C. Harold Dodd

Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012 The higher faiths call their followers to strenuous moral effort. read more

Commemoration of Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1012 The higher faiths call their followers to strenuous moral effort. Such effort is likely to be arduous and painful in proportion to the height of the ideal, desperate in proportion to the sensitiveness of the conscience. A morbid scrupulousness besets the morally serious soul. It is anxious and troubled, afraid of evil, haunted by the memory of failure. The best of the Pharisees tended in this direction, and no less the best of the Stoics. And so little has Christianity been understood that the popular idea of a serious Christian is modeled upon the same type of character. (Continued tomorrow).

The primitive Christians were accustomed to speak, in a language which was older than Christianity, of being "in the Spirit" read more

The primitive Christians were accustomed to speak, in a language which was older than Christianity, of being "in the Spirit" -- as though Spirit were an ethereal atmosphere surrounding the soul, and breathed in as the body breathes in the air. Paul, too, used this expression, but he placed alongside it a parallel form of words, "in Christ" or "in Christ Jesus". Where we find these words used we are being reminded of the intimate union with Christ which makes the Christian life an eternal life lived in the midst of time. The deeper shade of meaning would often be conveyed to our minds if we translated the phrase "in communion with Christ". But, Paul's Christ mysticism is saved from the introverted individualism of many forms of mysticism by his insistence that communion with Christ is also communion with all who are Christ's.

The ascetic believed that, because he was so holy, the Devil was permitted special liberties with him, and he found read more

The ascetic believed that, because he was so holy, the Devil was permitted special liberties with him, and he found in his increasing agony of effort a token of divine approval. Not along this track lies the path of moral progress. Christianity says: face the evil once for all, and disown it. Then quiet the spirit in the presence of God. Let His perfections fill the field of vision. In particular, let the concrete embodiment of the goodness of God in Christ attract and absorb the gaze of the soul. Here is the righteousness, not as a fixed and abstract ideal, but in a living human person. The righteousness of Christ is a real achievement of God's own Spirit in man.

Continued from yesterday: The result of all this is that the Christian is a free man. It is here read more

Continued from yesterday: The result of all this is that the Christian is a free man. It is here to be observed that the term "freedom" is ambiguous in common usage. It is sometimes used to imply that a man can do just as he likes, undetermined by any external force. To this the determinist replies that as a matter of fact this freedom is so limited by the laws which condition man's empirical existence as to be illusory. The rejoinder from the advocates of free will is that no external force can determine a man's moral conduct (and with mere automatism we are not concerned), unless it is presented in consciousness, and that in being so presented it becomes a desire, a temptation, or a motive. In suffering himself to be determined by these, the man is not submitting to external control, but to something which he has already made a part of himself, for good or ill. When, however, we have said that, we are faced with a further problem. Not all that is desired is desirable, and in being moved by my immediate desire I may be balking myself of that ultimate satisfaction which is the real object of all effort. If that is so, then to "do as I like" may well be no freedom at all. There is a law of our being which forbids satisfaction to be found along that line, as it is written, "He gave them their desire, and sent leanness into their souls." (Ps. 106:15) (Continued tomorrow).

That appearance on earth as an individual is the crisis in the history both of Christ Himself and of the read more

That appearance on earth as an individual is the crisis in the history both of Christ Himself and of the humanity He saves and leads. The ministry of Jesus, therefore, culminating in His death, is essential to Paul's whole thought. If in certain aspects of his theology it is the death that bulks most largely -- because it seemed to him to be the purest and most moving expression of what the whole life meant -- he is quite aware that the ethical impulse given by the example and teaching of Jesus is of the very stuff of the Christian life. He alludes to the Gospel story but sparingly, but those who study his teaching most closely become aware that he is himself acting and speaking all through under the impulse of the life and teaching of Jesus. If he refuses to "know Christ after the flesh," it means that he will not risk a harking back to the temporary conditions of the Galilean ministry when the Spirit of Christ is clearly leading out into new fields. The issues of that ministry have been gathered up in the new experience of "Christ in me", and that experience gives a living Christ, who leads ever onward those who will adventure with Him, and not a prophet of the past, whose words might pass into a dead tradition.