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    All theological language is necessarily analogical, but it was singularly unfortunate that the Church, in speaking of punishment for sin, should have chosen the analogy of criminal law, for the analogy is incompatible with the Christian belief in God as the creator of Man. Criminal laws are laws, imposed on men, who are already in existence, with or without their consent, and, with the possible exception of capital punishment for murder, there is no logical relation between the nature of a crime and the penalty inflicted for committing it. If God created man, then the laws of man's spiritual nature must, like the laws of his physical nature, be laws -- laws, that is to say, which he is free to defy but no more free to break than he can break the law of gravity by jumping out of the window, or the laws of biochemistry by getting drunk -- and the consequences of defying them must be as inevitable and as intrinsically related to their nature as a broken leg or a hangover. To state spiritual laws in the imperative -- Thou shalt love God with all thy being, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself -- is simply a pedagogical technique, as when a mother says to her small son, "Stay away from the window!" because the child does not yet know what will happen if he falls out of it.

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  18  /  16  

Feast of Thomas More, Scholar & Martyr, & John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr, 1535 The redeemed in Heaven crying read more

Feast of Thomas More, Scholar & Martyr, & John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr, 1535 The redeemed in Heaven crying continually, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood," give, say the scriptures, an adoration which, in depth and fullness, no angel of them all can ever equal. Yet even then, we have not reached the centre. For when we worship, we are in God's presence, and it is what He says and does to us that is the all-important thing, not what we say and do toward Him. Since He is here and speaking to us, face to face, it is for us, in a hush of spirit, to listen for and to His voice, reproving counseling, encouraging, revealing His most blessed will for us; and, with diligence, to set about immediate obedience. This and this, upon which He has laid His hand, must go; and this and this to which He calls us must be at once begun. And here and now I start to it. That is the heart of worship, its very core and essence.

by A. J. Gossip Found in: Christianity Quotes,
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  18  /  20  

Continuing a short series on forgiveness: Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. ("To know all is to forgive all.") read more

Continuing a short series on forgiveness: Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. ("To know all is to forgive all.") No commonplace is more untrue. Behavior, whether conditioned by an individual neurosis or by society, can be understood, that is to say, one knows exactly why such and such an individual behaves as he does. But a personal action or deed is always mysterious. When we really act, precisely because it is a matter of free choice, we can never say exactly why we do this rather than that. But it is only deeds that we are required to forgive. If someone does me an injury, the question of forgiveness only arises if I am convinced (a) that the injury he did me was a free act on his part and therefore no less mysterious to him than to me, and (b) that it was me personally whom he meant to injure. Christ does not forgive the soldiers who are nailing him to the Cross; he asks the Father to forgive them. He knows as well as they do why they are doing this -- they are a squad, detailed to execute a criminal. They do not know what they are doing, because it is not their business, as executioners, to know whom they are crucifying. If the person who does me an injury does not know what he is doing, then it is as ridiculous for me to talk about forgiving him as it would be for me to "forgive" a tile which falls on my head in a gale.

by W. H. Auden Found in: Christianity Quotes,
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  14  /  15  

Feast of All Souls If you ask me how I believe in God, how God creates Himself in me, read more

Feast of All Souls If you ask me how I believe in God, how God creates Himself in me, and reveals Himself to me, my answer may perhaps provoke your smiles or laughter, and even scandalize you. I believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breath of His affection, feel His invisible and intangible hand drawing me, leading me, grasping me.

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  14  /  13  

Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269 read more

Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885 Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269 God generally gives spiritual blessings and deliverances as He does temporal ones; that is, by the mediation of an active and vigorous industry. The fruits of the earth are the gift of God, and we pray for them as such; but yet we plant, and we sow, and we plough, for all that; and the hands which are sometimes lift up in prayer must at other times be put to the plough, or the husbandman must expect no crop. Everything must be effected in the way proper to its nature, with the concurrent influence of the divine grace, not to supersede the means, but to prosper and make them effectual.

by Robert South Found in: Christianity Quotes,
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Poor souls are apt to think that all those whom they read of or hear of to be gone to read more

Poor souls are apt to think that all those whom they read of or hear of to be gone to heaven, went thither because they were so good and so holy... Yet not one of them, not any man that is now in heaven (Jesus Christ alone excepted), did ever come thither any other way but by forgiveness of sins. And that will also bring us higher, though we come short of many of them in holiness and grace...

by John Owen Found in: Christianity Quotes,
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  11  /  13  

Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356 Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, read more

Feast of Antony of Egypt, Abbot, 356 Commemoration of Charles Gore, Bishop, Teacher, Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, 1932 Now what ought to have been the attitude of thoughtful Christians towards ecclesiastical authority, resulting from our Lord's whole attitude towards it? I think that the Catholic Church ought to have maintained and used ecclesiastical and sacerdotal authority, but that its maintenance and its use ought to have been accompanied with a continual fear. Because they had before them this fact, that however divinely authoritative, however securely resting on a basis of legitimate and genuine inspiration, yet the ecclesiastical authority of the Old Covenant, by no process of sudden revolution, but simply by a process of gradual development, was capable of becoming something so utterly alien in spirit from what it was intended to be, that when the Christ came, to prepare for whom and to welcome whom was the one reason for which it existed, it did in fact reject Him utterly.

by Charles Gore Found in: Christianity Quotes,
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  8  /  9  

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He is my Altar, I His holy place; I am His guest, and He my read more

Feast of Luke the Evangelist He is my Altar, I His holy place; I am His guest, and He my living food; I'm His by penitence, He is mine by grace; I'm His by purchase, He is mine by blood; He's my supporting elm, and I His vine: Thus I my Best-beloved's am; thus He is mine.

by Francis Quarles Found in: Christianity Quotes,
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Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689 "The read more

Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167 Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689 "The clergy," says Canon Rhymes, "are called to give to the laity the benefit of their theological understanding and so help them to account for and understand the faith which is in them." But surely there is no point in trying to account for faith: the moment it is accounted for rationally, it is no longer faith. Those whose hearts are filled with the Christian spirit... are best left to proclaim the Gospel in their own words and, above all, through the example of their own lives.

by John Grigg Found in: Christianity Quotes,
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  8  /  7  

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

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