February 2012
21 posts
4 tags
Excluding Any Faith of Man in Himself
“It is a decisive mark of what the Bible calls faith that everything stated about man as such, and about his bearing and circumstances, appears absolutely as the determination of his orientation to God as an object and therefore as the determination of his knowledge. Biblical faith excludes any faith of man in himself—that is, any desire for religious self-help, any religious self-satisfaction,...
“Sometimes this star is still. Seem times she dances. She is Mary’s star....”
– >. Frederick Buechner, Godric, 96
3 tags
“Dear N.N., Many thanks for your kind letter. But what an obstinate fellow you...”
– » Karl Barth
“Those who fail to honor their elders and to learn the exegetical task condemn...”
– Dale Allison (via wesleyhill)
“We live in a time when many religious people feel fiercely threatened by...”
– Marilynne Robinson (via ayjay)
8 tags
Genuine Questions of Church Proclamation
“Just as the reality of the Word of God in Jesus Christ bears its possibility within itself, as does also the reality of the Holy Spirit, by whom the Word of God comes to man, so too the possibility of the knowledge of God and therefore the knowability of God cannot be questioned in vacuo, or by means of a general criterion of knowledge delimiting the knowledge of God from without, but only from...
6 tags
Happy Little Hyphens
“The concept of revelation and that of reason, history or humanity were usually linked by the copulative particle ‘and’, and the most superficial provisos were regarded as sufficient protection against all the possible dangers of such combinations. Happy little hyphens were used between, say, the words ‘modern’ and ‘positive,’ or ‘religious’ and ‘social,’ or ‘German’ and ‘Evangelical,’ as if the...
3 tags
Free In the Same Sense
“The source of theology (which can also be called Gospel) is also its subject-matter, to which it is tied just as all other branches of knowledge pursued at the university are tied to their subject-matter. Without it theology could and would dissolve into amateurish excursions into history, philosophy, psychology, and so on…Bound to its subject matter though it is in this way, it enjoys complete...
3 tags
Rant: Book Design
Caveat: I know next to nothing about the book publishing industry, especially from the inside.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that some publishers pay very little attention to the readability and design of their books and make enjoying them quite difficult on the reader. Gaudy and attention-less cover art, problem-creating page margins, mind-numbing fully justified paragraphs, font and leading...
4 tags
There’s Only One True Port
“Some of the monks tried to drag them away but it was plain they’d never leave till Brendan spoke of his voyages to them. It was the shortest I ever heard him do it.
‘I’ll tell you about my voyages then,’ he said. ‘They never did anybody a bit of good least of all Christ.’ The wet was pelting his face.
‘There’s only one true port,’ he said. ‘That’s Heaven. God grant we never shipwreck on our...
3 tags
“If it was dark, it was the darkness of the womb.”
– » Lynn White (via mediumaevum)
No Better Than Judas After All
Pete Peterson on one of the most affecting books I’ve ever read, Shusako Endo’s Silence:
“The fawn wouldn’t die, at least not according to my schedule. I gave up on it. What was I to do? Wait beside the road all night? Throw it in my truck and wait until morning to drive it to a vet? I didn’t have time for that. I left. I stood up and left it writhing in the grass coughing and sputtering and...