He that gives should never remember, he that receives should never forget.

…Talmud

Don’t imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he won’t be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who’s always telling you that, of course, he’s nobody. Probably all you’ll think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him, it will be because you feel a bit envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He won’t be thinking about himself at all. There I must stop. If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you’re not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

…C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Christian Behavior

The scandal of the Bible does not lie so much in its claim to record the Word of God, as in its insistence that the Word of God is to be heard in a particular historical happening, in a particular locality — and only there. To put it in a provocative manner: the Bible is theology. It is historical theology. It can reveal its meaning only to those who regard it as the Word of God, and are able to preserve a strict confidence in the universal significance of particular historical occasions.

Philosophers Who Believe, Kelly James Clark, ed. [1993]

… E. S. Hoskyns (1884-1937), We Are the Pharise

After a trip to Mexico [in 1984]… I fell ill… The illness was protracted… I suffered a mild depression… When [an episcopal priest] prayed for my recovery, I choked up and wept. The only prayer I knew word for word was the Pater Noster. On that day and in the days after it, I found myself repeating the Lord’s Prayer, again and again, and meaning every word of it. Quite suddenly, when I was awake one night, a light dawned on me, and I realized what had happened… After many years of affirming God’s existence and trying to give adequate reasons for that affirmation, I found myself believing in God.

… Mortimer Adler (1902-2001), quoted in

Philosophers Who Believe, Kelly James Clark, ed. [1993]

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601

February 9, 2004

A life devoted unto God, looking wholly unto Him in all our actions, and doing all things suitably to His glory, is so far from being dull and uncomfortable, that it creates new comforts in everything that we do.

… William Law (1686-1761)

February 7, 2004

One of Paul’s most important teachings… is the doctrine of what we call “justification by faith”. It frequently appears to the non-Christian mind that this is an immoral or at least unmoral doctrine. Paul appears to be saying that a man is justified before God, not by his goodness or badness, not by his good deeds or bad deeds, but by believing in a certain doctrine of Atonement. Of course, when we come to examine the matter more closely, we can see that there is nothing unmoral in this teaching at all. For if “faith” means using a God-given faculty to apprehend the unseen divine order, and means, moreover, involving oneself in that order by personal commitment, we can at once see how different that is from merely accepting a certain view of Christian redemption… That which man in every religion, every century, every country, was powerless to affect, God has achieved by the devastating humility of His action and suffering in Jesus Christ. Now, accepting such an action as a fait accompli is only possible by this perceptive faculty of “faith”. It requires not merely intellectual assent but a shifting of personal trust from the achievements of the self to the completely undeserved action of God. To accept this teaching by mind and heart does, indeed, require a metanoia [“transformation”], a revolution in the outlook of both heart and mind.

… J. B. Phillips (1906-1982),

New Testament Christianity [1956]

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525

There is a cowardice in this age which is not Christian. We shrink from the consequences of truth. We look round and cling dependently. We ask what men will think; what others will say; whether they will not stare in astonishment. Perhaps they will; but he who is calculating that, will accomplish nothing in this
life. The Father — the Father which is with us and in us — what does He think? God’s work cannot be done without a spirit of independence. A man has got some way in the Christian life when he has learned to say, humbly yet majestically, “I dare to be alone.”

… F. W. Robertson

A life devoted unto God, looking wholly unto Him in all our actions, and doing all things suitably to His glory, is so far from being dull and uncomfortable, that it creates new comforts in everything that we do.

… William Law (1686-1761)

One of Paul’s most important teachings… is the doctrine of what we call “justification by faith”.  It frequently appears to the non-Christian mind that this is an immoral or at least unmoral doctrine.  Paul appears to be saying that a man is justified before God, not by his goodness or badness, not by his good deeds or bad deeds, but by believing in a certain doctrine of Atonement.  Of course, when we come to examine the matter more closely, we can see that there is nothing unmoral in this teaching at all.  For if “faith” means using a God-given faculty to apprehend the unseen divine order, and means, moreover, involving oneself in that order by personal commitment, we can at once see how different that is from merely accepting a certain view of Christian redemption… That which man in every religion, every century, every country, was powerless to affect, God has achieved by the devastating humility of His action and suffering in Jesus Christ.  Now, accepting such an action as a fait accompli is only possible by this perceptive faculty of “faith”.  It requires not merely intellectual assent but a shifting of personal trust from the achievements of the self to the completely undeserved action of God.  To accept this teaching by mind and heart does, indeed, require a metanoia [“transformation”], a revolution in the outlook of both heart and mind.

… J. B. Phillips (1906-1982),
New Testament Christianity [1956]