An essential part of the ordination exam ought to be a passage from some recognized theological work set for translation into vulgar English —- just like doing Latin prose. Failure on this part should mean failure on the whole exam. It is absolutely disgraceful that we expect missionaries to the Bantus to learn Bantu, but never ask whether our missionaries to the Americans or English can speak American or English. Any fool can write learned language: the vernacular is the real test. If you can’t turn your faith into it, then either you don’t understand it or you don’t believe it.
…C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) in “The Christian Century”
Few have defined what free will is, although it repeatedly occurs in the writings of all. Origen seems to have put forward a definition generally agreed upon among ecclesiastical writers when he said that it is a faculty of the reason to distinguish between good and evil, a faculty of the will to choose one or the other. Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.
…John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ii.2.4 [1559]
We should always pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God; we should always act with as much energy as those who expect everything from themselves.
I cannot answer all the curious questions of the brain concerning prayer and law, not half of them, indeed, and I will not attempt to; but I will cast my anchor here in this revealing fact, that He, the Holiest of the Holy and the Wisest of the Wise, He prays. Therefore I am assured that this anchorage of Divine example will hold the vessel in the tossings of the wildest sea of doubt, and I shall be as safe as He was, if the vessel itself is engulfed in the waves of suffering and sorrow. His act is an argument. His prayer is an inspiration. His achievements are the everlasting and all-sufficient vindication of prayer.
“If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer . . . I believe it quite rationally based upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case . . . is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts.”
For your heart is your life, and your life can only be altered by that which is the real working of your heart. And if your prayer is only a form of words, made by the skill of other people, such a prayer can no more change you into a good man, than an actor upon the stage, who speaks kingly language, is thereby made to be a king: whereas one thought, or word, or look, towards God, proceeding from your own heart, can never be without its proper fruit, or fail of doing a real good to your soul. Again, another great and infallible benefit of this kind of prayer is this; it is the only way to be delivered from the deceitfulness of your own hearts. [Continued tomorrow]
… William Law (1686-1761), The Spirit of Prayer [1749]
Meditation:Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.”How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Words are merely carriers of the secret, supernatural communications, the light and call of God. That is why spiritual books bear such different meanings for different types and qualities of soul, why each time we read them they give us something fresh, as we can bear it.
…Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Light of Christ [1944]
