Saturday, May 31, 2008

Doctrinal Righteousness

“[Roman] Catholic righteousness by good works is vastly preferable to a Protestant righteousness by good doctrine. At least righteousness by good works benefits one’s neighbor, whereas righteousness by good doctrine only produces lovelessness and pride.”

- Herman Bavinck

Herman Bavinck is my favorite theologian. I think this is my new favorite quote.

Friday, May 30, 2008

The Dilemma of Belief in the World of Today

"Belief appears no longer as the bold but challenging leap out of the apparent all of our visible world and into the apparent void of the invisible and intangible; it looks much more like a demand to bind oneself to yesterday and to affirm it as eternally valid. "


- Pope Benedict XVI

This is is a great quote from a brilliant thinker as to why so many people today adopt a hermeneutics of suspicion. This is a difficult barrier for the minister of the gospel today.

Friday, May 9, 2008

What Hath Rome to do with Westminster?

"To be sure, the response of faith to revelation, which God grants to the creature he chooses and moves with his love, occurs in such a way that it is truly the creature that provides the response, with its own nature and its natural powers of love"

Hans Urs von Balthasar

This is a beautiful summation of the tension of God's initiating grace and our authentic response to the gospel from a brilliant Roman Catholic theologian.

Monday, May 5, 2008

your story

an open letter addressed to you

ruffled, broken, bent on the table

good news, bad news, you just don’t know

pregnant expectation attacks your stomach

the clock hand is now moving slowly


the paper in your hands is rough

the words are small

piercing your eyes with emotion

you taste excitement once again


paradise warped into wasteland

then stunned back into something beautiful

freedom strangled by the heat of idolatry

beauty, justice, relationships

the vandalization of shalom; the triumph of grace

from a garden-park to a holy city

This is your story