The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.
Livy, Roman historian
Electronic communication is supposed to be destroying our ability to use normal language, as we resort to various forms of shorthand – BTW, FWIW, LOL, ROFLOL, etc, etc.
Well maybe.
But if it’s a sign of linguistic decline, it’s not the first time. FF Bruce points out that certain greetings were so common in Roman correspondence that letter-writers use abbreviations. Like SVBEEV for “si vales, bene est; ego valeo” (If you are well, it is good; I am well).
The early years of instruction he passed in liberal arts, and so thoroughly imbibed the sweets of learning, that no warlike commotions, no pressure of business, could ever erase them from his noble mind.
William of Malmesbury, book V, 125. said of Henry the I.
Indeed it is known, that, at the siege of Antioch, with a Lorrainian sword, he cut asunder a Turk, who had demanded single combat, and that one half of the man lay panting on the ground, while the horse, at full speed, carried away the other: so firmly the miscreant sat. Another also who attacked him he clave asunder from the neck to the groin, by taking aim at his head with a sword; nor did the dreadful stroke stop here, but cut entirely through the saddle, and the backbone of the horse.
William of Malmesbury, book IV, 394.
Being reproved and excommunicated for this [wife stealing] illicit amour, “You shall curl with a comb,” said he, “the hair that has forsaken your forehead, ere I repudiate the viscountess;” thus taunting a man, whose scanty hair required no comb.
William of Malmesbury, book V, 469.
Here, also, the excess of your learning appears ; for, whilst you love books, you manifest how deeply you have drunk of the stream. For many things, indeed, are eagerly desired when not possessed, but no person will love philosophy, who shall not have imbibed it thoroughly.”
William of Malmesbury, book V, 478. Said of Earl Robert.
The Franks “born with the baptism of Clovis” are not the Franks of Charlemagne or those of the French people Jean Le Pen hope to really around his political movement…The peoples of Europe are a work in progress and always will be.
Patrick J. Geary, Myth of Nations,157.
The cultivation of a provincial identity is most obvious in the literature composed in Gaul in the fourth century through the early sixth century…–and Sidonius (ca. 430-484)–an aristocrat from Lyon–expressed their deepest feelings not for Rome, or even for Gaul, but for their particular cities. Ausonius sings the praises of his beloved Bordeaux while Sidonius focuses on the Auvergne. Across Gaul, expressions of love for the patria focused not on Rome or even the chimeric “Gaul,” beloved of French nationalist historians, but, rather, on Marseille, Narbonne, Trier, Lyon, or other civitates.
– Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations – The Medieval Origins of Europe, 104.
In the High Middle Ages–the twelfth and thirteenth centuries–the towns would become the foci of a rich, vibrant culture. Two of the greatest glories of the high medieval civilization, the cathedral and the university, were both characteristically urban.
C Warren Hollister, The Making of England, 79.
I must admit, when I first got this assignment, I was a bit confused about which character to pick. There are so many characters to choose, from the pokey little puppy and curious george, to mice who had mental disorders relating to cookies. Even spider man is an option, the comic books of whom I stole from my brother on a regular basis.
However, there was one story that was intense, exciting, fun filled, and never failed to put me to sleep at night. A story seeking truth, fulfillment, and the leafiest leaf there ever was. This story is called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This caterpillar was the bravest, most destructive little guy ever to inch his way through the waxy pages of children’s literature. All he had to do was chew, chew, chew and then he would make progressively larger and larger holes in food items. With each fat, caterpillar shaped bullet hole, he would grow bigger and bigger. This caterpillar had drive. He had vision. He made holes in colorfully illustrated pie and cake and the occasional sausage link. This caterpillar was a diverse, unstoppable, eating machine. This story even followed me through my high school years, telling me that I, too, could go on. Every day, when I came through the glass double doors at Churchill county high school, I would think: holes. How could I make my own figurative caterpillar shaped hole in the public school system? Every time someone would say holes, I would smile secretly to myself.
Finally, at the end of the caterpillar’s munchings, he found what he had been searching for. A leaf to end all leafs. Destiny. In a sharp and calculating move, he ate that leaf. Then, conflict. A stomachache afflicted the caterpillar. Straining to fight this deplorable evil, the caterpillar wrapped himself up and then, just when all hope was lost, the caterpillar burst forth as a beautiful, inspirationally colored butterfly. So to you, I commend The Very Hungry Caterpillar. If you bore holes in everyone’s food supply, ruining it for general consumption, you will be beautiful too. Where is your leaf?
– Katie Travis, Sophomore Declamation
New Saint Andrews College, January 2007
I hope y’all remembered to go give blood, if you are healthy. If you haven’t done it yet and you are physically able to, take a break from school (or partying) and get on over to Tyndale Library to give blood. The bus will be out there till 5 p.m.
Yes, I gave blood today, barely. The nurse who helped me said my blood was starting and stopping, I think I didn’t drink enough fluids. I was afraid there was some major problem, or that they would reject me and throw away my blood, but the nurses seemed fine with it going slow. “We’re just happy to have the blood!
It didn’t really hurt, and if it does I think about all the sick people who don’t have a choice, who have needles and IV’s stuck in them day after day after day. At least we have a choice to give willingly of our clean blood. And you can’t help but feel good about that.
If you hold that Dante’s Divine Comedy was written verse after verse, then you must also judge the Gospels as separate entities. However, you then must forgive me if I am not interested in your views because you prove yourself a complete barbarian in matters of creation. A great symphony first exists as a whole and later it unfolds in its single movements. Quacks may patch four movements together; that, however, entitles us to call them quacks. The whole test of Christianity is that it binds all the times together.
– Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Fruit of Lips, 133.
The industry and forbearance of this man, any one will admire who reads the book which Bede composed concerning his life and those of the succeeding abbats: his industry, in bringing over a multitude of books, and being the first person who introduced in England constructors of stone edifices, as well as makers of glass windows ; in which pursuits he spent almost his whole life abroad : the love of his country and his taste for elegance beguiling his painful labours, in the earnest desire of conveying something to his countrymen out of the common way ; for very rarely before the time of Benedict were buildings of stone seen in Britain, nor did the solar ray cast light through the transparent glass.
– William of Malmesbury, Book II, chapter III
It has been made evident, I think, what disgrace and what destruction the neglect of learning and the immoral manners of degenerate men brought upon England! These remarks obtain this place in my history merely for the purpose of cautioning my readers.
– William of Malmesbury, Book II, chapter III
The searcher of my heart is witness that it was not for lust of gold that I came to France or continued there, but for the necessities of the church.
–Alcuin, William of Malmesbury, Book II, chapter III
Gregory of Nazianzen wrote against Apollinarianism, the belief that Jesus incarnated into man but did not indwell a human mind, saying,
If anyone has put his trust in him as a man without a human mind, he is wholly bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which he has not assumed he has not healed; but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved
-Gregory of Nazianzen, Letter to Cledonius in The Person of Christ by Donald Macleod, 160.
The Bible bids us come and eat. “Take, eat, this is my body”. Jesus gave the bread, not only to his disciples, but also to Judas. They were all one in Christ, and Christ bid them all come. But eleven were blessed, and one was cursed. In his letter to Corinth, Paul is giving directions for how the Supper is to be taken, and he tells the church of Corinth not to take the Body of the Lord in an unworthy manner lest they bring judgment upon themselves. What is Paul saying? First of all, the Supper is to be taken when the saints, the Body of Christ gather. Secondly they are to exemplify the unity represented by the Supper in their conduct, for if not their conduct lies about the nature of the body of Christ which is unified. God is One, and the Body of Christ must be One with each other and with the Father. If a man is not in communion with his brother, then he ought to be reunited, lest he lie about the meaning of the Supper he is about to partake. What a more fitting opportunity to repent of faction than before the Table which represents the unity of the church? What is the last thing for a saint to do before the table of the Lord? Abstain.
To abstain is to cut oneself off from the people of God, which in affect fulfills Paul’s warning. He reproached them for coming together with lack of unity, how much less unified is the Body of Christ when certain members are watching, and “partaking in heart”? The point of the Supper is the remembrance of the death of Christ. That death, because of the breaking of Christ’s body on the cross, now unites together believers who have been washed through baptism in the blood of Christ. Christ’s body was broken so that many might be un-broken and unified with Him. The command to all that are in the body is to come, eat, and drink. As a father invites his children to the Sabbath Meal, so Christ invites us to his table. May no child say, “No thanks dad, I’ll just watch you all eat.” Let us first of all obey the clear command to come, and secondly, let us do so in a worthy manner.
January 8, 2007
Lyon, France
Written early Monday morning after reflecting upon a Baptist worship service from the day before.
Christianity has nothing to fear from rigorous scholarship. On the contrary, the application of stringent historical criteria serves only to confirm our confidence in the gospels.
– Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ,115.
We do this [use apocalyptic language] all the time ourselves. I have often pointed out to students that to describe the fall of the Berlin Wall, as one well might, as an ‘earth-shattering event’ might perhaps lead some future historian, writing in the Martian Journal of Early European Studies, to hypothesize that an earthquake had caused the collapse of the Wall, leading to both sides realizing they could live together after all. A good many readings of apocalyptic literature in our own century operate on about that level of misunderstanding.
-N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 282.
Though Sirach is not scripture, it is very interesting, and contains much wisdom (as well as some very humorous sayings!). Here are a few I wrote down during my reading.
“When an intelligent person hear a wise saying, he praises it and adds to it;
when a fool hears it, he laughs at it and throws it behind his back.”
Sirach 21: 15
“Whoever teaches a fool is like one who glues potsherds together, or who rouses
a sleeper from deep slumber. Whoever tells a story to a fool tells it to a
drowsy man; and at the end he will say, ‘What is it?’
Weep for the dead, for he has left the light behind; and weep for the fool, for he has left intelligence behind. Weep less bitterly for the dead, for he is at rest; but the
life of the fool is worse than death. Mourning for the dead lasts seven days,
but for the foolish or the ungodly it lasts all days of their lives.”
-Sirach 22:9-12“There is no venom worse than a snake’s venom, and no anger worse than a woman’s wrath. I would rather live with a lion and a dragon than live with an evil woman. A woman’s wickedness changes her appearance, and darkens her face like that of a bear.”
Sirach 25:15-17 – he must have known some interesting women…“Pamper a child, and he will terrorize you; play with him, and he will grieve you.”
Sirach 30:9 hmm…“A joyful heart is life itself, and rejoicing lengthens one’s life span.”
Sirach 30:22“Those who are cheerful and merry at the table will benefit from their food.”
Sirach 30:25“Wine drunk at the proper time and in moderation is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul.”
Sirach 31: 28“A seal of emerald in a rich setting of gold is the melody of music with good wine.”
Sirach 32:6“Do not be overconfident on a smooth road, and give good heed to your paths.”
Sirach 32:21-22“The Lord created medicines out of the earth, and the sensible will not despise them.”
Sirach 38:4“A friend or companion is always welcome, but a sensible wife is better than either.”
Sirach 40:23
One undercurrent beneath the Federal Vision business is a hidden difference in epistemological assumptions. The Hellenistic method strips accidents away from the thing, looking for essences. The Hebraic way of definition adds layer upon layer, looking at the thing from as many different angles as possible, and in as many situations as possible. Peter Leithart talks about this latter way of knowing in his book The Kingdom and the Power, and there is also a section on it in Angels in the Architecture.
This leads to an assumption on the part of the former that once you have a “definition,” it is time to stop, and defend that orthodox definition against all comers. We can see this tendency in the definitions of the visible/invisible Church, or with statements about “outward” Christians and Christians “inwardly.” But I have no trouble with these distinctions, as far as they go. Yes, there are Christians outwardly and Christian inwardly. But I then want to take this matter under discussion and look at it from numerous other directions, trying grasp the whole by means of addition. In contrast, the Hellenistic approach to definition (and I am not using this pejoratively; there is an important place for this kind of definition) seeks to understand by means of subtraction. How much can we take away and still have the thing we are talking about? But the temptation is then to disallow other approaches, approaches that may operate with a different set of descriptive rules. The Hebraic way gives us man worshipping, man playing, man eating, man making love, man working, man sleeping, and man writing poems. The Hellenistic way gives us a featherless, bipedal carbon unit.
For the Hellenistic approach, a true Christian is one who is one inwardly, period, stop. And this is true. But I also want to say that we have inward Christians and outward Christians, faithful Christians and adulterous Christians, temporary Christians and Christians forever, slaves and sons, wheat and tares, sons of Hagar and sons of Sarah, washed pigs and washed lambs, fruitless branches and fruitful branches, Christians who die in the wilderness and Christians who die in Canaan, and so on.
Now if someone of the other party thinks that I am essentially doing the same thing he is doing (that is, picking one and one only out of this list in order to make it the “true” definition), he has every right to be concerned. For example, if we are limited to one, then inward/outward is one of the best metaphors. But it is a metaphor, and needs other metaphors. If I were to isolate “fruitless branches and fruitful branches” to the exclusion of all others, and make it “the definition,” then I have become an Arminian. I think that this is what our critics are worried about. But we are not seeking to substitute; we are seeking to layer.
Anti-sacramental, anti-ritual evangelicalism emphasizes a personal relationship with God, but tends to encourage what Anthony Giddens calls “pure relationship,” a relationship that is not tacked down with external anchors and supports. A live-in relationship, without benefit of the rites and legalities of marriage, is a pure relationship. Evangelicalism tends to encourage a live-in relationship with Jesus.
This is wrong, a departure from Christian tradition, and unbiblical. It also places unbearable burdens on the soul. Tempted by the devil, Luther slapped his forehead to remind himself of his baptism. His standing before God was anchored in Christ, to whom he had been joined by baptism.
For evangelicals, assurance cannot be grounded in anything so external and objective. Spontaneous enthusiasm is the test of sincerity, and the source of assurance. But eternal, self-scrutinizing vigilance is necessary to ensure that the enthusiasm is really spontaneous.
Enthusiasm was supposed to liberate the soul from all the dead forms, but it comes with its own set of chains.
I found some of the tables on this website especially helpful for learning the alphabet. I’m grouping the best tables together here.
Dionysius to brother Novatian, greeting. If you were led on unwillingly, as you claim, then you can prove it by retreating willingly. One should endure anything rather than split the church of God, and martyrdom to avert schism I think more glorious than that to avoid idolatry. For in the case of the latter one is martyred for the sake of his own single soul, but in the former for the sake of the whole church.
– Dionysius, Eusibius, Book 7.
“Like the closing chapters of Job, Ecclesiastes teaches that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophies or theologies, that God is up to more than we can possibly conceive, and that, limited and finite as we are, it is only natural that our grasp of the pattern of history is partial and our control of life is limited.” (Deep Comedy, Dr. Leithart)
(God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. . . )
“Like the days of creation, which move from evening to morning, biblical history moves from darkness to light, from the darkness, emptiness and formlessness of the original creation (Gen. 1:2) to the lighted and teeming city of Revelation. History moves toward day.” (Ibid.)
(The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. . . )
“The joy of Easter, the joy of resurrection, the joy of trinitarian life does not simply offer an alternative ‘worldview’ to the tragic self-inflation of the ancients. Worked out in the joyful life of the Christian church, deep comedy is the chief weapon of our warfare. For in the joy of the Lord is our strength, and Satan shall be felled with ‘cakes and ale’ and midnight revels.” (Ibid.)
(Calls you one and calls you all to gain his everlasting hall . . . )
“Good Christian Men, Rejoice!”
HT: Lydia Smith