"Only boast in the cross of Jesus Christ. It is a single idea. A single goal. A single passion. Only boast in the cross. The word can be translated "exult in" or "rejoice in." Only exult in the cross of Christ. Only rejoice in the cross of Christ. Paul says let this be your single passion, you single boast and joy and exultation. In this great moment called ONE DAY let the ONE THING that you love, the one thing that you cherish, the one thing that you rejoice in and exult over be the cross of Jesus Christ.
This is shocking for two reasons.
1) One is that it's like saying: Only boast in the electric chair. Only exult in the gas chamber. Only rejoice in the lethal injection. Let your one boast and one joy and one exultation be the lynching rope. "May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." No manner of execution that has ever been devised was more cruel and agonizing than to be nailed to a cross. It was horrible. You would not have been able to watch it - not without screaming and pulling at your hair and tearing your clothes. Let this be the one passion of your life.
2) That is one thing that is shocking about Paul's words. The other is that he says this is to be the only boast of your life. The only joy. The only exultation. "May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
What does he mean by this? Really? No other boast? No other exultation? No other joy except the cross of Jesus - the death of Jesus?
What about the places where Paul himself uses the same word for "boast" or "exult" for other things? For example:
Romans 5:2: "We exult in hope of the glory of God."
Romans 5:3: "We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that they produce patience and approvedness and hope."
2 Corinthians 12:9, "Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses."
1 Thessalonians 2:19: "Who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you?"
So, if Paul can boast and exult in all these things, what does Paul mean - that he would not "boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ"?
But what does that mean? Is that just double talk? You exult in one thing and just say that you are exulting in another thing? No. There is a very profound reason for saying this - that all exultation, all rejoicing, all boasting in anything should be a rejoicing in the cross of Jesus Christ.
He means that, for the Christian, all other boasting, should also be a boasting in the cross. All exultation in anything else should be exultation in the cross. If you exult in the hope of glory you should be exulting in the cross of Christ. If you exult in tribulation because tribulation works hope, you should be exulting in the cross of Christ. If you exult in your weaknesses, or in the people of God, you should be exulting in the cross of Christ.
Why is this the case? For this reason: for redeemed sinners, every good thing - indeed every bad thing that God turns for good - was obtained for us by the cross of Christ. Apart from the death of Christ, sinners get nothing but judgment. Apart from the cross of Christ, there is only condemnation. Therefore everything that you enjoy in Christ - as a Christian, as a person who trusts Christ - is owing to the death of Christ. And all your rejoicing in all things should therefore be a rejoicing in the cross where all your blessings were purchased for you at the cost of the death of the Son of God, Jesus Christ."
'Tis finished! the Messiah dies,
cut off for sins, but not his own.
Accomplished is the sacrifice,
the great redeeming work is done.
The veil is rent; in Christ alone
the living way to heaven is seen;
the middle wall is broken down,
and all the world may enter in.
'Tis finished! All my guilt and pain,
I want no sacrifice beside;
for me, for me the Lamb is slain;
'tis finished! I am justified.
The reign of sin and death is o'er,
and all may live from sin set free;
Satan hath lost his mortal power;
'tis swallowed up in victory.
Charles Wesley
1. Man cannot understand it. This is necessary to a change. Whatsoever is done by the will, must be done by the impulse of some other faculty. Sensitive appetite cannot instruct the will to this work. Sense is not capable of reason, much less of religion, though it be the portal to both. The will can never be moved to any good thing, unless the mind propound it as good and amiable. The act of thinking must precede the act of believing, for we cannot believe without thinking of what we believe. It is less to think than understand. If we cannot, then, do that which is less in the preparation, we cannot do that which is greater, especially when it is impossible to will without thinking; and thinking is a necessary means to willing. He that cannot prepare himself for a good thought, how can he prepare himself for a gracious habit? What ability have we to the act of faith, when we have no ability to any thought of faith? We cannot by the strength of nature understand it, if we consider,
(1.) The first blot caused by sin was upon the understanding. Man was first deceived by the sophistical reasonings of the serpent. The first effect of sin was to spread a thick darkness upon Adam's understanding. Though the whole house, and every beam of it, fell together, yet this faculty was first unfastened, and brought all the rest to ruin. As soon as ever he ceased from glorifying God as God, a darkness was brought upon his foolish heart: Rom. i. 21, 'When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened,' where the apostle describes the state of man in corrupt nature after his fall.
(2.) There is a darkness transmitted from him to the understanding of every man by nature. The light is darkened in the heaven of the soul, the more spiritual part of the mind, Isa. v. 30, as the prophet speaks in another case. Our understandings are so closed up with the thick slime of sin, that we cannot see the beauty of gospel truths; 'darkness comprehends not the light,' John i. 5. Though the light of the sun did shine a thousand times brighter than it does, and strike upon the face and eyelids of a man with the greatest glory, yet if there be a spot upon the apple of his eye, if he scants a seeing faculty, he can apprehend nothing of it.
(3.) There is an unsuitableness and a contrariety in the mind of man to the gospel, which is the instrument of regeneration. There is a mighty distance between the spiritual object and the natural faculty. The understanding, though never so well furnished with natural stuff, is but natural, and flesh; the object is supernatural and spiritual; therefore the richest mere nature can no more attain to the knowledge of spiritual things, than the clearest sense can attain to the knowledge of rational. Though every man 'by nature has the things contained in the law,' Rom. ii. 14, 15, yet no man has by nature the things contained in the gospel. The gospel has not the same advantage in the hearts of men as the law hash, for it finds nothing of kin to it. Though a natural heart has some broken pieces of the law of God deposited in it, yet there is not the least syllable of Christ or regeneration written in the mind by the hand of nature.
(4.) Besides this, the natural levity of the understanding does incapacitate it to prepare itself. It is with the understanding as with a line, the farther it is stretched out the weaker and more wavering it is. So is the understanding, being at a distance from God. How do vain thoughts intrude into the mind! No man can keep a door locked against them. We feel them rushing upon us while we endeavour to avoid them. We are confounded and overwhelmed by them, and drawn to things against our own resolutions. Man has not the command of his own heart, so much as to think steadily of a divine object.
(5.) Hence it follows that a natural mind has no right notion of grace. To the right notion of a thing is required suitableness, pleasure, and a fixedness of the mind upon it. A natural mind wants all these. How can it then prepare itself for that which it has no knowledge of? And without knowledge it cannot commend it to the will. The apostle asserts a plain cannot in this business: 1 Cor. ii. 14, 'He cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.' Being destitute of the Spirit, they cannot discern the things of the Spirit.
The cross. What a diverse and theologically complete term.
The New Testament describes the Cross in its multiple facets.
It is a military operation; the Divine Warrior’s victory over Satan, sin, and death.
It is an act of diplomacy; reconciling the world to God.
It is a legal act; the execution of a sentence of death.
It is a cultic act; the sacrifice that ends all sacrifice.
The 4th can be more aptly stated: "sacrifice and the redemption of society."
It is clear from the New Testament that the cross has both theological and sociological dimensions. That is, the cross reconciles God with man and also reconciles man and man, redeeming human society.
My ultimate aim is to answer Anselm’s question, Cur Deus Homo? in a way that demonstrates not only the theological but the "sociological" necessity of the cross.
I.
Raising the question this way immediately raises a conflict with secular thought. To be sure, Christians and secularists agree that society needs to be redeemed. Though secularists may object to the use of a religiously loaded word like "redemption," one of the driving forces of post-Enlightenment modernity has been the passion to liberate human society from its pathologies so that it may flourish in freedom and peace. A central question that divides Christians and moderns has to do with the means for achieving that condition. For Christianity, society is redeemed by the Incarnate Son, who entered a disordered and perverted world reeling under the curse and wrath of God (Rom. 1:18-32) to redeem "us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us" on the cross (Gal. 3:13). Through the blood of Christ and through His cross, Jew and Gentile have been made "one new man" and are "reconciled in one body" (Eph 2:11-16). Through Jesus, societies torn by violence, hatred, and envy, societies inflated with pride, societies distracted and obsessed by sensuality are renewed in joy, peace, patience, love, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.
For moderns, on the other hand, Christianity is one of the pathologies from which society must be delivered. Moderns are repulsed at the idea of substitutionary atonement and by sacrifice. For Jesus to take our place is unjust and unbecoming of God. According to Nietzsche, the "god on the cross" cannot be the redeemer of society and human life; rather, the cross was the negation of life. For others, claiming that a violent death lies at the heart of history legitimizes violence, and to suggest that human society and culture can be redeemed only by an event during the first century, an event that took place in the Eastern backwaters of the Roman Empire, is patently absurd. Who needs that? If we liberalize political systems, adjust the incentive structure of the economy, break down invidious class barriers -- if all this can be done, then soon the lion will lie with the lamb and the cow and the bear will graze together. This confidence that society can be redeemed by human effort cuts across the political spectrum; it can take a conservative law-and-order regime or a liberal agenda of removing-discrimination-and-inequalities. The differences between conservative and liberal are less important than their essential agreement that society can be redeemed by law. Both agree that a "new order of the ages" can be established by Constitutional Convention, without the gore of crucifixion or the miracle of resurrection.
Theologians in the modern world have felt the pressure of these objections to traditional theories of the atonement. Beginning with the Socinians of the sixteenth century, and increasingly in the subsequent two centuries, sociological (and psychological) theories of the atonement supplanted earlier theological theories. For modern theologians the cross did not effect a transformation of human life, but instead set an example of the kind of life that would regenerate man. If only we all lived like Jesus, pouring ourselves out for others, sympathizing with the miserable, identifying ourselves with outcasts, we could usher in the millennium.
Intellectual history is full of paradoxes, and several are involved in modern theology’s abandonment of satisfaction theories of the atonement. For one, many modern thinkers, eager to escape the long shadow of Anselm, found that some idea of atonement and substitution was essential to any coherent moral philosophy. Kant serves to illustrate this point. According to the analysis offered by R. R. Reno, Kant, like other thinkers of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment, attempted to hold together three premises concerning the possibility of redemptive change for man or for society. First, according to the "personal continuity" criterion, a man or society who changes from evil to good must be somehow the same throughout the process of change. Otherwise, obviously, no change has taken place, but only replacement. Second, according to the principle of "moral determination," what we are morally is who we are. Our moral condition is the key to our identity. Finally, according to the (Pelagian) criterion of "personal potency," the power to change from evil to good must lie in human beings themselves.
But Kant ultimately could not avoid some kind of atonement, even substitutionary atonement. There is evidently a conflict between the "personal continuity" criterion and the "moral determination" criterion. If our moral condition determines our identity, then the "new man" is not the same person as the old man and if this is true, it does not seem that moral change is possible. The problem becomes acute in Kant’s analysis of punishment. Those who sin must be punished, but the new man is not the same as the old man, and therefore it is unjust for him to suffer the consequences of his former self’s actions. But if the new man does not suffer any consequences of his former self’s sins then there does not appear to be any meaningful moral continuity between the old man and the new.
Kant’s solution to this dilemma is to introduce a concept of vicarious suffering. Though the new man is not strictly liable for the sins of his former self, yet he suffers the consequences of the old man’s sins. As Reno puts it, "The righteous person I seek to become pays the debt of the sinful person I presently am." Kant has not dispensed with the need for substitutionary atonement and vicarious suffering but merely relocated it. In place of an external atonement through Jesus’ sufferings and death, Kant offers a self-atonement. Here it becomes clear that Kant’s "personal potency" criterion is supreme above all: What Kant and the Enlightenment reject is not atonement per se, but the idea that we need someone else to atone for us. Fundamentally, the Enlightenment rejected the Christian doctrine of atonement because it conflicted with the basic assumption that man is autonomous, capable of making his own way.
I wish to focus, however, on a second paradox, which is this: At the same time that theologians were busy seeking alternatives to sacrificial accounts of Christ’s death, anthropologists and psychologists were discovering that sacrifice was at the heart of ancient and primitive society, and had left a permanent imprint on human psychology and culture. Freud believed that society grew out of a primal murder, and James Frazer’s monumental Golden Bough traced the myth of the dying and rising god through Greek and other mythologies, showing how this provided the background for rituals of death and resurrection that were believed to renew nature and society. Early in the twentieth century, Marcel Mauss uncovered links between religious transactions and human social transactions by focusing on the phenomenon of gift-exchange. Relations with the gods were constituted by sacrificial offerings, in much the same way that relations among men were nourished by mutual giving and receiving. By the middle of the last century, Mary Douglas was defending the logic of supposedly primitive notions of pollution, purity, and sacrifice, and claiming that these were still at work in our own sanitized culture.
Over the past thirty years, the most thorough account of sacrifice and its role in social regeneration has been offered by the French-American literary critic and philosopher, Rene Girard. Girard has developed a theory of religion and culture that highlights the formative role of sacrifice and scapegoating, and this theory has led him to convert to Christianity. Girard’s theory is worth lingering over for a few moments.
Central to Girard’s work are his notions of "mimetic desire" and "mimetic rivalry." Contrary to the Enlightenment assumption that men are autonomous, Girard asserts that we are radically social, so much so that even our desires -- which we often think of as uniquely our own -- are socially formed. We desire "mimetically," that is, because we imitate the desires of others. When we see another person, especially someone we admire, desiring something or someone, we begin to desire it as well. This is simply a fact of human life, according to Girard, but it has a built-in bias toward rivalry. If I see my friend’s desire for a woman, and begin to imitate that desire, we are shortly drawn into rivalry for the woman. There is, after all, only one woman between us. Societies can degenerate into little more than a network of mimetic rivalries, and at that point they have reached what Girard calls a "sacrificial crisis," a time when "love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked twixt father and son," when life is dominated by "machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves" (King Lear 1.2.106-109, 112-114).
Such a war of all against all can end in only two ways: either the society disintegrates completely, or the rivalries are defused through sacrifice. A society in the midst of sacrificial crisis reunifies and restores harmony by directing the violence of rivalry toward a scapegoat. Because every member of the society joins with others in abhorrence toward the "outsider" who serves as sacrificial victim, the slaughter of the sacrifice helps to restore order. Rivals are reduced to friends when they find a third party to attack together. For Girard, this sociological theory leads into a theory of religion: Ritual sacrifices are repeated regularly to avert dissolution and to maintain the order and unity of a religious community.
There is more to Girard’s theory, but this sketch is sufficient to indicate how Girard was led to embrace Christianity. In Girard’s view, though the gospels appear to endorse this sacrificial mechanism, they in fact undermine it. Jesus is made a scapegoat, but the gospels (unlike ancient myths) insist on his innocence and thereby expose the dynamics of sacrifice. Dissemination of the gospel and the gospels therefore unravels the dynamics of scapegoating that served as the basis for all previous societies, and open the possibility of another city, a society based not on victimization and slaughter but one based on love.
Despite its interest and in spite of Girard’s admiration for the gospels and Jesus, there are lingering questions. First, it is not clear that Girard’s theory requires anything like an orthodox Christology: Why is it necessary for the scapegoat to be the Son of God in flesh, or for there to be a god at all for that matter? Girard affirms in his most recent work that only the Son of God can bring an end to the scapegoat mechanism, but the whole theory was developed before Girard came to this confession. It appears that the incarnation is extrinsic to the atonement, something that cannot be the case. Second, in Girard’s theory redemption does not actually occur at the cross; instead, the story of the cross exposes the foundations of culture, and therefore the preaching of the gospel is the moment of redemption. True as this is in certain respects, in orthodox Christian doctrine the preaching of the gospel is the announcement of an accomplished event that objectively, apart from any response or announcement, changed the world.
Despite these weaknesses, at another level Girard’s theory poses questions that have been inadequately answered in traditional theories of the atonement. By placing the cross in the context of a cultural history of sacrifice, Girard shows with striking clarity why redemption had to take the form that it did -- the sacrificial death of an innocent victim. And, Girard shows that there is an internal connection between the cross and the redemption of society. Girard, in short, insists on the sociological necessity of the cross, and if we cannot entirely accept his answers, at least we can appreciate the force of his questions.
II.
In addition to Girard and other anthropological studies, several developments in recent theology provide resources for exploring the sociological dimensions of the atonement. I will enumerate three, developing the last at somewhat more length. First, detailed and valuable work was done on Leviticus during the nineteenth century, and, inspired by the work of Jacob Milgrom, Mary Douglas, and others, study of the book of Leviticus has become a growth industry in Old Testament studies. This has produced a more nuanced and precise understanding of the nature of sacrifice in the Bible, which is essential background for grasping the significance of the sacrifice of Jesus.
Two points will illustrate how this might affect the theology of the atonement. Old Testament sacrifices were indeed expiations, cleansing sin through the death of a substitute, but that was only one moment of a larger sacrificial sequence. After being killed, the animal was transformed into smoke to ascend to heaven and its flesh was given to the worshiper as food, and that whole ritual comes under the rubric of sacrifice. Biblically, to speak of Jesus’ work as "sacrificial" means not only that He was put to death for our sins; Christ’s "sacrifice" embraces His resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, and even Eucharist. To speak of Christ’s sacrifice is to say that He achieved atonement by passing through death into the presence of His Father. Second, sacrifice is a liturgical act, and if the atonement was sacrificial, then it was an act of worship. How does an act of worship by the Incarnate Son atone for sin? Exploring this question may bring us close to Thomas Aquinas, who taught that Christ’s supreme act of reconciling obedience was a supreme and redeeming Eucharist. Jesus’ main explanation of His death occurred at the Last Supper, and that may be more significant than Protestants, at least, have realized.
Turning to New Testament studies: since Krister Stendahl’s landmark article, "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," New Testament scholars have recognized that Paul was not a theologian of the soul so much as a theologian of Israel and an apostolic herald of a counter-imperial gospel. Political theology is as central to Paul as the forgiveness of individual sins. Clearly, Paul is also a herald of the crucified Christ. If he is both a theologian of the cross and a theologian of Israel, Paul’s letters are central in any effort to explore the sociological dimensions of the atonement. Moreover, if Paul saw Jesus as the climax of the history of Israel, then that history must play a much larger role in our understanding of the atonement that it has traditionally done. Our theology of the atonement cannot bypass the Old Testament and move immediately from Adam’s sin to the cross. Atonement theology must be to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
Finally, and a bit more expansively, recent treatments of the Trinity are very relevant to this discussion. As Bonhoeffer said, the Who question is more fundamental than the How question. The question, Who is the Redeemer? shapes our answer to the question, How is redemption accomplished? And the New Testament’s answer to the "Who" question is, Father, Son, and Spirit. How does this figure into our understanding of the cross?
In the wake of Barth, most writers in Trinitarian theology emphasize that we must move from the economic to the ontological trinity, that is, from the history of redemption to our understanding of who God is in Himself. Theology proper must take its cues from the revelation of God in His dealings with Israel and in Jesus. Michael Ramsey put it succinctly: "God is Christlike and in Him there is no unChristlikeness at all." If we move in the opposite direction -- from the ontological to the economic Trinity -- we run the risk of formulating a generic doctrine of God that limits beforehand what God might possibly do, an apophatic theology that defines God without any reference to His actual words or works.
This suggests that the doctrine of the atonement should be consistent with, should "fit," what we know of the inner life of Father, Son, and Spirit, and that the atonement in fact is one of the main places where that inner life is unveiled. To fill out this point, we can borrow some insights from the French Catholic theologian Francois Xavier Durrwell. Two themes guide Durrwell’s Trinitarian theology. First, in Augustinian fashion, he focuses attention on the Spirit as the bond of unity of Father and Son and as the love in which the Father begets the Son. Second, following insights from Athanasius, he insists that the relations of Father and Son are reciprocal, mutually determining. The Father is as dependent for His Fatherhood on the existence of the Son as the Son is dependent on the Father for His Sonship. There is no Son without a Father, but it is also true that the Father is not Father unless He has a Son.
Durrwell’s way of making these points, however, is peculiarly illuminating. As summarized by Anne Hunt, Durrwell taught that "The Holy Spirit . . . flows from the Father not just in a primordial or originating sense but in loving response to the Son. In other words we can understand that the Son’s love of the Father prompts the love of the Father for the Son." Durrwell himself stated the point this way: "The Father fills the Son with his Spirit of Love and the love that takes over the Son elicits from the Father the gift of the Spirit in a perpetual round." This conception of Trinitarian life is certainly evident economically, in the atoning work of the Incarnate Son. As Peter said in his Pentecost sermon, the Son who obeyed unto death was exalted by His Father and given the gift of the Spirit, which was then poured out on the gathered disciples. If we can reason from economy to ontology -- on the assumption that God is as He has revealed Himself -- then this is a revelation of the interTrinitarian life: The Father gives the Spirit to the Son, who, in the Spirit, offers Himself to the Father in love and obedience, which in turn elicits the outpouring of the Spirit from the Father to the Son. This is a round; or, as Catherine LaCugna put it, the Trinitarian life as eternal chiastic motion and exchange.
This gives us some insight into the structure of the atonement, as well as its sociological import. On the cross, the Son, incarnate in the likeness of sinful flesh and operating according to the demands of the fallen world, offered Himself to His Father in perfect obedience to death, and as a result elicited the gift of the Spirit from His loving Father. The sociological dimension immediately follows. The Spirit is the bond of communion, the Lord and giver of life, including social life. When the Spirit is poured out, the earth is renewed, the fruits of the Spirit flourish, the righteous decree of the law is fulfilled, and men worship and serve the Creator rather than the creature. The need for the redemption of society can be stated as a need for the outpouring of the Spirit, who is the unity of the society of Father and Son, and the Spirit is secured for us by the obedience of the Son to the Father. A Trinitarian theology of the atonement thus integrates the theological and sociological dimensions, and takes a step toward accounting for the sociological necessity of the cross. The Spirit is necessary for the redemption of society; the Son’s obedience on the cross secures the Spirit; and therefore the "sacrifice" of Jesus is the necessary condition for the redemption of society.
A fine recent article by Kahled Anatolios, published in Pro Ecclesia, brings out another feature of a Trinitarian account of the atonement. Anatolios describes the Spirit as the immanent (within the Triune life) agent of the "mutual love" of the Father and the Son and the Spirit’s economic work (God’s actions outside Himself) as the "availability" of God to us. It is through the Spirit that we come to share in the inherently "un-sharable" sonship of the Eternal Son. This Trinitarian soteriology also takes on an ecclesial or social dimension. The Spirit, who is the agent of God’s availability to us, works to open us out in availability for others. As Anatolios puts it, "By the Spirit, we experience, from within, the appeal to render available to others as much love as we ourselves receive as ‘beloved,’ so that the outward availability of this love, in the Spirit, becomes equal to our status as beloved, in the Son." Since mutual availability is the prerequisite of community, it is the Spirit, secured and given to us by and in the Son in His atonement, who is the bond of any true "commonwealth."
III.
I have been discussing the theology and "theory" of the atonement, and have grasped for ways to express this. But Robert Jenson is no doubt correct that a theory of the atonement is far less important than its enactment, and particularly its liturgical enactment. What will make the sociological necessity of the cross most obvious and persuasive are not a theologian’s puzzlings, but the joy and praise and self-sacrifice of a church that knows, worships, and serves Jesus, and Him Crucified.
Taken from: Leithart.
37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. 38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. 39 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. 40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
John 6
"INFINITE and eternal Majesty! Author and Fountain of being and blessedness! how little do we poor sinful creatures know of thee, or the way to serve and please thee! We talk of religion, and pretend unto it; but, alas! how few are there that know and consider what it means! How easily do we mistake the affections of our nature, and issues of self-love, for those divine graces which alone can render us acceptable in thy sight! It may justly grieve me to consider, that I should have wandered so long, and contented myself so often with vain shadows and false images of piety and religion; yet I cannot but acknowledge and adore thy goodness, who hast been pleased, in some measure, to open mine eyes, and let me see what it is at which I ought to aim. I rejoice to consider what mighty improvements my nature is capable of, and what a divine temper of spirit doth shine in those whom thou art pleased to choose, and causest to approach unto thee. Blessed be thine infinite mercy, who sentest thine own Son to dwell among men, and instruct them by his example as well
as his laws, giving them a perfect pattern of what they ought to be. O that the holy life of the blessed Jesus may be always in my thoughts, and before mine eyes, till I receive a deep sense and impression of those excellent graces that shined so eminently in him! And let me never cease my endeavours, till that new and divine nature prevail in my soul, and Christ be formed within me."
Scougal
"And he prayed to God, that "if it were possible," (or, as one of the Evangelists hath it, "if he were willing,") "that cup might be removed:" yet he gently added, "nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." Of what strange importance are the expressions, John xii. 27. where he first acknowledgeth the anguish of his spirit, "Now is my soul troubled," (which would seem to produce a kind of demur,) "and what shall I say?" And then he goes on to deprecate his sufferings, "Father, save me from this hour;" which he had no sooner uttered, but he doth, as it were, on second thoughts, recall it in these words, "But for this cause came I into the world;" and concludes, "Father, glorify thy name." Now, we must not look on this as any levity, or blameable weakness in the blessed Jesus: he knew all along what he was to suffer, and did most resolutely undergo it; but it shows us the inconceivable weight and pressure that he was to bear, which, being so afflicting, and contrary to nature, he could not think of without terror; yet considering the will of God, and the glory which was to redound from him thence, he was not only content, but desirous to suffer it."
Scougal
"The LORD of hosts has sworn saying, 'Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand, to break Assyria in My land, and I will trample him on My mountains.' Then his yoke will be removed from them and his burden removed from their shoulder.
This is the plan devised against the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretched out against all the nations. For the LORD of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?"
A little different - I know. Still working on other ideas and decided to do something simple - still doesn't work too well, but good enough for a short time.
It's difficult when one doesn't know the software as well as one should...
"I have been through the Hall of the Kings--I alone from this age, and now you. I am a Druid, the last to walk this earth. ... I do not possess the power of the Dark Lord--but I can get us safely through these caverns to the other side of the Dragon's Teeth."
"And then?" Balinor's question came softly out of the mist.
"A narrow cliff-trail men call the Dragon's Crease leads downward out of the mountains. Once there, we will be within sight of Paranor."
There was a long, awkward silence. Allanon knew what they were thinking; disregarding it, he continued.
"Beyond this entrance, there are a number of passages and chambers, a maze to one who does not know the way. Some of these are dangerous, some are not. Soon after we enter, we will reach the tunnel of the Sphinxes, giant statues like these sentries, but carved as half man, half beast. If you look into their eyes, you will be turned to stone instantly. So you must be blindfolded. In addition you will be roped to one another. You must concentrate on me, think only of me, for their will, their mental command, is strong enough to force you to tear off the blindfolds and gaze into their eyes."
The seven men looked at one another doubtfully. Already they were beginning to question the soundness of this whole approach.
"Once past the Sphinxes, there are several harmless passages leading to the Corridor of the Winds, a tunnel inhabited by invisible beings called Banshees after the legendary astral spirits. They are no more than voices, but those voices will drive mortal men insane. Your ears will be bound for protection, but again the important thing for you to do is to concentrate on me, let my mind blanket yours to prevent it from receiving the full force of those voices. You must relax; do not fight me. Do you understand?"
He counted seven barely perceptible nods.
"once beyond the Corridor of the Winds, we will be in the Tomb of the Kings. Then there will be only one more obstacle..."
He stopped talking, his eyes turned warily to the cavern entrance. For a moment it seemed he might finish the sentence, but instead he motioned them toward the dark entryway. They stood uneasily between the stone giants, the graying mist clouding the high cliff walls surrounding them, the black, yawning opening before them waiting like the open maw of some great beast of prey. Allanon produced a number of wide cloth strips and gave one to each man. Utilizing a heavy length of climbing rope, the little group bound themselves to one another, the surefooted Durin taking the lead position, the Prince of Callahorn again assuming his post as rear guard. The blindfolds were securely fastened in place and hands were joined to form a chain. A moment later, the line moved cautiously through the entrance to the Hall of the Kings.
There was a deep, hushed stillness in the caverns, magnifed by the sudden dying of the winds and the echoing of their footfalls along the rocky passageway. The tunnel floor was strangely smooth and level, but the cold that had settled into the aged stone from centures of constant temperatures seeped quickly through their tensed bodies and left them chill and shaking. No one spoke, each man trying to relax as Allanon led them carefully through a series of gently winding turns. In the middle of the groping line, Shea felt Flick's hand grip his own tightly in the blackness that surrounded them. They had drawn closer to each other since their flight from the Vale, bound now by ties of experiences shared more than by kinship. Whatever happened to them, Shea felt they would never lose that closeness. NOr would he forget what Menion had done for him. He thought about the Prince of Leah for a moment and found himself smiling. The highlander had changed so much during the past few days that he was almost a different person. The old Menion was still in evidence, but there was a new dimension to him that Shea found difficult to define. But then all of them, Menion, Flick, and himself, had changed in little ways that could not be readily detected until each man was considered as a whole. He wondered if Allanon had seen the changes in him--Allanon, who had always treated him somehow as less than a man, more a boy.
They came to an unsteady halt, and in the dep silence that followed the commanding voice of the Druid leader whipered soundlessly in the mind of each man: Remember my warning, let your thoughts turn to me, concentrate only on me. Then the line moved forward, the booted feet echoing hollowly on the cavern floor. Immediately the blindfolded men could sense the presence of something waiting ahead of them, watching silently, patiently. The seconds flitted away as the company moved deeper into the cavern. The men became aware of huge, still forms rising up on either side--images carved of stone with faces that were human, but attached to the crouched bodies of indescribable beasts. The Sphinxes. In their minds the men could see those eyes, burning past the fading image of Allanon, and they began to feel the strain of trying to concentrate on the giant Druid. The insistent will of the stone monsters pushed into their brains, weaving and tangling into their scattered thoughts, working tenaciously toward the moment when human eyes would meet their own lifeless gaze. Each man began to feel a rapidly growing urge to rip away the restraining cloth which shackled his sight, to strip away the darkness and gaze freely on the wondrous creatures staring silently down on him.
But just when it seemed that the probing whisper of the Sphinxes must at last break through the waning resolve of the beleaguered men and draw their thoughts completely away from the fading image of Allanon, his iron thought cut through to them with the sharpness of a knife, soundlessly calling to them. Think only of me. Their minds obeyed instinctively, wrenching free of the almost overpowering urge to gaze upward into the watching stone faces. The strange battle wore on without respite as the line of men, sweating and breathing harshly in the stillness, groped its way through the tangled maze of unseen images, bound together by the rope about their waists, the chain of tightly clenched hands, and the commanding voice of Allanon. No one lost his grip. The Druid led them steadily down the row of Sphinxes, his own eyes locked onto the cavern floor, his indomitable will fighting to hold the minds of his sightless charges. Then at last the faces of the stone creatures began to fade and fall away, leaving the mortals alone in the silence and darkness."
Excerpt from chapter 14 of The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
"I cannot speak of religion without lamenting that, among so many pretenders of it, so few understand what it means. Some place it in the understanding, orthodox notions and opinions; and all the account they can give of their religion is that they are of this or the other persuasion, and have joined themselves to one of those many sects whereinto Christendom is most unhappily divided. Others place it in the outward man, in a constant course of external duties and a model of performances; if they live peaceably with their neighbors, keep a temperate diet, observe the returns of worship, frequenting the church and their closet, and sometimes extend their hands to relieve the poor, they think they have sufficiently acquitted themselves."
The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man Henry Scougal
"God challenges this work as his own, excluding the creature from any share as a cause: Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27, 'I will sprinkle clean water upon you, I will cleanse you, I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit into you, I will take away the heart of stone, 1 will give you a heart of flesh, I will put my Spirit into you.' Here I will no less than seven times. Nothing is allowed to man in the production of this work in the least; all that is done by him is the walking in God's statutes by virtue of this principle. The sanctifying principle, the actual sanctification, the reception of it by the creature, the removal of all the obstructions of it, the principle maintaining it, are not in the least here attributed to the will of man. God appropriates all to himself. He does not say he would be man's assistant, as many men do, who tell us only of the assistance of the gospel, as if God in the gospel expected the first motions of the will of man to give him a rise for the acting of his grace. You see here he gives not an inch to the creature. To ascribe the first work, in any part, to the will of man, is to deprive God of half his due, to make him but a partner with his creature. The least of it cannot be transferred to man but the right of God will be diminished, and the creature go shares with his Creator. Are we not sufficient of ourselves to do any thing? and are we sufficient to part stakes with God in this divine work? What partner was the creature with God in creation? It is the Father's traction alone, without the hand of free-will. 'None can come, except the Father, which has sent me, draw them,' John vi. 44. The mission of the Mediator, and the traction of the creature, are by the same hand. Our Saviour could not have come unless the Father had sent him, nor can man come to Christ unless the Father draw him. What is that which is drawn? The will. The will, then, is not the agent; it does not draw itself."
Stephen J Charnock