Anglo-Saxon vs French roots of English

A further and rather telling example [of difference in English word origins between Anglo-Saxon and French] is the fact that the English words for many animals (such as ‘cow’, ‘sheep’, ‘boar’, ‘deer’) refer to the living creature in the hands of the farmer or herdsman, while once slaughtered, cooked and served to the Norman barony they acquire a French-based culinary name: ‘beef’, ‘mutton’, ‘pork’, or ‘venison’.

Stephen Pollington, An Introduction to the Old English Language and its Literature, 8.

The Sad Suspended State of the Skeptic

We assert still that the Skeptic's End is quietude in respect of matters of opinion and moderate feeling in respect of things unavoidable. For the Skeptic… so as to attain quietude thereby, found himself involved in contradictions  of equal weight, and being unable to decide between them suspended judgment; and as he was thus in suspense there followed, as it happened, the state of quietude in respect of matter of opinion . For the man who opines that anything is by nature good or bad is for ever being disquieted: when he is without the things which he deems good he believes himself to be tormented by things naturally bad and he pursues after the things which are, as he thinks, good; which when he has obtained he keeps falling into still more perturbations because of his irrational and immoderate elation, and in his dread of a change of fortune he uses every endeavor to avoid losing the things which he deems good. On the other hand, the man who determines nothing as to what is naturally good or bad neither shuns nor pursues anything eagerly; and, in consequence, he is unperturbed.

- Sectus Empiricus, in,

Landesman, Philosophical Skepticism, 39.

The kind of relativistic, un-judgmental view of life, seems to me a kind of de-creation. God created man to have dominion on all creation, and to be in a state of suspended non-judgment, not pursuing anything ardently, not ruling with any dogmas whatsoever is a kind of reversal of the dominion mandate.

Philosophical (and Theological) Classifications

"Philosophical classifications are not like labels for political parties that people officially join; at best, they point to a salient feature that systems that differ in many other ways have in common. Such groupings fail to rise to the level of natural kinds; they are closer to what Wittgenstein thought of as concepts based upon family resemblances. They should be understood as handy devices for abbreviated referenced rather than as the product of a deep analysis of a philosophical tendency.

Charles Landesman, Skepticism – The Central Issues, 2.

Recorded Music as “Overhearing”

The reason why gramophone music is so unsatisfactory to any one accustomed to real music is not because the mechanical reproduction is bad - that would be easily compensated by the hearer’s imagination - but because the performers and the audience are out of touch.  The audience is not collaborating; it is only overhearing.

- Collingwood

HT: Peter Leithart

Sanctification and Justification

Why, then, are we justified by faith? Because by faith we grasp Christ's righteousness, but which alone we are reconciled to God. Yet you could not grasp this without at the same time grasping sanctification also. For he “is given unto us for righteousness, wisdom, sanctification, and redemption” [I Cor. 1:30]. Therefore Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify. These benefits are joined together by an everlasting and indissoluble bond, so that those whom he illumines by his wisdom, he redeems; those whom he redeems, he justifies; those whom he justifies, he sanctifies…Thus is is clear how true it is that we are justified not without works yet not through works, since in our sharing in Christ, which justifies us, sanctification is just as much included as righteousness.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk III, ch. 26.1

A Sermon for the President

From Blog and Mablog:

 

Ascension Sunday 2009
This Lord’s Day is Ascension Sunday, the day we have set apart to commemorate the exaltation of Jesus Christ to the right hand of the Ancient of Days. This was the day upon which He was given universal and complete authority over all nations and kings, when He was given all rule and authority, dominion and power. Our Lord’s name is the name which is high above every name, and His is the name that, when spoken, will cause every knee to bow, and every tongue to confess, that He is indeed Lord of heaven and earth. And, as we cannot emphasize too much, or say too often, this is no invisible spiritual truth. It is simply, undividedly, true. This means it is true in a way that makes it true on the most practical levels. It is true when church is over.

"It came to pass also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, wail for the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down, even her, and the daughters of the famous nations, unto the nether parts of the earth, with them that go down into the pit. Whom dost thou pass in beauty? go down, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised. They shall fall in the midst of them that are slain by the sword: she is delivered to the sword: draw her and all her multitudes. The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of hell with them that help him: they are gone down, they lie uncircumcised, slain by the sword" (Eze 32:17-21).

One of the visions that the prophet Ezekiel was given was that of a parliament of dead kings, assembled in the nether regions of Sheol—the Greek word for this place is Hades. The prophet was speaking of nations which had had their time of great glory under the sun, but which, inevitably, had descended below to an empty governance of shades and shadows, the empty governance of nothing that mattered. This reality is inescapable—in Augustine’s trenchant phrase, among the nations of men, the dead are replaced by the dying, and however splendid an empire might be for the moment, there is no future for any nation outside of Christ. History occurs on the inexorable conveyor belt of moving time. There is nothing that will shut this conveyor belt off, and so there is no device to allow one nation’s day of glory to be forever fixed. Glory cannot be kept or retained in that way at all. There is no future glory for any king or president, for any nation or people, outside of Christ. So for those who reject Christ, below the earth in the nether regions, we find nothing but wisps of lost glory, and above ground at some future date talented archeologists might be able to find the remnants of an Ozymandian ruin.

Continue Reading…

European Noblesse: France

Yet we must hang on to this proposition of historical fairness with our very teeth, defending it against momentary appearances: European noblesse—of feeling, of taste, of manners, taking the word, in short, in ever higher sense—is the work and invention of France; European vulgarity, the plebeianism of modern ideas, that of England.—

Friedrich Nietzshe, Beyond Good and Evil, section 253 (p. 192).

Happiness a basis? – ευδαιμονία και αρετή

Nobody is very likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous—except perhaps the lovely “idealists” who become effusive about the good, the true, and the beautiful and allow all kinds of motley, clumsy, and benevolent desiderata to swim around in utter confusion in their pond. Happiness and virtue are no arguments.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 49.

Independence

Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 41.

Mistrust

One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 82.

Speed and Time

Like many modern advances, the domination of time turns into its opposite; absolute control of time through absolute speed, speed for its own sake, leaves us feeling we have no control of time.

Peter Leithart, Solomon Among the Postmoderns, 42.

More than Salvation

This whole notion is rooted in the realization that Christianity is not just involved with “salvation” but with the total man in the total world. The Christian message begins with the existence of God forever and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation. We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that.

Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, 89.

Gothic Africans??

Why did we ever force the Africans to use Gothic architecture? It’s a meaningless exercise. All we succeeded in doing was making Christianity foreign to the African. If a Christian artist is Japanese, his paintings should be Japanese, if Indian, Indian.

Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible,  76.

Knowledge of One’s Language

Educated speakers are notoriously unreliable in analyzing their own language. If Chrysostom weighs two competing interpretations, his conclusion should be valued as an important opinion and no more. If, on the other hand, he fails to address a linguistic problem because he does not appear to perceive a possible ambiguity, his silence is of the greatest value in helping us determine how Paul’s first readers were likely to have interpreted the text.

Moisés Silva, Philippians, 27.

Swearing people are verbally farting

Swearing people are verbally farting, I explain to my children, and one often gets trapped that way, playing free and easy with God’s name, edging into off-colour jokes unbecoming the tongue of a child of the king (Eph. 5:3-14), lost in a vile, scoffing sort of raping with the mouth, because one has not been faithful in undergirding, developing and norming the semantic quality of one’s communication. If one has poor grammar and no mastery of syntax, no colour to his vocabulary, then one has no control, no depth, no persuasive power to his language. So it’s very tempting to bolster one’s weak talk by pulling in dues ex machine exclamations and by violating different social and ethical norms in order to grab attention, trying to load your speech powerfully enough to gain dominating control of the communicating situation. But it is in vain, because God’s creational order forbids it. The havoc of hate takes place. Dirty and God-damning talk is terribly destructive. But that is not “strong language” any more than rape is passionate love.

-Seerveld, An Obedient Aesthetic Life, 54.

All that Glitters Ought to be Gold

“I think gold was meant to be seldom seen, and to be admired as a precious thing; and I sometimes wish that truth should so far literally prevailed as that all should be gold that glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter that was not gold.

John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 50.

Architecture

Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that they sight of them may contribute to his health, power, and pleasure.

John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 8.

Robinson Crusoe on the Providence of God

 

"If so, nothing can happen in the great Circuit of his Works, either without his Knowledge or Appointment. And if nothing happens without his Knowledge, he knows that I am here, and am in this dreadful Condition; and if nothing happens without his Appointment, he has appointed all this to befal me." 

- Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, 79.

 

     This quote from Robinson Crusoe exemplifies Defoe's Calvinistic worldview. There is of course the doctrine of Predestination involved, and how God created, knows, and is in control of all things. But much further than that, this passage shows Defoe's doctrine of Salvation. He starts with the question of where everything came from, and ends with adoring that Creator. Realizing that God is the Creator leaves Robinson Crusoe without any pride. He has nothing to stand on which God has not given him, therefore all complaining, all rebellion, and all despair loose their place and meaning. Having contemplated these things the only thing for Crusoe to do is to cry out to God, praise him, and trust him in all he does. He has no more right to question God's eternal decree's as to his location than a tree on the island would. He therefore can rest in the confidence that God has brought this about for his good, and not for his evil. Crusoe's next question was to ask why God had chosen to bring these things upon him. He had scarcely thought this when he realized how he had been going against God's will and his life's calling all his days. In spite of all this, Crusoe realized that God had spared him through incredible circumstances. How can Crusoe doubt that God was up to something in his life? When Christ offers grace to a particular sinner, that grace is irresistible and un-stoppable.

The Pagan's Intellect

"What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything."

C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, 99.

The Battered but Safe εκκλησια

"There is pleasure to be on board a ship battered by a storm, when we are certain that it will not perish: the persecutions buffeting the Church are of this kind."

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 617.

Bordedom

"Nothing is so intolerable for man as to be in a state of complete tranquility, without passions, without business, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nothingness, his abandonment, his inadequacy, his dependence, his helplessness, his emptiness. At once from the depths of his soul arise boredom, gloom, sadness, grief, vexation, despair."

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 515.

Labour Saving Machinary

"There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour...I will forgive Mordor-gadgets some of their sins, if they will bring [this letter] quickly to you..."

J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to his son Christopher, 7 July 1944.

Tolkien and His Car

"There was the unforgettable occasion in 1932 when Tolkien bought his first car, a Morris Cowley that was nicknamed 'Jo'...After learning to drive he took the entire family by car to visit his brother Hilary...At various times during the journey 'Jo' sustained two punctures and knocked down part of a dry-stone wall near Chipping Norton, with the result that Edith refused to travel in the car again until some months later - not entirely without justification, for Tolkien's driving was daring rather than skilful. when accelerating headlong across a busy main road in Oxford in order to get into a side-street, he would ignore all other vehicles and cry 'Charge 'em and they scatter!' - and scatter they did."

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 162.

The Tolkiens

"A principal source of happiness to them was their shared love for their family...Tolkien was immensely kind and understanding as a father, never shy of kissing his sons in public even when they were grown men, and never reserved in his display of warmth and love."

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 161.

Tolkien's Friendship with Lewis

"Friendship with Lewis compensates for much, and besides giving constant pleasure and comfort has done me much good from the contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual - a scholar, a poet, and a philosopher - and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage, of Our Lord."

J.R.R Tolkien, quoted in, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 152.

Tolkien's Humour

He could laugh at anybody, but most of all at himself, and his complete lack of any sense of dignity could and often did make him behave like a riotous schoolboy. At a New Year's Eve party in the nineteen-thirties he would don an Icelandic sheepskin hearthrug and paint his face white to impersonate a polar bear, or he would dress up as an Anglo-Saxon warrior complete with axe and chase an astonished neighbour down the road. Later in life he delighted to offer inattentive shopkeepers his false teeth among a handful of change. 'I have,' he once wrote, 'a very simple sense of humour, which even my appreciative critics find tiresome.'

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 134.

The un-importance of News

[Tolkien], like his friend C.S. Lewis, regards 'news' as on the whole trivial and fit to be ignored, and they both argue (to the annoyance of many of their friends) that the only 'truth' is to be found in literature. However, they both enjoy the crossword.

J.R.R. Tolkien - A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter, 121.

Finding God in the Lord of the Rings

"Tolkien cast his mythology in his form because he wanted it to be remote and strange, and yet at the same time not to be a lie. He wanted the mythology and legendary stories to express his own moral view of the universe; and as a Christian he could not place this view in a cosmos without the God that he worshipped. At the same time, to set his stories 'realistically' in the known world, where religious beliefs were explicitly Christian, would deprive them of imaginative colour. So while God is present in Tolkien's universe, He remains unseen.

When he wrote the Silmarillion Tolkien believed that in one sense he was writing truth. He did not suppose that precisely such peoples as he described as, 'elves', 'dwarves', and malevolent 'orcs', had walked the earth and done the deed that he recorded. But he did feel, or hope, that his stories were in some sense an embodiment of a profound truth.

J.R.R. Tolkien - A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter, 99.

The Letter that got Mr. Stephen Boissoin in Big Trouble

 

The Following is the actual letter written by Rev. Stephen Boissoin who was at the time National Chairman of the Concerned Christian Coalition (now Concerned Christians Canada Inc.) It is this letter that has the Rev. Stephen Boissoin and Concerned Christians Canada Inc., (CCC) appearing before The Alberta Human Rights Commission.

Homosexual agenda wicked
Rev. Steven Boissoin
Central Alberta Chairman Concerned Christian Coalition
6/17/02

The following is not intended for those who are suffering from an unwanted sexual identity crisis. For you, I have understanding, care, compassion and tolerance. I sympathize with you and offer you my love and fellowship.

I prayerfully beseech you to seek help, and I assure you that your present enslavement to homosexuality can be remedied. Many outspoken, former homosexuals are free today.
Instead, this is aimed precisely at every individual that in any way supports the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s. I cannot pity you any longer and remain inactive. You have caused far too much damage.

My banner has now been raised and war has been declared so as to defend the precious sanctity of our innocent children and youth, that you so eagerly toil, day and night, to consume. With me stand the greatest weapons that you have encountered to date: God and the “Moral Majority.” Know this, we will defeat you, then heal the damage you have caused.
Modern society has become dispassionate to the cause of righteousness. Many people are so apathetic and desensitized today that they cannot even accurately define the term “morality.”

The masses have dug in and continue to excuse their failure to stand against horrendous atrocities such as the aggressive propagation of homo- and bisexuality. Inexcusable justifications such as, “I’m just not sure where the truth lies,” or “If they don’t affect me then I don’t care what they do,” abound from the lips of the quantifiable majority.

Face the facts, it is affecting you. Like it or not, every professing heterosexual is having their future aggressively chopped at the roots. Edmund Burke’s observation that, “All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” has been confirmed time and time again. From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators.

Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights.

Your children are being warped into believing that same-sex families are acceptable; that men kissing men is appropriate.
Your teenagers are being instructed on how to perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex and at the same time being told that it is normal, natural and even productive. Will your child be the next victim that tests homosexuality positive?
Come on people, wake up! It’s time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.

Regardless of what you hear, the militant homosexual agenda isn’t rooted in protecting homosexuals from “gay bashing.” The agenda is clearly about homosexual activists that include, teachers, politicians, lawyers, Supreme Court judges, and God forbid, even so-called ministers, who are all determined to gain complete equality in our nation and even worse, our world.
Don’t allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centred and morally deprived individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.

The homosexual agenda is not gaining ground because it is morally backed. It is gaining ground simply because you, Mr. and Mrs. Heterosexual, do nothing to stop it. It is only a matter of time before some of these same morally bankrupt individuals such as those involved with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Lovers Association, will achieve their goal to have sexual relations with children and assert that it is a matter of free choice and claim that we are intolerant bigots not to accept it.

If you are reading this and think that this is alarmist, then I simply ask you this: how bad do things have to become before you will get involved? It’s time to start taking back what the enemy has taken from you. The safety and future of our children is at stake.

Rev. Stephen Boissoin
Central Alberta Chairman
Concerned Christian Coalition

Cutting the Throat of Sin - In Defence of Satire

"I do believe in my heart that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry; and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two, for I may weep, and be murmuring, and repining, and thinking all sorts of bitter thoughts against God; while, at another time, I may laugh the laugh of sarcasm against sin, and so evince a holy earnestness in the defence of the truth. I do not know why ridicule is to be given up to Satan as a weapon to be used against us, and not to be employed by us as a weapon against him. I will venture to affirm that the Reformation owed almost as much to the sense of the ridiculous in human nature as to anything else, and that those humourous squibs and caricatures, that were issued by the friends of Luther, did more to open the eyes of Germany to the abominations of the priesthood than the more solid and ponderous arguments against Romanism. I know no reason why we should not, on suitable occasions, try the same style of reasoning. 'It is a dangerous weapon,' it will be said, 'and many men will cut their fingers with it.' Well, that is their own look-out; but I do not know why we should be so particular about their cutting their fingers if they can, at the same time, cut the throat of sin, and do serious damage to the great adversary of souls"

-Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 389

HT: Blog & Mablog

Lowly, not servile

"Manly persons are disgusted, and suspect hypocrisy when they hear a preacher talking molasses. Let us be bold and outspoken, and never address our hearers as if we were asking a favour of them, or as if they would oblige the Redeemer by allowing Him to save them. We are bound to be lowly, but our office as ambassadors should prevent our being servile" (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 344).   

HT: Blog & Mablog

The Glorification of Saint Thomas Aquinas

      "This picture establishes the direct relationship between vision and knowledge for which the Dominican Aquinas had argued in his Summa Theologica. Just as we still  use the phrase "I see" to mean "I understand," For Aquinas the word visio meant more than just vision. "This term," he writes, "in view of the special nature and certitude of sight, is extended in common usage to the knowledge of all the senses and it is even made to include intellectual knowledge, as in Matthew 5:8: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'" The Pisa altarpiece, like most Gothic images, was not considered primarily as a work of art by its contemporaries, but as something far more powerful and instrumental, because of its capacity not just to reflect the world, but to reshape it in God's image."

-Michael Camille, Gothic Art - Glorious Visions, 25.

Gothic "Virtual Reality"

Gothic art was and continues to be a technology for engaging beholders in certain forms of visual communication. It is user-friendly, compared to earlier and later visual regimes. Medieval cathedrals, like computers, were constructed to contain all the information in the world for those who knew the codes. Medieval people loved to project themselves into their images just as we can enter into our video and computer screens. In this respect Gothic artists, such as the Italian Giotto (c. 1267-1337), were the first to experiment with what we call "virtual reality."

Michael Camille, Gothic Art - Glorious Visions, 15.

What we like is good for us!

Our taste buds in particular are designed to help us recognize and pursue important nutrients: we have receptors for essential salts, for energy-rich sugars, for amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, for energy-bearing molecules called nucleotides. Raw meat triggers all these tastes, because muscle cells are relatively fragile, and because they're biochemically very active. the cells in a plant leaf or seed, by contrast, are protected by tough cell walls that prevent much of their contents from being freed by chewing, and their protein and starch are locked up in inert storage granules. Meat is thus mouth-filling in a way that few plant foods are. Its rich aroma which cooked comes from the same biochemical complexity.

Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, 123.

Aquinas on the necessity of God

The second way is from the nature of an efficient cause. In the world of the senses we find that there is a consequence of efficient causes, but we never find something that causes itself, and it is impossible to do because it would precede itself--which is impossible...Thus it is necessary to posit some first efficient cause which all men call God.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, part I, question 2.

The "finesse" of Butter

What we now know as French cuisine was one of the great social and artistic achievements of the nineteenth century. It was based upon olive oil in the south and butter in the north; and since prestige and power lay mostly in the north, butter became one of the foundations of the art and science of the great French chefs - of what is known as cuisine classique. To this day southern French cooking tends to be called "hearty" or "robust," and other rustic epithets, even by its greatest admirers: delicacy and finesse generally involve the use of butter.

Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner - the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal, 99.

Butter and Hair-do's

Another very luxurious practice, often available only to the rich, was coating one's hair in butter or lard. It kept down vermin, helped preserve order in an elaborate hair-do, and added a gleam for which even we occasionally yearn, with our "structuring" hair-gel, brilliantine, and other hair oils.

Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner - the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal, 92.

Salt and Civilization

Salt represents the civilized: it requires know-how to get it, and a sophisticated combination of cooking and spoilt, jaded appetites to need it. Its sharp taste suggests sharpness of intellect and liveliness of mind. Salt (bright, dry, titillating, and dynamic) is synonymous in several languages with wit and wisdom.

Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner - the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal, 76.

Salt as Salary

The word "salary" dates from the Roman distribution of salt as part of their soldiers' pay; an inadequate person, we still say, is "not worth their salt."

Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner - the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal, 72.

The Salt of Friendship

Oath-taking, in many cultures, is a ceremony involving salt, just as the act of swearing may employ blood or iron as a sign denoting a person's unbreakable word. Salt is shared at table, in a context of order and contentment. Traditional Bedouin will never fight a man with whom they have once eaten salt. When the Lord God of Israel made a covenant with the Jews, it was a Covenant of Salt, denoting an unalterable bond of friendship. It also meant that the Jews had settled down in the Promised Land, had ceased to be sheep-herding nomads, and would now eat the fruit of their harvests, cooked and seasoned with salt.

Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner - the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal, 67.

Vegitarians were not Meant to Be

Human beings, it seems, learn about salt (and become addicted to it) at a very precise moment in their history: when they cease being almost exclusively carnivorous and learn to eat vegetables in quantities usually available only when they grow them themselves. When people begin not only to eat a lot of vegetables, but to reduce the salt content in their food by boiling it--a cooking method which presupposes the ability to make metal pots that can be set directly over a fire--hen salt becomes more desirable still.

Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner - the extraordinary history and mythology, allure and obsessions, perils and taboos of an ordinary meal, 65.

Aquinas on the Result of Tyranny

Thus it is that because rulers instead of inducing their subjects to be virtuous are wickedly jealous of their virtue and hinder it as much as they can, very few virtuous men are found under tyrants. For as Aristotle says, "brave men are found where brave men are honored, " and Cicero says, "what is despised by everyone decays and ceases to grew." It is natural that men who are brought up in fear should become servile in spirit and cowardly in the face of any difficult or strenuous endeavor. So the Apostle [Paul] says "Fathers, do not provoke your children to indignation lest they become discouraged." King Solomon had these evil effects of tyranny in mind when he said "When the wicked reign it is the ruination of men" because the wickedness of tyranny leads their subjects to fall away from the perfection of virtue.

St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, ch. 3.

Aquinas on a Tyrant

If the tyrant is not extreme, it is better to tolerate a mild tyranny for a time rather than to take action against it that may bring on many dangers that are worse than the tyranny itself.

St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, ch 6.

Aquinas on ευδαιμονια

In order for man to achieve beatitude it was necessary therefore that God should become man to take away the sin of the human race.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Against the Gentiles, Bk IV, ch. 54.

Aquinas on Governement

The best government of a society (multitudo) is one that is ruled by one person. This is clear from the end of government which is peace. Peaceful unity among his subjects is the end of a ruler, and one ruler, rather than many rulers, is a more proximate cause of unity.

St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Against the Gentiles, Bk. IV, ch. 76.

Thomas Aquinas on Reason and Faith

Now human reason is related to the knowledge of the truth of faith...in such a way that reason can attain likenesses of it that are true but not sufficient to comprehend the truth conclusively or as known in itself.

St. Thomas Aquinuas, The Summa Against the Gentiles, Bk 1., ch. 8.

Dante on Fraud and Traitors

"Now fraud, that eats away at every conscience, is practiced by a man against another who trusts in him, or one who has no trust. This latter way seems only to cut off the bond of love that nature forges...But in the former way of fraud, not only the love that nature forges is forgotten, but added love that builds a special trust;

thus, in the tightest circle, where there is the universe's center, seat of Dis, all traitors are consumed eternally."

Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XI.

Humility & Magnanimity

Aquinas' list of virtues does not altogether tally with Aristotle's, though he works hard to Christianize some of the more pagan characters who figure in Ethics. Aristotle's ideal man is great-souled, that is to say, he is a highly superior being who is very conscious of his own superiority to others. How can this be reconciled with the Christian virtue of humility? By a remarkable piece of intellectual legerdemain, Aquinas makes magnanimity not only compatible with humility but part of the very same virtue. There is a virtue, he says, that is the moderation of ambition, a virtue based on on a just appreciation of one's own gifts and defects. Humility is the aspect that ensures that one's ambitions are based on a just assessment of one's defects, magnanimity is the aspect that ensures that they are based on a just assessment of one's gifts.

Anthony Kenny, Medieval Philosophy, Vol 2., 73.

On Kingship

While writing the First Part of the Summa St Thomas began a political treatise, On Kingship, laying down principles for the guidance of secular governments in a way that leaves no doubt that kings are subject to priests and that the pope enjoys a secular as well as a spiritual supremacy.

Anthony Kenny, Medieval Philosophy, Vol. 2, 70.

The Foundation of Liberal Arts

A typical medieval university consisted of four faculties: the universal undergraduate faculty of arts, and the three higher faculties, linked to professions, of theology, law, and medicine.

Anthony Kenny, Medieval Philosophy, Vol. 2, 55.

Universities

The university is, in essentials, a thirteenth-century innovation, if by 'university' we mean a corporation of people engaged professionally, full-time, in the teaching and expansion of a corpus of knowledge in various subjects, handing it on to their pupils, with an agreed syllabus, agreed methods of teaching, and agreed professional standards. Universities and parliaments came into existence at roughly the same time, and have proved themselves the most long-lived of all medieval inventions.

Anthony Kenny, Medieval Philosophy, Vol. 2, 55.

Theodore Roosevelt quotes

"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."

"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness."

"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs."

"I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character!"

"Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!"

"Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage."

- Theodore Roosevelt

Difficult Life

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty... I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

- Theodore Roosevelt

The Things that will Destroy America

The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich quick theory of life.

- Theodore Roosevelt

Real Success

Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.

- Theodore Roosevelt

The Soul

The Soul once seen to be thus precious, thus divine; you may hold the faith that by its possession you are already nearing God; in the strength of his power make upwards towards him.

Plotinus, Enneads, V.I

Foreknowledge

To support this, [Cicero] denies foreknowledge and thus, in seeking to make men free, he makes them irreverent.

St. Augustine, City of God, book V, ch. 9.

Divine Names

How then can we speak of the divine names? How can we do this if the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge, if it abides beyond all reach of mind and of being, if it encompasses and circumscribes, embraces and anticipates all things while itself eluding their grasp and escaping form any perception, imagination, opinion, name, discourse, apprehension, or understanding? How can we enter upon this undertaking if the Godhead is superior to being and is unspeakable and unnameable?

Dionysius, The Divine Names, 1.5

God Enables

Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.

Augustine, Confessions, book X, ch 29.

Anselm & the Greatness of God

What art thou, then, Lord God, than whom nothing greater can be conceived?

Anselm, Proslogium

Fortune & Wandering

Lastly fortune when apparently happy leads men astray by her blandishments, wandering from the true good.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, II.vii

Technorati Tags: boethius,fortune

Augustine

My error was my god.

Augustine, Confessions, IV.vii.12

Beowulf

A warrior will sooner die than live a life of shame.

Beowulf, 2890

Illuminated Manuscripts

This brings us to the true function of decoration in a twelfth-century book. It was clearly not just because it was pretty. The twelfth century was an age which delighted in classification and ordering of knowledge. Its most admired writers, men like Peter Lombard and Gratian, arranged and shuffled information into order that was accessible and easy to use. Twelfth-century readers loved encyclopedias...Les us then consider book illumination in these terms. It suddenly becomes easy to understand. Initials mark the beginning of books or chapters (PL.85). They make a manuscript easy to use. It helps classify the priorities of the text...A newspaper does this today with headlines of different sizes...any reader of a modern newspaper will fiercely defend his choice of paper by praising the text, not the layout or illustrations. It is not surprising that the twelfth-century chroniclers from St. Albans, Lincoln, and Canterbury complimented the accuracy of manuscripts when what they meant was that they liked using them.

Christopher De Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts 99.

Amo, Amas, Amat

Amo, amas, I love a lass,
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip's grace
Is her nom'native case,
And she's of the feminine gender.
Rorum, corum,sunt Divorum!
Harum, scarum, Divo!
Tag rag, merry derry, periwig and hatband!
Hic hoc horum Genitivo!

-John O'Keeffe, Agreeable Surprise II.ii

A Scotch Joke

It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. Their only idea of wit...is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.

Rev. Sydney Smith, Lady Holland - Memoir

All Truth is God's Truth

A person who is a good and true Christian should realize that truth belongs to his Lord, wherever it is found, gathering and acknowledging it even in pagan literature, but rejecting superstitious vanities and deploring and avoiding those who 'though they knew God did not glorify him as God...'

Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching II.75

The Fullness of Our Happiness

For the fullness of our happiness, beyond which there is none else, is this: to enjoy God the three in whose image we were made.

St. Augustine, De Trinitate, I.18

Cicero on Treachery

No treachery is more insidious than that which is hidden under a pretence of loyalty, or under the name of kinship. For against an open adversary you could be on your guard and thus easily avoid him; but this hidden evil, within the house and family, not only arises before you are aware but even overwhelms you before you can catch sight of it and investigate it.

Cicero, In Verr., 2.1.13

The Paradox of Love

You, sir, have taught me the paradox of love. Strong yet gentle, patient yet pressing ahead, mature and yet young . . . This indeed would puzzle any sage, and fill him with wonder like a ship on the sea or a serpent on a rock . . .

- Petite Huguenotte, Letters to my Fiance

The Unnameable Names of God

How then can we speak of the divine names? How can we do this if the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge, if it abides beyond the reach of mind and of being, if it encompasses and circumscribes, embraces and anticipates all thins while itself eluding their grasp and escaping from any perception, imagination, opinion, name, discourse, apprehension, or understanding? How can we enter upon this undertaking if the Godhead is superior to being and is unspeakable and unnameable?

-Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, 5.

Realizing all this, the theologians praise it by every name--and as the Nameless One...This surely is the wonderful "name which is above every name: and is therefore without a name...And yet on the other hand they give it many names, such as "I am being," "life," "light," "God," the "truth." These same wise writers...use names drawn from all the things caused: goo, beautiful, wise, beloved, God of gods, Lord of Lords, Holy of Holies, eternal, existent, Cause of the ages. They call him source of life, wisdom, mind, word, knower, possessor beforehand of all the treasures of knowledge, power, powerful, and King of Kings, ancient of days, the unaging and unchanging, salvation, righteousness and sanctification, redemption, greatest of all and yet the one in the still breeze. They say he is in our minds, in our souls, and in our bodies, in heaven and on earth, that while remaining ever within himself he is is also in and around and above the world, that he is above heaven and above all being, that he is sun, star, and fire, water, wind, and dew, cloud, archetype stone, and rock that he is all, that he is no thing.

-Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, 6.

Milton on the Vaudois

This poem was written by John Milton concerning the persecution of the Vaudois (Waldenses). Milton, along with Sir Morland, used his gift of prose to try to stop the Duke of Savoy from massacring these French Huguenots.

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

E'en them, who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,

Forget not: in thy book record their groans,

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant; that from these may grow

An hundred-fold, who, having learnt thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe!

John Milton, in The Waldenses: Sketches of the Evangelical Christians of the Valleys of the Piedmont, Alexis Muston

Cicero on Property Tax

When constant wars made the Roman treasury run short, our forefathers often used to levy a property tax. Every effort must be made to prevent a repetition of this; and all possible precautions must be taken to ensure that such a step will never be needed. What I am going to say now will refer to the world in general and not specifically to Rome, because when I am making ominous forecasts I would rather that they were directed towards other countries and not our own. But if any government should find itself under the necessity of levying a tax on property, the utmost care has to be devoted to making it clear to the entire population that this simply has to be done because no alternative exists short of complete national collapse.

Cicero, On the Good Life, On Duties, Book II

Cicero on Man's Best Friend

As for dogs which mount faithful guard, fawn affectionately on their masters, show such detestation of strangers, exhibit an astonishing ability to pick up a scent, and show such enthusiasm for the hunt, what does all this denote except that they are bred for the benefit of the human race?

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods Book II

Cicero on the Sea

How beautiful again is the sea, and how splendid in its entirety, with its crowd and variety of islands, its picturesque coastlines and beaches! It is the home of so many different species of marine life, partly dwelling under water, partly floating and swimming on the surface, and partly encrusted on the rocks with its shells. The sea itself in its longing to embrace the land, sports on its shoreline, so that the two elements seem to merge into one.

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, book II

Aristotle and Virtue

Therefore, virtue is an active condition that makes one apt at choosing, consisting in a mean condition in relation to us, which is determined by a proportion and by the means by which a person with practical judgment would determine it.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1107a.

The Article

One of the greatest gifts bequeathed by the Greeks to Western civilization was the article. European intellectual life was profoundly impacted by this gift of clarity.

Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament, 207.

The Man of Learning

...Children ought to be provided with property and resources of a kind [referring to the tools of philosophic knowledge and learning] that could swim with them even out of a shipwreck. These are indeed the true supports of life, and neither Fortune's adverse gale, nor political revolution, nor ravages of war can do them any harm. Developing the same idea, Theophrastus, urging men to acquire learning rather than to put their trust in money, states the case thus: "The man of learning is the only person in the world who is neither a stranger when in a foreign land, nor friendless when he has lost his intimates and relatives; on the contrary, he is a citizen of every country, and can fearlessly look down upon the troublesome accidents of fortune. But he who thinks himself entrenched in defenses not of learning but of luck, moves in slippery paths, struggling through life unsteadily and insecurely."

~Vitruvius, De architectura (The Ten Books on Architecture), book VI. 1st century B.C.

All the gifts which fortune bestows she can easily take away; but education, when combined with intelligence, never fails, but abides steadily on to the very end of life.

Ibid

Bible Schools

Bible colleges divorced the study of the Bible, a religious enterprise, from the study of nature, human nature, and society, the so-called secular disciplines. Whether intended or not, such a divorce ironically reinforced the very process of secularization that evangelicals opposed.

~D.G. Hart, That Old-time Religion in Modern America - Evangelical Protestantism in the Twentieth Century, 50.

The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, -- rejoicing -- sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.


~ BY Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A House of Singing

"I don't remember that I ever have passed that house," he said, "without hearing some one singing. Does it go on all the time?"
Yes, unless mother is sick."
"And what is it all about?"
"Oh just joy! Gladness that we are alive, that we have things to do that we like, and praising the Lord."
"Umph!" Said Mr. Pryor.
"It's just letting out what our hearts are full of, "I told him. "Don't you know that song: 'Tis the old time religion
And you cannot keep it still?' "

-Laddie

Bach and World War II

Even in the winter of 1940, it was difficult to buy or rent a piano; not that the Germans were responsible (their pillage was directed to more useful ends) but because music had become all at once a very real need: for many young Frenchmen J.S. Bach was a powerful and safe ally in the Resistance against Hitler.

H.I. Marrou; Earl F. Langwell, The Review of Politics, Vol. 8, No. 1. (Jan., 1946)

Cigars

When I have found intense pain relieved, a weary brain soothed, and calm refreshing sleep obtained by a cigar, I have felt grateful to God, and have blessed His name.

~ Charles Spurgeon

Speaking in Tongues

There is, however, another dimension to this unusual phenomenon of speaking in tongues, if the tongues in view here and in the church at Corinth were in the nature of foreign languages. In discussing the question of tongues-speaking in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul cites Isaiah 28:11-12 ('Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me') and indicates that tongues are 'a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers' (1 Cor. 14:21-22)

Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit - Contours of Christian Theology, 61.

Death & Resurrection

The one thing that is "not good" in the original creation is Adam's loneliness. And how does God go about addressing that imperfection? He puts Adam into deep sleep, tears out a rib from his side, closes up the flesh, and builds a woman from the rib. The solution to what is "not good" is something like death, and something like resurrection.

That's always the solution. When God sees that something is "not good" in us, in our life situation, He tends not to ease us into a new stage. He kills us, in order to raise us up again. That has to happen, because it is a universal truth that "unless the seed go into the ground and die, it cannot bear fruit."

-Peter Leithart

Turning the Cheek

A student, Daniel Foucachon, gave some very thoughtful perspectives on Jesus' instructions in the Sermon on the Mount. He noted that Jesus is not commending non-resistance, but a particular kind of resistance. Our resistance is modeled on Jesus' own; He conquered by going willingly to the cross, and He instructs us to do the same in the details of life.

Regarding the instructions to give more than adversaries ask, he points out that the Bible says the borrower is the slave of the lender. When we give more than is demanded of us, we become lenders and place our opponent in the place of a borrower. Giving more than asked thus reverses the power relationship, so that the "oppressed" takes mastery of the situation. We really do "overcome" evil with good.

-Dr. Leithart, Leithart.com

Homeschooling in Germany

From The Washington Post:

Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.
On Feb. 1, 15 German police officers forced their way into the home of the Busekros family in the Bavarian town of Erlangen. They hauled off 16-year-old Melissa, the eldest of the six Busekros children, to a psychiatric ward in nearby Nuremberg. Last week, a court affirmed that Melissa has to remain in the Child Psychiatry Unit because she is suffering from "school phobia."
Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938 and ordered all children to be sent to state schools. The home-schooling community in Germany is tiny. As Hitler knew, Germans tend to obey orders unquestioningly. Only some 500 children are being home-schooled in a country of 80 million. Home-schooling families are prosecuted without mercy.
Last March, a judge in Hamburg sentenced a home-schooling father of six to a week in prison and a fine of $2,000. Last September, a Paderborn mother of 12 was locked up in jail for two weeks. The family belongs to a group of seven ethnic German families who immigrated to Paderborn from the former Soviet Union. The Soviets persecuted them because they were Baptists. An initiative of the Paderborn Baptists to establish their own private school was rejected by the German authorities. A court ruled that the Baptists showed "a stubborn contempt both for the state's educational duty as well as the right of their children to develop their personalities by attending school."

HT: Right Mind

Lordship of Jesus Christ

This world belongs to our Saviour, and we have been given custodial charge of it. We are responsible to him for how we use it. The problem of sin includes not only questions of personal morality but also the careless use of Christ's environment. A host of matters, in the personal, political and social arenas, are transformed when we see Christ's mediatorial kingship in this way.

-Robert Letham,
The Work of Christ - Contours of Christian Theology, 208.

The Study of History

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

Decline of Language?

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).

- Peter Leithart

More Malmesbury

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.

Baptism of Clovis

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.

Patriatism in Gaul's civitates

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.

Urban Civilization

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.

Caterpillar Declamation

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

Harmony of the Gospels

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.

William of Malmesbury

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

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.

Sainte-Cêne

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.

Rigorous Scholarship

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.

Apocalyptic Language

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.

Sirach

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

Layered Definitions

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.

Doug Wilson

Unbearable burden of Evangelicalism

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.

-Dr. Peter Leithard

Against Schism - A Letter of Dionysius

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.

Laughter is Warfare

"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

An Observation by Bach

[Bach] grasped the sound properties of any place at first glance. A remarkable illustration of that fact is the following: He came to Berlin to visit me; I showed him the new opera house. He perceived at once its virtues and defects (that is, as regards the sound of music in it). I showed him the great dining hall. He looked at the ceiling, and without further investigation made the statement that the architect had here accomplished a remarkable feat, without intending to do so, and without anyone’s knowing about it: namely, that if someone went to one corner of the oblong shaped hall and whispered a few words very softly upwards against the wall, a person standing in the corner diagonally opposite, with his face to the wall, would hear quite distinctly what was said, while between them, and in the other parts of the room, no one would hear a sound. A feat of architecture hitherto very rare and much admired! This affect was brought about by the arches in the vaulted ceiling, which he saw at once.

Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, The Bach Reader: A life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, 276. In Music of the Western World.

An Imprecatory Prayer

Father of Jesus Christ, our gracious God, we cry out to You in a time of trouble. Our adversaries come at us with lies, lies that they delight to tell, fluent lies, as their father tells them, in their native language.

We pray that You would return to them seven-fold, according to all that they have done or said or hoped for, and all according to the promises of Your holy Word. Grant to them shame of face, so that they might turn back to You and seek Your name. We would not be like Jonah, resentful or afraid of Your grace to other sinners, even to those who have sinned grievously against us.
You have taught us, called us, summoned us, to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, to rejoice when we are mistreated by them, and to return good for evil. We are not to return evil for evil, but rather to overcome evil with good. We accept this and rejoice in it. We know and understand that this is based on Your holy character and example—You give rain and sunlight to the righteous and unrighteous both—and that this is therefore Your standard of holiness for us, and we gladly submit to it. We therefore seek the grace to continue to love our enemies, asking You to save them. Not only would we be saved from their treachery and lies, but we ask that You would save them from their treachery and lies.

In praying this way, we ask that we would be able to distinguish sharply between those who are our personal enemies, and those who are our enemies for Your name’s sake. We pray that we would extend nothing but wholehearted grace to the former, and that we would commit the terrors of strict justice, with regard to the latter, entirely and only to You. We would not be like the disciples who, caught up in their mistaken zeal, did not know "what spirit they were of." We would ask nothing from You in this that Your Word does not specifically invite us to ask. You are a God who keeps covenant to a thousand generations, and we are asking You to keep Your covenant word. If justice falling on the heads of our enemies is not a promise of covenant justice, Lord, we don’t want to ask for it. But if it is such a promise, we dare not refuse to ask. How long, Lord, will You leave in sin those who mistreat Your people in this way?

If it is not Your sovereign purpose to destroy them through saving grace, we pray that You would humiliate them and give them shame of face regardless. We pray that they would fall into the pit they have purposefully dug for us. We pray that You would turn all their plans and purposes upside down. Like Haman, we pray that they would be hanged on the gallows they have built for Your people. You are the judge of the whole earth; will You not do right? How long will You delay in bringing justice to the earth? Doesn’t it bother You that Your name and Your people are treated this way? We know that You are everlastingly good; why are You silent in that goodness? We know that You have promised to justify and vindicate Your people; rise up, Lord, and scatter Your enemies!

Father, we pray that You would deal with this situation. If it is Your good pleasure to deal with it through saving them, then that is what we would by far prefer, and it is what we ask for. But if it is not Your good pleasure to save them, we ask that You would cut them off in their course of sinning regardless, and that You would not allow their iniquity to come to its full measure. Set limits to Your judgment on them. We pray that You would set limits to that judgment by setting limits to their lies and treachery. We pray, Father, that You would cut them off in the midst of their sin.

We ask that You would deliver us from their snares in a way that showcases Your final and ultimate vindication and justification of us, together with all Your people. We know that we are sinners, and that many just and righteous accusations could be brought against us. For the sake of Christ, we pray that we would be justified concerning all that we have done that is wrong and wicked. But because Christ is our Protector as well as Savior, we pray that we would be vindicated and justified with regard to all that we have not done wrong. You chastise us for our sins, but that is not why these evil men and women attack us—they attack us because we love what is good, and because we trust in You.

Father, we pray that the angel of the Lord would chase them down. We pray that You would set for them a dark and slippery place, and that the angel of the Lord would persecute them there. They have hated us without any just cause at all, and they have devised all their plots without any good reason. We ask You therefore to rise up and defend us. Stand in the pass behind us, and lower Your spear against them. Turn them back from their wicked attacks. Rout them, we pray. Chase them like chaff in a stiff wind. We pray that You would string Your bow, sharpen Your sword, make ready all the instruments of death. Ordain Your arrows to fly against those who persecute the righteous. Make their mischief to roll back on their own impudent heads.
Those who hate us without cause are more than the hairs of our heads, and yet, Lord, we know that You have all those hairs numbered. You number and name, and note, their hatreds. You know our foolishness; You know our sinfulness, and You also know that our sin is not why we are being attacked. Rather it is for Your sake, and our identification with You. Let their table become poisonous to them, let it become a snare. Let their eyes be darkened, and judicial blindness fall upon them.

We pray that their eyes would be blinded by You; strike them so that they cannot see. Father, we pray that You would make their loins shake continuously, that they would be seized with fear and amazement. Pour out hot indignation all over them; take hold of them tightly in Your wrathful anger. May their dwellings become empty and desolate—for whenever You chastise anyone else, they love to pile on as though You were not there. They persecute the one that You are disciplining, and by their talk they dismay the one who is suffering under Your hand. Add iniquity to their iniquity; make a great heap of their sins. Do not let them enter into Your righteousness. Blot them out of the book of the living. Do not record their names alongside the names of the righteous.

God of our praise, do not hold Your peace. The mouths of the wicked and the mouths of the deceitful have joined in chorus together, and they are speaking against us with lying tongue. They are surrounding us with words of hatred, and they fight against us without good reason. It is because we love You that they are our adversaries, but we still give ourselves to prayer. Not only have we incurred their hostility by loving You, but we have also loved them, and have been treacherously betrayed by them. They returned evil for good, and hatred for love, ingratitude for kindness.

Let these wicked men come under the rule and reign of wicked men. Let Satan be continually at their right hand, accusing them. When they come into judgment, when the trial comes, we pray that the verdict of guilty would be rendered. When they cry out to You, let their prayers be reckoned as sinful. When they pray to You, let the ceiling above them remain silent. Cut short their days. When they have abused offices within Your Church, let other faithful men rise up to take their place.

Let their children be orphaned, cut off without a father. Let their wives be widows, and we pray that their children would be desolate, having to beg their bread in empty places. We pray that the extortioner would come back at them, catching them in their plots, and taking all that they have. May strangers and aliens pillage them and leave them with nothing. We pray that when this happens, and Your hand is evident, that no one would show mercy, and that no kindness would be extended to his fatherless children. Cut off his posterity; may his name and his line come to nothing. Recall how sinful his father was, and call up again the sins of his mother. May their sins come before Your throne continually so that their name may be blotted out, and remembered on the earth no more.

We ask for this because he is merciless. He loved to kick the poor and downtrodden, and sought to kill the broken-hearted. He loved cursing, and so give him that cursing. He detested blessing, so let blessing remain far away from him. He would put on curses like a comfortable coat; let those curses of his seep into him deeply. Tie those curses around him permanently. Let this be the clothing of all our enemies.

Let them curse, so long as You bless. When they get up in the morning, and hear of the blessings You have bestowed on us, let them be greatly ashamed. Let confusion cover over them completely, as though it were a mantle. I pray that You stand at our right hand, and that You would always save us from those who would condemn our souls.

We offer this pray to You in the righteous and holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and amen.

- Doug Wilson

Only the Gauls had managed that

The Republic had no fiercer bogeyman than the pale-skinned, horse-maned, towering Gaul. Hannibal might have ridden up to Rome's gates and flung his javelin over them, but he had never succeeded in capturing the seat of the Republic. Only the Gauls had managed that. Way back, at the beginning of the fourth century BC, a barbarian horde had burst without warning across the Alps, sent a Roman army fleeing from it in panic, and swept into Rome.

Tom Holland, Rubicon, 234.

Love Will Ascend

Love will ascend in unexpected ways
Like the heart-throbbing gleam of the moon's
Bright rays, as it touches your
Heart... slowly... the flame starts to glow as
Your heart starts to know of a growing
Devotion that will transform and transplant
You; to become one in soul--a rare treasure
Most forgotten, to share common passions
And share the same view, and sharing one
Father; these things will fast mend any
Disparity between me and you.
The outwardly perfect match is irrelevent,
Indeed when two hearts remain forever divided
In two. But if each heart may be willing to
Give unhindered to the other, then those
Two shall forever be true.
Such love remains my oriflamme;
This is my wish--it is now what I am.>

~Deborah Ruth Foucachon (2003)

Words of The Wise

A few great quotes I borrowed from Liz Callihan's blog.

Life

• Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
  - Christopher Morley

Friendship

• Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
  - Aristotle
  
• Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
  - George Washington
  
• We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.
  - Thucydides
  
• The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
  - Walt Whitman
  
• Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.
  - Publilius Syrus

Love

• To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
  - Bertrand Russell
  
• Love is everything it's cracked up to be...It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
  - Erica Jong
  
• But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
  - Jane Austen
  
• Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
  - Peter Ustinov

Humility

• Life is a long lesson in humility.
  - J.M. Barrie
  
• He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.
  - Confucius
  
• It well becomes a young man to be modest.
  - Titus Maccius Plautus

Enjoying the Bible

Subsequent religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the Bible seriously rather than to enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the matter may well be that by learning to enjoy the biblical stories more fully as stories, we shall also come to see more clearly what they mean to tell us about God, man, and the perilously momentous realm of history.

-Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative,189.

Calculation of Perils

Soldiers and comrades in this adventure, I hope that none of you in our present strait will think to show his wit by exactly calculating all the perils that encompass us, but that you will rather hasten to close with the enemy, without staying to weigh the odds, seeing in this your best chance of safety. In emergencies like ours calculation is out of place; the sooner the danger is face the better.

-Demosthenes, Thucydides, IV.10

The Primacy of Symbolism

Symbolism, then, is not some secondary concern, some mere curiosity. In a very real sense, symbolism is more important than anything else for the life of man. As we have seen, the doctrine of creation means that every created item, and also the created order as a whole, reflects the character of the God who created it. In other words, everything in the creation, and the creation as a whole, points to God. Everything is a sign or symbol of God.

-James Jordan, Through New Eyes, 30.

A True Theist

Always to be a theist in the full and true sense of the word, that is, to see God's counsel and hand and work in all things and simultaneously, indeed fro that very reason, to develop all available energies and gifts to the highest level of activity--that is the glory of the Christ faith and the secret of the Christian life.

Bavinck, God and Creation, 605

Fate as Providence

Now, Christian theology by no means opposes the idea that all things were known and determined by God from eternity. To that extent it even recognized a "fate," and some theologians believed they could also use the word in a good sense. If we remember, says Augustine, that fatum is a derivative of fari and then describe by means of it the eternal and unchanging word by which God sustains all things, the name can be justified. Boethius referred to fate as "a disposition inherent in changeable things by which Providence connects all things in their due order."

-Bavinck, God and Creation, 600.

"Fate" could, in a pinch, still have a good meaning in the Christian world-and-life view; but chance (casus) and fortune (fortuna) are un-Christian through and through.

-ibid, 603.

A Knights Calling

A knight must have no calling or science other than: arms, lady, and conscience.

-Guillaume de Machaut, c 1340

Homily on the Pslams

“[The book of Psalms] heals the ancient wounds of souls and to the newly wounded brings prompt relief; it ministers to what is sick and preserves that is in health; and it wholly removes the ills, howsoever great and of whatsoever kind, that attack souls in our human life; and this by means of a certain well-timed persuasions which inspires wholesome reflection.”

For when the Holy Spirit saw that mankind was ill-inclined toward virtue and that we were heedless of the righteous life because of our inclination to pleasure, what did He do? He blended the delight of melody with doctrine in order that through the pleasantness and softness of the sound we might unawares receive what was useful in the words, according to the practice of wise physicians, who, when they give the more bitter draughts to the sick, often smear the rim of the cup with honey. For this purpose these harmonious melodies of the Psalms have been designed for us, that those who are of boyish age or wholly youthful in their character, while in appearance they sing, may in reality be educating their souls. For hardly a single one of the many, and even of the indolent, has gone away retaining in his memory any precept of the apostles or of the prophets, but the oracles of the Psalms they both sin at home and disseminate in the market place. And if somewhere one who rages like a wild beast from excessive anger falls under the spell of the psalm, he straightway departs, with the fierceness of his soul calmed by the melody.

A psalm is the tranquility of souls, the arbitrator of peace, restraining the disorder and turbulence of thoughts, for it softens the passion of the soul, and moderates its unruliness. A psalm forms friendships, unites the divided, mediates between enemies. For who can still consider him an enemy with whom he has sent forth one voice to God? So that the singing of psalms bring love, the greatest of good things, contriving harmony like some bond of union and uniting the people in the symphony of a single coir.

A Psalm drives away demons, summons the help of angels, furnishes arms against nightly terrors, and gives respite from daily toil; to little children it is safety, to men in their prime an adornment, to the old a solace, to woman their most fitting ornament. It peoples solitudes, it chastens market places. To beginners it is a beginning; to those who are advancing, an increase; to those who are concluding, a support. A psalm is the voice of the church. It gladdens feast days; it creates the grief which is in accord with God’s will, for a psalm brings a tear even from a heart of stone.

A psalm is the work of angels, the ordinance of Heaven, the incense of the Spirit. Oh, the wise invention of the teacher who devised who we might at the same time sing and learn profitable things, whereby doctrines are somehow more deeply impressed up the mind!”

- St. Basil

c. 370 AD