Saturday, November 4, 2023

"Throughout, Moody portrayed Christ himself as a sinner"

"did you ever know a man to keep the law except the Son of God himself?"

"Christ kept the law.  He was the Lamb, pure and spotless.  He never broke the law, therefore He can die for the sins of man."

     Dwight L. Moody, "Man’s great failure," in Glad tidings (New York:  E. B. Treat, 1876)), 411, 416.  I mount this in support of Alan Jacobs on James WalvinAmazing grace:  a cultural history of the beloved hymn (University of California Press, 2023), "Beyond belief," The homebound symphony:  stagger on rejoicing, November 2, 2023.


"I must die for my sins or find some substitute to die in my stead.  I cannot get this man or that man to die for me, because they have sinned themselves, and would have to die for their own sins.  But Christ was without sin, and therefore He could be my substitute."

     Dwight L. Moody at Calvary's cross:  a symposium on the atonement (1900), 26, as quoted by James F. Findlay, Jr. at Dwight L. Moody:  American evangelist, 1837-1899 (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 231-232 (where p. 31 in Calvary's cross is given as well).


"You may find a good many flaws in your character, but you can not find a flaw in the Lamb of God."

"And here we find the first glimpse of the doctrine of substitution—the substitution of the just for the unjust—the great doctrine of atonement and substitution foreshadowed in Genesis."

"'So loved the world;' that includes them; if they inhabited some other land they might tremble, but they are in this earth, for all the sons and daughters of which Christ died, the just for the unjust."

     Dwight L. Moody, New sermons, addresses, and prayers (Chicago:  J.W. Goodspeed, 1877), 151 and 147 ("Tracing the scarlet thread"), 382 ("Best methods with inquirers").  See also p. 276 for a direct quotation of 1 Pet 3:18.


Etc.!

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

"We awaken in Christ's body": almost as much Stephen Mitchell as St. Symeon the New Theologian

We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? -- Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ's body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.


     Stephen Mitchell, apparently very loosely and with great poetic license paraphrasing St. Symeon the New Theologian, Hymn 15, presumably ll. 141 ff., though it is often challenging to determine at a glance which lines in particular these are supposed to be translations of, and where any ellipses may lie.  The enlightened heart:  an anthology of sacred poetry (New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989), 38-39.  "All translations and adaptations in this book are mine, unless otherwise indicated" (167, underscoring mine), and nothing is otherwise indicated for this one.  A far more straightforward key to the original Greek of Sources Chrétiennes 156 (1969), 276 ff. is Divine eros:  hymns of Saint Symeon the New theologian, trans. Daniel K. Griggs, Popular patristics series 40 (Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2010), 81 ff.