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"In these circumstances the strategy of translating the language of the faith into the jargon of the streets is superficial. The intention is good, and there is even a grain of truth on offer. It is wise to develop contemporary analogies that will capture in a vivid way the great truths of the gospel. . . . However, the mistake is to think that folk are ready to roll over and accept the Christian faith if only we could find a way to make it intelligible to them. This ignores the offense of the faith. To see what is at stake in salvation requires an intellectual revolution that shakes the foundations of one's standard conception of oneself. The darkness and cognitive malfunction are so great that the active grace of God is required to wake us from our dogmatic slumbers. We should permit the claims of the faith to call into question the common intellectual assumptions of our day rather than capitulating at the first sign of opposition. Moreover, it is not always easy to explain the deep things of God even to veteran believers. Thus, to rely on strategies of translation, or on cute analogies, or on church growth techniques, in order to relieve our anxieties is disastrous for the church in the long run. We need to keep our nerve, pray for divine assistance, and launch forth boldly in the teeth of opposition and ridicule. Cutting a deal with the world at this point and reworking the faith to accommodate its wishes is simply wrongheaded and ineffective."
William J. Abraham, Wesley for armchair theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 106.
"The Holy Spirit does indeed work incessantly to bring folk to faith in Christ and connect them to each other in the body of Christ. However, does not the Holy Spirit also work to create the church as an institution that exists through space and time? So in following up on the comprehensive work of the Holy Spirit, we are drawn deeper into the life and work of the church as an institution. In practice Wesley was headed away from the institutional church. If we follow his best instincts we will do a U-turn and head in the opposite direction."
William J. Abraham, Wesley for armchair theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 121. Cf. "It was this world of faith that Wesley inhabited. He was supported at every level in his work. The state, the church, the universities, and the intellectual giants of his day supplied him with a network of ideas and practices without which he would have been hopelessly handicapped. Wesley himself rarely saw this; like most reformers and renewalists he had a keener eye for what was wrong than for what was right. He was so preoccupied with the problems of dry rot in the pulpit that he forgot how good the foundations were. He was so worried about the broken arms of his patients that he ignored how well they had already learned to walk. He was so busy adding new trains to the railway company and getting them to run on time that he overlooked his deep dependence on the network of track and railway stations that dotted the countryside. He was so taken with his piccolo trumpet and the tune he was playing that he disregarded the steady beat of the big drum at the back of the orchestra. Wesley's life and thought depended critically on the commitments of the state, the requirements of the Church of England, the theological presuppositions of university life, and the effectiveness of the intellectual work done by a host of scholars and writers. His genius was to note that these in themselves were not enough to secure the spiritual welfare of people. The church also needed to be an effective tutor in the spiritual life" (32-33).
William J. Abraham, Wesley for armchair theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 108.
"it is not enough merely to be enlightened and in tune with history. During the Reign of Terror, after having given good service to the Revolution, eight 'constitutional bishops' perished on the guillotine."
James Hitchcock, "The French connection: the many parallels between France's Revolution and today's anti-Christian secularism," Touchstone 24, no 5 (September/October 2011), 35.
"it is true that the invisible grace that these structures communicate to us, or for which they are the occasion of our reception, will perdure even after they cease. However, in a sense, just the inverse is true as well: invisible grace moves us toward the sacraments not as mere historically contingent means, but also as precursors to a more profound eschatological form of dependence upon mediation: the mediation of the sacred humanity of Christ, which will perdure eternally. The sacraments are imperfect instrumental applications 'already' of what we will experience more perfectly for eternity: dependence upon the mediating grace of Jesus Christ as man. . . .
"in contrast to Rahner's view, sacramental grace for Aquinas is not simply the visible manifestation of what is always, already happening invisibly outside the Church. Nor does extra-sacramental grace drive us towards the sacraments simply because of a general human need for categorical mediation. Rather, such grace 'outside the Church' is only a diminished form and anticipation of what comes to full reality uniquely in the sacraments of the Church. Quite in opposition, then, to Rahner's view, sacraments cannot appear as visual aids to what we already possess, but they are instruments that incorporate us into a higher form of life with God than that which we previously possessed when we were not yet incorporated into the fullness of sacramental life.
". . . Like Congar, St. Thomas certainly holds that the sacraments are the means of grace that produce an inward spiritual communion and that they give way eventually to the eschatological life of the kingdom of God. He also makes it clear, however, that these same sacraments are part of the inherent common good of social communion into which the invisible workings of grace invite us, and by which those same workings are inwardly maintained. Nor does this corporate body cease to be eschatologically. When these sacramental means cease to exist, they do so in order to give way not to a non-sacramental, invisible reality, but to a superior communal life that is itself also visible and invisible. This is the life of the Resurrection, in which we will live in everlasting dependency upon the 'sacramental' mediation of Christ himself: the human mediation of the Savior as High Priest. His humanity will remain the everlasting instrument and sign of the communication of divine life, such that we will be dependent upon Jesus as both God and human for eternity. Already in the life of the Church in this world, then, sacramental communion is part of the very form of the saving life of grace, since we are saved in an ecclesial body that is inseparably visible and invisible."
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., "The priesthood makes the Church: ecclesial communion and the power of the keys," Nova et vetera: the English edition of the international theological journal 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 221, 227-228 (209-236).
"There are those who say, After Auschwitz one can no longer speak of God. [Yet] Israel did so [after another such event] in the Old Testament long ago. I [by contrast] find [that] after Auschwitz one can no longer speak in such a ridiculously 'Enlightened' fashion and with such unspeakable naïveté [(so lächerlich aufgeklärt und so unsäglich naiv)] of the self-realized and superior man [(dem selbstverwirklichten und besseren Menschen)], as so commonly today."
Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 92 (75-95). Others have said this, too, of course.
Karl Barth, CD I/2, 486 =KD I/2, 539 (§19.2.3), as quoted by Bruce L. McCormack in his "The being of Holy Scripture is in becoming: Karl Barth in conversation with American evangelical criticism," Evangelicals and Scripture: tradition, authority and hermeneutics, ed. Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguéz, and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 68 (55-75). "these specific men" are the "first witnesses": "His disciples, His followers, His apostles, those who are called by Him, the witnesses of his resurrection, those to whom He Himself has directly promised and given His Holy Spirit". So they are unique: "It is in this function that they are distinguished from us and from all other men, whom they resemble in everything else." Yet there is something about this that rings true for the saints as well.
"In these circumstances the strategy of translating the language of the faith into the jargon of the streets is superficial. The intention is good, and there is even a grain of truth on offer. It is wise to develop contemporary analogies that will capture in a vivid way the great truths of the gospel. . . . However, the mistake is to think that folk are ready to roll over and accept the Christian faith if only we could find a way to make it intelligible to them. This ignores the offense of the faith. To see what is at stake in salvation requires an intellectual revolution that shakes the foundations of one's standard conception of oneself. The darkness and cognitive malfunction are so great that the active grace of God is required to wake us from our dogmatic slumbers. We should permit the claims of the faith to call into question the common intellectual assumptions of our day rather than capitulating at the first sign of opposition. Moreover, it is not always easy to explain the deep things of God even to veteran believers. Thus, to rely on strategies of translation, or on cute analogies, or on church growth techniques, in order to relieve our anxieties is disastrous for the church in the long run. We need to keep our nerve, pray for divine assistance, and launch forth boldly in the teeth of opposition and ridicule. Cutting a deal with the world at this point and reworking the faith to accommodate its wishes is simply wrongheaded and ineffective."
