"the shape of the body I am"

"my femaleness or maleness is constituted not in malleable or contingent psychology or social construction but in the shape of the body I am, which can be hated and even mutilated but cannot actually be given the shape of its counterpart, not even by the most sophisticated technology."

     Robert W. Jenson, Systematic theology, vol. 2, The works of God (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1999), 89-90.  "Thus sexuality is the fact of that identity of subject and object that is the peculiar structure of humanity."

"no gesture left for final commitment"

     "Intercourse is the ultimate creaturely gesture of this sort, the movement of my body to the other that cannot be surpassed without harmful consequences.  For here the one body actually engulfs the other and that body enters the first, only in this active abolition of distance to be mutually the bodies they are.  Therefore if intercourse is a gesture and not a mere technique of sensation or reproduction, it can be the embodiment of an ultimate promise:  the promise of myself if it kills me, of share life 'until death do us part.' . . .
     "We can of course stipulate together that intercourse shall be the sign of a lesser address.  We can make it be the gestural embodiment of 'I am yours forever, maybe,' or 'I am yours for this pleasant weekend.'  But then we have no gesture left for final commitment, and so become incapable of it.  A society in which this was a widespread condition could not long cohere."

     Robert W. Jenson, Systematic theology, vol. 2, The works of God (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1999), 92.

Sin boldly (Esto peccator et pecca fortiter)

     Martin Luther, letter no. 424 to Philipp Melanchthon, 1 August 1521, WA Br 2, p. 372, l. 84.  I was put onto the track of these famous words, which it had not occurred to me to look for, by Ryan Reeves, "Did Luther really tell us to 'love God and sin boldly'?," The Gospel Coalition, as posted by Michael D. Zibell.

"Icons do with color what Scripture does with words"; or, more accurately, "That which the narrative declares in writing is the same as that which the icon [(ἡ ἀναζωγράφησις)] does [in colours]."

"Modern viewers of art tend to see form in terms of line. . . . Gregory, however, expresses a late antique belief in the manifestation of form and reality through color[, a belief] that persisted throughout the Byzantine period."

     Liz James, "Color and meaning in Byzantium," Journal of early Christian studies 11, no. 2 (Summer 2003):  226 (223-233).  The lines immediately preceding, from pp. 225-226, are these (there is much more of great value):

     [Following classical philosophy,] The church fathers also perceived a significant role for color in making an image vital.  In his First Sermon on the Song of Songs, Gregory of Nyssa linked the creation of form to the use of colors[, speaking of] '. . . the form which the artist has created in colors.'  Colors direct the viewer to form:  they make it possible to apprehend form.  In case this should be seen as mere rhetorical flourishing and the display of cliché, John Chrysostom was even more explicit, implying that the image is not present until it is colored.  'As you see these things [the subject of the painting] being sketched, you do not know the whole, and yet you are not entirely ignorant of it, but you know faintly that a man and a horse are being drawn.  Who the emperor is, and who the enemy, you do not know exactly until the true colors have been applied, making the image clear and distinct.' . . . 'As long as somebody traces the outline as in a drawing, there remains a sort of shadow; but when he paints over it brilliant tints an lays on colors then an image emerges.'  On a spiritual level, this true likeness is Christ. . . . the sketch represents the shadow, that is, the Old Testament, and the true colors represent truth, that is the New Testament. . . .
. . . what Chrysostom says makes it clear that color was the more important element, without which an image was incomplete (and thus a false likeness) and unfinished.  This image of the underpainting preceding the colored picture that is the true image is one which recurs in the Fathers, from Cyril of Alexandria to Patriarch Germanos and John of Damascus, who described Melchisedek as the σκίασμα of Christ, the underpainting preceding the colored picture.
    This appears to express a widely-held and consistent belief that color gave an image form and reality.

Headline from the sixth session of the Second Council of Nicaea (i.e. Fr. Stephen Freeman and Daniel J. Sahas (Icon and logos:  sources in eighth-century iconoclasm:  an annotated translation of the sixth session of the seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicea, 787) (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1986), 69) respectively).
     Thanks to Ben McFarland for putting me onto this emphasis on color specifically, via the Freeman version of those words.

"rule in all our hearts alone"

Legacy Icons

"Dirigere et sanctificare, regere et gubernare dignare, Dominus Deus, Rex caeli et terrae, hodie corda et corpora nostra, sensus, sermones et actus nostros in lege tua, et in operibus mandatorum tuorum:  ut hic et in aeternum, te auxiliante, salvi et liberi esse mereamur, Salvator mundi.  Qui."

Deign to direct and sanctify, rule and govern today our hearts and bodies, thoughts, words, and acts in your law, and in the works of your commandments, O Lord God, King of heaven and earth:  that here and into eternity, you helping, we may merit to be saved and freed, O Savior of the world.  Who.

     Oratio at Prime (Ordinarium divini Officii ad Primum), Brevarium Romanum, and at Morning Prayer (Ad Laudes matuitinas) in vols. 3 and 4 (only) of Liturgia horarum, hastily translated by me.  Liturgy of the hours vol. 3 pp. 1006-1007 and vol. 4, pp. 970-971 (only):

Lord God, king of heaven and earth, direct our minds and bodies throughout this day, and make us holy.  Keep us faithful to your law in thought, word and deed.  Be our helper now and always, free us from sin, and bring us to salvation in that kingdom where you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

    I have not yet looked deeply into the origins of this one, but if I'm reading p. 29 of Jonathan Black, "Psalm uses in Carolingian prayerbooks:  Alcuin’s Confessio peccatorum pura and the seven penitential Psalms (Use 1)," Mediaeval studies 65, no. 1 (January 2003) aright, then a Dirigere et santificare digneris (Dominus) of some sort is present in two 9th-century manuscripts.
     Meanwhile, a very incomplete chronology:

1974:  Above.

1955:  collect near the conclusion of the Capitular office at Prime, The Anglican Breviary containing the Divine office according to the general usages of the Western Church put into English in accordance with the Book of common prayer (Mount Sinai, NY:  Frank Gavin Liturgical Foundation, Inc., 1998 [1955]), A31:  "O Lord God, King of heaven and earth, vouchsafe, we beseech thee, to direct, sanctify, and govern, both our hearts and bodies, in the ways of thy laws, and in the works of thy commandments : that through thy most mighty protection, O Saviour of the world, both here and ever, we may be preserved in body and soul.  Who."

1928:  I'm not yet seeing this in the 1928 Book of common prayer, despite the claims made here (which incorporate).

1662:  second collect "to be said after the Offertory, when there is no Communion, every such day one, or more; and the same may be said also, as often as occasion shall serve, after the Collects either of Morning or Evening Prayer, Communion, or Litany, by the discretion of the Minister", Book of Common-Prayer:  O Almighty Lord, and everlasting God, vouchsafe, we beseech thee, to direct, sanctifie, and govern both our hearts and bodies in the wayes of thy laws, and in the works of thy commandments, that through thy most holy protection, both here and ever, we may be preserved in body and soul, through."  Cummings (2011), p. 405.

1568:  Above.

1559:  second collect "to be saide after the Offertorie, when there is no Communion, euery suche daye one", Boke of common praier:  "O Almightie Lord and euerliuing god, vouchsafe, we beseche thee, to directe, sanctifye, and gouerne, both oure heartes and bodies, in the wayes of thy lawes, and in the woorks of thy commaundments:  that through thy most mightie proteccion, both here and euer, we may be preserued in body and soule:  through."  Everyman's Library (1910), p. 391.  Cf. the slight variations in Cummings (2011), p. 139.

1549:  second collect "to bee sayed after the Offertory, when there is no Communion, euery such day one", Booke of the common prayer:  "O Almightie Lorde and euerlyuyng GOD, vouchesafe, we beseche thee, to direct, sanctifye, and gouerne, both our heartes and bodies, in the wayes of thy lawes, and in the workes of thy comaundementes:  that through thy most mightie proteccion, both here and euer, we may be preserued in body and soule:  Through."  Everyman's Library (1910), p. 228.  Cf. the slight variations in Cummings (2011), p. 37.

[Between 1099 (death of St. Osmund and 1543 (imposition of the Sarum Breviary upon the province of Canterbury) (ODCC, 3rd ed. rev, (2005), sv "Salisbury or Sarum, Use of")]:  Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, ed. Procter and Wordsworth, fasc. 2 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1879), p. 55 (Ad Primam), the standard scholarly edition of the last (1531) edition of the Great Breviary (fasc. 2, p. 7):  "In omnibus aliis festis et profestis dicitur haec Oratio sine Dominus vobiscum sed tantum cum Oremus[:]  Dirigere et sanctificare et regere dignare Domine Deus quaesumus corda et corpora nostra in lege tua:  et in operibus mandatorum tuorum : ut hic et in aeternum te auxiliante sani et salvi esse mereamur.  Per."

9th century?  Above.

"the need for renewed attention to particularity in Methodist theology"

Since "The expulsion of B.T. Roberts and others from the Genesee Conference", "Methodism . . . has tended to be more comfortable with a big-tent vision for Methodism than with wrestling with the details and boundaries that are necessary in order for there to be a theological tradition."

     Kevin M. Watson, Old or New School Methodism?: The fragmentation of a theological tradition (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2019), 280, 284, underscoring mine.  The headline is from p. 283.
     "There was a recognizable theological tradition in American Methodism from the first Methodists who traveled from Britain to the British Colonies that would become the United States of America in the 1760s until the 1850s. The particularities of that tradition were largely articulated by John Wesley’s preaching and writing, which stated that the mission of Methodism was to 'spread scriptural holiness.' Throughout this period of time there was a formal commitment in the Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as other denominations formed subsequent to the MEC, to the doctrine of entire sanctification, or Christian perfection. American Methodism was also committed to a set of practices that would 'raise up a holy people'" (278, underscoring mine).

Satisfy our just desires

"Lord our God, we humbly ask you, that, through the working of this mystery, our offences may be cleansed and our just desires fulfilled.  Through."

"Domine Deus noster, suppliciter te rogamus, ut, huius operatione mysterii, vitia nostra purgentur, et iusta desideria compleantur.  Per."

     Post-communion, Second Sunday after the Nativity, Roman missal.  This derives from the 8th century Old Gelasian.  See Corpus orationum no. 5708, on p. 84 of vol. 9

Suppliciter te rogamus, domine deus noster, ut huius operatione mysterii et vitia nostra purgentur et iusta desideria compleantur.

and Bruylants no. 813, on p. 230 of vol. 2:

Per hujus, Domine, operationem mysterii, et vitia nostra purgentur, et justa desideria compleantur.  Per.

     Cf. James 4:3:  "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly [(male)], to spend it on your passions [(concupiscentiis)]."  Also Jn 8:44:  "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires [(desideria)]."  Most importantly, Ps 37:4:  "Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires [(petitiones)] of your heart."  Etc.
     Cf. also St. Augustine.