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"the social determinist claim that we are definitively constrained by the character of our contemporary vernacular is just plain false. What we have also got is the language of Holy Scripture itself, responsibly Englished if we will use it, and the language of the liturgy and hymns passed down to us. Neither translator nor teacher is restricted to whatever limit seems to pertain in our colloquial argot.
"Think about . . . the Venerable Bede, whose grandparents were pagan, and that entire generation of Benedictines. They translated into their native Anglo-Saxon both the Gospels and the Psalms. But there was a sorry inadequacy in this vigorous early form of our language where many biblical and liturgical terms were concerned. The earliest translators were not daunted, but promptly borrowed words from Latin to meet the need: alms, altar, angel, anthem, apostle, ark, canticle, chalice, creed, deacon, demon, disciple, epistle, hymn, manna, martyr, priest, prophet, psalm, Psalter, rule, Sabbath, shrift, temple. Later would come words like absolution, baptism, beatitude, charity, communion, confession, contrition, creator, crucifixion, devotion, faith, homily, mercy, miracle, obedience, passion, pastor, penance, religion, sacrament, saint, sanctuary, savior, temptation, theology, trinity, virgin, virtue—and on and on.
"What would have happened if someone had said, in that time and place, 'We just have to find dynamic equivalents in Anglo-Saxon?' There weren’t any. Appropriately, the first translators were not intimidated by the prospect of teaching people the meaning of biblical and sacral terms not to be found anywhere in their everyday language. They gratefully borrowed the language of Scripture as they found it in another tongue. We may need to reclaim their honest practice.
". . . If the flat, secularized language of our culture no longer has the terms to convey spiritual content, we, too, can borrow words from our own English language—terms hallowed in another age and culture—and give back to them their fullness of meaning for understanding Scripture."
David Lyle Jeffrey, "Our babel of bibles: scripture, translation & the possibility of spiritual understanding," Touchstone 25, no. 2 (March/April 2012): 37-38 (29-38). Too bad Jeffrey isn't a better stylist himself, because this is a good article in other respects.
"Thus Satan brings to completion his own disaster, be it because he damns together with himself those who identify themselves with his revolt, be it because, by crucifying Christ, Head and Body, he tears up the charter [(schédule)] according to which the world belonged to him. This charter was only the law: good in this, that it expresses the divine will of justice that constitutes, as it were, the texture of the world; but [the] enemy of man nonetheless, because it renders him a victim of the chastisement of Satan for having consented to his rebellion. It is effaced by Christ on the cross, because at the cross the absurdity into which the first economy (as good as it was in principle) has fallen (as a consequence of the perversion of the powers that rule it) becomes obvious. Indeed, this perversion reached its summit at point of contact with the supreme initiative of the divine love.
"It becomes in this way apparent that the diabolical tendency is always an inhibition. It restricts itself to a first stage of the divine initiatives, and refuses to cooperate in the enlargements of them. It retains what it has. But it is overtopped and as it were drowned [(dépassé et comme noyée)] by the rising flood of love."
Louis Bouyer, “Les deux économies du gouvernement divin: Satan et le Christ,” in Initiation théologiques par un groupe de théologiens, tome II: Dieu et sa creation, 2nd ed. (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1953), 516 (504-535).
The two early nineteenth-century Kentucky revivalists Robert Marshall and J. Thompson in response to criticism (presumably Reformed), as quoted by Mark A. Noll in The scandal of the evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Company, 1994), 63, quoting Nathan O. Hatch, The democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 174.
"The consequences for the churches were immense. They were now compelled to compete for adherents. . . ."
"This combination of revivalism and disestablishment had effects whose importance cannot be exaggerated. Analyzed positively, the combination gave the American churches a new dynamism, a new effectiveness in fulfilling the Great Commission, and a new vitality in bringing the gospel to the people. Analyzed negatively, the combination of revivalism and disestablishment meant that pragmatic concerns would prevail over principle. What the churches required were results—new adherents—or they would simply go out of business. Thus, the production of results had to override all other considerations."
Mark A. Noll, The scandal of the evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 66. Yet wouldn't a determinative factor be the target audience? Wouldn't it depend on who you're competing for? And haven't intellectuals been always in the minority? And if that's true, then don't you have to "become all things to all men"?
Moreover, I find it hard to believe that schism isn't an additional factor, i.e. that a united church isn't in a better position to "become all things to all men" than an increasingly fragmented one.
"II. I proceed now to the second thing proposed, viz. to show how this light is immediately given by God, and not obtained by natural means. And here,
"First. 'Tis not intended that the natural faculties are not made use of in it. The natural faculties are the subject of this light: and they are the subject in such a manner, that they are not merely passive, but active in it; the acts and exercises of man's understanding are concerned and made use of in it. God in letting in this light into the soul, deals with man according to his nature, or as a rational creature; and makes use of his human faculties. But yet this light is not the less immediately from God for that; though the faculties are made use of, 'tis as the subject and not as the cause; and that acting of the faculties in it, is not the cause, but is either implied in the thing itself (in the light that is imparted), or is the consequence of it. As the use that we make of our eyes in beholding various objects, when the sun arises, is not the cause of the light that discovers those objects to us.
"Second. 'Tis not intended that outward means have no concern in this affair. As I have observed already, 'tis not in this affair, as it is in inspiration, where new truths are suggested: for here is by this light only given a due apprehension of the same truths that are revealed in the Word of God; and therefore it is not given without the Word. The gospel is made use of in this affair: this light is "the light of the glorious gospel of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4). The gospel is as a glass, by which this light is conveyed to us; 1 Corinthians 13:12, "Now we see through a glass…." But,
"Third. When it is said that this light is given immediately by God, and not obtained by natural means, hereby is intended, that 'tis given by God without making use of any means that operate by their own power, or a natural force. God makes use of means; but 'tis not as mediate causes to produce this effect. There are not truly any second causes of it; but it is produced by God immediately. The Word of God is no proper cause of this effect: it don't operate by any natural force in it. The Word of God is only made use of to convey to the mind the subject matter of this saving instruction: and this indeed it doth convey to us by natural force or influence. It conveys to our minds these and those doctrines; it is the cause of the notion of them in our heads, but not of the sense of the divine excellency of them in our hearts. Indeed a person can't have spiritual light without the Word. But that don't argue, that the Word properly causes that light. The mind can't see the excellency of any doctrine, unless that doctrine be first in the mind; but the seeing the excellency of the doctrine may be immediately from the Spirit of God; though the conveying of the doctrine or proposition itself may be by the Word. So that the notions that are the subject matter of this light, are conveyed to the mind by the Word of God; but that due sense of the heart, wherein this light formally consists, is immediately by the Spirit of God. As for instance, that notion that there is a Christ, and that Christ is holy and gracious, is conveyed to the mind by the Word of God: but the sense of the excellency of Christ by reason of that holiness and grace, is nevertheless immediately the work of the Holy Spirit."
Jonathan Edwards, "A divine and supernatural light" (August 1733), Doctrine II. The works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Perry Miller et al., vol. 17 (Sermons and discourses, 1730-1733, ed. Mark R. Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)), p. 416-17.
"It is not rational to suppose, if there be any such excellency in divine things, that wicked men should see it. 'Tis not rational to suppose, that those whose minds are full of spiritual pollution, and under the power of filthy lusts, should have any relish or sense of divine beauty, or excellency; or that their minds should be susceptive of that light that is in its own nature so pure and heavenly. It need not seem at all strange, that sin should so blind the mind, seeing that men's particular natural tempers and dispositions will so much blind them in secular matters; as when men's natural temper is melancholy, jealous, fearful, proud, or the like."
Jonathan Edwards, "A divine and supernatural light" (August 1733), Doctrine III Secondly 2. The works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Perry Miller et al., vol. 17 (Sermons and discourses, 1730-1733, ed. Mark R. Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)), p. 421.
"We hope nothing then, we fear every thing, from a religious movement, which nevertheless in its rise excites our sympathy, and of which we do not deny, as of any event in the world, the incidental benefits. Yet interest, pity and admiration we do feel for many of the principal agents in it; and if the choice lay between them and the reformers of the 16th century (which we thankfully acknowledge it does not,) a serious inquirer would have greater reason for saying, 'Sit anima mea cum Westleio,' than 'cum Luthero,' or 'cum Calvino,' and 'cum multis aliis,' as the grammar has it, 'quos nunc perscribere longum est.'"
John Henry Newman, reviewing vol. 1 of The life and times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1839), in The British critic, and quarterly theological review 28, no. 56 (October 1840): 264. All of this though Methodism was, for Newman, undoubtedly "a formal heresy" (263).
George Whitfield in a letter from Bristol dated 24 June 1749: "Sit anima mea cum Methodistis."
I was put onto this by Robert G. Walker, "A game of tag: a new source for Samuel Johnson?," Times literary supplement no. 5675 (January 6, 2012): 14 (14-15), where the source and subsequent career of the Averoeism "Sit anima mea cum . . ." is discussed at some length.
