"love" no sign "that two people . . . belong to each other"

"'if life did not make duties for us before love comes—love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other.  But. . . . I must not, cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others.  Love is natural—but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too.'"

     George Eliot, The mill on the Floss III.vi.11, "In the lane" (ed. with an introduction and notes by A. S. Byatt (London: Penguin Books, 2003 [1979]), 469).
     One question would be whether this is really duty speaking, or only one of the voices within Maggie.  Cf.  the narrator at IV.vii.2, "St Ogg's passes judgment" (517 ff.), which comes after Maggie's important response to Stephen in III.vi.14, "Waking" (495 ff.), but not after she has come out on the other side of "The last conflict" (III.vii.5) and been fixed in that position by her final act of self-sacrifice.
     If it is, as I believe, duty speaking, then the narrator at IV.vii.2 (517 ff.) is speaking for Stephen in III.vi.14 (495 ff.), not Stephen for the narrator.

"the defeat that we love better than victory"

     "It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable—when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us—that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory."

     George Eliot, The mill on the Floss II.v.3, "The wavering balance" (ed. with an introduction and notes by A. S. Byatt (London: Penguin Books, 2003 [1979]), 342).

"At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light: but how, when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary—how, if there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again to the life-nourishing day?"

     III.vi.5, "The last conflict" (534).

Tom Tulliver no St. John Vianney

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"Tom, more miserable than usual, determined to try his sole resource, and that evening, after his usual form of prayer . . . , he added, in the same low whisper, 'And please to make me always remember my Latin.'  He paused a little to consider how he should pray about Euclid. . . . But at last he added — 'And make Mr Stelling say I shan't do Euclid any more.  Amen'
     "The fact that he got through his supines without mistake the next day, encouraged him to persevere in this appendix to his prayers, and neutralised any scepticism that might have arisen from Mr Stelling's continued demand for Euclid.  But his faith broke down under the apparent absence of all help when he got into the irregular verbs."

     George Eliot, The mill on the Floss I.ii.1, "Tom's first half" (ed. with an introduction and notes by A. S. Byatt (London: Penguin Books, 2003 [1979]), 149-150).

"for getting a strong impression that a skein is tangled, there is nothing like snatching hastily at a single thread."

George Eliot, The mill on the Floss I.i.8, "Mr Tulliver shows his weaker side" (ed. with an introduction and notes by A. S. Byatt (London:  Penguin Books, 2003 [1979]), 82).

"He Himself is the propitiation (ἱλασμός) for our sins"

"unless we are mistaken, by [ἱλάσκομαι] is expressed in profane literature the action of man on divinity [(actio hominis in divinitatem)], whereas by this word in the O[ld] T[estament] (the LXX) is understood the action of Divinity on man (whether direct or via a mediating priest) [(actio Divinitatis in hominem (sive directa sive mediante sacerdote))].  Here the talk is of the annihilation of sin; there of the propitiation of divinity, of the placation of wrath."

     L. Moraldi, "Sensus vocus ἱλαστήριον in Rom. 3,25," Verbum Domini 26 (1948):  272 (257-276), as quoted by Léopold Sabourin, S.J., in his "Le bouc émissaire, figure du Christ?," Sciences écclesiastiques 11 (1959):  64n85 (45-79).  Thus, in the Comm. in Lev. of Dionysius the Carthusian we have an application of "penal substitution . . . to the sacrifice of the Old Testament.  The sacrifices of animals are not, above all, for Dionysius, the symbolic expression of death to sin on the part of the one who offers them or a figure of the true sacrifice to come; their immolation has a sense in itself [(un sens en elle-même)]:  the beasts, by their sufferings, satisfy [(satisfont à, give satisfaction to)] the justice of God" (Sabourin, 65).
     Sabourin is not, I think, complimenting Dionysius here.

 

Jesus as the scapegoat of Lev 16 an innovation

"To our knowledge, no writer anterior to the [period of the] Reform utilized the symbolic imposition of sins on the scapegoat [at Lev 16] to illustrate the Pauline paradoxes of 2 Cor 5:21 and Gal 3:13, according to which, on this interpretation, Christ would have become sin personified, malediction itself."

     Léopold Sabourin, S.J., "Le bouc émissaire, figure du Christ?," Sciences écclesiastiques 11 (1959):  69 (45-79).  "Before the Reform, for example, one did not hesitate to say that Christ suffered the punishment due to sins; [but it is only] during the epoque of the Reform [that] one begins to speak of the transfer of our sins to Christ.  Thus William of St-Thiery wrote in the Middle Ages, 'transtulit [Christus] in se poenam omnium peccatorum '[([Christ] has transferred to himself the penalty for all sins)]' (Disp. adv. Abelardum, VII; PL 180, 274); Cajetan, on the other hand, affirmed (in 1519):  'Transtulit autem [Deum] peccata nostra in Christum [(But [God] has transferred to Christ our sins)]' (Epist. Pauli. juxtam sensum litt. enarr., in 2 Cor 5:21 (Venetiis, 1531), p. 81)" (69n107).
     Sabourin continues:  "Such a usage is all the more suspect because these two texts [(2 Cor 5:21 and Gal 3:13)] figure among the principal [texts] cited by the early Reformers in support of their theory of the imputation of sins to Christ and of forensic justification" (69).
     It is important to note (as indeed the reference to Cajetan already implies) that Sabourin doesn't charge the Protestants with this exclusively.  Indeed, it is of the Comm. in Lev. of Dionysius the Carthusian (Denys le Chartreux, Denys van Leeuwen, Denys Ryckel, d. 1471) that Sabourin, speaking of an "equivocal honor," says, "For the first time in one and the same figure and in [one and the] same context, Christ is represented as a scapegoat marching to Calvary laden with the sins of men" (65).  Moreover, Sabourin goes on to implicate in this, in addition to Cajetan, other Catholics of the Reformation period and after as well (69 ff.), including those who have interpreted the gesture of the imposition of hands associated with the Hanc igitur ("Spreading his hands over the oblation he says:  Therefore, Lord, we pray:  graciously accept this oblation of our service," etc.) as an imposition of sins (75 ff.).
     Nonetheless, it is the theory of (mere) imputation that takes it on the chin admittedly.  Indeed, Sabourin goes further than this one quotation would by itself necessarily imply, questioning "the [very] possibility of making use of this figure [of the scapegoat] in relation to the redemptive act of our Savior" (45, and in other words elsewhere).
     "It goes without saying that our remarks on the new tendencies, revealed at the time of the Reform, are in no way directed against the satisfactio vicaria as understood by a healthy catholic theology" (70n108).

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

     Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The cost of discipleship I.4 ("Discipleship and the cross") (2nd rev. and unabridged edition, trans. R. H. Fuller and Irmgard Booth (New York:  The Macmillan Company, 1959), 79).
     The original German, though, is much more prosaic:

"Jeder Ruf Christi fährt in den Tod."
Every call of Christ leads to death.

See Discipleship I.4 ("Discipleship and the cross"), trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, Dietrich Bonhoeffer works, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr., vol. 4, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2001), 87 and 87n11.