Convicting.

We have not known thee as we ought,
Nor learned thy wisdom, grace and pow'r;
The things of earth have filled our thought,
And trifles of the passing hour.
Lord, give us light thy truth to see,
And make us wise in knowing thee.

We have not feared thee as we ought,
Nor bowed beneath thine awful eye,
Nor guarded deed, and word, and thought,
Remembering that God was nigh.
Lord, give us faith to know thee near,
And grant the grace of holy fear.

We have not loved thee as we ought,
Nor cared that we are loved by thee;
Thy presence we have coldly sought,
And feebly longed thy face to see.
Lord, give a pure and loving heart
To feel and own the love thou art.

We have not served thee as we ought;
Alas! the duties left undone,
The work with little fervor wrought,
The battles lost, or scarcely won!
Lord, give the zeal, and give the might,
For thee to toil, for thee to fight.

When shall we know thee as we ought,
And fear, and love, and serve aright!
When shall we, out of trial brought,
Be perfect in the land of light!
Lord, may we day by day prepare
To see thy face, and serve thee there.

(Thomas Pollock)

On Antinomianism

The Missal by John Waterhouse

Katherine Parr:

Only speaking of the Gospel makes not men good Christians, but good talkers, except [when] their facts and works agree with the same: so then their speech is good because their hearts are good. And even as much talk of the word of God, without practicing the same in our living, is evil and detestible in the sight of God, so it is a lamentable thing to hear how there are many in the world that do not well digest the reading of scripture, and do commend and praise ignorance, and say that much knowledge of God's word is the original of all dissension, schisms, and contention, and makes men haughty, proud, and presumptuous by reading of the same.

This manner of saying is no less than a plain blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. For the Spirit of God is the author of his word, and so the Holy Ghost is made the author of evil, which is a most great blasphemy and (as the scripture saith) "a sin that shall not be forgiven in this world, neither in the other to come" [Matt. 12:32]. It were all our parts and duties to procure and seek all the ways and means possible, to have more knowledge of God's word set forth abroad in the world, and not allow ignorance, and discommend knowledge of God's word, stopping the mouths of the unlearned with subtle and crafty persuasions of philosophy and sophistry, whereof comes no fruit, but a great perturbation of mind to the simple and ignorant, not knowing which way to turn them. For how is it not extreme wickedness to charge the holy, sanctified word of God with the offenses of man? To allege the scriptures to be perilous learning, because certain readers thereof fall into heresies?

(The Lamentation of a Sinner, chapter 10)

No doubt Katherine Parr had the Catholics of her day in mind as she wrote the above words, but they still stand relevant today. Sins have a nasty habit of recurring through the years: In the Middle Ages, the Roman church discouraged laymen from reading the Bible, asserting that only the allegedly well-trained clergy was capable of reading it correctly; today, Evangelicalism is infiltrated with the belief that "doctrine divides."

Summer Miscellanies

1. A few days ago, I discovered the new stats tab on my blogger dashboard. Whoa, is it fun. In the past month, my brilliant blog had somewhere around 40 page views. And half were me. I know, TRAFFIC OVERLOAD.....
   There's 2 nice things about having an unread blog: a. You don't have to worry about what everyone thinks of what you say, and b. having a popularity complex is a problem you won't be dealing with for a while.....
2. It's very difficult to get algae out of swimming pools.
3. Maddie was over at my house on Saturday, and being the nerdy duo that we are, we went to Half Price Books. There, I spotted a couple of sets of books put out by one of the coolest publishers in the whole entire world. Every single book of theirs is a work of art. So are their prices. Ah well.
4. The best summer project, a la Jonathan Edwards: "Resolved, to strive to my utmost every week to be brought higher in religion, and to a higher exercise of grace, than I was the week before."
5. Ok, only nerds like me will appreciate this one. The other day I came across an article about a painting I've often seen of Ophelia from Hamlet. Apparently, a lady found the exact location of the setting the artist painted. Wow.

Dante's Inferno

Through me the way to the infernal city,

Through me the way to eternal sadness,

Through me the way to the lost people.

Justice moved my supreme maker,

I was shaped by divine power,

By highest wisdom, and by primal love.

Before me, nothing was created

That is not eternal, and eternally I endure.

Abandon all hope, you that enter here.

(Canto 3, lines 1-9)

Imagine yourself wandering, lost, in a creepy forest and suddenly you happen upon Virgil, who takes you to a gateway that has these words hanging over it. Sound like a fun tourist trap? Ehhhh.....

Botticelli's chart of Hell

Despite it's ominous first section, The Inferno quickly engaged my interest. I mean, who isn't fascinated by delightful things like demons pecking victims immersed in pitch or heretics entombed in blazing sarcophagi? Yeah, no one, I know. All joking profundity aside, I've often noticed that we humans have an interest in morbidity. Just like the Romans who flooded the Colosseum for the gladiator games and the medieval peasants enthralled by burning heretics, we modern, post-enlightenment, liberated-from-superstition people are still drawn to it. Ever noticed how popular horror flicks or ghost stories are?

The layout of Dante's hell makes the book a masterpiece in and of itself. The entire time I was reading The Inferno, I kept asking myself, "How did this guy come up with this stuff?!" According to the book, Hell is divided into two main sections and three types of sins - Upper Hell  (the sins of incontinence or lack of self control) and Nether Hell (the sins of violence and fraud).

In Upper Hell are found those characterized by lust, gluttony, stinginess & extravagance, and wrath. In case you were wondering, no, the punishments here aren't that creative. However, it does contain my favorite: the misers and the spendthrifts, who have been strategically placed in the same circle, are their  own punishment. All day long they bicker about the spending of eachother's money (or lack thereof) and throw stones at one another. Brilliant, Dante, brilliant.

The sins of violence come right after the aforesaid circle of the heretics and the people found there aren't quite what you would think of as particularly violent. There's the obvious murderers and suicides, but then there's those who are destructive towards God and the order He designed for His creation - profligates, usurers, blasphemers, etc. By far, however, the largest section of Hell is the sins of fraud. Dante includes a wide range of sins here, including flatterers, hypocrites, sorcerers, thieves, liars, and counselors of fraud.

When I got to the end of the story, I got a major case of heebie jeebies. In the last layer stands a gigantic Satan, whose three heads continually tear up the three most heinous traitors to their lords: Brutus, Cassius, and (dum dum dum!) Judas. Virgil and Dante end up having to climb down Satan's hairy body to get out of Hell. YEESH.

As Dante was a medieval Catholic, most people, as did myself, assume that his book is full of Catholicism. While it definitely is present, the more prominent force is Greek philosophy. For example, Dante got his inspiration for the organization of Hell from Aristotle, whose book on ethics laid out which sins were more destructive than others. Also, it's important to understand that the book is an allegory, like Pilgrim's Progress, and the punishments therin are images of how pernicious sin is in our lives. (Dante wasn't so concieted as to believe that he knew how the otherworld is set up :-) The biggest problem I had with Dante's assessment of which sin is worse than the other is in the beginning. In the first (and least serious) layer he places The Futile - those who knew about Christ but never did anything about it. The Bible clearly states that the sin of unbelief is one of the worst you can commit.

Overall, though, this book is definitely one of my favorites. It made me think. Although I'm unquestionably not a poetic type of person, I have a weekness for epics, and this is hands down one of the best. But I probably wouldn't have appreciated it as much if I didn't read the edition I did - Dorothy Sayers' translation was fun to read (it rhymed!) and her notes brought to my attention many things I never would have noticed. I highly reccomend it!