Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962).

Niebuhr's comment about modern theology sadly seems to be increasingly true of evangelical preaching too...

"A God without wrath, brings men without sin, into a kingdom without judgement, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

It seems to me that unless we have the courage of our convictions and teach key ideas like Sin, Wrath, Judgement and the Cross, the Evangelical Church will have nothing of worth to say to the on-looking world. We will be compelled to reflect back to the world what it finds congenial. There is a coherent philospohical message in the Gospel, but when we compromise on any of these teachings a sceptical world will point out that our message has ceased to have any coherence.
Unless we understand sin and God's anger towards it we will not have a realistic understanding of the world we live in nor an understanding of the conflicted nature of humanity, nor will we be able to adequately describe who Jesus is, or what his ministry meant, we will be supremely unable to explain the purpose of the Cross.

JONATHAN SWIFT.

You just knew that I had to have at least one quotation from my namesake!

"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).

G.K. CHESTERTON on Humility.

"What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.
Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty
has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was
never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about
himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been
exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man
does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert -
himself."

Quoted from the chapter called "The Suicide of Thought"
in his book "Orthodoxy", published in 1908.

BENEDICT XVI on Relativism.

"Today a particularly insidious obstacle to the
task of education is the massive presence in our
society and culture of that relativism which,
recognising nothing as definitive, leaves as the
ultimate criterion only the self with its desires.
And under the semblance of freedom it becomes
a prison for each one, for it separates people
from one another, locking each person into his
or her own ego."
Pope Benedict XVI speaking at a conference of
educationalists.

I chose this quotation, not because it comes from
a pope but, because he aptly expresses the problem
with 'relativism' as a sociological phenomenon.
For those of you who believe that 'relativism' is the
only absolute I would like to open up the discussion.
Benedict XVI points out the consequences of this
'relativism'; I would like to take issue with one of
its supposed foundations.

A few months ago I was listening to a debate about
'relativism' on the radio. Heaven knows where the
BBC get their pundits from but one of the panel
asserted that Einstein had provided the scientific
basis underpinning the philosophy of 'relativism'.
'Einstein proves Relativism to be true' [that is
everything is relative to each other - there are
no fixed points of reference].

While his fellow panellists acknowledged the
self evident truth of this I was shouting at the
radio! "You don't understand Relativity at all
do you!?" Even lay people have heard of e=mc2
which means energy equals mass times constant
squared. Einstein never said 'everything is
relative to everything else', he actually said mass
and energy are relative to a fixed constant - in
this case the speed of light.There are constants,
there are fixed reference points.

I suppose if something is repeated often enough
for long enough 'relativism' will become the received
wisdom. That however will never make it true.
The reality is that the human heart doesn't want
any reference outside of itself and its desires.
Whatever the BBC pundits say 'Relativism' has no
scientific basis - its basis is really found in our
self centred human nature.

I do not believe that for every proposition
there is always an equally valid opposite.
There is such a thing as objective truth, the
Cosmos does have its fixed reference points.

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN.

"If only there were evil people some where
insidiously committing evil deeds and it were
necessary only to separate them from the rest
of us and destroy them. But the line dividing
good and evil cuts through the heart of every
human being."
Alexandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
"The Gulag Archipelago".

C.S. LEWIS.

During the Second World War CS Lewis gave a
series of radio talks on the BBC. These talks were
subsequently published as "Mere Christianity".
In one talk on 'Forgiveness' Lewis said this:-

"Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in
the paper. Then suppose that something turns up
suggesting that the story might not be quite true,
or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's
first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite
so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment,
and even a determination to cling to the first story
for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as
bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am
afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed
to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is
beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If
we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to
see grey as black, and then to see white itself as
black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything -
God and our friends and ourselves included - as
bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be
fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

Christian Intolerance Rightly
Understood!

"In any final analysis, it is clear everything that is good,
true and beautiful has it's origin in God, mediated to men
through that living word who has been from eternity the
revealer of the God-head.
"Did he not say that he is the light that lighteth every man?
The Christian then can trace all that is best in non-christian
religions to it's ultimate source and origin and give him
thanks. Similarly, all that is evil, false and unlovely comes
from below, for God is light and in him is no darkness at
all.
"These other religions then, like so much else in the world
of men, are made up of elements whose ultimate origins are
diverse. But in so far as these diverse elements have been
welded into systems which serve only to divert and keep
men from that way of salvation and life which cost God
himself the incarnation and the cross, the Christian must
regard them as satanic substitutes, however good they may
be in parts. This intolerance, if intolerance it be, is not that
of a sectarian and insensitive spirit, but is necessarily inherent
in the nature of the Christian message."

Professor Norman Anderson in the preface to "The World's
Religions".

THE MATERIALIST.

As an explanation of the world, materialism has
a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality
of the madman's argument; we have a sense of it
covering everything and the sense of it leaving
everything out. Contemplate some able and
sincere materialist, as, for instance Mr McCabe
[a noted anti-Christian rationalist of his day],
and you will have exactly this unique sensation.

He understands everything, and everything does
not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may
be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still
his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow
his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman,
seems unconscious of the alien energies and the
large indifference of the earth, of fighting peoples
or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the
sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is
so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest
hole that a man can hide his head in.

GK Chesterton (1874-1936) from his book
"Orthodoxy", published 1908.

"JESUS OF THE SCARS"
by Edward Shillito.

The other gods were strong;
but thou wast weak;
they rode, but thou didst
stumble to a throne;
but to our wounds only
God's wounds can speak,
and not a god has wounds,
but thou alone.