Jonathan

“After the world had been created, man was placed in it as in a theater, that he, beholding above him and beneath the wonderful works of God, might reverently adore their Author.”
― John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis - Volume 2 - Enhanced Version

“I'm a decretal Calvinist. I'm a five-point Calvinist. I believe it all. I'm a black-coffee Calvinist. I'm a crawl-over-broken-glass Calvinist. I wake up in the morning and I say, 'Ah, Calvinism! Another day of Calvinism! Oh boy, oh boy!”
― Douglas Wilson

“The world, knowing how all our real investments are beyond the grave, might expect us to be less concerned than other people who long for what is called Higher thought and tell us that 'death doesn't matter'; but we are not 'high minded', and we follow the One who stood and wept at the grave of Lazarus-not surely, because He was grieved that Mary and Martha wept, and sorrowed for their lack of faith (though some thus interpret) but because death, the punishment of sin, is even more horrible in His eyes than in ours. The nature if which He had created as God, the nature of which He had assumed as Man, lay there before Him in his ignominy; a foul smell, food for worms. Though He was to revive it a moment later, He wept at the shame; if I may here quote a writer of my own communion, 'I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed of it.' And that brings us again to the paradox. Of all men, we hope most of death; yet nothing will reconcile us to-well, it's unnaturalness. We know that we were not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder; and we know that on one level it is an enemy already disarmed; but because we know that the natural level also is God's creation we cannot cease to fight against death which mars it, as against all those other blemishes upon it, against pain and poverty, barbarism and ignorance. Because we love something else more than this world we love even this world better than those who know no other.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

“There cannot be any 'story' without a fall-all stories are ultimately about the fall-at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien