Jacob Moore > Recent Status Updates

268: The Christian's ability to exercise faith in Christ Jesus and to grasp spiritual realities is the product of the Spirit's work. Therefore we do not dare restrict our epistemological categories to those of secularists. To do so would be to deny a central point in what distinguishes us as Christians; to do so would be tantamount to asking us to blaspheme.

145-6: I am paralyzed sometimes, when I think that we are of so little service to the neighborhood, though this is a green oasis in the midst of a great spiritual desert... God, however, so help us, as to make us a blessing to the neighborhood! I long to see something done for the people around. We must open our arms to them: we must go out into the open air and preach God's gospel to them.

Spurgeon on the church.

128: And is it true that this poor depraved heart is to become as holy as that of God? And is it true that this poor spirit, which often cries, "O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this sin and death!" shall get rid of sin and death? I shall have no evil things to vex my scars, and no unholy thoughts to disturb my peace. Oh happy hour! May it be hastened!

194: Immersion in biblical texts can produce a very complex way of reflecting within a framework of biblical authority, to which most contemporary examples look simple-minded. We can't "appeal to the Bible" ... without beginning to do theology. Theology puts together a way of looking as a Christian at the world in all its variety ... and provides a context rich enough for discussing the complexities of our lives.

109: Turn aside and see this great sight! An incarnate God upon the cross; a substitute atoning for mortal guilt; a sacrifice satisfying the vengeance of Heaven, and delivering the rebellious sinner. Here is essential wisdom; enthroned, crowned, glorified... Ye who glory in your learning bend your heads in reverence, and own that all your skill could not have devised a gospel at once so just to God, so safe to man.

73: Let someone who loves me dear as his own life come and plead with me, then truly his words are music; they taste like honey; he knows the password of the doors of my heart, and my ear is attentive to every word... And is not the Holy Ghost a loving comforter? Dost thou know, O saint, how much the Holy Spirit loves thee? Can thou measure the love of the Spirit? How great is the affection of his soul towards thee?

137: The Scylla of modernity and the Charybdis of postmodernity are equally uninviting to those who want to follow another Way, who are convinced that in a universe made by and for a personal/transcendent and omniscient God who talks, the only reasonable stance is that of the apostle Paul: "Let God be true, and every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4).

55: A gospel without the Trinity! It is a pyramid built upon its apex. A gospel without the Trinity! It is a rope of sand that cannot hold together. A gospel without Trinity! Then, indeed, Satan can overturn it. But give me a gospel with the Trinity, and the might of hell cannot prevail against it; no man can any more overthrow it than a bubble could split a rock, or a feather break in halves a mountain.

Finch said wearily, "If he doesn't make it here, he can go somewhere else and get his degree; and despite everything he might even make it here. You could lose this, you know, no matter what you do. We can't keep the Walkers out."

"Maybe not," Stoner said. "But we can try."

30: Let me think the solemn thought, that this book is God's handwriting-- that these words are God's! Let me look at its date; it is dated from the hills of heaven. Let me look at its letters; they flash glory on my eye. Let me read its chapters; they are big with meaning and mysteries unknown... Prophecies pregnant with wonders ... Oh book of books! And was thou written by my God? Then I will bow before thee.

22: Wilt thou begin the year by looking unto Christ? You know how sinful you are this morning; you know how filthy you are; and yet it is possible that, before you open your pew door, and get into the aisle, you will be as justified as the apostles before the throne of God... How simple does it seem! ... Yet there it is, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God and there is none else."

So Stoner began where he had started, a tall, thin, stooped man in the same room in which he had sat as a tall, thin, stooped boy listening to the words that had led him to where he had come. He never went into that room that he did not glance at the seat he had once occupied, and he was always a slightly surprised to discover that he was not there.

431: Second Vatican Council documents describe the church reading Scripture as the "Pupil of the Holy Spirit." Reformers likened the church to a schoolroom in which believers become competent in the Christian way. Scripture is God's interpretation of reality, summed up in the story of Christ. Christians then have a schoolroom (church), subject (Christ), and a teacher (Spirit). And yes, there is a text in this class.

367: Even to judge against the text's grain, you must first judge with it: receptivity before resistance, competent reading before liberated counterreading, poetics before politics.

335: Eschatology means only that the end is postponed. Interpeters lives this side of the eschaton, and truth outruns interpretation for this reason... This should not disturb us. To be human is to be an interpeter, a communicative agent, a citizen of language. We know things not immediately as angels, but mediately through ... language ... Yet we know enough -- enough to go on reading, to go on with our lives.

1250: He breathed heavily, then uttered these last words: "In the past I stole a loaf of bread for the sake of the living. Today, for the sake of the living, I don't want to steal a name.

301: "A [sea] captain can establish position without a foundation. Spatial location is relative... We can establish determinancy not because we orient ourselves by means of absolute fixed epistemological landmarks, but by means of points that are fixed in relationship to one another. A language may have no absolute center, but its terms are in a determinate relation to one another."

Gold. Pure gold.

237: Ellul is in no doubt about what is at stake: The rupture between the speaker and his words is the decisive break. If a person is not behind his words, it is mere noise. Unless there is something in what we say, we will never be able to witness to what is other than ourselves. And unless we are faithful to what we say, our witness will be null and void. Fidelity to our words exacts a sacred bond.

So birds of peace and hope and love
Come fluttering earthward from above,
To settle on life's window- sills,
And ease our load of earthly ills;
But we, in traffic's rush and din
Too deep engaged to let them in,
With deadened heart and sense plod on,
Nor know our loss till they are gone.

1145: The pupil dilates in the dark and eventually finds light there, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and eventually finds God.

207: Moderns in limiting property rights do so without reference to the rights and dispensations of God. We do it without reference to something higher than our own practical and political interests. For this reason, modern political debate about property tends to oscillate between an incapacity to justify any limit on individual property and an assertion of a right to reorder it any way the political body desires.

179: The [Christian] vocation is to offer hope in a hopeless workplace. To the extent that the modern economy tears asunder work from the life of the worker, the Christian impulse is precisely to keep joined what God (in creation) made together.

112: When a father changes diapers and "someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool... God, with all his angels and creatures, is smilling." Rather than complaining about their lot, parents should confess to God, "I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers." We should be confident, Luther teaches, that in serving our families, we are doing God's will, fulfilling our calling as men and women.

206-7: The design plan of language is to serve as the medium of covenantal relations with God, with others, with the world... Language is ... a covenant that bestows dignity and responsibility on the agent of language... It is therefore no little part of our Christian vocation to bear witness to the trustworthiness of the institution of language by being responsible authors & responsible readers.

186: Deconstructive ethics amounts to an iconoclastic gesture followed by a shrug of the shoulders... There is no escape from context, no escape from a plurality of possible meanings. Yet, at the end of the day, must we not say, decide, do something? If the responsibilities of the reader are merely negative ... then is it ever possible to move beyond the ethics of prohibition to an ethic of love?

161: Christian orthodoxy believes that God is essentially the one who communicates himself to others in trinitarian fashion. A trinitarian theology of the Word of God conceives of God as author, as message, and as power of reception... The Incarnation ... grounds the possibility of human communication by demonstrating that it is indeed possible to enter into the life of another so as to achieve understanding.

138: Behind these debates about the nature of interpretation lie conflicting visions of what it is to be authentically human. Whether there is determinate meaning in texts is ultimately linked with the question of whether there is determinate meaning to human life... Desire yearns to be free of hermeneutical, epistemological, and ethical constraints... The author's meaning must die so that the interpreter might live.

80: "Vattel recognizing, that, even here, our enemy has a say in how we fight, observes that an enemy who "observes all the rules of regular warfare" can be dealt with in more proportionate ways than an enemy who does not. Against those who do not observe the laws of war, Vattel's reasoning begins to reflect the gloves off approach of Luther."

Helpful for thinking through events in Israel.

60: Paul's command that we obey is necessarily conditional. Calvin concluded as much, arguing that our obligation to political rulers is but a species of the genus, the genus being our obligation to God. Our obligation to rulers is likewise just a subset of our obligation to God. The command of God binds the conscience unconditionally and defines the scope of all subordinate obedience.

123 & 126: We are now in a position to to formulate a general rule describing the relation between meaning and metaphysics: textual meaning will only be as determinate and decidable as the conception of reality that it ultimately presupposes... The question, "is there a meaning in this text?" is, in the final analysis, linked to another: "What think ye of Christ?"