Summer Reading -- The City of God by Augustine

I am hoping to read through The City of God by St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in north Africa (November 13, 354 – August 28 430).  It is considered a classic.  I fear my intentions will not measure up to my stamina.  I don't know if I enough time or ambition to read all 511 pages with small print, archaic translation, and heavy content.  Oh well, at least my summer reading title sounds impressive. 

Here is a brief snippet to start things off.  Something from Augustine on God's intentions in allowing suffering to come upon both the righteous and the wicked.

"Nevertheless does the patience of God still invite the wicked to repentance, even as the scourge of God educates the good to patience.  And so, too, does the mercy of God embrace the good that it may cherish them, as the severity of God arrests the wicked to punish them. ... But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the wills which even good men often suffer."

-- The City of God: Book 1, paragraph 8.  

Page 5, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by Philip Schaaf.  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI. (c) 1956.

Summer Reading: Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers

This book has been in my shelf since 2007.  Actually, it sat on my desk for the past couple of years because, "I am going to read this.  Really.  I mean it."

Well, now we are hitting the summer lull in the schedule, so I will be plowing through it.  I hope it will be easy plowing. 

An early quotation: "My counsel is to surround your entrance into the world of the fathers with humility, self-awareness, a listening ear, prayer and a sense of humor.  It is better to chuckle at the periodic patristic quirk than to allow our self-righteous anger wall off their insights." (Page 36)

Summer Reading Snippets -- A wicked character vs. A corrupt nature

Here is a quote from Charles Porterfield Krauth, regarding a person's character vs. his sinful nature.  A man's character is what we usually judge (e.g., Is he jovial or is he a grouch?  Is he generous or is he stingy?  Is he helpful or is he self-absorbed?).  All people vary in their character, as some are more friendly, more patient, or more charitable than others.  But all men have the same sinful nature, and it is fully corrupt.  That is what God sees and judges, no matter how highly or lowly we think of a person's behavior or character. 

Here is Krauth: 
          The relative innocence of any human being cannot in itself save him.  The innocence of any human being can only be relative.  There is a great difference in the character of unregenerate persons relatively to each other, but there is no difference whatever in their nature.  A thousand things mould and modify character, but the corrupt heart is untouched by them all.  The phenomena of a corrupt heart are infinitely diversified, not only in their number, but in their intensity.....
          Every man is more guilty absolutely than he is innocent relatively....
          God can no more save sin in nature than he can save it in character, and hence a new nature is as absolutely needed by an infant as by an adult." (pp 415-416, emphases are Krauth's, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology)

The world may still regard an unbeliever as a wonderful person and a believer as nothing special because of their deeds, but God judges the nature.  One's character will, by and large, remain what it is after conversion (a grouchy person may not magically become jovial), his nature and status do change.  God no longer regards the man a sinner, but a saint.  And that's the only judgment that matters.

Summer Reading Snippets: We are a catholic church

The original draft of the Apostles' Creed confesses: "I believe in ... the holy, catholic Church."  Over time, it changed into "the holy, Christian Church."  Both confess that there is one church, just as there is one kingdom of God, not competing kingdoms of God.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church has always confessed and claimed that it is the church catholic.  In other words, we are not a sect which has branched off of Christendom.  We have retained the confessions that the Christian Church has always taught.  The Augsburg Confession and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession take great pains to say so.

The Lutheran Reformation was not a rebellion or a revolution.  It was a conservative Reformation, which means to say that it strove to retain what the Christian Church practiced in regard to rites and ceremonies, as much as Scripture allowed it to.  That is why some come to Divine Services in the Lutheran Church and comment, "That looks just like a Catholic service!"

In my corner of Lutheranism (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod), and perhaps in others, this comment is often met with a visceral reaction in which people try to distance our church as far as possible from Rome.  While Evangelical Lutherans have maintained our protest against Rome (cf the above confessions, as well as the Smalcald Articles for the reasons for such protests and division), there is still much which we practice which continues the tradition of the western church .  The fact is, we are a catholic church, though not Roman, and our worship ought to confess that.  That means we follow the western rite (the Common Service is our version of that), the Church Year, the use of vestments, et al.  There is no need to apologize for it, much less to distance ourselves from it.  Our continued use of these ceremonies and rites testifies that we are the church catholic. 

With that in mind, consider this Summer Reading Snippet from The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology by Charles Porterfield Krauth:
          "We are not so much alarmed therefore, as some men pretend to be with mere coincidence with elements existing in the Romish Church.  If anything in our Protestant doctrines or usages be, indeed, a perpetuation of what is unscriptural in the Romish system, it should be weeded out; but it does not follow, that because a thing is in Rome, it is of Rome." (p 342, emphasis original)

Summer Reading Snippets

This summer, I promised myself that I would read The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology by Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823-1883).  This volume intends to demonstrate that Luther and the Evangelical Lutheran Church were not revolutionaries who sought the overthrow of the Roman Catholic Church.  Instead, the were reformers.  And they were not radical reformers who sought to jettison everything that looked, sounded, and smelled Roman Catholic.  They sought to conserve what the church catholic had always taught and practiced, unless it violated the teachings of Scripture (and sadly, plenty did).

So, here is a snippet from Krauth regarding the Church and her struggles.

          "The life of a Church may be largely read in its controversies.  As the glory or shame of a nation is read upon its battle-fields which tells for what it periled the lives of its sons, so may the glory or shame of a Church be determined when we know what it fought for and what it fought against; how much it valued what it believed to be truth; what was the truth it valued; how much it did, and how much it suffered to maintain that truth, and what was the issue of its struggles and sacrifices.  
          "A Church which contends for nothing, either has lost the truth, or has ceased to love it." (p 147)