Lloyd-Jones: Focusing on What Really Matters

From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BetweenTwoWorlds/~3/ImQHHnLLKcA/lloyd-jones-focusing-on-what-really.html

Lloyd-Jones: Focusing on What Really Matters

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, commenting on Phil. 1:10 ("that you may approve what is excellent," or "that you may have a sense of what is vital"):

The difficulty in life is to know on what we ought to concentrate. The whole art of life, I sometimes think, is the art of knowing what to leave out, what to ignore, what to put on one side. How prone we are to dissipate our energies and to waste our time by forgetting what is vital and giving ourselves to second and third rate issues. Now, says Paul, here you are in the Christian life, you are concerned about difficulties, about oppositions and about the contradictions of life. What you need is just this: the power to concentrate on that which is vital, to leave out everything else, and to keep steadily to the one thing that matters.

The Life of Joy: Philippians, vol. 1, pp. 54-55.

Great Bonar quote about Faith

From http://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/a-fresh-definition-of-faith/

Faith may seem a slight thing to some; and they may wonder how salvation can flow from [simply] believing.  Hence they try to magnify it, to adore it, to add to it, in order that it may appear some great thing, something worthy of having salvation as its reward.  In doing so, they are actually transforming faith into a work, and introducing salvation by works under the name of faith.  They show that they understand neither the nature nor the office of faith."

"Faith saves, simply by handing us over to the Savior.  It saves, not on account of the good works which flow from it; not on account of the love which kindles it; not on account of the repentance which it produces; but solely because it connects us with the Saving One.  Its saving efficacy does not lie in its connection with [our] righteousness and holiness, but entirely in its connection with the Righteous and Holy One."

Quotes from Horatius Bonar, The Blood of the Cross (New Ipswich: Pietan Publications, 1997), 59. 

Keith Mathison, Charles Hodge vs. John Williamson Nevin on the Lord's Supper

From http://www.ligonier.org/blog/2009/08/charles-hodge-vs-john-williamson-nevin-on-the-lords-supper.html

 

Charles Hodge vs. John Williamson Nevin on the Lord's Supper August 31, 2009 @ 7:50 AM  |  Posted By: Keith Mathison

 

In 2002, I published a book entitled Given For You: Reclaiming Calvin's Doctrine of the Lord's Supper. On page 136, I made the following statement:

One of the most fascinating theological debates to occur in nineteenth-century antebellum America was the eucharistic debate between John Williamson Nevin and Charles Hodge that resulted from the publication of Nevin's book, The Mystical Presence.

Nevin's book was published in 1846. In April 1848, Hodge responded in a review published in the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review. In September 1850, Nevin published a 128 page response to Hodge in the Mercersburg Review.

Since all of these documents are now available for free online, I thought it might be helpful to those interested in the debate to provide the links in one location. In order to read this important debate, just click on the links below:

Nevin - The Mystical Presence

Hodge - 1848 Book Review

Nevin - 1850 Response to Hodge Review

It may also be helpful to those interested in the subject to note a similar discussion that took place in the Southern Presbyterian Church. In 1876, the Southern Presbyterian theologian John Adger published an article titled "Calvin Defended Against Drs. Cunningham and Hodge" in the Southern Presbyterian Review. That article is also now available online. The links to Adger's article and to the relevant essays by Cunningham and Hodge to which he is responding are listed below.

Cunningham - 1862 Essay

Hodge - 1871 - 73 Reformed Doctrine of the Lord's Supper (Systematic Theology, Vol. 3)

Adger - 1876 Article [Adger's article is the sixth article in the list]

For a good introduction to Calvin's view in his own words, see his Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper.

C.S. Lewis, "An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula"

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BetweenTwoWorlds/~3/FO9aE2QjXII/ever-increasing-craving-for-ever.html

From C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (p. 44)--remember that it's told from a devil's point of view, so "the Enemy" is God and "Our Father" is Satan.

Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy [God] has produced, at at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. . . . An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. . . . To get a man's soul and give him nothing in return--that's what really gladdens Our Father's [Satain's] heart.

WHI on Faith, Tested to be Purified, and the "Theology of the Cross"

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/component/option,com_wordpress/Itemid,39/p,84

One of the most difficult things about Christianity is that it completely contradicts the natural order of things. Consider, for instance, what we think about winning, success, and life: they all go together in our minds! Sadly, too many "talks" masquerading as Christian sermons in even Reformation-minded churches confirm us in our innate desire for what Luther termed, "a theology of glory." But true gospel-centered, "theology of the cross"-focused Christianity says that life comes after death, that glory comes through suffering, that losing our lives is the only means of finding them, and that God is most active when he seemed most remote.

This is bread and butter for White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation (often to the consternation of our critics who want us to talk about life-change and progress). Reading this week in Ed Clowney's The Message of First Peter (published by IVP in 1988), I was reminded of the pastoral comfort that this message (not the one focused on success and betterment) gives:

Peter has reminded us that the testings do not destroy our faith, but purify it. Since the peculiar nature of faith is its looking, not to oneself, but to the Lord, it is most strongly grounded when it is most dependent. 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' So the Lord said to Paul, and Paul could therefore say: 'For when I am weak, then I am strong.' In order to resist the devil we draw near to God. (216, emphasis mine)

Our prayer is that you would find yourself in churches and surrounded by communities of faith this Sunday that emphasize this great truth and encourage you by pointing you to the strength of the Lord, the God of all grace

Yoder on Christians & Pacifism

...we must proclaim to every Christian that pacifism is not the prophetic vocation of a few individuals, but that every member of the body of Christ is called to absolute non resistance in discipleship and to abandonment of all loyalties which counter that obedience, including the desire to be effective immediately or to make oneself responsible for civil justice. (John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution, 72)

From http://www.inhabitatiodei.com/2009/08/13/yoder-on-just-war-4/

 

Thomas Brooks, "Lord, do not give me up to the ways of my own heart!"

"Oh Lord, this mercy I humbly beg: that whatever you give me up to, do not give me up to the ways of my own heart. If you will give me up to be afflicted, tempted, or reproached, I will patiently sit down and say, 'It is the Lord; let him do with me what seems good in his own eyes.' Do anything with me, Lord, lay what burden you will upon me, but please, do not give me up to the ways of my own heart."

 

Thomas Brooks, "Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices", Banner of Truth, 1997, page 50.

Top 100 Sci Fi books list

From http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html

 

 

Rank	Author/Editor	Title	Year
1	Orson Scott Card	Ender's Game [S1]	1985
2	Frank Herbert	Dune [S1]	1965
3	Isaac Asimov	Foundation [S1-3]	1951
4	Douglas Adams	Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy [S1]	1979
5	George Orwell	1984	1949
6	Robert A Heinlein	Stranger in a Strange Land	1961
7	Ray Bradbury	Fahrenheit 451	1954
8	Arthur C Clarke	2001: A Space Odyssey	1968
9	Isaac Asimov	[C] I, Robot	1950
10	William Gibson	Neuromancer	1984
11	Philip K Dick	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	1968
12	Robert A Heinlein	Starship Troopers	1959
13	Larry Niven	Ringworld	1970
14	Arthur C Clarke	Rendezvous With Rama	1973
15	Aldous Huxley	Brave New World	1932
16	H G Wells	The Time Machine	1895
17	Dan Simmons	Hyperion [S1]	1989
18	Arthur C Clarke	Childhood's End	1954
19	Robert A Heinlein	The Moon is a Harsh Mistress	1966
20	H G Wells	The War of the Worlds	1898
21	Ray Bradbury	[C] The Martian Chronicles	1950
22	Joe Haldeman	The Forever War	1974
23	Kurt Vonnegut	Slaughterhouse Five	1969
24	Neal Stephenson	Snow Crash	1992
25	Niven & Pournelle	The Mote in God's Eye	1975
26	Ursula K Le Guin	The Left Hand of Darkness	1969
27	Orson Scott Card	Speaker for the Dead [S2]	1986
28	Philip K Dick	The Man in the High Castle	1962
29	Michael Crichton	Jurassic Park	1990
30	Alfred Bester	The Stars My Destination	1956
31	Isaac Asimov	The Caves of Steel	1954
32	Frederik Pohl	Gateway	1977
33	Roger Zelazny	Lord of Light	1967
34	Madeleine L'Engle	A Wrinkle In Time	1962
35	Jules Verne	20,000 Leagues Under the Sea	1870
36	Stanislaw Lem	Solaris	1961
37	Kurt Vonnegut	Cat's Cradle	1963
38	Michael Crichton	The Andromeda Strain	1969
39	Carl Sagan	Contact	1985
40	Isaac Asimov	The Gods Themselves	1972
41	John Wyndham	The Day of the Triffids	1951
42	Neal Stephenson	Cryptonomicon	1999
43	Anthony Burgess	A Clockwork Orange	1962
44	Robert A Heinlein	Time Enough For Love	1973
45	Philip K Dick	UBIK	1969
46	Vernor Vinge	A Fire Upon the Deep	1991
47	Daniel Keyes	Flowers for Algernon	1966
48	Kim Stanley Robinson	Red Mars [S1]	1992
49	Walter M Miller	A Canticle for Leibowitz	1959
50	Isaac Asimov	The End Of Eternity	1955
51	Mary Shelley	Frankenstein	1818
52	Kurt Vonnegut	The Sirens of Titan	1959
53	Neal Stephenson	The Diamond Age	1995
54	Iain M Banks	Player Of Games [S2]	1988
55	Jules Verne	Journey to the Center of the Earth	1864
56	L Ron Hubbard	Battlefield Earth	1982
57	Ursula K Le Guin	The Dispossessed	1974
58	David Brin	Startide Rising [S2]	1983
59	Orson Scott Card	Ender's Shadow [S1]	1999
60	Peter F Hamilton	The Reality Dysfunction [S1]	1996
61	Greg Bear	Eon	1985
62	Philip Jose Farmer	To Your Scattered Bodies Go	1971
63	Niven & Pournelle	Lucifer's Hammer	1977
64	Margaret Atwood	The Handmaid's Tale	1985
65	Philip K Dick	A Scanner Darkly	1977
66	Alfred Bester	The Demolished Man	1953
67	Gene Wolfe	The Shadow of the Torturer [S1]	1980
68	Harry Harrison	The Stainless Steel Rat [S1]	1961
69	Arthur C Clarke	The City and the Stars	1956
70	Philip K Dick	The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch	1964
71	Robert A Heinlein	The Door Into Summer	1956
72	Connie Willis	Doomsday Book	1992
73	Michael Crichton	Sphere	1987
74	Robert A Heinlein	Citizen Of the Galaxy	1957
75	C S Lewis	Out of the Silent Planet [S1]	1938
76	Dan Simmons	Ilium	2003
77	Robert A Heinlein	Have Space-Suit - Will Travel	1958
78	Robert A Heinlein	The Puppet Masters	1951
79	H G Wells	The Invisible Man	1897
80	Clifford Simak	Way Station	1963
81	Edgar Rice Burroughs	A Princess of Mars [S1]	1912
82	Ursula K Le Guin	The Lathe of Heaven	1971
83	Alastair Reynolds	Revelation Space [S1]	2000
84	John Wyndham	The Chrysalids	1955
85	Iain M Banks	Use of Weapons [S3]	1990
86	Julian May	The Many-Colored Land [S1]	1981
87	E E 'Doc' Smith	Grey Lensman [S4]	1951
88	Richard Morgan	Altered Carbon [S1]	2002
89	Arkady & Boris Strugatsky	Roadside Picnic	1972
90	Edwin A Abbott	Flatland	1884
91	David Brin	The Postman	1985
92	Clifford Simak	[C] City	1952
93	Greg Bear	Blood Music	1985
94	Audrey Niffenegger	The Time Traveler's Wife	2003
95	John Brunner	Stand on Zanzibar	1969
96	Arthur C Clarke	The Fountains of Paradise	1979
97	Stanislaw Lem	[C] The Cyberiad	1974
98	Theodore Sturgeon	More Than Human	1953
99	Philip K Dick	VALIS	1981
100	William Gibson	[C] Burning Chrome	1986