This is the Faith of the Son of God. God withdrew, as it were, that the perfect Will of the Son might arise and go forth to find the Will of the Father.
Is it possible that even then he thought of the lost sheep who could not believe that God was their Father; and for them, too, in all their loss and blindness and unlove, cried, saying the word they might say, knowing for them that God means Father and more, and knowing now, as he had never known till now, what a fearful thing it is to be without God and without hope? I dare not answer the question I put.
But wherein or what can this Alpine apex of faith have to do with the creatures who call themselves Christians, creeping about in the valleys, hardly knowing that there are mountains above them, save that they take offence at and stumble over the pebbles washed across their path by the glacier streams? I will tell you. We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments, instead of up at the snows of purity, whither the soul of Christ clomb.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Eloi”
I accidentally included part of this next one in the last. So you had a headstart in today’s bit here - but most of that still freshly new for today.
(35) Creeping Christians
We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments, instead of up at the snows of purity, whither the soul of Christ clomb. Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbour’s footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master’s, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self . The true self is that which can look Jesus in the face, and say My Lord .
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Eloi”
I want to move past my astonishment at MacDonald’s concept of the Will to Faith. I find that he sets our notions on their heads and shows a different but valid (and often harder) way of looking at things – maybe a better one. At least often.
The piece I quoted from Fear and Trembling is part of Kierkegaard’s extended examination of the story of Abraham (which comprises the entire text of Fear and Trembling). Kierkegaard looks at the story from a number of directions, all directed at criticizing/condemning the Danish state church and its members as well as the younger Danes, who had aligned themselves with Hegel’s dialectical System of understanding “spiritual” and historic progress.
The quote I chose is one of a multitude of jabs at the members of the Danish state church who assumed they were Christians as a result of having been baptized, catechized and carrying out the prescribed rituals. Kierkegaard uses bitter irony to demonstrate that, while the Danish church members and pastors claim to venerate Abraham, they have come nowhere near the requirement of Christianity, i.e. faith, yet assume that they have even surpassed Abraham.
Kierkegaard emphasizes that, after 130 years of access to God with covenants and miracles, plus his determined will to faith while going through the most incomprehensible trial demanded by God, Abraham came through with nothing more than faith. That took his entire life. He got no further.
Considering Kierkegaard’s criticism, I have to wonder about myself. Am I like the Danes in his sights? Am I resting on forms and culture, rather than on actual faith? Am I satisfied with quoting some doctrinal statement or another as an answer to questions in life, because that’s nicely prepared and packaged with me, (all the thinking is done for me already), or am I wrestling with hard things and faith? Penner talks about truth-telling being agonistic. So is our grasp on faith, I think. So the idea of the Will to Faith, something we fight for, makes more sense than it did at first.
@Klax’s question, adding to the agon-izing, resists trite answers, which I hope not to give. What we have are fragile, awkward things. Actually, it’s easier when considering their fragility and unwillingness to fit neatly together, to shrug and point to their anachronistic nature, and the reasonableness of other explantions. How does one make sense of premodern, edited texts stemming from oral traditions? What is there for us in texts of dubious authorship and authenticity, completely ignorant of what is currently known about what exists? These are hard questions that are relatively new to me.
What do we have? [I know in putting any answer out I’m setting myself up.] We have a vision of life of faith in Christ. And we also have a yearning for it. I know that yearning indicates only itself. But I also wonder if the yearning can’t also be a work of God. I understand that’s arguable as well.
We have (some of us have?) the ability to grant the benefit of the doubt, rather than just telling ourselves lies as if they are certainties. Crying out, “Help my unbelief!” is an exercise of that benefit of the doubt – I wouldn’t need to cry out, if I thought belief were unimportant. Would I cry out in prayer for help with unbelief, if I absolutely disbelieved? I don’t think so, but that’s me.
When faith seems to come easy, the Will to Faith doesn’t come to mind. But at some times that really might seem like the only thing we are holding on with.
So long as we have nothing to say to God, nothing to do with him, save in the sunshine of the mind when we feel him near us, we are poor creatures, willed upon, not willing; reeds, flowering reeds, it may be, and pleasant to behold, but only reeds blown about of the wind; not bad, but poor creatures.
And how in such a condition do we generally act? Do we not sit mourning over the loss of our feelings? or worse, make frantic efforts to rouse them?
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Eloi”
None of us wishes or likes to be there of course - Christ himself had no wish to be hanging on a cross.
Yet there he was. And I suppose that must be some final, if even desolate bit of comfort when that same experience overtakes us. Somebody has been there before us, … and emerged. And yet, as Macdonald seems to be stressing lately here - ‘Comfort’ is not at all the operative word. Desolation - and yet somehow, declaring for God from the depths of that pit.
God does not, by the instant gift of his Spirit, make us always feel right, desire good, love purity, aspire after him and his will. Therefore either he will not, or he cannot. If he will not, it must be because it would not be well to do so. If he cannot, then he would not if he could; else a better condition than God’s is conceivable to the mind of God–a condition in which he could save the creatures whom he has made, better than he can save them. The truth is this: He wants to make us in his own image, choosing the good , refusing the evil. How should he effect this if he were always moving us from within, as he does at divine intervals, towards the beauty of holiness? God gives us room to be ; does not oppress us with his will; “stands away from us,” that we may act from ourselves, that we may exercise the pure will for good. Do not, therefore, imagine me to mean that we can do anything of ourselves without God. If we choose the right at last, it is all God’s doing, and only the more his that it is ours, only in a far more marvellous way his than if he had kept us filled with all holy impulses precluding the need of choice. For up to this very point, for this very point, he has been educating us, leading us, pushing us, driving us, enticing us, that we may choose him and his will, and so be tenfold more his children, of his own best making, in the freedom of the will found our own first in its loving sacrifice to him, for which in his grand fatherhood he has been thus working from the foundations of the earth, than we could be in the most ecstatic worship flowing from the divinest impulse, without this willing sacrifice. For God made our individuality as well as, and a greater marvel than, our dependence; made our apartness from himself, that freedom should bind us divinely dearer to himself, with a new and inscrutable marvel of love; for the Godhead is still at the root, is the making root of our individuality, and the freer the man, the stronger the bond that binds him to him who made his freedom.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Eloi”
The highest condition of the human will is in sight, is attainable. I say not the highest condition of the Human Being; that surely lies in the Beatific Vision, in the sight of God. But the highest condition of the Human Will, as distinct, not as separated from God, is when, not seeing God, not seeming to itself to grasp him at all, it yet holds him fast.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Eloi”
Troubled soul, thou art not bound to feel, but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou canst not love when thou wilt, but thou art bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last. Try not to feel good when thou art not good, but cry to Him who is good. He changes not because thou changest. Nay, he has an especial tenderness of love towards thee for that thou art in the dark and hast no light, and his heart is glad when thou dost arise and say, “I will go to my Father.” For he sees thee through all the gloom through which thou canst not see him. Will thou his will. Say to him: “My God, I am very dull and low and hard; but thou art wise and high and tender, and thou art my God. I am thy child. Forsake me not.” Then fold the arms of thy faith, and wait in quietness until light goes up in thy darkness. Fold the arms of thy Faith I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee of something that thou oughtest to do, and go and do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feelings: Do thy work.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon “The Eloi ” (the last one from this particular sermon.)
Oh I guess one could just pout like a lout. By Jiminy, not sure what’s gotten into me. Sorry must be the elf on shelf bit working it’s way out of my attention.
Our God is a consuming fire.–HEBREWS xii. 29 I will be looking up that verse later
I’m excited I’m so excited I’m reading I’m reading from Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald: The Consuming Fire that’s shared in this forum
Yes and this fire is water to drink for my spirit I use to call this white light oh wow I’m so excited, so thrill to read more how to I contain my excitement
And our God is a consuming fire: I read from article
Yes I can relate with article: God consuming fire feeds me too yes. I know this personally
let us have grace to serve the Consuming Fire, our God read from article
my response: I’m not that well at serving., but I drink fire. Maybe the word serve is the same meaning as when I write: I allow light teach me in the midst of my situations. Is that the same word as serve maybe? I don’t know of yet
he is a consuming fire. I read in article: I respond Fire feeds us yes who is the Holy Spirit Shechinah vessel from God.
God brought through the vessel of the shechinah light that’s fire Holy Spirit to my spirit, living in my spirit for me to drink water
Jews understand this as vessel of the Shechinah
“but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst;” John 4:14 (I agree) that’s a verse explaining what I experience yes it is true
I drink fire that’s water that’s Holy Spirit yes!!!
The Holy Spirit fills us to overflowing,
John 4:14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again—ever! In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up within him for eternal life. My response I know this I know this, it is true. Light who lives in me is true. Light I drink from is my home. Holy Spirit spiritual life that I breath. Comforts me. I have a relationship with my best friend who understands me and I can go to my best friend just as I am.
The light who lives in me is my best friend who I have a relationship with is true
that the fire will burn us until we worship: from article: my response: Wow and I wrote explaining same in my long message: let me quote
Let me explain what I wrote;
Quenching burns away the same fire that feeds us. I hope quenching is the correct word. Holy Spirit is the fire light. The burn I crave for when I block or quench that then I’m thirsty, that causes me to drink
I’ll quote again from what I wrote: I made this up to see if it helps me., notice where I have hell. Maybe I shouldn’t use the word Hell. But I did so to explain
I’m reading from Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald: The Consuming Fire that’s shared in this forum. and I’m responding
and continue what George MacDonald wrote but that the fire will burn us until we worship thus; yea, will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God.
Ok I yet will be finishing reading this ok
I allow light Holy Spirit teach me in the midst of my emotions and my thoughts and in the midst of my situations, how I can allow Holy Spirit to continue to feed me
…when the agony of death was over, when the storm of the world died away behind his retiring spirit, and he entered the regions where there is only life, and therefore all that is not music is silence, …
…which finishes the thought in 41 above … Lewis had literally split this apart, midsentence, as it were.
…(for all noise comes of the conflict of Life and Death)–we shall never be able, I say, to rest in the bosom of the Father, till the fatherhood is fully revealed to us in the love of the brothers. For he cannot be our father save as he is their father; and if we do not see him and feel him as their father, we cannot know him as ours. Never shall we know him aright until we rejoice and exult for our race that he is the Father. He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?