MacDonald (as selected by Lewis)

Faith & Science Conversation
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I think I understand what you are saying, at least in part, Mark. If the only thing Christians, or anyone with some sort of theistic belief, focus on is “the sweet by and by”, then yes; I agree with you. And there is plenty of that.
MacDonald has been hard for me to take at times, too, but I think for different reasons. This part not so much, because I think he is talking about what Christians should be focusing on, and that is a reciprocal loving relationship with God through Jesus, as well as demonstration of that love to others now – both as a result of that relationship with God and out of obedience to him. Not as a fearful drudgery, but as an overflow of the love that we have experienced ourselves.
Because we are not naturally loving, we’ve been shown how and told to do it.

I think about the ways I’m aware of that you and Lia show (have been showing) love for and to each other, and that it costs you both something. It’s not for some future reward but for the reward now of doing the loving and being in that loving relationship.

That’s my take from these bits from MacDonald.

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Plenty of that with Jesus and Paul too. “If Christ is not risen, we are to be most pitied of all people.” For the joy set before him, he was able to endure grotesque suffering.

Kierkegaard looked forward to an intimate friendship with his beloved Regina in the life to come.

Pilgrims for whom the world was not worthy.

And yet we pray for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. That his kingdom would come. A kingdom that is now and not yet.

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Yes, that. And it is knowable now, not “hypothetically”, and enjoyable. The factual accounts which I am wont to repeat are evidence of those who do indeed know, and I am among them. History is replete with us.

(And some of the evidence is just plain fun. SBO? Not so much. :grin: But at least I know to whom I’m thankful.)

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(164) There Is No Merit in It

In the main we love because we cannot help it. There is no merit in it: how should there be in any love?–but neither is it selfish. There are many who confound righteousness with merit, and think there is nothing righteous where there is nothing meritorious. ‘If it makes you happy to love,’ they say, ‘where is your merit? It is only selfishness!’ There is no merit, I reply, yet the love that is born in us is our salvation from selfishness. It is of the very essence of righteousness. Because a thing is joyful, it does not follow that I do it for the joy of it; yet when the joy is in others, the joy is pure. That certain joys should be joys, is the very denial of selfishness. The man would be a demoniacally selfish man, whom love itself did not make joyful.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Self-Denial ”.

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Nice of you to include this.
Which, in the context of the discussion I was having with Mark, is what I was addressing in my entire reply to Mark. While focusing on Mark’s frequently-stated concerns about Christians focused on an unknown future, while ignoring the known present.

I wonder how Mark’s concerns, if taken to heart by “the” church, in the context of Christian faith, could transform the way the church is present now on the earth and what different impact it would have here and now?

I wonder what SK had to say about finitude in contrast to the infinite, which of the two is higher, and which of the two is a matter of faith. How he would classify his thoughts about Regine in the context of questions of finitude and the infinite?

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Kant could be held up as the poster child for that sentiment. MacDonald is once more in my good graces and I’ll try to remember the next time he seems to be veering off the track on one side it may well be for dramatic effect when re enters on the other.

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This seems timely following that:
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I guess I needed to enjoy the beauty of the cliffs of Dover today and be reminded of seeing them from the air. Rats. :grin:

(And not merely needs, but wants and desires. Of course, desiring God is not a bad idea, because guess what you get then.)
 

@Kendel: Thanks for prompting me a while back to figure out how to turn an image into a link. :+1:

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(165) Faith

Do you ask, ‘What is faith in him?’ I answer, The leaving of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of his and him; the leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as he tells you . I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this necessity–this obedience. It is the one terrible heresy of the church, that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ. The work of Christ is not the Working Christ, any more than the clothing of Christ is the body of Christ. If the woman who touched the hem of his garment had trusted in the garment and not in him who wore it, would she have been healed? And the reason that so many who believe about Christ rather than in him, get the comfort they do, is that, touching thus the mere hem of his garment, they cannot help believing a little in the live man inside the garment.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Truth in Jesus. [165-167]

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There is a distinction to be made between believers and believists. That’s why there are so many severe warnings from Jesus and in the epistles – even in the early church there were ‘mere professors’.

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(166) The Misguided

Instead of so knowing Christ that they have him in them saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins–the way to madness of the brain, and despair of the heart. Some even ponder the imponderable-- whether they are of the elect, whether they have an interest in the blood shed for sin, whether theirs is a saving faith–when all the time the man who died for them is waiting to begin to save them from every evil–and first from this self which is consuming them with trouble about its salvation; he will set them free, and take them home to the bosom of the Father–if only they will mind what he says to them–which is the beginning, middle, and end of faith. If, instead of searching into the mysteries of corruption in their own charnel-houses, they would but awake and arise from the dead, and come out into the light which Christ is waiting to give them, he would begin at once to fill them with the fulness of God.

‘But I do not know how to awake and arise!’

I will tell you:–Get up, and do something the master tells you; so make yourself his disciple at once.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Truth in Jesus.
The above includes more than Lewis chose to … and so leading directly into tomorrow’s selection.

It seems to me that there are many today who don’t even rise so far as to reach what MacDonald here describes as “the Misguided”. There are many who brashly already “know” that they are of the elect. And for them rise up from that to be able to even just agonize as to whether or not they are truly believers might actually bring them one step closer to the realm of becoming actual disciples that MacDonald so urges.

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What a good morning of reading today! I finished reading Fear and Trembling (in the book, after having also listened to most parts many times for support/reinforcement) just now, and then your quote.
In both pieces the resolution was “the thing”!

I like MacDonald’s practicality. Get off your rear, and pick one of the many things Christ told you to do. Start doing it. Behave like a disciple to be a disciple.

Oh, wow. I don’t think I know them. Maybe I”m desensitized. Anyone who knows they’re elect, knows it because of their faith in and dependence on Jesus for their salvation - what could one possibly be proud about; everything about the state is humiliating, until one gets to grace, which has nothing to do with our “goodness.”
Thanks though, Merv, for the reminder that it’s so easy to present as a prideful jerk, even easier to be one.

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Which can be now and still not yet :sunglasses:

Glad to hear you finished FT, and that it was rewarding! I’m reading Betz’s article, and am taken aback by how indebted Kierkegaard was to Hamann. Quotes shall be forthcoming, God willing.

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Gardiner talks about this in the OUP VSI on sk. It’s not uncommon for one great thinker to have been greatly influenced by predecessors. So, this doesn’t surprise me. It should be interesting to learn what SK took from Hamann and how he used it.

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Does Gardiner write about Hamann? I should like to listen to that when it becomes available. Backhouse’s lectures were my primary introduction to Kierkegaard, and searching his book now, he makes no mention of Hamann.

Hamann deserves more credit here and for possibily being the one who awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber. If not directly affecting, he doubtless made an impression as an early, albeit ironic, reader of Hume in Konigsberg.

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(167) The Way

Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said, Do it, or once abstained because he said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in him, if you do not anything he tells you.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Truth in Jesus.

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This resonates with me except that I substitute conscience for God as the one whose commands must be followed. But of course I simply can’t see who/what does the calling, I just kniw there is something more wise than I whose concerns have proven more consequential in my life than my petty preferences.

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(168) The First and Second Persons

I worship the Son as the human God, the divine, the only Man, deriving his being and power from the Father, equal with him as a son is the equal at once and the subject of his father…

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Creation of Christ”

A brief interlude … Over the next few days, it seems to me like Lewis’ choices are short, even truncated, though probably still of profound value even if I’m unable to fully glean the grain there. So I want to include here an opening to one of MacDonald’s sermons, “Freedom” that shows how he rolls when it comes to scriptures …in this case a scripture that MacDonald himself finds less than clear. The following is a teaser. If you want to see M’s conclusion, you’ll need to investigate the sermon for yourself.

The opening to MacDonald’s sermon: “Freedom”

The Truth shall make you free… Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.–JOHN viii. 32, 34-36.

As this passage stands, I have not been able to make sense of it. No man could be in the house of the Father in virtue of being the servant of sin; yet this man is in the house as a servant, and the house in which he serves is not the house of sin, but the house of the Father. The utterance is confused at best, and the reasoning faulty. He must be in the house of the Father on some other ground than sin. This, had no help come, would have been sufficient cause for leaving the passage alone, as one where, perhaps, the words of the Lord were misrepresented–where, at least, perceiving more than one fundamental truth involved in the passage, I failed to follow the argument. I do not see that I could ever have suggested where the corruption, if any, lay. Most difficulties of similar nature have originated, like this, I can hardly doubt, with some scribe who, desiring to explain what he did not understand, wrote his worthless gloss on the margin: the next copier took the words for an omission that ought to be replaced in the body of the text, and inserting them, falsified the utterance, and greatly obscured its intention. What do we not owe to the critics who have searched the scriptures, and found what really was written! In the present case, Dr. Westcott’s notation gives us to understand that there is another with ‘a reasonable probability of being the true reading.’ The difference is indeed small to the eye, but is great enough to give us fine gold instead of questionable ore. In an alternative of the kind, I must hope in what seems logical against what seems illogical; in what seems radiant against what seems trite.

What I take for the true reading then, [is]: …

And here is a gem from later on in that same sermon …

Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust.

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This almost sounds like the Buddhist take on suffering, that we do it to ourselves. To be happy don’t do what spoils happiness. But once you’ve erred do not seek repeal but pay what suffering you owe. Then accrue no more such debt. Much more about how to live than how to escape responsibility.

Paying one’s debts isn’t just submitting to legalism. The reaping and sowing are intrinsically linked. Each affects the other. But learn from the reaping so as to sow more wisely.

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(169) Warning

We must not wonder things away into nonentity, but try to present them to ourselves after what fashion we are able–our shadows of the heavenly.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “The Creation of Christ, but with added my emphasis (the Snippet was that Lewis chose to print.)

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(170) Creation

The word creation applied to the loftiest success of human genius, seems to me a mockery of humanity, itself in process of creation.

As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: The Creation of Christ

Ouch! Both cryptic, and - at seeming face value and in isolation of any context, quite a severe appraisal of all human endeavor. [It’s an interesting contrast to me, with some lyrics I see in modern hymns now which include a humanistic flavor of Christianity where we see ourselves and our work as a partnership with God, and as such - we laud such work as praiseworthy.]