Apologies in advance for harping on resolutions–low hanging fruit and all that–but I figure we only have another couple days until we hit the sell-by date. Plus, Oliver’s rant was too rich to pass up, esp given the passage from Law and Gospel that follows it (not to mention this post from a few years ago):
“We tend to lower the bar of God’s righteous Law, in the hopes that fulfilling one or a small set of them will be enough to gain the Almighty’s ear. Of course, it’s impossible to keep all of the Bible’s various moral teachings before us at any one time. Selectivity is a foregone conclusion, and the criteria for such selection will always be pride-driven, at least in part. But it is also a defense mechanism, dividing up righteousness into manageable, seemingly do-able parts. Like the Rich Young Ruler who walks away from Jesus in great sadness, we’d certainly like to parse and snip our way into an achievable spirituality—one that doesn’t drive us to the grave every day of our lives.”
COMMENTS
2 responses to “The Exact Middle Ground Between Lying to Yourself and Lying to Other People”
Leave a Reply
http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2016/janfeb/unexamined-grace.html?paging=off
John Barclay— “Luther did not “rediscover” grace (which was near the center of practically every form of medieval theology), nor did he simply reinvigorate the Augustinian tradition. As an isolated slogan, sola gratia tells us far too little about its precise Lutheran configuration. What is distinctive in Luther is not only the relentlessly Christological reference of grace, but also its permanent state of incongruity. On these grounds, believers live perpetually from a reality outside of themselves, a status of divine favor enjoyed only in and from Christ. Their agency does not need to be re-attributed to the agency of grace, because their works are non-instrumental, and are performed in faith, that is, from the security of a salvation already granted. On the same grounds, gift-giving is stripped of the instrumental reciprocity that had been basic to its rationale. In this sense, Luther did not just reform the church. He offered a new theological definition of gift “
Kimmel’s Man on the Street Interviews on Breaking Resolutions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0huEUpu6QA