Jonathan Edwards on the Beauty of the Church

This is a quote from The Theology of Jonathan Edwards. The authors are describing Edwards's aesthetics. This passage is poignant about how Edwards viewed the Church.

As the saints perceive and respond to God's beauty, they themselves acquire a beauty that is "The moral image of God in them." The beauty of the saints consists in a comprehensive and well-ordered moral and spiritual character, free from disproportion and deformity, so that they become "proportioned Christians." As Edwards noted in Religious Affections: "Another thing wherein those affections that are truly gracious and holy, differ from those that are false, is beautiful symmetry and proportion." Similarly, in Charity and Its Fruits, Edwards spoke of the concomitant development of various virtues or of "Christian graces concatenated together." Faith, love hope humility, repentance, thankfulness, reverence, submission, patience, contentment, meekness--these and all other graces of the Christian life grow together and not in isolation. The spiritual beauty of the saints consists in a complex of discrete though interrelated virtues.

As each saint responds to the beauty of God, so each responds to the beauty of other saints. For one person's consent to being is not isolated from that of another person, and "it is naturally agreeable to perceiving being that being should consent to being." As a result, there is a multiplying effect of consent and beauty within the community of the saints. Each saint not only consents to God but to the consent of other saints to God--a process that comes to consummation in heaven. The holy community, joined together in unity, is a community of consent that possesses its own special beauty. For "union is spoken of in Scripture as the peculiar beauty of the church of Christ," and "tis one of the most beautiful and happy things on earth, which indeed makes earth most like heaven." Krister Sairsingh writes: "The church is the community which re-presents the divine community of consent. And in this human community of co-consenters to being in general, the divine glory becomes visible." Conrad Cherry comments that, Edwards's "theory of virtue brought into symbiotic relation the beauty of the cosmos, the beauty of human morality, and the beauty of divine benevolence."

(McClymond and Mcdermott, pp. 100-101)

I don't fully understand these thoughts, but it interesting to ponder that Edwards had several conflicts with his contentious congregation. This congregation eventually kicked him out from his pastorate and yet Edwards sees the Church as beautiful.

Calvin on Deacons

Calvin saw 2 classes of deacons in the church. One type that administer the gifts to the poor and the other type that took care of the poor.

The care of the poor was committed to deacons, of whom two classes are mentioned by Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, "He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity;" "he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness," (Rom. 12: 8.) As it is certain that he is here speaking of public offices of the Church, there must have been two distinct classes. If I mistake not, he in the former clause designates deacons, who administered alms; in the latter, those who had devoted themselves to the care of the poor and the sick. Such were the widows of whom he makes mention in the Epistle to Timothy, (1 Tim. 5: 10.) For there was no public office which women could discharge save that of devoting themselves to the service of the poor. If we admit this, (and it certainly ought to be admitted,) there will be two classes of deacons, the one serving the Church by administering the affairs of the poor; the other, by taking care of the poor themselves. For although the term "diakonia" has a more extensive meaning, Scripture specially gives the name of deacons to those whom the Church appoints to dispense alms, and take care of the poor; constituting them as it were stewards of the public treasury of the poor. Their origin, institution, and office, is described by Luke, (Acts 6: 3.) When a murmuring arose among the Greeks, because in the administration of the poor their widows were neglected, the apostles, excusing themselves that they were unable to discharge both offices, to preach the word and serve tables, requested the multitude to elect seven men of good reports to whom the office might be committed. Such deacons as the Apostolic Church had, it becomes us to have after her example. (Calvin’s Institutes. Book 4, Chapter 3, Section 9)

Calvin notes that deacons and elders(bishops) were selected by the suffrage of the people.

Luke relates that Barnabas and Paul ordained elders throughout the churches, but he at the same time marks the plan or mode when he says that it was done by suffrage. The words are, "Cheirotonesantes presbuterous kat' ekklesian", (Acts 14: 23.) They therefore selected (creabant) two; but the whole body as was the custom of the Greeks in elections, declared by a show of hands which of the two they wished to have. Thus it is not uncommon for Roman historians to say, that the consul who held the comitia elected the new magistrates for no other reason but because he received the suffrages, and presided over the people at the election. (Calvin’s Institutes Book 4, Chapter 3, Section 15).

House Church Movement in Scotland (1547-1559 A. D.)

I found this second-hand book at the Haunted House Bookstore called The Story of the Scottish Reformation by Renwick. It was published in 1960. I knew very little about the Reformation in Scotland and it was very cheap so I bought it. I found a historical parallel. The growth of the Church in Scotland foreshadowed the house church movement in China during the 1960s and 1970s. The French captured the Castle of Saint Andrews in the 1550s, which was a haven for the Reformation leaders. The leaders were made galley slaves and many thought the Reformation movement would die. However God is not bound by circumstance. Renwick described what happens:

When the Castle of St. Andrews was captured by the French it seemed as if the cause of the Reformed Church was lost. Scotland was virtually governed by the French, and the Roman Church seemed permanently established. Indeed, throughout all Europe, the the Protestant faith was at its lowest ebb. Yet the amazing fact emerges that, at this very time when the Protestant movement in Scotland was without a leader, the Reformed doctrines took an ever-increasing hold upon all classes. Thus, when, in 1555, John Knox returned from Geneva for a visit of a few months, he was overjoyed to find great masses of the people thirsting for the gospel. This he related in a letter to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Bowes, and declared they were 'night and day sobbing and groaning for the bread of life. If I had not seen it with my eyes in my own country, I could not have believed it. Depart I cannot until such time as God quench their thirst a little'.

Renwick pointed out that this time of exile was good for Knox too. Although he suffered horribly as a galley slave, when he was released he made it to mainland Europe and met with the Reformation leaders. He came back to Scotland a well-trained, and bold leader. Knox and the other leaders most probably had made wise plans, but God chose His own way. (Proverbs 16:9)

When the Chinese Communist regime kicked out the missionaries in the 1960s, many thought the Church in China would die. However, the church went underground and grew.

Sproul on the Christian's Main Business of Life -- Romans 12:11a

R. C. Sproul comments on Romans 12:11a:

My translation of the next phrase reads not lagging in diligence (v. 11a). An older translation reads "not slothful in business" (KJV). We are not to be lazy in business; however, Paul is not talking about commercial enterprise. The word business comes from the term busy-ness, which means we should be busy people, busy with the things of God. Jonathan Edwards gave a sermon about pressing into the Kingdom of God. "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take by force" (Matt. 11:12). Edwards said that those who have come to Christ have been born again and given spirit of zeal to pursue the things of God with a sense of urgency and with hunger and passion. Therefore, it is the duty of every Christian to press into the kingdom of God, making that the main business of life. The kingdom of God cannot be a secondary interest for a true Christian. We are to be diligent and active in the things of God.

p. 423-424. St. Andrew's Expositional Commentary.

Audio Recordings of C. S. Lewis (BBC)

Here are 2 short recordings of two C. S. Lewis BBC talks that were given during the World War 2. These talks were put into print, collected, published later as "Mere Christianity."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHxs3gdtV8A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYoU5_MQOU0&feature=related

Hawking/Mlodinow on the Godless Creation of the Universe

From the The Grand Design

We will describe how M-theory may offer answers to the question of creation. According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. They are a prediction of science. Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is, at times like the present, long after their creation. Most of these states will be quite unlike the universe we observe and quite unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Thus our presence selects out from this vast array only those universes that are compatible with our existence. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation

(p. 9, Hawking and Mlodinow)

C. S. Lewis on the Universe

Brian Green thinks Christians place man in the center of the universe, but as C. S. Lewis points out God is greater and more infinite than any universe or multiverse that Man can dream up.

The size and emptiness of the universe which frightened us at the outset of this book, should awe us still, for though they may be no more than a subjective by-product of our three-dimensional imagining, yet they symbolise great truth. As our Earth is to all the stars, so doubtless are we men and our concerns to all creation; as all the stars are to space itself, so are all creatures, all thrones and powers and mightiest of the created gods, to the abyss of the self-existing Being, who is to us Father and Redeemer and indwelling Comforter, but of whom no man nor angel can say nor conceive what He is in and for Himself, or what is the work that he 'maketh from the beginning to the end'. For they are all derived and unsubstantial things. Their vision fails them and they cover their eyes from the intolerable light of utter actuality, which was and is and shall be, which never could have been otherwise, which has no opposite.

(C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 159)