HERESY

'Elements of truth can be found in almost any system, if not because of common grace, then because the devil needs an admixture of truth in order to market a lie successfully. The most effective heresies have capitalized on important elements of truth which were lacking in current Christian understanding.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.218.

GRACE

'We are not saved by the love we exercise, but by the love we trust.'

PT Forsyth in Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiriutual Life, p.213.

THE CHURCH & CULTURE

'...if the church has not fully appropriated the life and redemptive benefits of Jesus Christ, it will inevitably be subject to two forms of re-enculturation. Either it will suffer destructive enculturation, absorbing elements of its host cultures which it should discern and suppress as unholy, or it will try to re-create once again the Old Testament protective enculturation, fusing itself with certain aspects of Christianized culture until the gospel is thought to be indisolubly wedded to those cultural expressions.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.191.

PRAYER

'Prayer functions as a safety valve without which informed Christians would constantly be anxious, aware as they are of the spiritual warfare surrounding them. And since faith is the essential grace expressed by and strengthened through prayer, we might say that we have interceeded enough when we have held before God the major responsibilities which confront us and any wider burdens which the Holy Spirit may suggest from day to day, and have exercized faith that he is at work in these. This is not at all a difficult labour; there may be times when it can be the work of minutes. Too little prayer is an expression of unbelief in God's love and care; so is too much.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.160.

PRAYER

'The proportion of horizontal communication that goes on in the church (in planning, arguing and expounding) is overwhelmingly greater than that which is vertical (in worship, thanksgiving, confession and intercession). Critically important committee meetings are begun and ended with formulary prayers, which are ritual obligations and not genuine expressions of depoendence - when problems and arguments ensue, they are seldom resolved by further prayer, but are wrangled out on the battlefield of human discourse. The old midweek prayer meetings for revival have vanished from the prgrames of most churches or have been transfomed into Bible studies ending with minimal prayer.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.153.

EVANGELISM

'This tendency to forget the redemptive emergency in the world and concentrate on enjoying dominion in a part of it has been a continual temptation to the the church.'

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life, p.147.

LIFE

'The life we all live is amateurish and accidental; it begins in accident and proceeds by trial and error toward dubious ends. That is the law of nature. But the dream of man will not accept what nature hands us. We have to tinker with it, trying to give it purpose, direction, meaning - or, if we are of another turn of mind, trying to demonstrate that it has no purpose direction, or meaning. Either way, we can't let it alone. The unexamined life, as the wise Greek said, is not worth living. We have to examine it, if only to persuade ourselves that we matter, and are in control, or that we are at least aware of what is being done to us. Autobiography and fiction are variant means to the same end.'

Wallace Stegner, 'The Law of Nature and the Dream of Man' in Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, p.219.

GOD'S LOVE

'Wilt thou love God, as he thee? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angel's waited on
In heaven, doth make his temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blessed,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er begun)
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption,
Coheir to his glory, and Sabbath's endless rest;
And as a robbed man, which by search doth find
His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy it again:
The Son of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom he had made, and Satan stol'n, to unbind.
'Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.'
John Donne, Poems and Devotions, p.52.

SANCTIFICATION

'Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'oerthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.'
John Donne, Poems and Devotions (Edited by Robert Van de Weyer), p.51.

ORIGINAL SIN

'It is, obviously, a belief that violates the most basic notions of justice. No wonder John Taylor of Norwich exclaimed, "What a God must he be, who can curse his innocent creatures before they have a being!" And yet the individual components of the idea are utterly familiar. Everyone knows that some people are born with a malady of some kind: a birth defect resulting from the mistransmission of genetic information, say, or a disorder (HIV, hepatitis) passed from mother to child through the umbilical cord. And we acknowledge that some social circumstances make certain sins all but inevitable. I don't see how I, as a white Southerner, raised in the 1960s and 1970s could have avoided some taint of racism, yet I don't think I should use that upbringing to declare myself innocent. Most of us are also comfortable with talk of "the human condition" - general circumstances shared by everyone, if nothing else "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." So we comprehend inherited affliction, collective and inherited responsibility, universally shared circumstances. It is the joining of these ideas that strains our minds. We struggle to hold together a model of human sinfulness that is universal rather than local, in which we inherit sin rather than choose it, and in which, nevertheless, we are fully, terrifyingly responsible for our condition.'

Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History, p.xiv.