While our culture tends to eschew religious polemics, great disagreements have produced not only some of the most awe-inspiring moments in human history, but also some of the most beautiful lines of prose. So argues Carl Truman in the latest issue of Themelios:
[P]olemic has produced some moments of great beauty in church history, and we should not let the modern cultural antipathy to religious controversy blind us to that fact. I need to be somewhat nuanced here, lest I am misunderstood, and distinguish two kinds of beauty in polemic. The first I call the polemics where, in the words of Yeats, ‘a terrible beauty is born.’ Yeats was writing about the Easter Uprising in Dublin and about the way that the cause of Irish national independence gave, in a moment of explosive violence, a terrible, frightening grandeur to men who had, up to that point, occupied mundane common-or-garden jobs.
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There is another kind of polemical beauty, however, and this is of a kind that you might not even notice was polemical unless it was explained as such. Some of the most beautiful lines in church history have been penned precisely as beautiful, if quiet, polemic.
(HT: Justin Taylor)
December 9th, 2010 | 4:37 pm
Trueman: “Medieval Catholicism was built upon a different strategy, where doubt of God’s individual mercy was a means by which to keep believers on the straight and narrow, so to speak. When the Heidelberg Catechism kicks off with a statement about assurance, it was also kicking Catholicism in the theological shins.”
That’s a funny line in a serious post.
December 9th, 2010 | 7:49 pm
One had better tread this ground of “assurance” very carefully, lest one sin against the virtue of Hope. We may indeed be assured of God’s graciousness toward us. That graciousness invites us into His Kingdom. At the same time one must not kid oneself about one’s own free will, which offers the possibility of declining the invitation. We are assured that God will not abandon us; let us not presume, however, that we will not abandon Him!
Another catechism Q & A which I learned, and which is somewhat more pithy and I would say to the point is this: Q. What are the sins against Hope? A. The sins against Hope are presumption and despair.
Let us avoid presuming lest we “put the Lord our God to the test.”
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