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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Then for the more definite illustration of this trinity of essence, speculative church teachers of subsequent times appealed to all sorts of analogies in nature, particularly in the sphere of the finite mind, which was made after the image of the divine, and thus to a certain extent authorizes such a parallel. They found a sort of triad in the universal law of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; in the elements of the syllogism; in the three persons of grammar; in the combination of body, soul, and spirit in man; in the three leading faculties of the soul; in the nature of intelligence and knowledge as involving a union of the thinking subject and the thought object; and in the nature of love, as likewise a union between the loving and the loved.1041 These speculations began with Origen and Tertullian; they were pursued by Athanasius and Augustin; by the scholastics and mystics of the Middle Ages; by Melanchthon, and the speculative Protestant divines down to Schleiermacher, Rothe and Dorner, as well as by philosophers from Böhme to Hegel; and they are not yet exhausted, nor will be till we reach the beatific vision. For the holy Trinity, though the most evident, is yet the deepest of mysteries, and can be adequately explained by no analogies from finite and earthly things. As the doctrines of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit were but imperfectly developed in logical precision in the ante-Nicene period, the doctrine of the Trinity, founded on them, cannot be expected to be more clear. We find it first in the most simple biblical and practical shape in all the creeds of the first three centuries: which, like the Apostles’ and the Nicene, are based on the baptismal formula, and hence arranged in trinitarian order. Then it appears in the trinitarian doxologies used in the church from the first; such as occur even in the epistle of the church at Smyrna on the martyrdom of Polycarp.1042 Clement of Rome calls "God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit" the object of "the faith and hope of the elect."1043 The sentiment, that we rise through the Holy Spirit to the Son, through the Son to the Father, belongs likewise to the age of the immediate disciples of the apostles.1044 Justin Martyr repeatedly places Father, Son, and Spirit together as objects of divine worship among the Christians (though not as being altogether equal in dignity), and imputes to Plato a presentiment of the doctrine of the Trinity. Athenagoras confesses his faith in Father, Son, and Spirit, who are one as to power (kata; duvnamin), but whom he distinguishes as to order or dignity (tavxi") in subordinatian style. Theophilus of Antioch (180) is the first to denote the relation of the three divine persons1045 by the term Triad.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Athanasius, in his early youth, at the beginning of the next period, wrote the first systematic treatise on redemption and answer to the question "Cur Deus homo?"1100 But it was left for the Latin church, after the epoch-making treatise of Anselm, to develop this important doctrine in its various aspects. § 154. Other Doctrines. The doctrine of the subjective appropriation of salvation, including faith, justification, and sanctification, was as yet far less perfectly formed than the objective dogmas; and in the nature of the case, must follow the latter. If any one expects to find in this period, or in any of the church fathers, Augustin himself not excepted, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, as the "articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae" be will be greatly disappointed. The incarnation of the Logos, his true divinity and true humanity, stand almost unmistakably in the foreground, as the fundamental truths. Paul’s doctrine of justification, except perhaps in Clement of Rome, who joins it with the doctrine of James, is left very much out of view, and awaits the age of the Reformation to be more thoroughly established and understood. The fathers lay chief stress on sanctification and good works, and show the already existing germs of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the meritoriousness and even the supererogatory meritoriousness of Christian virtue. It was left to modern evangelical theology to develop more fully the doctrines of soteriology and subjective Christianity. The doctrine of the church, as the communion of grace , we have already considered in the chapter on the constitution of the church,1101 and the doctrine of the sacraments, as the objective means of appropriating grace, in the chapter on worship.1102 § 155. Eschatology. Immortality and Resurrection. I. General Eschatology: Chr. W Flugge: Geschichte des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit, Auferstchung, Gericht und Vergeltung. 3 Theile, Leipz. 1794–1800. Part III. in 2 vols. gives a history of the Christian doctriNe. Not completed. William Rounseville Alger (Unitarian): A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. With a Complete Literature on the Subject. Philad. 1864, tenth ed. with six new chs. Boston, 1878. He treats of the patristic doctrine in Part Fourth, ch. 1. p. 394–407. The Bibliographical Index by Prof. Ezra Abbot, of Cambridge, contains a classified list of over 5000 books on the subject, and is unequalled in bibliographical literature for completeness and accuracy. Edm. Spiess: Entwicklungsgeschichte der Vorstellungen vom Zustand nach dem Tode. Jena, 1877. This book of 616 pages omits the Christian eschatology. II. Greek and Roman Eschatology: C. Fr. Nägelsbach: Die homerische Theologie in ihrem Zusammenhang dargestellt. Nürnberg, 1840. The same: Die nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens bis auf Alexander. Nürnberg, 1857. Aug Arndt: Die Ansichten der Alten über Leben, Tod und Unsterblichkeit. Frankfurt a. M. 1874. Lehrs: Vorstellungen der Griechen über das Fortleben nach dem Tode. Second ed. 1875. Ludwig Friedlaender: Sittengeschichte Roms, fifth ed. Leipz. 1881, vol. III. p. 681–717 (Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube). III. Jewish Eschatology; A. Kahle: Biblische Eschatologie des Alten Testaments. Gotha, 1870.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  For true it is, O Lord, that Thou madest heaven and earth; and it is true too, that the Beginning is Thy Wisdom, in Which Thou createst all: and true again, that this visible world hath for its greater part the heaven and the earth, which briefly comprise all made and created natures. And true too, that whatsoever is mutable, gives us to understand a certain want of form, whereby it receiveth a form, or is changed, or turned. It is true, that that is subject to no times, which so cleaveth to the unchangeable Form, as though subject to change, never to be changed. It is true, that that formlessness which is almost nothing, cannot be subject to the alteration of times. It is true, that that whereof a thing is made, may by a certain mode of speech, be called by the name of the thing made of it; whence that formlessness, whereof heaven and earth were made, might be called heaven and earth. It is true, that of things having form, there is not any nearer to having no form, than the earth and the deep. It is true, that not only every created and formed thing, but whatsoever is capable of being created and formed, Thou madest, of Whom are all things. It is true, that whatsoever is formed out of that which had no form, was unformed before it was formed. Out of these truths, of which they doubt not whose inward eye Thou hast enabled to see such things, and who unshakenly believe Thy servant Moses to have spoken in the Spirit of truth;—of all these then, he taketh one, who saith, In the Beginning God made the heaven and the earth; that is, “in His Word coeternal with Himself, God made the intelligible and the sensible, or the spiritual and the corporeal creature.” He another, that saith, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth; that is, “in His Word coeternal with Himself, did God make the universal bulk of this corporeal world, together with all those apparent and known creatures, which it containeth.” He another, that saith, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth; that is, “in His Word coeternal with Himself, did God make the formless matter of creatures spiritual and corporeal.” He another, that saith, In the Beginning God created heaven and earth; that is, “in His Word coeternal with Himself, did God create the formless matter of the creature corporeal, wherein heaven and earth lay as yet confused, which, being now distinguished and formed, we at this day see in the bulk of this world.” He another, who saith, In the Beginning God made heaven and earth; that is, “in the very beginning of creating and working, did God make that formless matter, confusedly containing in itself both heaven and earth; out of which, being formed, do they now stand out, and are apparent, with all that is in them.”

• From Wild (2012)

  I walked to the natural food cooperative, the front of which the radical youth of the lower Pacific Northwest had made into something of a daytime encampment, gathering on the grass and sidewalks in front of the store. Almost immediately, I spotted another of the men I’d seen up at Toad Lake—the headband man, the leader of the pack who, like Jimi Hendrix, called everybody baby. He sat on the sidewalk near the entrance to the store holding a little cardboard sign that had a request for money scrawled in marker across it. In front of him there was an empty coffee can with a smattering of coins. “Hi,” I said, pausing before him, feeling buoyed to see a familiar face, even if it was his. He still wore his strange grubby headband. “Howdy,” he replied, obviously not remembering me. He didn’t ask me for money. Apparently, I exuded the fact that I had none. “You traveling around?” he asked. “I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” I said to jog his memory. He nodded without recognition. “A lot of people from out of town are showing up for the Dead festivities.” “Are there festivities?” I asked. “Tonight there’s something.” I wondered if he’d convened a mini–Rainbow Gathering at Crater Lake, like he’d said he’d do, but not enough to ask him. “Take it easy,” I said, walking away. I went into the co-op, the air-conditioned air so strange on my bare limbs. I’d been in convenience stores and small tourist-oriented general stores in a few of my resupply stops along the PCT, but I hadn’t been in a store like this since I’d begun my trip. I walked up and down the aisles looking at things I couldn’t have, stupefied by their offhand plenitude. How was it that I had ever taken these things for granted? Jars of pickles and baguettes so fresh they were packed in paper bags, bottles of orange juice and cartons of sorbet, and, most of all, the produce, which sat so brightly in bins I felt almost blinded by it. I lingered, smelling things—tomatoes and heads of butter lettuce, nectarines and limes. It was all I could do not to slip something into my pocket.

• From Wild (2012)

  I looked around at the trees, the waning light slanting through them. It would be evening soon and I’d have to find a place to camp. I would pitch my tent in the snow and wake in the snow and continue on in the snow. This, in spite of everything I’d done to avoid it. I walked on and eventually found what passed for a fairly cozy spot to pitch a tent when you have no choice but to allow a frozen sheaf of snow beneath a tree to be cozy. When I crawled into my sleeping bag, wearing my rain gear over all my clothes, I was chilly but okay, my water bottles wedged in close beside me so they wouldn’t freeze. In the morning, the walls of my tent were covered with swirls of frost, condensation from my breath that had frozen in the night. I lay quiet but awake for a while, not ready to confront the snow yet, listening to the songs of birds I couldn’t name. I only knew that the sound of them had become familiar to me. When I sat up and unzipped the door and looked out, I watched the birds flitter from tree to tree, elegant and plain and indifferent to me. I got my pot and poured water and Better Than Milk into it and stirred, then added some granola and sat eating it near the open door of my tent, hoping that I was still on the PCT. I stood and washed out my pot with a handful of snow and scanned the landscape. I was surrounded by rocks and trees that jutted out from the icy snow. I felt both uneasy about my situation and astounded by the vast lonesome beauty. Should I continue on or turn back? I wondered, though I knew my answer. I could feel it lodged in my gut: of course I was continuing on. I’d worked too hard to get here to do otherwise. Turning back made logical sense. I could retrace my steps to Sierra City and catch another ride farther north still, clear of the snow. It was safe. It was reasonable. It was probably the right thing to do. But nothing in me would do it. I walked all day, falling and skidding and trudging along, bracing so hard with my ski pole that my hand blistered. I switched to the other hand and it blistered too. Around every bend and over every ridge and on the other side of every meadow I hoped there would be no more snow. But there was always more snow amid the occasional patches where the ground was visible. Is that the PCT? I’d wonder when I saw the actual ground. I could never be certain. Only time would tell.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Another specimen of a Christmas hymn by the same, commencing ejn Bhqleevm: "In Bethlehem is He born! Maker of all things, everlasting God! He opens Eden’s gate, Monarch of ages! Thence the fiery sword Gives glorious passage; thence, The severing mid-wall overthrown, the powers Of earth and Heaven are one; Angels and men renew their ancient league, The pure rejoin the pure, In happy union! Now the Virgin-womb Like some cherubic throne Containeth Him, the Uncontainable: Bears Him, whom while they bear The seraphs tremble! bears Him, as He comes To shower upon the world The fulness of His everlasting love! One more on Christ calming the storm, zofera'" trikumiva", as reproduced by Neale: "Fierce was the wild billow Dark was the night; Oars labor’d heavily; Foam glimmer’d white; Mariners trembled Peril was nigh; Then said the God of God —’Peace! It is I.’ Ridge of the mountain-wave, Lower thy crest! Wail of Euroclydon, Be thou at rest! Peril can none be— Sorrow must fly Where saith the Light of Light, —’Peace! It is I.’ Jesu, Deliverer! Come Thou to me: Soothe Thou my voyaging Over life’s sea! Thou, when the storm of death Roars, sweeping by, Whisper, O Truth of Truth! – ’Peace! It is I.’ " § 115. The Latin Hymn. More important than the Greek hymnology is the Latin from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Smaller in compass, it surpasses it in artless simplicity and truth, and in richness, vigor, and fulness of thought, and is much more akin to the Protestant spirit. With objective churchly character it combines deeper feeling and more subjective appropriation and experience of salvation, and hence more warmth and fervor than the Greek. It forms in these respects the transition to the Evangelical hymn, which gives the most beautiful and profound expression to the personal enjoyment of the Saviour and his redeeming grace. The best Latin hymns have come through the Roman Breviary into general use, and through translations and reproductions have become naturalized in Protestant churches. They treat for the most part of the great facts of salvation and the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But many of them are devoted to the praises of Mary and the martyrs, and vitiated with superstitions. In the Latin church, as in the Greek, heretics gave a wholesome impulse to poetical activity. The two patriarchs of Latin church poetry, Hilary and Ambrose, were the champions of orthodoxy against Arianism in the West. The genius of Christianity exerted an influence, partly liberating, partly transforming, upon the Latin language and versification. Poetry in its youthful vigor is like an impetuous mountain torrent, which knows no bounds and breaks through all obstacles; but in its riper form it restrains itself and becomes truly free in self-limitation; it assumes a symmetrical, well-regulated motion and combines it with periodical rest. This is rhythm, which came to its perfection in the poetry of Greece and Rome.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  One of them represents a Roman governor making approaches to Christian virgins whom he had shut up in the scullery of his palace. Happily he was struck with madness and embraced the pots and kettles and covered with soot and dirt, was unceremoniously hustled about by the devil. It is not known whether these plays were acted out or not.2107 Hroswitha was an isolated personality and the mediaeval play had its origin not with her, but in the liturgical ritual for the festivals of Easter, Good Friday, and Christmas. To make the impression of the service more vivid than the reading or chanting of the text could do, dramatic features were introduced which were at first little more than the simplest tableaux vivants. They can be traced beyond the eleventh century and have their ancestry in the tropes or poetical interpolations inserted into the liturgy for popular effect.2108 The first dramatic action was associated with the services on Good Friday and Easter. On Good Friday the cross was hid in a cloth or in a recess in the walls, or in a wooden enclosure, specially put together. Such recesses in the walls, called "sepulchres," are still found in Northwold, Navenby, and other English churches. On Easter day the crucifix was taken out from its place of concealment with solemn ritual. In Davis’ Ancient Rites of Durham is the following description:2109 — "Within the church of Durham upon Good Friday there was a marvellous solemn service in which two of the ancient monks took a goodly large crucifix all of gold of the picture of our Saviour Christ, nailed upon the cross .... The service being ended, the said two monks carried the cross to the Sepulchre with great reverence (which Sepulchre was set up that morning on the north side of the quire, nigh unto the high altar before the service time) and there did lay it within the said Sepulchre with great devotion." To this simple ceremony, adapted to impress the popular imagination, were soon added other realistic elements, such as the appearance of the angels and the women at the sepulchre, the race between Peter and John, and the conversation between Mary and the gardener. Dialogues made up of biblical language were introduced, one of the earliest of which is the conversation between the women and the angels:— Whom seek ye in the sepulchre, worshippers of Christ? Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, O heavenly denizens. Quam quaeritis in sepulchro, Christocolae? Jesum Nazarenum, crucifixum, O coelicolae. On Christmas the dramatic action included the angels, the Magi, and other actors, and a real cradle or manger. Priests in the garb of shepherds, as they approached the stable, were met with the question,— Whom seek ye in the stable, O shepherds, say? Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite? To which they replied, The Saviour, Christ the Lord, the infant wound in swaddling clothes.

• From Wild (2012)

  When the flames from the pages I’d burned had gone out and I’d stood to return to my tent, the sound of high and frenzied barks and howls came to me from the east—a pack of coyotes. I’d heard that sound in northern Minnesota so many times it didn’t scare me. It reminded me of home. I looked up at the sky, the stars everywhere and magnificent, so bright against the dark. I shivered, knowing I was lucky to be here, feeling that it was too beautiful to go back into my tent just yet. Where would I be in a month? It seemed impossible that I wouldn’t be on the trail, but it was true. Most likely I’d be in Portland, if for no other reason than that I was flat broke. I still had a small bit of money left over from Ashland, but nothing that wouldn’t be gone by the time I reached the Bridge of the Gods. I let Portland roll around in my mind through the days, as I passed out of the Sky Lakes Wilderness into the Oregon Desert—a high dusty flat plain of lodgepole pines that my guidebook explained had been smattered with lakes and streams before they were buried beneath the tons of pumice and ash that had fallen on them when Mount Mazama erupted. It was early on a Saturday when I reached Crater Lake National Park. The lake was nowhere in sight. I’d arrived instead at the campground seven miles south of the lake’s rim. The campground wasn’t just a campground. It was a mad tourist complex that included a parking lot, a store, a motel, a little coin laundromat, and what seemed to be three hundred people revving their engines and playing their radios loud, slurping beverages from gigantic paper cups with straws and eating from big bags of chips they bought in the store. The scene both riveted and appalled me. If I hadn’t known it firsthand, I wouldn’t have believed that I could walk a quarter mile in any direction and be in an entirely different world. I camped there for the night, showering blissfully in the bathhouse, and the next morning made my way to Crater Lake. My guidebook had been correct: my first sight of it was one of disbelief. The surface of the water sat 900 feet below where I stood on the rocky 7,100-foot-high rim. The jagged circle of the lake spread out beneath me in the most unspeakably pure ultramarine blue I’d ever seen. It was approximately six miles across, its blue interrupted only by the top of a small volcano, Wizard Island, that rose 700 feet above the water, forming a conical island upon which twisted foxtail pines grew. The mostly barren, undulating rim that surrounded the lake was dotted with these same pines and backed by distant mountains.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  But how didst Thou speak? In the way that the voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son? For that voice passed by and passed away, began and ended; the syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so forth in order, until the last after the rest, and silence after the last. Whence it is abundantly clear and plain that the motion of a creature expressed it, itself temporal, serving Thy eternal will. And these Thy words, created for a time, the outward ear reported to the intelligent soul, whose inward ear lay listening to Thy Eternal Word. But she compared these words sounding in time, with that Thy Eternal Word in silence, and said “It is different, far different. These words are far beneath me, nor are they, because they flee and pass away; but the Word of my Lord abideth above me for ever.” If then in sounding and passing words Thou saidst that heaven and earth should be made, and so madest heaven and earth, there was a corporeal creature before heaven and earth, by whose motions in time that voice might take his course in time. But there was nought corporeal before heaven and earth; or if there were, surely Thou hadst, without such a passing voice, created that, whereof to make this passing voice, by which to say, Let the heaven and the earth be made. For whatsoever that were, whereof such a voice were made, unless by Thee it were made, it could not be at all. By what Word then didst Thou speak, that a body might be made, whereby these words again might be made? Thou callest us then to understand the Word, God, with Thee God, Which is spoken eternally, and by It are all things spoken eternally. For what was spoken was not spoken successively, one thing concluded that the next might be spoken, but all things together and eternally. Else have we time and change; and not a true eternity nor true immortality. This I know, O my God, and give thanks. I know, I confess to Thee, O Lord, and with me there knows and blesses Thee, whoso is not unthankful to assure Truth. We know, Lord, we know; since inasmuch as anything is not which was, and is, which was not, so far forth it dieth and ariseth. Nothing then of Thy Word doth give place or replace, because It is truly immortal and eternal. And therefore unto the Word coeternal with Thee Thou dost at once and eternally say all that Thou dost say; and whatever Thou sayest shall be made is made; nor dost Thou make, otherwise than by saying; and yet are not all things made together, or everlasting, which Thou makest by saying.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Further, I had to make a daily, hourly effort to enter into the ghastly conditions of seventh-century Arabia, and that meant that I had to leave my twentieth-century assumptions and predilections behind. I had to penetrate another culture and develop a wholly different way of looking at the world. It required a constant concentration of mind and heart that was in fact a type of meditation, and one that suited me far better than the Ignatian method that I had followed in the convent to so little effect. It now strikes me that while I was writing Muhammad, I was learning the disciplines of ecstasy. By this, of course, I do not mean that I fell into a trance, saw visions, or heard voices. Had I done so, I would never have got the book finished in time. The Greek ekstasis, it will be recalled, simply means “standing outside.” And “transcendence” means “climbing above or beyond.” This does not necessarily imply an exotic state of consciousness. For years I had longed to get to God, ascend to a higher plane of being, but I had never considered at sufficient length what it was that you had to climb from. All the traditions tell us, one way or another, that we have to leave behind our inbuilt selfishness, with its greedy fears and cravings. We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao. What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind. There may even be a biological reason for this. The need to protect ourselves and survive has been so strongly implanted in us by millennia of evolution that, if we deliberately flout this instinct, we enter another state of consciousness. This is a purely personal speculation of my own. But the history of religion shows that when people develop the kind of lifestyle that restrains greed and selfishness, they experience a transcendence that has been interpreted in different ways. It has sometimes been regarded as a supernatural reality, sometimes as a personality, sometimes as wholly impersonal, and sometimes a dimension that is entirely natural to humanity, but however we see it, this ecstasy had been a fact of human life.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It was a marked progress from the triclinia, or rooms in private houses, and crypts, in which the early Christians worshipped, to the cathedral of St. Sophia, at the completion of which Justinian is said to have exclaimed, "O Solomon, I have excelled thee." And what a change it was from the huts and rude temples of worship of Central and Northern Europe to the splendid structures dedicated to Christian worship,—the worship which Augustine of Canterbury, and Boniface, and St. Ansgar had introduced among the barbarous Northern tribes! It is also characteristic that the great mediaeval structures were not palaces or buildings devoted to commerce, although the Gothic palace of the doges, in Venice, and the town halls of Brussels, Louvaine, and other cities of Belgium and Holland are extensive and imposing. They were buildings devoted to religion, whether cathedral or conventual structures. They were often, as in France, placed on an elevation or in the centre of the city, and around them the dwellings clustered as if for protection. The great cathedrals became a daily sermon, bearing testimony to the presence of God and the resurrection of Christ. They served the people as a Bible whose essential teachings they beheld with the eye. Through the spectacle of their walls and soaring spires, their thoughts were uplifted to spiritual things. Their ample spaces, filled or dimly lit with the sunlight piercing through stained-glass windows, reminded them of the glory of the life beyond, which makes itself known through varied revelations to the lonely and mysterious existence of the earth. The strong foundations and massive columns and buttresses typified the stability of God’s throne, and that He hath made all things through the word of His power. Their construction occupied years and, in cases, centuries were necessary to complete them. Who can estimate the prayers and pious devotion which the laying of the first stones called forth, and which continued to be poured out till the last layer of stones was laid on the towers or fitted into the finial? Their sculpture and stained-glass windows, frescoes, and paintings presented scenes from Scripture and the history of the Church. There, kings and queens, warriors, and the men whom the age pronounced godly were laid away in sepulture, a custom continued after the modern period had begun, as in the case of Luther and Melanchthon, whose ashes rest in the Castle Church of Wittenberg. In spite of frequent fires consuming parts of the great churches or the entire buildings, they were restored or reconstructed, often several times, as in the case of the cathedrals of Chartres, Canterbury, and Norwich. Central towers collapsed, as in the case of Winchester, Peterborough, Lincoln, and other English cathedrals, but they were rebuilt. In the erection of these churches princes and people joined, and to further this object they gave their contributions of material and labor.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The theory of the transmutation of the elements and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity were among the chief objects of the attacks of the Reformers. The fullest and clearest presentation of the eucharist was made by Thomas Aquinas. He discussed it in every possible aspect. Where Scripture is silent and Augustine uncertain, the Schoolman’s speculative ability, though often put to a severe test, is never at a loss. The Church accepted the doctrines of transubstantiation and the sacrificial meaning of the sacrament, and it fell to the Schoolmen to confirm these doctrines by all the metaphysical weapons at their command. And even where we are forced by the silence or clear meaning of Scripture to regard their discussion as a vain display of intellectual ingenuity, we may still recognize the solemn religious purpose by which they were moved. Who would venture to deny this who has read the devotional hymn of Thomas Aquinas which presents the outgoings of his soul to the sacrificial oblation of the altar? Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium. Sing my tongue the mystery telling.1655 The culminating point in the history of the mediaeval doctrine of the eucharist was the dogmatic definition of transubstantiation by the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. Thenceforth it was heresy to believe anything else. The definition ran that "the body and blood of Christ are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power."1656 The council did not foist upon the Church a new doctrine. It simply formulated the prevailing belief. The word "transubstantiation" is not used by Hugo of St. Victor and the earlier Schoolmen. They used "transition" and "conversion," the latter being the favorite term. The word "transubstantiation" seems to have been first used by Hildebert of Tours, d. 1134.1657 According to Duns Scotus, the doctrine cannot be proved with certainty from the Scriptures and must be accepted upon the basis of the decision of the Church.1658 The passages, chiefly relied upon for proving the doctrine, are John 6 and the words of institution, "this is my body," in which the verb is taken in its literal sense. Rupert of Deutz is the only Schoolman of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries who dissented from it. He seems to have taught the theory of impanation.1659 Three names, applied to the eucharist, had special significance.1660 It is a sacrifice because it repeats Christ’s oblation on the cross. It is a communion because it presents the unity of the Church. It is a viaticum because it is heavenly manna for pilgrims on their way to heaven. Thomas Aquinas also uses the term of John of Damascus, assumption, because the sacrament lifts us up into the Deity of Christ, and calls it hostia, or the host, because it contains Christ himself, who is the oblation of our salvation.1661 It was also called the mass.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  The bulk of the book, chapters 3–37, is a series of poetic speeches or debates between Job and a few “comforters.” These friends are supposedly trying to make Job feel better. As is often the case when we try to help people going through pain, they should have just kept their mouths shut and sat with him in his pain because what they said only made things worse. By the end of their “advice,” Job might have been suffering for days, weeks, or even months. His friends had exhausted themselves trying to explain why it was all Job’s fault. He must have sinned, they argued, because (according to their theology and cosmology) bad things were always the consequences of bad actions. They defended God at the expense of Job. In the process, they actually undermined God’s sovereignty and blamed Job for things he never did. They had a wrong perspective: of Job, of suffering, of God, of sin, of wealth, and of just about everything else they pompously addressed. Their understanding made sense to them because they were looking at things from their limited, finite point of view. But God wasn’t impressed by their theology or cosmology. He doesn’t tend to appreciate humansplaining. Finally, in chapters 38–41, God speaks. These chapters are some of the finest examples of ancient poetry, not just in the Bible, but in world literature. For four solid chapters, God blasts Job’s friends for speaking “words without knowledge” (38:2). And He’s not referring to Twitter. God gives them example after example from nature that illustrates how small their perspective is, how limited their knowledge and power are. Speaking of oceans, God says this: Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, “This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt”? Job 38:8–11 In other words, if you think the ocean is impressive, imagine the power of the one who created the ocean! Now that’s perspective!

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  When we pray, we need to realize that we are tapping in to the resources of heaven. That is no small thing. When the Bible encourages us to pray in faith, it’s talking about praying from an expansive, awestruck awareness of the nature of God. He wants us to focus on how big He is, not on how big our problems are. We might be small, but we can pray big prayers. We might be weak, but we can trust in God’s strength. We might be uncertain, but we can be sure of His love. We might be tempted, but we can find a way out through Jesus. We might be sinful, but we are forgiven and accepted by grace. We might be anxious, but we find our peace in His presence. We might be grieving, but we can rejoice that God will carry us through. Our prayers must be bathed in the certainty that God hears us and that He is able to help. We know God is there. We know He cares. We know He intervenes in human existence. And so, we pray, and God acts. Get in the car, friend. FRIENDS OF JESUS Prayer might seem like an unnecessary activity when you think about God’s omniscience. Why pray if God already knows what you’re going to ask? Why pray if He has a better plan than you could ever come up with? Why pray if what you’re asking for might just mess things up even more? We’ve probably all wondered these things at one point or another. I don’t have it all figured out. I think the interplay between God’s sovereignty and our humanity will always have an element of mystery to it. I do know, though, that when we pray, we partner with God. We participate in His sovereign rule. I think that’s part of what Jesus meant when He told us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  4. Enemies God is not nearly as intimidated by opposition as we are. Not at all intimidated, in fact. The Bible is full of examples of God giving His people victory. But Jesus takes it a step further. He tells us to love our enemies. Talk about a different perspective. You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:43–45 Jesus didn’t just tell us to love your enemies. He did it. While hanging on the cross they were crucifying Him upon, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). 5. Obstacles One time, Jesus and His disciples were crossing a large lake called the Sea of Galilee, and they were overtaken by a storm. Several of the disciples were experienced fishermen, but this storm was so bad they were afraid they were going to drown. Mark recounts that Jesus was asleep in the back, peacefully resting on a pillow while His disciples nearly lost their minds. Finally, they woke Him up. “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” (4:38). Jesus woke up, yawned, stretched, looked around, yawned again, then casually told the wind and the waves to knock it off. Instant calm. The disciples, Mark writes, were now terrified of Him, not the storm. In a good way. “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (verse 41). They had a perspective change. Rather than being in awe of the elements, they were in awe of the one who created and controlled the wind and the waves. Prayer reminds us that all obstacles are small next to the omnipotent creator of the universe.

• From Wild (2012)

  As I hiked, the fragments of songs pushed their way into the mix-tape radio station in my head, interrupted occasionally by Paul’s voice, telling me how foolish I’d been to trek into the snow like this alone. He would be the one who would do whatever had to be done if indeed I didn’t return. In spite of our divorce, he was still my closest kin, or at least the one organized enough to take on such a responsibility. I remembered him lambasting me as we drove from Portland to Minneapolis, when he’d plucked me out of the grips of heroin and Joe the autumn before. “Do you know you could die?” he’d said with disgust, as if he half wished I had so he could prove his point. “Every time you do heroin it’s like you’re playing Russian roulette. You’re putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. You don’t know which time the bullet’s going to be in the chamber.” I’d had nothing to say in my defense. He was right, though it hadn’t seemed that way at the time. But walking along a path I carved myself—one I hoped was the PCT—was the opposite of using heroin. The trigger I’d pulled in stepping into the snow made me more alive to my senses than ever. Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward, I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something. That perhaps being amidst the undesecrated beauty of the wilderness meant I too could be undesecrated, regardless of what I’d lost or what had been taken from me, regardless of the regrettable things I’d done to others or myself or the regrettable things that had been done to me. Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.O Somber and elated, I walked in the cool air, the sun glimmering through the trees, bright against the snow, even though I had my sunglasses on. As omnipresent as the snow was, I also sensed its waning, melting imperceptibly by the minute all around me. It seemed as alive in its dying as a hive of bees was in its life. Sometimes I passed by places where I heard a gurgling, as if a stream ran beneath the snow, impossible to see. Other times it fell in great wet heaps from the branches of the trees.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  The piece seemed to rediscover the amazement every pianist should properly feel at the invention of the piano. Moreover, playing it did very odd things to her perception of time, though it did so only when she began right at the beginning and went straight through. Another piano student, Paul Mackey, knocked on her practice-room door on the eve of her lesson with Professor Sparkling. He asked her what she was up to. She was evasive, saying only that she was doing an Albedo piece for Sparkling. Paul seemed impressed and asked if he could hear some of it. Reluctantly at first, Rhody began playing it. Paul paced in the tiny room as he listened; he had the distracting habit of doing laps around the piano while he listened to his friends play. But the music was so powerful that Rhody found that she could successfully ignore him, at least until something unexpected happened. She came to the emended chord, the soft one dangling like a trumpet vine under the fermata, and played it, holding the sustain pedal down, and glanced up at him to get his reaction, and saw that Paul was completely motionless, halted in mid-step in some sort of trance. The chord slowly faded; when it was inaudible, Paul ajbruptly looked at her and said, “Why did you stop?” “Why did you stop?” said Rhody. “What do you mean?” said Paul. “You just hit that weird staccato chord and then stopped playing.” “It was hardly a staccato chord,” said Rhody. “It had a fermata over it, in fact. Look.” Paul examined the music and raised his eyebrows. “Well, you certainly played it like a staccato chord.” Rhody pondered Paul’s reaction for a second and then began a few bars back and finished the piece. This time there was no unusual behavior from Paul. That night she had a dream in which she did Kegel exercises with a vaginal barbell until her PC muscles were so strong that when she went onstage under black-light and inserted a red Swingline 99 hand-held stapler in her vagina, she could staple a glowing airplane ticket with it. Professor Sparkling was in the audience, watching her staple the airplane tickets that the other men shyly brought up and held between her legs. He had a tube of phosphorescent motionlotion that he squeezed on the shaft of his penis so that, as he began to stroke it, it glowed with a pale blue light. He walked up the side stairs onto the stage and knelt before where she sat on a black Thonet chair. He held in one hand the manuscript of his paper on the history of Mascon Albedo’s deliberate disimprovement of Map .

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Why, I beseech Thee, O Lord my God? I see it in a way; but how to express it, I know not, unless it be, that whatsoever begins to be, and leaves off to be, begins then, and leaves off then, when in Thy eternal Reason it is known, that it ought to begin or leave off; in which Reason nothing beginneth or leaveth off. This is Thy Word, which is also “the Beginning, because also It speaketh unto us.” Thus in the Gospel He speaketh through the flesh; and this sounded outwardly in the ears of men; that it might be believed and sought inwardly, and found in the eternal Verity; where the good and only Master teacheth all His disciples. There, Lord, hear I Thy voice speaking unto me; because He speaketh us, who teacheth us; but He that teacheth us not, though He speaketh, to us He speaketh not. Who now teacheth us, but the unchangeable Truth? for even when we are admonished through a changeable creature; we are but led to the unchangeable Truth; where we learn truly, while we stand and hear Him, and rejoice greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice, restoring us to Him, from Whom we are. And therefore the Beginning, because unless It abided, there should not, when we went astray, be whither to return. But when we return from error, it is through knowing; and that we may know, He teacheth us, because He is the Beginning, and speaking unto us. In this Beginning, O God, hast Thou made heaven and earth, in Thy Word, in Thy Son, in Thy Power, in Thy Wisdom, in Thy Truth; wondrously speaking, and wondrously making. Who shall comprehend? Who declare it? What is that which gleams through me, and strikes my heart without hurting it; and I shudder and kindle? I shudder, inasmuch as I unlike it; I kindle, inasmuch as I am like it. It is Wisdom, Wisdom’s self which gleameth through me; severing my cloudiness which yet again mantles over me, fainting from it, through the darkness which for my punishment gathers upon me. For my strength is brought down in need, so that I cannot support my blessings, till Thou, Lord, Who hast been gracious to all mine iniquities, shalt heal all my infirmities. For Thou shalt also redeem my life from corruption, and crown me with loving kindness and tender mercies, and shalt satisfy my desire with good things, because my youth shall be renewed like an eagle’s. For in hope we are saved, wherefore we through patience wait for Thy promises. Let him that is able, hear Thee inwardly discoursing out of Thy oracle: I will boldly cry out, How wonderful are Thy works, O Lord, in Wisdom hast Thou made them all; and this Wisdom is the Beginning, and in that Beginning didst Thou make heaven and earth.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  INITIATOR OFTHE KINGDOM OF GOD 153 get it? There is nothing- very wonderful inrediscov- ering the truthafter another manhas found the way; but how the first, separated by ages before and after by the sole possession ofthis insight, obtained it, this is matter for profound wonder. Thereforeit is really true that Jesus of Nazareth, in a uniqueway, true of no other, is the only begotten and first born Son o God, and thatall ages, if they are capable ofunderstand- ing him at all, must recognize himas such. Itistrue enough that now any man can rediscover this doctrine in the writings of the apostles and appropriate it in his own convictions. It is also true, and we assert it, that the philosopher, as faras he knows, discovers the same truths independently of Christianity, and sees them with a clearnessand breadth of vision which traditional Christianity can not match. Yet itremains for ever true that we, our entire age, andall our philosophical investi- gations are based on Christianity, and our thinking pro- ceeds from it; that thisChristian faith has entered in the most manifold ways into our entire culture; and that we allwould notbe what we are, unless this power- ful principle had preceded us historically. It remains incontestably true thatall those who since Jesus have arrived at union with God, have attained it only through him and by his mediation. Thus in every way it is con- firmed that to the end of time all wise men will bow before this Jesus of Nazareth, and the more of life they have themselves, the more humbly will they acknowledge the exceedingglory of this great personality." * ijohann Gottlieb Fichte, "Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben," Lecture VI. 1806* The translation is mine.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  While writing Muhammad, I had to make a constant, imaginative attempt to enter empathically into the experience of another. This was a kind of ecstasy. For six months I was intent all and every day on trying to understand a man’s search for sanctification. Even though I was not a believer, I had to think myself into a religious frame of reference, and enter the mind of a man who believed that he was touched directly by God. Unless I could make that leap of sympathy, I would miss the essence of Muhammad. Writing his life was in its own way an act of islām —a “surrender” of my secular, skeptical self, which brought me, if only at second hand and at one remove, into the ambit of what we call the divine. During these months, I often recalled my conversation with Hyam. I noticed that the Koran spends very little time imposing an official doctrine; it propagates no creed, and is rather dismissive of theological speculation. Like Judaism, Islam is not especially bothered about belief: the word kafir, often translated “unbeliever,” really means one who is ungrateful to God. Instead of accepting a complex creed, Muslims are required to perform certain ritual actions, such as the hajj pilgrimage and the fast of Ramadan, which are designed to change them. One of the first things the Prophet asked his converts to do when he began to preach in Mecca was to prostrate themselves in prayer several times a day, facing the direction of Jerusalem. Arabs did not approve of kingship, and it was hard for them to grovel on the ground like slaves, but the posture of their bodies in the characteristic prostrations of Muslim prayer taught them, at a level deeper than the rational, what was required in the act of islām, the existential surrender of one’s entire being to God. For a set time each day, they had to lay aside that egotistic instinct to prance, strut, preen, and draw attention to themselves. The physical discipline was meant to affect their inner posture.