Don’t Be So Afraid, Instead…

Do not fear. Instead, these are the things you shall do: Speak each man the truth to his neighbor; Give judgment in your gates for truth, justice, and peace; Let none of you think evil in your heart against your neighbor; And do not love a false oath. For all these are things that I hate,’ Says the LORD.” (Zech. 8:15-17)

Timely? Oh yes.

Luther on the Uselessness of the Church Fathers

One should draw from the source and diligently read the Bible. For a man who knows the text is also an extraordinary theologian. One passage or one text from the Bible is worth more than the glosses of four writers who aren’t reliable and thorough.

Suppose I take the text, ‘Everything created by God is good’ [I Tim. 4:4]; food, marriage, etc., are created by God; therefore [they are good], etc. The glosses contradict this; Bernard, Dominic, and Basil wrote and acted otherwise. But the text itself overcomes the glosses.

The dear fathers were held in high esteem; meanwhile what they did to the Bible was wrong. Ambrose and Basil were quite dull, and Gregory Nazianzen was accused of writing nothing honestly about God in his poetry and songs. — Martin Luther

Totally right.

Don’t You Wish The Rules of Calvin’s Geneva Were Universally In Force?

SERMONS

1. Everyone in each house is to come on Sundays, unless it be necessary to leave someone behind to take care of children or animals, under penalty of 3 sous.
2. If there be preaching any weekday, arranged with due notice, those that are able to go and have no legitimate excuse are to attend, at least one from each house, under penalty as above.
3. Those who have man or maid servants, are to bring them or have them conveyed when possible, so that they do not live like cattle without instruction.
4. Everyone is to be present at Sermon when the prayer is begun, under penalty as above, unless he absent himself for legitimate reason.
5. Everyone is to pay attention during Sermon, and there is to be no disorder or scandal.
6. No one is to leave or go out from the church until the prayer be made at the end of Sermon, under penalty as above, unless he have legitimate cause.

We all long for the good old days.

Fun Facts From Church History: Zwingli’s ‘Zurich German’ Wasn’t Widely Understood

zwingli213The dialect the good people of Zurich spoke was, and is, in many respects, quite unique (even now).  Luther had problems with it and so did The Landgrave of Marburg.

Consequently, on

May 7, 1529, [Zwingli wrote the Landgrave in the lead-up to the Marburg Colloquium] – “… that I address you in Latin I do it for this reason only because I fear that our Swiss tongue is strange to you” (viii., 663). So, also, to the same on July 14th he wrote: “I fear that if we meet I shall not be understood in my tongue. So I do not know whether it would not be better if we used Latin” (viii., 324).

At Marburg Luther constantly whined about Zwingli using Greek.  He did so not to be a show-off (even though he could have done, being at that stage far better than Luther (though not than Melanchthon) at Greek and the best of the lot in Hebrew) but because the folk there assembled would have been lost had he spoken the language of his home.

Today With Zwingli: Redemption Means Change or it Means Nothing

When … Divine Majesty formed the plan of redeeming man, it did not intend that the world should persist and become inveterate in its wickedness. For if this had been the plan, it would have been better never to have sent a redeemer than to have sent one under such conditions that after redemption there should be no change from our former diseased state.

It would have been laughable if He to whom everything that is ever to be is seen as present had determined to deliver man at so great a cost, and yet had intended to allow him immediately after his deliverance to wallow in his old sins. He proclaims, therefore, at the start, that our lives and characters must be changed. For to be a Christian is nothing less than to be a new man and a new creature [2 Cor. 5:17].  — Huldrych Zwingli

Today with Emil Brunner

brunner83Emil Brunner received one of his several Honorary Doctorates – this one from the University of Oslo-  in 1946.  He was very deserving of such honors and, unlike his contemporary Karl Barth, wrote well and concisely.