Who Said That?

A tip of my hat to anyone who can, without Googling, identify the source of this quote:

There [is a distinction between] one kind of understanding of earthly things; another of heavenly. I call “earthly things” those which do not pertain to God or his Kingdom, to true justice, or to the blessedness of the future life; but which have their significance and relationship with regard to the present life and are, in a sense, confined within its bounds. I call “heavenly things” the pure knowledge of God, the nature of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the Heavenly Kingdom. The first class includes government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts. In the second are the knowledge of God and of his will, and the rule by which we conform our lives to it.

Good luck....

Who Said That?

Big ups to whoever can correctly identify the source of the following quotation:

"But if 'righteousness,' within the lawcourt context, refers to the status of the vindicated person after the court has announced its verdict, we have undercut in a singe stroke the age-old problem highlighted in Augustine's interpretation of 'justify' as 'make righteous.' That always meant, for Augustine and his followers, that God, in justification, was actually transforming the character of the person, albeit in small, preliminary ways (by, for instance, implanting the beginnings of love and faith within them). The result was a subtle but crucial shifting of metaphors: the lawcourt scene is now replaced with a medical one, a kind of remedial spiritual surgery, involving a 'righteous implant' which, like an artificial heart, begins to enable the patient to do things previously impossible.

"But part of the point of Paul's own language, rightly stressed by those who have analyzed the verb dikaioo, 'to justify,' is that it does not denote an action which transforms someone so much as a declaration which grants them a status. It is the status of the person which is transformed by the action of 'justification,' not the character."

And as always, no Googling....

Who Said That?

Any guesses as to the source of this quote?

"In Paul's view of salvation history, the Abrahamic covenant has chronological priority and ontological primacy over the Mosaic.... The logical corollary of Paul's view of the Abrahamic covenant is that the Mosaic covenant is secondary and subordinate. Moreover, its definitive shape is achieved, not in the earlier Sinai or Wilderness legislation (Exod 20 - Num 36), but in the book of Deuteronomy (i.e., the Book of the Law), where it is ratified by curses invoked and pronounced by Moses and the Levites (Deut 27-30).... Christ's curse-bearing death on the cross simultaneously bears and expiates the Deuteronomic covenant curses and releases the Abrahamic blessings promised to the nations at the [binding of Isaac]" (emphases original throughout).

And please, no Googling....

Who Said That?

Here is this week's "Who Said That?":

"[Believers] are not under a legal system administered according to the principles of retributive justice, a system which requires perfect obedience as the condition of acceptance with God, and which says, 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.' They are under grace, that is, under a system in which believers are not dealt with on the principles of justice, but on the principles of undeserved mercy, in which God does not impute 'their trespasses unto them.' There is therefore to them no condemnation. They are not condemned for their sins, not because they are not sins and do not deserve condemnation, but because Christ has already made expiation for their guilt and makes continual intercession for them."

There's a double challenge here: First guess the source of the quotation, and then guess who cited it approvingly. And as always, no Googling....

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**Update**

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The original quotation is from Princeton theologian Charles Hodge, and it was cited approvingly by Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis in his book Not By Faith Alone.

Who Said That?

Please, no Googling:

"We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many desires and synthetic passions as possible.... We live in a society that tries to keep us dazzled with euphoria in a bright cloud of lively and joy-loving slogans. Yet nothing is more empty and more dead, nothing is more insultingly insincere and destructive than the vapid grins on the billboards and the moronic beatitudes in the magazines which assure us that we are all in bliss right now. I know, of course, that we are fools, but I do not think any of us are fools enough to believe that we are now in heaven.... I think the constant realization that we are exhausting our vital spiritual energy in a waste, the inescapable disgust at the idolatrous vulgarity of our commercial milieu is one of the main sources of our universal desperation."

Good luck....

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***Update***

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The answer is Thomas Merton (well done, Rob).

Who Said That?

"... lest the universal monarchy should become a universal tyranny, a check is needed upon the Empire. This, in Dante's scheme, is provided by the Church, which at every point interfuses and penetrates the secular order, not by directly intervening in politics (since this can only corrupt the spiritual power by worldly greed and ambition), but by forming men of such character that they will produce a temporal society in which it is possible to live a full and a Christian life.

"It is at this point we find Dante clearly distinguishing between Reason and Revelation. The secular order is founded upon Reason, and its task is to lead happiness in this world; the spiritual order is founded upon Revelation, and its task is to lead men to eternal beatitude. "

If you know the answer straight away, keep it to yourself in order to give others a chance to guess. And as always, no Googling.... .

***UPDATE***

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Commenter Barrett Turner got the answer right, the quote is from Dorothy Sayers's introduction to Dante's Inferno.

The Answer... Kind Of.

I will be heading out of town in a couple hours for a speaking engagement and won't be back until late Sunday, so I figured I shouldn't leave you all hanging concerning the answer to the recent Who Said That? I heard the quote in a Protestant/Catholic debate involving Michael Horton, but I'll let you listen to the clip to find out the quote's original source.

Enjoy....

Who Said That?

"[The Greek word translated 'justification'] always has a certain forensic flavor which prevents its becoming a mere synonym of regeneration or re-creation. In later theology, however, this sense is often lost, and justification comes to mean nothing more than the infusion of grace. Now when Paul applies the juridical terminology to the new Christian reality, it acquires an entirely new meaning. It refers now not to the future but to the past (Rom. 5:9), not to the just man but the sinner (Rom. 4:5). And so the basis of justification must also be different. It can no longer be observance of the law. It must be Christ, whom God has made our righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30), which is the same thing as saying that we are justified by faith in Christ" (Rom. 3:28).

Who Said That?

Here is a double-whammy "Who Said That?" -- two quotes from two authors for you to identify (without Googling).

Without any further ado, then, here is Quote #1:

Scripture also uses "salvation" in two senses, broad and narrow…. Salvation in the narrower sense means just being accepted by God, or justified, forgiven for sin, being in a state of grace.... In this narrower sense of salvation we can be saved by faith alone....

To summarize, then, a. We are neither justified (forgiven) nor sanctified (made holy) by intellectual faith alone (belief); b. We are justified by will-faith, or heart-faith alone; c. But this faith will necessarily produce good works.

… We are not saved by good works alone; that we cannot buy our way into heaven with "enough" good deeds; that none of us can deserve heaven; and therefore if we were to die tonight and meet God, and God were to ask us why he should let us into heaven, if we are Christians our answer should not begin with the word "I" but with the word "Christ."

And Quote #2:

Hence it is evident that the question here does not concern the necessity of merit, causality, and efficiency—whether good works are necessary to effect salvation or to acquire it by right.... Rather the question concerns the necessity of means, of presence and of connection or order—Are good works required as the means and way for possessing salvation? This we hold.

Although the proposition concerning the necessity of good works to salvation… was rejected by various Lutheran theologians as less suitable and dangerous… still we think with others that it can be retained without danger if properly explained…. Although works may be said to contribute nothing to the acquisition of our salvation, still they should be considered necessary to the obtainment of it, so that no one can be saved without them.

Good luck....

Who Said That?

Can anyone, without Googling, identify the source of this quotation?

"That the Roman Church is more honored by God than all others is not to be doubted. St, Peter and St. Paul, forty-six Popes, some hundreds of thousands of martyrs, have laid down their lives in its communion, having overcome Hell and the world; so that the eyes of God rest on the Roman church with special favor. Though nowadays everything is in a wretched state, it is no ground for separating from the Church. On the contrary, the worse things are going, the more should we hold close to her, for it is not by separating from the Church that we can make her better. We must not separate from God on account of any work of the devil, nor cease to have fellowship with the children of God who are still abiding in the pale of Rome on account of the multitude of the ungodly. There is no sin, no amount of evil, which should be permitted to dissolve the bond of charity or break the bond of unity of the body. For love can do all things, and nothing is difficult to those who are united."

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***UPDATE***

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Surprise, surprise: It was from a letter of Martin Luther to Pope Leo. How's that for irony?

The Charge of Romanism Recanted

The answer to our "Name That Exegete" quiz is (drumroll please...): Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict XVI.

Please don't miss the irony (we Gen-Xers love this kind of thing):

Critics of the Federal Vision constantly claim that the so-called Auburn Avenue theologians are "on the road to Rome." But both contemporary Jewish and Roman Catholic theology, together with ancient Near Eastern archaeological studies, are all coming to the same conclusion, i.e., that there were two types of covenants operating throughout Old Testament times (suzerainty/vassal treaties and covenants of grant). Couple this together with the fact that FV and NPP proponents are arguing for the very opposite conclusion (that "covenant" is a kind of monolithic amalgam of grace plus obedience) and it suddenly appears that the charge of insipid Roman Catholicism against our FV brethren may be unfounded after all.

Since confessional Reformed theology has been arguing all along (echoing Paul) that law and gospel must never be mixed or conflated, it appears that both Jerusalem and Rome may be "on the road to Geneva."

Name that Exegete

Either out of homage to Riddleblog or just to balatantly steal Kim's idea, I'll post the following quote to see if any of you can guess who said it. And please: no Googling....

"[Paul] sees the covenant made with Abraham as the real, fundamental, and abiding covenant; according to Paul, the covenant made with Moses was interposed (Rom 5:20) 430 years after the Abrahamic covenant (Gal 3:17); it could not abrogate the covenant with Abraham but constituted only an intermediary stage in God’s providential plan....

"Thus Paul distinguishes very sharply between two kinds of covenants that we find in the Old Testament itself: the covenant that consists of legal prescriptions and the covenant that is essentially a promise, the gift of friendship, bestowed without conditions.... [T]he Sinai covenant in Exodus 24 appears essentially as ‘the imposition of laws and obligations on the people.’ ... By contrast, the covenant with the Patriarchs is regarded as eternally in force. Whereas the covenant imposing obligations is patterned on the vassal contract, the covenant of promise has the royal grant as its model. To that extent Paul, with his contrast between the covenant with Abraham and the covenant with Moses, has rightly interpreted the biblical text (emphasis added)."

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I'll post the answer later this evening. And yes, there's irony involved....