Braxton Bragg > Recent Status Updates

“We know only in love; we make progress in the truth by loving. When we love, we enjoy; we also desire to share the fruits of our contemplation. As the doctors of the church universally recognized, knowledge of God is deeply participatory” (pg. 60).

“The radical interruption of our idolatries by God in Jesus Christ is radically regenerative: new creation is its fruit. I was blind but now I see. But what do I see but the one who has been there all along, declaring ‘himself in all of being’?” (pg. 40)

“The more we are like him, the more human we are, and the more human we are, the more we resemble him as his likeness. We grow in being, becoming more rather than less real, and all that because we live in a believing relation to the one who ‘is being’” (pg. 35).

“Accordingly, it is fitting to begin treatment of the Christian life with God's existence. This name above all others instructs us in the nature of the relationship between the created and uncreated. This relationship, we discover, is a participatory one. For example, God is life. Life belongs to God, and life, whether it be human or the life of living things such as trees, exists only in relation to God” (pg. 7)

“As sons… we inherit God's glory by participating in it. God unfolds his glory in creation to enfold us with it. "In your light do we see light" (Ps. 36:9). Through Christ, the song is resolved because we are drawn into the musicality of the Trinity's mutual glorification (John 17:24; cf. 12:28; 17:5)… Our inheritance is a gift that comes with the giver, but the primary gift is the giver himself” (pg. 138).

“Light and life remain in the Word, even if they disappear from the world. From the fact that Jesus gives eternal life, we remember that the Word was and remains the source of all life and light. It is only in turning to him that things will find life and harmony” (pg. 95).

“Like an infinite wellspring, God’s fullness fills other things without diminishing itself” (pg. 76).

“Creation out of nothing highlights what is implicit in Scripture’s polemic against idolatry: There is one Creator and there are many creatures, but there is nothing in between. Creation out of nothing therefore confronts us with the relentless distinction between God and creation” (pg. 70).

“God’s pure love of his own goodness has infinitely more than ‘desire’ because he eternally possesses what every desire ultimately seeks” (pg. 43).

🔥🔥

“There is an intrinsic order that theological thinking must observe if our thoughts are subject to Scripture: first God, then God’s works. This order tells us something important” (pg. 40).

Spoken like a true disciple of John Webster!

“Scripture speaks about creation in doxological tones, liturgical forms, and poetic symbols because creation is ordered to the praise of God, to be used for the praise of God, and points beyond itself to God” (pg. 37).

“There is not anything whatsoever befalls us, without [God’s] overruling hand.”

“Job piously sets us an example in his own case, ‘He is in one mind, and who can turn him? And what his soul desireth, even that he doth. For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me; and many such things are with him’” (Job 23:13-14).