Andrew McNeely > Recent Status Updates

“Where power and a cruel heart are wed
How deep the poison, challenging belief!”

The greatest challenge in reading Taylor–at least for me–is following his mode of thought. He’ll argue a point for several pages, tricking the reader, so to speak, into accepting it before negating the point for several more pages. Then, just when you’ve accepted the negation as his primary point, he spends several more pages showing how both sides connect and mutate into something else. Damn Hegelians!

“Luther liberated the Christian conscience, liberated it from papal decree and canon law. But he also took it captive through the Word of God and imposed on it the responsibility to render service to the world. That is why in all realms of life, be they marriage and sexuality, civic duties or obedience to temporal authorities, the Word of God must be heard anew…”

“[Luther] tried to urge his ‘beloved Germans’ into a unity of faith and purge them of that nationalism which dreams of the union of religion and blood…He would…have condemned any identification of Church and nation as running counter to God’s will: equating God’s people with a state or nation, be it Germany or Rome, not only perverts the Gospel, it also threatens world peace.”

Luther against moralizing the Bible:

“It has become a deplorable custom that the Gospels and Epistles are treated like law books, in which one is to learn what we are to do, and in which the works of Christ are presented as nothing but an example held before one’s eyes. Wherever this errant opinion remains within the heart, there neither gospel nor epistle can be read usefully and in a Christian way…”

Luther calls to the “God against God”:

“But Luther refuses to go so far as to attribute [suffering] to ultimate significance. For this reason he flees from God who hides himself–and toward the God who became human and who reveals himself in the most hidden way on the cross. It is appropriate ‘to press on toward and to call to God against God’: toward the revealed God against the hidden one” (p. 11).