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Archive for the ‘Common Grace’ Category

“The order of this charity”

Posted in Christian Ethics, Common Grace, Conscience & Casuistry, Natural Law, Paternalism & Patriarchy, Political Theory & Theology, Postwar Consensus, Nationalism, Puritans & Puritanism, Social Issues, William Ames on July 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The following is drawn from William Ames’ Marrow of Theology 2.16, “Of Justice and Charity toward our neighbour.” A Reformed orthodox treatment of the ordo amoris or order of love.

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13. The order of this charity is this: that God is first and chiefly to be loved by charity, and so he is, as it were, the formal reason for this charity toward our neighbour. Next after God we are bound to love ourselves, namely with that charity which respects true blessedness; for loving God himself with a love of union, we love ourselves immediately with that chief charity which respects our spiritual blessedness. But secondarily, we should love others whom we would have partake of the same good with us. Moreover, others may be deprived of this blessedness without our fault, but we ourselves cannot; and therefore we are more bound to will and to seek this blessedness for ourselves than for others.

14. This is why the love of ourselves has the force of a rule or a measure for the love of others: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

15. Hence it is never lawful to commit any sin for another’s sake, even though our offence may seem small, and to be a chief good which we should seek for another. For he that wittingly and willingly sins, hates his own soul. Pro 8.36, He that sins against me, offers violence to his own soul. Pro 29.24. He that partakes with a thief, hates himself: he hears cursing and does not declare it.

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Kuyper on the sacredness of sleep

Posted in Anthropology, Biblical Theology, Common Grace, Natural Theology, tagged , , , , on January 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The following comes from the pen of Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), pastor, theologian, and prime minister of the Netherlands. It’s a devotional work entitled To Be Near Unto God. And you don’t have to be a card-carrying Neo-Calvinist to appreciate it!

“NIGHT is a mystery in our life, and remains a mystery. For years together, sleep to most people is a provisional going out from life, in order after some seven or eight hours to come back to it. When they fall asleep, which most people do immediately after their head touches the pillow, they are gone, and when the hand on the dial of the clock has moved on a given number of hours, they rise and resume their part in life. At most they have an occasional remembrance of a dream that entered into their sleep, but for the rest it is all a blank. The seven hours during which they were lost in unconsciousness passed by unobserved, and as far as their remembrance of them goes they amounted to no more than two or at most three hours.

“Thus a third of life is taken out of their existence. When they are thirty years of age, they have actually lived but twenty, and the other ten years are wrapped in the haziness of sleep.

“This sleep, however, was not devoid of purpose. He who was weary on retiring, rises girded with new strength, though as far as his consciousness goes, he was idle. His thinking, feeling, willing, working, have all been at a stand-still. This absolute surcease of life is the normal state of things, for as long as man is well, in the fullness of his strength and not oppressed by cares, he sleeps as long as nothing disturbs him from without.

“Why this was so ordained, remains a riddle. For though it is true that after hours of work our strength becomes exhausted and demands rest to recuperate, this does not solve the problem. For at once the question arises: “Why this exhaustion of strength?” God, our Maker, after Whose Image weare created fainteth not, neither is He weary. The heavenly hosts of angels do not sleep. Of the New Jerusalem we read: “And there shall be no night there” (Rev. 22: 5). Thus, a being who does not continually exhaust his strength, and hence is in no need of sleep, is conceivable. Why God, our Maker, appointed a life for us with continual exhaustion of its power to be restored by sleep, remains a mystery. This ordinance of the Lord has not been promulgated without a purpose and a wise design, though no one understands it.”

Read the rest of the chapter here.

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“The Humanity of Hospitality”

Posted in Common Grace, Culture, Hospitality on October 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Silence the critics . . . have them over for dinner! A good article by Carl Trueman:

Princeton professor Robert P. George recently drew my attention to a trivial but emblematic incident in which a flight attendant wished a passenger a “blessed” night. Unfortunately, the recipient of these kind words was a member of America’s progressive officer class who responded with predictable outrage. Clara Jeffery, editor of the progressive magazine Mother Jones, was so traumatized by this verbal assault, she took to X to express her splenetic indignation at the “creeping Christian nationalism” this unwanted benediction displayed.  

She has since deleted the post and been both derided and defended online. While Prof. George saw in the tantrum yet more evidence of progressive condescension and scorn for the working class, others have resorted to the incantatory clichés of critical theory that magically render superfluous the need for thoughtful engagement with anything outside of the acceptable progressive frame of reference. One simply cannot dialogue with such people because any attempt to do so is regarded as a manipulative (even if unwitting) attempt to reinforce the values of an intrinsically unjust system. “Shut up and listen!” is the progressive default response.

Read the rest here

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