Reformed Resurrection Quotes

Let my silence grow with noise as pregnant mothers grow with life. Let my silence permeate these walls as sunlight permeates a home. Let the silence rise from unwatered graves and craters left by bombs. Let the silence rise from empty bellies and surge from broken hearts. The silence of the hidden and forgotten. The silence of the abused and tortured. The silence of the persecuted and imprisoned. The silence of the hanged and massacred. Loud as all the sounds can be, let my silence be loud so the hungry may eat my words and the poor may wear my words. Loud as all the sounds can be, let my silence be loud so I may resurrect the dead and give voice to the oppressed. My silence speaks.

The question that Luke-Acts puts to the church—then and now—is not “Are you reforming society?” but rather “Is the power of the resurrection at work among you?

How can you possibly hope to reform her after the life she's been leading?' 'It's not her I'm wanting to reform - it's me,' he replied. 'Besides, it's taking me into a world where I can do some good.' 'I can't imagine you happy.' 'That's not the point.' 'Of course it isn't. But if she has a heart, she can't be happy either. She can't want you to do that.' 'No, she doesn't.' 'I see. But life...' 'What about life?' 'Life demands something different.' 'Life only wants us to do the right things,' said Nekhlyudov. -Resurrection

Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God?

How can you possibly hope to reform her after the life she's been leading?' 'It's not her I'm wanting to reform - it's me,' he replied. 'Besides, it's taking me into a world where I can do some good.' 'I can't imagine you happy.' 'That's not the point.' 'Of course it isn't. But if she has a heart, she can't be happy either. She can't want you to do that.' 'No, she doesn't.' 'I see. But life...' 'What about life?' 'Life demands something different.' 'Life only wants us to do the right things,' said Nekhlyudov.

If the Left forms no such alliances, it will never have any effect on the laws of the United States. To form them will require the cultural Left to forget about Baudrillard's account of America as Disneyland--as a county of simulacra--and to start proposing changes in the laws of a real country, inhabited by real people who are enduring unnecessary suffering, much of which can be cured by governmental action. Nothing would do more to resurrect the American Left than agreement on a concrete political platform, a People's Charter, a list of specific reforms. The existence of such a list--endlessly reprinted and debated, equally familiar to professors and production workers, imprinted on the memory both of professional people and of those who clean the professionals' toilets--might revitalize leftist politics.

If you’re simply looking for moral reformation (improved behavior), you might need a life coach, a cheerleading section, or a really good friend, but not a Savior. But if you require mortal resurrection, you’re going to need something beyond yourself, someone who will raise dead people to life, give sight to the blind, and set captives free.

What a glorious Savior he is! Once again consider Christ in his entire identity, life, and work. In his birth, he is the divine Son and Lord who chooses to become our Mediator in obedience to his Father’s will. In his life, as the incarnate Son, he is still the sovereign King who willingly and gladly chooses to die for us. In his death, he does not die as a victim or martyr but as one who is fully in control, choosing to die for us. By his death, he pays for our sin, destroys death, and defeats Satan by putting him under his feet in triumph. In his resurrection, which is inseparable from his life and death, the Father by the Spirit exalts the Son and inaugurates the glorious new covenant age of the new creation. From that posture of authority, the glorified and exalted Son pours out the Spirit, once again proof that he is Lord and Messiah/King. From that same posture of authority, the exalted and ascended Lord rules over his people, governs history, and will return in power to consummate all that he has begun in his first coming.

Of all people however, Reformed Christians should resurrect the biblical teaching on self-denial from its unjust obscurity. it is not the property of Medieval Flagellants. We dare not yield it as the property of the "deeper life" movement. It was the Son of God who said, "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." Mark 8:34

So the first step that those of us who wish to explore the meaning of resurrection must take is to recognize that the founding moment of the Christian story is not about either an empty tomb or the resuscitation of a deceased body. Its original proclamation asserted that in some manner God had raised Jesus into being part of who God is. Jesus was raised by God into God.

Church Fathers on the End Times The Church Fathers taught pre-millennialism in the first three centuries. Here are the pre-millennial teachings from the Fathers in their order:   1.        The Roman Empire would split in two. (This took place in AD 395.) 2.        The Roman Empire would fall apart. (This took place in AD 476.) 3.        Out of what was the Roman Empire, ten nations would spring up. These are the ten toes/horns of Daniel’s prophecies. 4.        A literal demon-possessed man, called the Antichrist, will ascend to power. 5.        The Antichrist’s name, if spelled out in Greek, will add up to 666. 6.        The Antichrist will sign a peace treaty between the Jews in Israel and the local non-believers there. This treaty will last seven years. 7.        This seven-year treaty is the last seven years of the “sets of sevens” prophecy in Daniel 9. 8.        At the end of the seven years, Jesus will return to earth, destroy the Antichrist, and establish reign of peace that will last for a literal 1000 years. 9.        They wrote they were taught these things by the apostles. They also wrote that anyone who rises up in the church and begins to say any of these things are symbolic, are immature Christians that can’t rightly divide the word of God, and should not be listened too. (Today these beliefs are included in the doctrines of most of, but not all of, the Reformed, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches!)   Here are some of the references from the early church fathers on the End Times:   “After the resurrection of the dead, Jesus will personally reign for 1000 years. He was taught this by the apostle John himself.” Papias Fragment 6   “The man of Sin, spoken of by Daniel, will rule two (three) times and a half, before the Second Advent… There will be a literal 1000 year reign of Christ… The man of apostasy, who speaks strange things against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us, the believers.” Justin Martyr Dialogue 32,81,110

The church's theology bought into this ahistoricism in different ways: along a more liberal, post-Kantian trajectory, the historical particularities of Christian faith were reduced to atemporal moral teachings that were universal and unconditioned. Thus it turned out that what Jesus taught was something like Kant's categorical imperative - a universal ethics based on reason rather than a set of concrete practices related to a specific community. Liberal Christianity fostered ahistoricism by reducing Christianity to a universal, rational kernel of moral teaching. Along a more conservative, evangelical trajectory (and the Reformation is not wholly innocent here), it was recognized that Christians could not simply jettison the historical particularities of the Christian event: the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, there was still a quasi-Platonic, quasi-gnostic rejection of material history such that evangelicalism, while not devolving to a pure ahistoricism, become dominated by a modified ahistoricism we can call primitivism. Primitivism retains the most minimal commitment to God's action in history (in the life of Christ and usually in the first century of apostolic activity) and seeks to make only this first-century 'New Testament church' normative for contemporary practice. This is usually articulated by a rigid distinction between Scripture and tradition (the latter then usually castigated as 'the traditions of men' as opposed to the 'God-give' realities of Scripture). Such primitivism is thus anticreedal and anticatholic, rejecting any sense that what was unfolded by the church between the first and the twenty-first centuries is at all normative for current faith and practice (the question of the canon's formation being an interesting exception here). Ecumenical creeds and confessions - such as the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed - that unite the church across time and around the globe are not 'live' in primitivist worship practices, which enforce a sense of autonomy or even isolation, while at the same time claiming a direct connection to first-century apostolic practices.

So the question arose now, as it had in the wake of the Mongol holocaust: if the triumphant expansion of the Muslim project proved the truth of the revelation, what did the impotence of Muslims in the face of these new foreigners signify about the faith? With this question looming over the Muslim world, movements to revive Islam could not be extricated from the need to resurrect Muslim power. Reformers could not merely offer proposals for achieving more authentic religions experiences. They had to expound on how the authenticity they proposed would get history back on course, how their proposals would restore the dignity and splendor of the Umma, how they would get Muslims moving again toward the proper endpoint of history: perfecting the community of justice and compassion that flourished in Medina in the original golden moment and enlarging it until it included all the world. Many reformers emerged and many movements bubbled up, but all of them can sorted into three general sorts of responses to the troubling question. One response was to say that what needed changing was not Islam, but Muslims. Innovation, alterations, and accretions had corrupted the faith, so that no one was practicing the true Islam anymore. What Muslims needed to do was to shut out Western influence and restore Islam to its pristine, original form. Another response was to say that the West was right. Muslims had gotten mired in obsolete religious ideas; they had ceded control of Islam to ignorant clerics who were out of touch with changing times; they needed to modernize their faith along Western lines by clearing out superstition, renouncing magical thinking, and rethinking Islam as an ethical system compatible with science and secular activities. A third response was to declare Islam the true religion but concede that Muslims had certain things to learn from the West. In this view, Muslims needed to rediscover and strengthen the essence of their own faith, history and traditions, but absorb Western learning in the fields of science and technology. According to this river of reform, Muslims needed to modernize but could do so in a distinctively Muslim way: science was compatible with the Muslim faith and modernization did not have to mean Westernization.

The fundamental root of all persecution is resistance to the gospel. The world despises the cross, for the cross pronounces a thunderous no to all human goodness. The cross lays us bare before God and exposes our wickedness and evil. The cross reminds us that the solution to the human problem is death and resurrection, while we as human beings think that we can be reformed and transformed with education and civilizing influences. When the message of the cross breaks upon the human consciousness, we either repent or are enraged at such an affront to our egos. We long for a gospel that commends us, makes us feel good about ourselves, and exalts us. The cross, however, renounces human potential. It teaches us to relinquish our hope that human beings can construct a just and good society. The new creation only comes through the cross, but the cross is not the last word; the last word is resurrection.

He was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (3:18). It is difficult to decide whether “spirit” should be capitalized (AV) or not (RSV), depending on whether the spirit is Christ’s spirit in contrast to his body, or whether it is the Holy Spirit. If it is the former, we may have the idea of an altogether “spiritual resurrection” in contrast to the resurrection of the body. This, however, is contrary to primitive Christian belief, which always thought of the resurrection of the body, although of a body transformed by the Holy Spirit. It is better, therefore, to take flesh and spirit not as two parts of Christ, but two different ways of viewing the whole Christ. Flesh is the human sphere of existence; Spirit is Christ in his heavenly sphere of existence.21 This can include his bodily resurrection, but the body glorified by the Holy Spirit. Our problem is with the words that follow: “in which [i.e., in the Spirit] he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark” (3:19-20). We can do little more than outline the three major interpretations.22 The older patristic interpretation is that in the intermediate state, Christ in the Spirit went and preached the gospel to the spirits of dead people imprisoned in Hades, who either lived in the days of Noah or in the time before Christ.23 This view soon lost favor, for it opened the door to the possibility of salvation after death. A second view, held by Augustine and many Reformers, holds that Christ in his pre-existent state of being preached the gospel through Noah to Noah’s living contemporaries. The third view, most widely accepted today, is that in the intermediate state Christ proclaimed the victory of the gospel to fallen angels imprisoned in Hades.24 The “preaching” involved may not mean an offer of salvation, but the triumphant announcement that through his death and resurrection, Christ had broken the power of the spirit world.25

Faith is our act, but not our work; it is an instrument of reception without being a means of merit; it is the work in us of the Holy Spirit, who both evokes it and through it ingrafts us into Christ in such a sense that we know at once the personal relationship of sinner to Saviour and disciple to Master and with that the dynamic relationship of resurrection life, communicated through the Spirit's indwelling. So faith takes, and rejoices, and hopes, and loves, and triumphs.

Believers in Jesus Christ are “not guilty” by virtue of Jesus’ death and resurrection (Rom 4:25). Since they are “in Christ” (Eph 1:3 – 14) and united to him by faith, they are no longer in Adam (Rom 5:12 – 19; 1 Cor 15:21 – 22). Hence, Jesus’ vindication at his resurrection is their vindication, his status is their status. Believers, even now, enjoy by faith the status of the resurrected one. In other words, in the resurrection of Jesus the last times have invaded history.

1400    Ecclesial communities derived from the Reformation and separated from the Catholic Church, “have not preserved the proper reality of the Eucharistic mystery in its fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Holy Orders.”239 It is for this reason that, for the Catholic Church, Eucharistic intercommunion with these communities is not possible. However these ecclesial communities, “when they commemorate the Lord’s death and resurrection in the Holy Supper... profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and await his coming in glory.”240

This believing people neither separates its religious faith from its historical aspirations nor does it confuse the two in a revolutionary messianism. This people believes in the resurrection and the life: salvation, work, bread, everyday understanding in their families. For their country, what they believe in is peace. There are some who think that this is not revolutionary. But the people themselves, who are asking for peace, know full well that this peace is the fruit of justice.19

Instead of trying to resurrect or reform a system whose endless pursuit of economic growth has created a nation of material abundance and spiritual poverty—and instead of hoping for a new FDR to save capitalism with New Deal–like programs—we need to build a new kind of economy from the ground up. That is what I have learned from fifty-five years of living and struggling in Detroit, the city that was once the national and international symbol of the miracle of industrialization and is now the national and international symbol of the devastation of deindustrialization. That is why so many people, especially young people, have their eyes on Detroit today.

Far from being a treatise meant to justify God’s righteousness in unconditional election, Romans 9–11 is a treatise about the incomprehensible mercy and scandalous faithfulness of God towards his creatures, through the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.

The Christa who resurrected no longer believes in those fairy tales. What I know is that a recalcitrant institution like the Southern Baptist Convention – an institution marinated in lies, deception, image, and illusion – will not reform itself voluntarily based on mere appeals to reform itself. It will not do so for the sake of goodness. It will not do so for the safety of kids. It will not do so for the love of God. Rather, it will do so only if prodded by unrelenting outside pressure – from media, lawsuits, prosecutions, and independent investigations. Even then, it will do so only with bare minimum baby steps.

A revival and a reformation must take place, under the ministration of the Holy Spirit. Revival and reformation [190] are two different things. Revival signifies a renewal of spiritual life, a quickening of the powers of mind and heart, a resurrection from spiritual death. Reformation signifies a reorganization, a change in ideas and theories, habits and practices. Reformation will not bring forth the good fruit of righteousness unless it is connected with the revival of the Spirit. Revival and reformation are to do their appointed work, and in doing this work they must blend.—The Review and Herald, February 25, 1902.

have no hope for the church reforming or renewing. My only hope is that it collapses and dies soon, before it does too much more harm, so something new can be resurrected.” Others had hope for renewal but talked in terms of centuries, not years or even decades. Latter-Day Saints, Adventists, Unitarians, and many others have reached out to me about their similar spiritual frustrations in their unique contexts.

He then made an appointment with his childhood minister to tell him the news that he had had a spiritual rebirthing experience—an encounter with the real, personal, resurrected Christ. To his chagrin, however, his pastor quipped, “If you believe in the resurrection of Christ, you’re a damn fool!” R.C. couldn’t believe his ears. He feebly replied, “Don’t you believe in the resurrection of Christ? You’re a minister. You preach about it all the time. You talked about it at my father’s funeral.” However, the minister dismissed the sentiment: “Nobody takes it literally in this day and age except illiterate fundamentalists, and you’re far too intelligent for that.”14

And is that all there is to it?’ Nekhlyudov cried as he read these words. And the inner voice of his whole being said, ‘Yes, that’s all there is to it.’ And then something happened to Nekhlyudov, the kind of thing that often occurs with people living a spiritual life. What happened was that an idea that at first had seemed weird paradoxical, maybe even ridiculous, after being confirmed time after time by the process of living, suddenly presented itself as a simple, incontrovertible truth. In this way it became clear to him that the only sure way of salvation from the terrible evil whereby so many were made to suffer was for people to acknowledge that they are guilty before God and therefore disqualified from punishing or correcting other people. He now saw clearly that the terrible evil he had witnessed in the prisons and at the halting-stations, and the smug complacency of those who were committing it, all stemmed from one thing: people were trying to do something that was impossible – to correct evil while being evil. Sinful people tried to correct sinful people and thought this could be achieved mechanically. The only result was that people needing and wanting money have a profession out of the imaginary punishment and correction of others, and they have become corrupt themselves even as they have gone on ceaselessly corrupting their victims. Now he could clearly see the origin of all the horrors he had witnessed, and what had to be done to eliminate them. The answer he had been unable to discover was the one given by Christ to Peter: always forgive, forgive everyone an infinite number of times, because there are no guiltless people who might be qualified to punish or correct. ‘No, it can’t be as simple as that,‘ Nekhlyudov said to himself, yet he could see beyond doubt that, however outlandish this had seemed to him at first, because he was so used to the opposite, it was the one sure way to solve the problem, both in theory and emphatically in practice. The age-old objection that evil-doers had to be dealt with – we can’t let them go unpunished, can we? – no longer bothered him. As an objection it might have been valid if there was any proof that punishment reduces crime and reforms criminals; but when the proof is entirely in the opposite direction, and it is clear that it is not within our power for some men to punish others, the only natural and reasonable thing is to stop doing what is not only useless but pernicious, as well as callous and immoral. ‘For centuries you have been executing people classed by you as criminals. Have they been eliminated? They have not, their numbers have only increased, added to by criminals corrupted by punishment and by other criminals – the judges, prosecutors, magistrates and gaolers who sit in judgement and dole out punishment.’ Nekhlyudov could now see that society and good order in general exist not because of the legalized criminals who judge and punish others, but because, despite all the forces of corruption, people do in fact pity and love one another. Hoping to find confirmation of this idea in the Bible, Nekhlyudov started reading from the beginning of St Matthew’s Gospel. After reading the Sermon on the Mount, which had always moved him, he discovered in it now for the first time not just abstract ideas of great beauty that imposed hyperbolical and impossible demands, but a series of simple, clear-cut, pragmatic commands, which, if followed (a distinct possibility), would establish a totally new order of human society, in which the violence that incensed Nekhlyudov would fall away of its own accord, and the greatest blessing for humanity, the kingdom of God on earth, would be achieved.

The rabbinical form of Judaism that emerged from this movement emphasized literacy and the skills to read and interpret the Torah. Even before the destruction of the temple, the Pharisee high priest Joshua ben Gamla issued a requirement in 63 or 65 AD that every Jewish father should send his sons to school at age six or seven. The goal of the Pharisees was universal male literacy so that everyone could understand and obey Jewish laws. Between 200 and 600 AD, this goal was largely attained, as Judaism became transformed into a religion based on study of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the Talmud (a compendium of rabbinic commentaries). This remarkable educational reform was not accomplished without difficulty. Most Jews at the time earned their living by farming, as did everyone else. It was expensive for farmers to educate their sons and the education had no practical value. Many seem to have been unwilling to do so because the Talmud is full of imprecations against the ammei ha-aretz, which in Talmudic usage means boorish country folk who refuse to educate their children. Fathers are advised on no account to let their daughters marry the untutored sons of the ammei ha-aretz. The scorned country folk could escape this hectoring without totally abandoning Judaism. They could switch to a form of Judaism Lite developed by a diaspora Jew, one that did not require literacy or study of the Torah and was growing in popularity throughout this period. The diaspora Jew was Paul of Tarsus, and Christianity, the religion he developed, seamlessly wraps Judaism around the mystery cult creed of an agricultural vegetation god who dies in the fall and is resurrected in the spring.

To suggest, therefore, that as Christians we should support the state of Israel because it is the fulfilment of prophecy is, in a quite radical way, to cut off the branch on which we are sitting. It is directly analogous to the mistake of the Galatians, who thought that if they were members of Abraham’s family they should go the whole way and get circumcised. It is similar to the mistake of which the Reformers accused the mediaeval Catholics, of supposing that in every Mass they were actually re-crucifying Jesus, when Jesus’ death had been once and for all, never to be repeated, on Calvary. It is a way of saying that in the cross and resurrection God did not actually fulfil his whole saving purpose; that Jesus did not in fact achieve the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy; that his resurrection was not the start of God’s new age; that Acts is wrong, Romans is wrong, Galatians is wrong, the letter to the Hebrews is wrong, Revelation is wrong. Say that if you like, but don’t claim to be Christian in doing so.

And is that all there is to it?’ Nekhlyudov cried out as he read these words. And the inner voice of his whole being said, ‘Yes, that’s all there is to it. ’ And then something happened to Nekhlyudov, the kind of thing that often occurs with people living a spiritual life. What happened was that an idea that at first seemed weird, paradoxical, maybe even ridiculous, after being confirmed time after time by the process of living, suddenly presented it as a simple, incontrovertible truth. In this way it became clear to him that the only sure way of salvation from the terrible evil whereby so many were made to suffer was for people to acknowledge that they are guilty before God and therefore disqualified from punishing or correcting other people. He now saw clearly that the terrible evil he had witnessed in prisons and the halting-stations, and the smug complacency of those who were committing it, all stemmed from one thing: people were trying to do something that is impossible – to correct evil while being evil. Sinful people tried to correct sinful people and thought this could be achieved mechanically. The only result was that people needing and wanting money have made a profession out of the imaginary punishment and correction of others, and they have become corrupt themselves even as they have gone on ceaselessly corrupting their victims. Now he could clearly see the origin of all the horrors he had witnessed, and what had to be done to eliminate them. The answer he had been unable to discover was the one given by Christ to Peter: always forgive, forgive everyone an infinite number of times, because there are no guiltless people who might be qualified to punish or correct. ‘No, it can’t be as simple as that,’ Nekhlyudov said to himself, yet he could see beyond doubt that, however outlandish this had seemed to him at first, because he was so used to the opposite, it was the one sure way to solve the problem, both in theory and emphatically in practice. The age-old objection that evil-doers had to be dealt with – we can’t just let them go unpunished can we? – no longer bothered him. As an objection it might have been valid if there was any proof that punishment reduces crime and reforms criminals; but when the proof is entirely in the opposite direction, and it is clear that it is not within our power for some men to punish others, the only natural and reasonable thing is to stop doing what is not only useless but pernicious, as well as callous and immoral. ‘For centuries you have been executing people classed by you as criminals. Have they been eliminated? They have not, their numbers have only increased, added to by criminals corrupted by punishment and by other criminals – the judges, prosecutors, magistrates and gaolers who sit in in judgement and dole out punishment.’ Nekhlyudov could now see that society and good order in general exist not because of the legalized criminals who judge and punish others, but because, despite all the forces of corruption, people do in fact pity and love one another. Hoping to find confirmation of this idea in the Bible, Nekhlyudov started reading from the beginning of St Matthew’s Gospel. After reading the Sermon on the Mount, which had always moved him, he discovered in it now for the first time not just abstract ideas of great beauty that imposed hyperbolical and impossible demands, but a series of simple, clear-cut, pragmatic commands, which, if followed, (a distinct possibility), would establish a totally new order of human society, in which the violence that incensed Nekhlyudov would fall away of its own accord, and the greatest blessing for humanity, the kingdom of God on earth, would be achieved. There were five of these commandments.

Justification by grace through faith” is the theologian’s learned phrase for what Chesterton once called “the furious love of God.” He is not moody or capricious; He knows no seasons of change. He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods—the gods of human manufacturing—despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course, this is almost too incredible for us to accept. Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: Through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of grace.

Until the Reformation, universities were chartered by ecclesiastical authorities to further the mission of the church and to supply the church with canon lawyers and learned clergy.34

clearly the pastoral office was considered a viable vocation for theologians during the Reformation and post-Reformation eras.45 Conclusion The pastor theologian has had a

For if we allow sin to remain in our conscience and try to deal with it there, or if we look at sin in our heart, it will be much too strong for us and will live on forever. But if we see that it rests on Christ and is overcome by his resurrection, and then boldly believe this, then sin is dead and nullified.