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Here is a simple but profound rule: if there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute. Society is left with one man or an elite filling the vacuum left by the loss of the Christian consensus which originally gave us form and freedom in northern Europe and in the West.
A regeneration that a man can have, and yet live carelessly in sin or worldliness, is a regeneration invented by uninspired theologians, but never mentioned in scripture. Holiness (Chapter 2)
to Thomas Aquinas the will was fallen after man had revolted against God, but the mind was not. This eventually resulted in people believing they could think out the answers to all the great questions, beginning only from themselves. The Reformation, in contrast to Aquinas had a more biblical concept of the Fall.How Should We Then Live, 85
The distinction between the news columns and the editorial page has, in many of the most influential papers, become much less clear.
It is important to realize what a difference a people's worldview makes in their strength as they are exposed to the pressure of life. That it was the Christians who were able to resist religious mixtures, syncretism, and the effects of the weakness of Roman culture speaks to the strength of the Christian worldview.How Should We Then Live, 19
In almost every place where the Reformation flourished there was not only religious noncompliance; there was civil disobedience as well.A Christian Manifesto
The Christian must understand what confronts him antagonistically in his own moment of history. Otherwise he simply becomes a useless museum piece and not a living warrior for Jesus Christ.
As the memory of the Christian consensus which gave us freedom within the biblical form increasingly is forgotten, a manipulating authoritarianism will tend to fill the vacuum.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788) said that the following five attributes marked Rome at its end: first, a mounting love of show and luxury (that is, affluence); second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor (this could be among countries in the family of nations as well as in a single nation); third, an obsession with sex; fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity; fifth, an increased desire to live off the state. It all sounds so familiar. We have come a long road since our first chapter, and we are back in Rome.How Should We Then Live
True sanctification then does not consist in talk about religion. This is a point that ought never to be forgotten. The vast increase of education and preaching in these latter days makes it absolutely necessary to raise a warning voice. Holiness (Chapter 2)
We must realize that Christianity is the easiest religion in the world, because it is the only religion in which God the Father and Christ and the Holy Spirit do everything. God is the Creator; we have nothing to do with our existence, or the existence of other things. We can shape other things, but we cannot change the fact of existence. We do nothing for our salvation because Christ did it all. We do not have to do anything. In every other religion we have to do something... but with Christianity we do not do anything; God has done it all: He has created us and He has sent His Son; His Son died and because the Son is infinite, therefore he bears our total guilt. We do not need to bear our guilt, nor do we even have to merit the merit of Christ. He does it all. So in one way it is the easiest religion in the world.
History indicates that at a certain point of economic breakdown people cease being concerned with individual liberties and are ready to accept regimentation.How Should We Then Live, 284
it is not only that we need absolutes in morals and values; we need absolutes if our existence is to have meaning--my existence, your existence, Man's existence. Even more profoundly, we must have absolutes if we are to have a solid epistemology (a theory of knowing--how we know, or how we know we know).How Should We Then Live?, 160-161
If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values.How Should We Then Live?, 160
The utopian dream of the Enlightenment can be summed up by five words: reason, nature, happiness, progress, and liberty. It was thoroughly secular in its thinking. The humanistic elements which had risen during the Renaissance came to flood tide in the Enlightenment. Here was man starting from himself absolutely.How Should We Then Live?, 132
Calvin himself in Geneva did not have the authority often attributed to him... Calvin's influence was moral and informal... For example, he preferred to have the Lord's Supper given weekly, but he allowed the will of the majority of the pastors in Geneva to prevail. Thus the Lord's Supper was celebrated only once every three months.How Should We Then Live?, 122
the fall of Constantinople in 1453 resulted in an exodus of Greek scholars who brought manuscripts with them to Florence and other northern Italian cities. It was the humanists of that time who, under the enthusiasm for the classics, spoke of what had immediately preceeded them as a "Dark Age" and talked of a "rebirth" in their own era.How Should We Then Live, 64
Rome did not fall because of external forces such as the invasion by the barbarians. Rome had no sufficient inward base; the barbarians only completed the breakdown-- and Rome gradually became a ruin.How Should We Then Live, 26
No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had that absolute in God's revelation.How Should We Then Live, 22
Every good deed we do in dependence on God does just the opposite of paying Him back; it puts us ever deeper in debt to His grace. And that is exactly where God wants us to be through all eternity. Brothers, We are Not Professionals (33)
A sanctified heart is better than a silver tongue. There is as much difference between gifts and grace as between a tulip painted on the wall and one growing in the garden.Divine Contentment
Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness. Catechism
Sanctification and the mortification of our lusts are the hardest part of Christianity. It is, in a manner, as natural for us to leap when we see the new Jerusalem as to laugh when we are tickled. Joy is not under command nor at our nod when it kisseth. But O, how many of us would have Christ divided into two halves, that we might take the half of Him only and take His office—Jesus and salvation! But Lord is a cumbersome word, and to obey and work out our salvation and perfect holiness is the cumbersome and stormy north side of Christ and that which we eschew and shift.
Bad men have their good moods, as good men have their bad moods; a bad man may, under pangs of conscience, a smarting rod, the approaches of death, or the fears of hell, or when he is sermon sick, cry out to the Lord for grace, righteousness, and holiness; but he is the only blessed man that hungers and thirsts after righteousness at all times. Heaven is for that man and that man is for heaven that hungers and thirsts in a right manner after the righteousness of justification and after the righteousness of sanctification.
Sanctification, by which our hearts and lives are conformed to the law, is a grace of God communicated to us by means, just like justification; and by means of teaching, and learning something that we cannot see without the Word (Acts 26:17-18)The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification: Growing in Holiness by Living in Union with Christ
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