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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.
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
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
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.
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
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
The principal exercises of religion, or virtue, respecting God, which the law of nature requires, are, 1. To contemplate him as the reason and pattern of our conduct. 2. To adore him with our soul and body as one possessed of infinite perfection. 3. To love him as one infinitely amiable and benevolent. 4. To observe and acknowledge his manifold and diversified providences, and act answerably to them. 5. To acquiesce in the whole of his will as wise and good. 6. To consider and trust in his power, wisdom, and goodness. 7. To be chiefly careful to please him, and to imitate him in his moral excellencies, who is infinitely perfect in himself, and on whose favour and the enjoyment of him, our true happiness wholly depends. 8. Cordially to listen to, believe, receive, and obey every further declaration of his will, which he is pleased to make to us.https://www.monergism.com/systematic-theology-john-brown-haddington-ebook
None of us are normal, even after we are Christians if we mean by that being perfect. What is possible, however, is for us to live in the fullness of life in the circle of who we are, constantly pressing on the border lines to try to take further steps.
A true believer looks on religion, not as a burden which he must be forced to endure—but a privilege which is his happiness to enjoy.
It is because man is conscious of his dependance that he is a religious being. And it is because he is conscious of his obligation that he is a moral being.
Religion is not only the natural, but the necessary, product of man's sense of dependence, which always abides as the innermost essence of the whole crowd of emotions which we speak of as religious, the lowest and also the highest.
The first act of religion, therefore, concerns those things which are communicated to us from God. The other concerns those things which we yield to God.
Each cycle of inflation, attempted control, the threat of economic recession, and finally, released control has increased inflation; yet politically, with most people dominated by the concept of an ever-expanding affluence, it is difficult or impossible to face the danger of economic recession.
To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it.How Should We Then Live, 297
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
In order to justify the early taking of the needed kidneys and other organs, the criterion for death is now generally accepted as a flat brain wave over a twenty-four-hour period.
Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals - increasingly men and women are not stirred by the values of liberty and truth - but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence. They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them.How Should We Then Live, 260
I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old, will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own lifestyles are not threatened. And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things.How Should We Then Live, 260
Existentialism and linguistic analysis are both antiphilosophies in that neither gives the basis people need for the answers to the big and fundamental questions. Not only do they not give the answers people need, but each in its own way generates confusion about meaning and values.
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