Advent I: A truth too simple for us to grasp

(Reposted from August 2006)

"Two Quotes"

"But let their zeal be according to knowledge. Lay the foundations of their faith....Put earnest, intellectual works into their hands. Let them feel the necessity of bracing up every power of mind they have to gain comprehension of the breadth and the depth of the truths they are called to believe. Let them not grow up with the notion that Christian literature consists of emotional appeals, but that intellect, mind, is on the other side. Supply them with books of calibre to give the intellect something to grapple with––an important consideration, for the danger is, that young people in whom the spiritual life is not yet awakened should feel themselves superior to the vaunted simplicity of Christianity."--Charlotte Mason, Studies in the Formation of Character


"True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful--which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.

"Related to this, it seems to me, is the fact that many Christians do not mean what I mean when I say Christianity is true, or Truth. They are Christians and they believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ's miracles, Christ's substitutionary death, and His coming again. But they stop there with these and other individual truths.

"When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality--the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth--Truth about all of reality. And the holding of that Truth intellectually--and then in some poor way living upon the truth, the Truth of what is--brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal [and educational] results."--Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto.

(Both quoted in For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay.)