Reflections on God … Man … Life
This past Wednesday, while teaching my latest Narnia session at my church, something struck me in a way it hadn’t before. I’m currently presenting and discussing C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair. We’re near the end (one week to go), and as I was reading aloud one of Puddleglum’s statements, the significance of what he said was more meaningful to me than ever. It was in chapter eleven, while the spellbound Prince Rilian is tied to the Silver Chair to… Read more »
What does it mean to be holy? What is Biblical virtue? Can we be holy as God is holy? We’re commanded to be. Some people may misunderstand that. Since we are not God, there is a difference. Charles Finney comments in his Systematic Theology, It is a well-settled and generally admitted truth that increased light increases responsibility, or moral obligation. No creature is bound to will any thing with the intenseness or degree of strength with which God wills it,… Read more »
One reason Charles Finney was so successful as an evangelist was his insistence that all people are accountable for their actions. Finney didn’t allow excuses; in his view, too many people would hide behind a theology that said they couldn’t obey God. He considered that illogical and dangerous to one’s spiritual state. In his Revival Lectures, he is quite blunt: We, as moral agents, have the power to obey God, and are perfectly bound to obey; and the reason that… Read more »
Charles Finney, in his Systematic Theology, makes some statements regarding moral law that many find controversial. As for me, I find them eminently sensible. Here’s what he says: Moral law is no respecter of persons—knows no privileged classes. . . . That which the precept demands must be possible to the subject. That which demands a natural impossibility is not, and cannot be, moral law. The true definition of law excludes the supposition that it can, under any circumstances, demand… Read more »