Sublime

If Augustine spent half his life battling the heresy of Pelagianism—the pretension that the human will was sufficient to choose its good—it’s because he saw it as the great lie that left people enchained to their dissolute wills. And no one is more Pelagian than we moderns.

To be in sin, and therefore to experience the need for justification, is to be the opposite of a minister. It is pride and self-absorption (incurvatus in se) to

Henry’s new mold was cast from a belief that divine action came not through duty to doctrines and traditions but through positive feelings—Henry was the first to so successfully mix Calvinism with Romanticism.

am heartened when Pavel Florensky calls theology “an empirical science.”

In a very real sense, Western Christianity is Augustinian Christianity.

Don’t worry, be happy. As modern people we have chosen Montaigne over Augustine. We traded pious self-cultivation for undemanding self-esteem. But is love of self really enough to be happy? You know the answer to that, dear reader. And so did Augustine.

ministry. Like any gift, we have truly received it when we are moved to gratitude—not when we feel guilty or deserving. The church can only be the household of ministry by first receiving ministry. We can never start by giving ministry without first receiving ministry, because ministry is bound in the being of God’s self.

so Barth had to start all over, seeking a way to speak of the coming of a transcendent God into the immanent frame of modern life.