Daniel 7: In the first year
of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he
lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream:
2 I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring
up the great sea, 3 and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different
from one another. … 15 As for me,
Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified
me. 16 I approached one of the
attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would
disclose to me the interpretation of the matter: 17 "As for these four great beasts, four
kings shall arise out of the earth. 18
But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the
kingdom forever—forever and ever."
Year C
All Saints
November 6, 2016
Cross~Wind Ministries
Title: Voices of the Dead
Introduction to Bible
In the Book of Daniel, the character
Daniel usually interprets dreams. In this dream, he must ask for assistance to
understand his dream. At the appropriate time, our passage says, God will right
wrongs. Visions like this in the Bible are the basis for the hope that the
sufferings and injustices of this world will end in reconciliation and peace
with each other and with God. My focus here is what it says about the saints,
the “holy ones,” who shall gladly receive and welcome the rule of God, and therefore
the judgment and transformation it will bring. We are going to read just a few
portions of this vision. This vision declares the beastly character of the
empires of the world. It describes in succession four beasts that represent
empires that existed prior to 167 BC. However, it does not take much study of
history, and of our time, to see that beastly powers are always at work. Political
authority often sees the people of God to be a threat. Most human authority
does not want to allow for allegiance to anything other than itself. Eventually,
one with a human face and voice will come to judge beastly powers. This judge
will actually come to fulfill the hopes and dreams of humanity.
Introduction
From the early days of Christianity, there is a sense that the Church
consists of not only all living believers, but also all who have gone before
us. For example, in Hebrews 12 the author encourages Christians to remember
that a “great cloud of witnesses” surrounds us encouraging us, cheering us on.[1]
A sign on the Winchester cathedral
in England says, as you enter the church, “You are entering a conversation that
began long before you were born and will continue long after you’re dead.” To
be a Christian partly means that we do not have to reinvent the wheel, morally
speaking. We do not have to make up this faith as we go. The saints will teach
us, if we will listen. Moreover, for modern, North American people, it takes a
kind of studied act of humility to think that we actually have something to
learn from the saints.
As Christians, God does not abandon
us to the moment. Our faith is more than "contemporary" (literally:
with the times). We do not invent the faith or the gospel anew in each
generation. The words and lives of the saints guide and encourage. We learn to
think with them. Think of the Christian faith as extended conversation with the
dead, dialogue with the saints.
We like our freedom in America. Sadly,
this has come to mean that we have a strong desire to be free of the past. In the
process, we become slaves of those who happen be walking around right now. Today,
as G. K. Chesterton put it, being a “traditionalist” means a determination not
to automatically dismiss any opinion outright just because he happens to be
your father or mother.[2]
I am
thinking of some fathers and mothers of the faith I have had. A pastor who
loved a line from a poem by Charles Studd:
Only one life, twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will
last.
A SS teacher who carefully and respectfully opened his Bible
to the passage the youth SS class would study that day. A professor who generously
spent time with his student after class and after graduation. I honor such
persons today. I honor my biological parents. I also honor those parents in the
faith.[3]
The
churches always need to be contemporary in the sense that they must minister to
the needs and issues of the time. However, to do so does not mean we minister
“with the times.” We must often minister “against the times.”
You check out the Ten Commandments,
it says that thing about ‘honor your father and mother.’ This is our attempt to
do that in just this small way. Because to be a Christian is to find yourself
moving to a different rhythm, a different beat.
Built right
into Christianity is the courageous determination to be traditionalists, to sit
with the saints, and thus participate in one of the most revolutionary
activities of the church.
Application
This is the
church's conversation with the dead, our continuing dialogue with the saints
about how they have preceded us in this faith. We are not alone. Philosophers have
long recognized in their studies that they are part of a long “great
conversation” that occurs within human thought. We keep learning and re-learning
what great thinkers from the past have said. Science is not like that. You can
know chemistry, biology, and physics by studying the current state of knowledge.
You can be contemporary, with the times, in science and math, and be none the
worse. Such is not true of many areas of human life.
None of us is here, "on our
own;" all of us are indebted to the saints for our faith.
Sometimes
people say that the church is "old fashioned," or stuck in the past,
too traditionalist and archaic. However, we see the past, the history of the
church with God, the testimony of the saints as one way that God still
strengthens us today as a great resource for thinking and living as a
Christian.
Therefore,
today we pause to give thanks for the communion of saints, that great cloud of
witnesses who believed. Many experienced persecution because of their beliefs,
sometimes by a political state and sometimes by other Christians. They passed
on the gospel to us today.
(Here you
might recall some of your congregation's saints who have made your church
possible for them today.)
The philosopher Nietzsche speaks of
going to the underworld and there learning from the dead. He will return there
often to talk with the dead. He must come to terms with past thinkers,
recognizing they will tell him whether he is right or wrong. They will even
discuss the rightness or wrongness of each other.[4]
In a way, that is one of our most fruitful sources of knowledge – conversation
with the dead.
We will
sometimes hear words like this: "Well, it's good to know that there's
someone up there cheering you on down here."
That is not
a bad way of envisioning the communion of saints. Sometimes we have it tough
down here, in the here and now, living a faithful Christian life, serving Jesus
as best we can. God be praised, we are not left to our own devices. The saints
cheer us on.
One person (minister) had an
annoying and painful mouth ulcer, so he went to the neighborhood pharmacy
seeking relief. The young pharmacist said, "Gentian violet, that's what
you need." "Gentian violet? Is that not what my mother gave me for
this when I was a kid? Do you mean to tell me that you medicine people have not
made any further advances in the treatment of mouth ulcers than gentian violet?
Is this traditional remedy all you've got?" "Don't knock traditional remedies,"
she said. "Sometimes they are the best remedies. You're a minister; you of
all people ought to know that." She was right.
Charles Wesley, John’s brother, picks up on this theme in his hymn that
appears in our United Methodist Hymnal as “Come, Let Us Join our Friends
Above,” #709. In the first verse, he offers a wonderful image of the Church
through the ages:
Let saints on earth
unite to sing, with those to glory gone,
for all the servants of our King in earth
and heaven, are one.
On All Saints Sunday,
we remember all those—famous or obscure—who is part of the “communion of
saints” we confess whenever we recite The Apostles’ Creed. We tell the stories
of the saints “to glory gone.”
Alongside the likes of Paul from the New Testament, Augustine, Martin
Luther, and John and Charles Wesley, we tell stories of the grandmother who
took us to church every Sunday. We remember the pastor who prayed with us to
receive Christ into our hearts and lives, prayed with us in the hospital, or
even married us. We remember the neighbor who offered a helping hand when we
needed it. We give thanks for the youth leader who told us Jesus loved us, the Sunday
school teacher who showered us with that love, and the woman in the church who
bought us groceries when we were out of work.
Retelling these stories grounds us in our history. These memories teach
us how God has provided for us through the generosity and sacrifice of those
who have come before us. The stories of the saints encourage us to be all God
has created us to be.[5]
Conclusion
"It ought to be the oldest
things that are taught to the youngest people," quipped G. K. Chesterton
in 1910. If that guarded approach applies anywhere, moral education would seem
to be the place. In learning right from wrong, young people ought to have the
benefit of ideas that have been around for a while. After all, when researchers
experiment with new treatments in medicine, the policy is to ask adult
volunteers, not to round up children. Common sense would seem to suggest a
similarly cautious approach to experiments in teaching values.[6]
Soren Kierkegaard once said that a
saint is someone whose life manages to be more than a "cranny through
which the infinite peeps." The saint lives in two worlds. He or she has a
vision of gladly welcoming the kingdom, thereby loosening the tight grip of
this world, while at the same time receiving this world as a gift and loving it
the way God loves it.[7]
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
and in remembrance and thanksgiving for the saints, all of them. Amen.
Going deeper
The benevolent treatment of the
foreign monarchs in Daniel 1-6 (?) has given way to the apocalyptic nightmare
of the four beast-like empires. The religious crisis precipitated by the reign
of Antiochus IV Epiphanes is the immediate occasion for the material of Daniel
7-12, written in 169-7 BC. The four “revelations” have as their purpose to
console, strengthen, and exhort their coreligionists. The unflinching faith of
these people had its ground in divine power and will to rescue all who trusted
in God and in the providence of God. The conviction is that at the appropriate
time, God will right all wrongs. If things are to be set right, this life and
this history is not often the place where that reconciliation takes place.
Believers have hope in the power of God, who takes human sin seriously and will
restore justice in an often unjust world. These people persevered in this
conviction despite all appearances that God was silent and not at work. The
point of the final visions is that the fourth kingdom is the final kingdom of
world history. For believers, all prophesies of Daniel unfulfilled by the end
of the sabbatical year in early autumn 163 BC were prophesies God will fulfill
in the distant future, when God should see fit to bring the end.
Pannenberg makes the point that the
apocalyptic vision is in relation to history. The view of history that
apocalyptic writers present, in that they also grasp future events before they
occur, requires confirmation by the actual course of the events.[8]
As written, of course, the course of history described in 11:1-39 from the
Persian Empire to Antiochus IV provides the basis for confidence that God will
fulfill the remainder of the prophecies. As we can see in Daniel 7-12 in
particular, this conclusion is highly problematic.
Chapter 7 is a vision of the four
beasts and “the man.” The author writes it between 169 and 167 BC as a
development of the vision in chapter 2 and is the last in time of the four
visions. Someone added the references to the small horn sometime in 167. In
relation to Chapter 2, it replaces the four metals with the four beasts. It
replaces the stone with the Ancient of Days. The reign of God will supplant
human authority. One difference is that God establishes the reign of God in the
people of God. We do not get a hint of persecution in Chapter 2, but it clearly
exists in Chapter 7. Ginsberg has noted that all references to the “small horn”
are later additions to the original text. He identifies the author as the same
author of Chapter 9, for their interest is in limiting the persecution to 3 ½
years. In addition, the Massoretic Text contains a transposition of the bear
and lion, probably by accident.
In Chapter 7, although the dating is
not of historical value, it presents the empires in correct chronological
order. This is the only vision said to come in a dream.
[In
verses 1-3, 17, we find a description of the four beasts from the sea.]
1 In the first year of King Belshazzar of
Babylon, [note that 5:30-31 refers to the death of this king?] Daniel had a dream and visions of his head
as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream: 2 I, Daniel, saw in my vision
by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, [resembles
Genesis 1:2. The surging ocean is typical of the world in which they live.] 3 and four great beasts came up out of the
sea, different from one another. 17
"As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth.[No
need to go to mythology to explain the beasts, for they were beasts in biblical
literature. We can see this in Job 26:12-13 (Rahab the sea monster, the fleeing
snake; Isaiah 27:1, Leviathan the snake that lives in the sea; Isaiah 51:9-11,
Rahab the serpent from the sea; Rev. 13:1, Beast with 7 heads and 10 horns.
Such imagery derives from Canaanite/Ugaritic mythology, in which Baal, the storm
god, defeats Yamm, the sea.]
[In verses 4-6, 12, we have an
account of the first three beasts.]
4 The first was like a lion and had eagles'
wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up
from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human
mind was given to it. [The lion is Babylon. Jeremiah 5:5ff and Habakkuk 2:5
picture it as a devourer of nations. The three fangs symbolize the three kings
known to the author, namely, Nebuchadnezzer, Evil-merodach, and Belshazzar. At
the time of the author, not even a remnant of Babylon was left.] 5 Another beast appeared, a second one, that
looked like a bear. It was raised up on one side, had three tusks in its mouth
among its teeth and was told, "Arise, devour many bodies!" [The
bear is the Medes. The small Syrian bear was less ferocious than the lion. The
one end that rises symbolizes Darius the Mede. The reference to “tusks” could
simply mean large teeth.] 6 After this,
as I watched, another appeared, like a leopard. The beast had four wings of a
bird on its back and four heads; and dominion was given to it. 12 As for the
rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were
prolonged for a season and a time. [The leopard is the Persians. From the
Jewish view, less destruction than the Babylonians. The four heads symbolize
the four kings known to author: Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, and Darius II.
Whereas the kingdom of the first was taken away, the second and third were
granted longer life. Throughout the Greek period, both Medes and Persians had
more or less independent empires.]
[Verses 7, 11b, 19-20a, 23-24a, and
26 concern the fourth beast.]
7
After this I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and
dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring,
breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet. It was different
from all the beasts that preceded it, and it had ten horns. 11b And as I watched, the beast was put to
death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. 19 Then I
desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was different from
all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of
bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped what was left with
its feet; 20a and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, 23 This is
what he said: "As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on
earth that shall be different from all the other kingdoms; it shall devour the
whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. 24a As for the ten
horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after
them. 26 Then the court shall sit in judgment, and his dominion shall be taken
away, to be consumed and totally destroyed.[A fitting description of the
Greek Seleucids. The author believed the tenth king would be the last, as God
destroys the empire. That king was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, though again, there
is some lack of knowledge on the part of the author. The point is that the
Greek empire was worse than the other empires and that the present king would
be the last before Israel would receive its kingdom forever. Note the author
writes after II Maccabees 4:7-8, I Maccabees 1:11-15, 20-23, but before I
Maccabees 1:54-61. Therefore, the main material is from 169-167 BC.]
[Verses 8, 11a, 20b-22, and 24b-25
concern the small horn.]
8 I
was considering the horns, when another horn appeared, a little one coming up
among them; to make room for it, three of the earlier horns were plucked up by
the roots. There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking
arrogantly. 11a I watched then because
of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. 20B and
concerning the other horn, which came up and to make room for which three of
them fell out—the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and
that seemed greater than the others. 21 As I looked, this horn made war with
the holy ones and was prevailing over them, 22 until the Ancient One came; then
judgment was given for the holy ones of the Most High, [In verse 22, we
have one of the few times in the Bible that says that the saints will judge the
world. Another is in I Corinthians 6:2 and Matthew 19:28. Generally, God is the
judge.] and the time arrived when the
holy ones gained possession of the kingdom. 24b This one shall be different
from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. 25 He shall speak words
against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall
attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law; [referring to the
disruption of the cultic calendar in I Maccabees 1:41-64 and the suppression of
traditional Jewish observances in II Maccabees 6:6.] and they shall be given into his power for a time, two times, and half
a time. [The one who added this failed to realize the tenth horn was
Antiochus IV. He describes this horn to be unmistakably him. He sets a time
limit to the persecution as 3 ½ years. It could be symbolic. If literal, it is
wrong, for the persecution was actually three years and eight days. The identity
of the three kings laid low is difficult. The original author believed them to
be successive kings of the Greek empire. However, the one who added these
verses believed they were ten contemporary kings, for Antiochus IV Epiphanes
defeated Ptolemy VI in 169, Ptolemy VII in 168, and Artaxis in 166.]
[In verses 9-10, we have the divine
tribunal.]
9 As I watched, thrones were set in place,
and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the
hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, [I Kings
22:19, Ezekiel 3:22-24, 10:1, I Enoch 14 all refer to the throne of God.] and its wheels were burning fire. 10 A
stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands
served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court
sat in judgment, and the books were opened. [Yahweh is the one who presides
at the heavenly court. The good and bad deeds of people are recorded in the
book. In verse 9, “ancient one” simply means an old man. This scene resolves
the tension through divine judgment.]
[In verses 13-14, 18, and 27, we
have an account of the one in human likeness. This being coming from heaven is
a direct contrast with the beasts from the ocean. It is clearly a symbol of the
saints. It has no messianic meaning, though Jesus refers to it in Mark 14:62,
based upon verse 13. This scene, combined with verses 9-10, resolves the
tension through divine judgment.]
13 As I watched in the night visions, I saw
one like a human being [The traditional interpretation is the Son of Man is
the Messiah. However, the Son of Man refers either to the faithful Jews or to
an angelic being. One might think of Gabriel in 8:15-16, 10:16-18 or Michael in
10:13, 21, 12:1. Note the references to a human voice or form.] coming with the clouds of heaven. And he
came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. 14 To him was given
dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass
away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed. 18 But the holy
ones [the Aramaic term “holy ones” is used only here for Israel. In Daniel
4:10, 14, 20; 8:13 it designates an angelic host, for which see I Enoch 14:22-23.
It represents persecuted Jews. For Irenaeus, the inheritance of the reign of
God is lordship over the earth. For him, the theme of the reign of God is
primarily that the blessings are consummated by those who will inherit them.[9]]
of the Most High shall receive the
kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever." 27 The kingship and dominion and the
greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people
of the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting
kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them." [Karl Barth
opines that what is involved in Messianic expectations is a transcending of
present political experience. He notes that in this passage, the “son of Man”
appearing the clouds shows all the characteristics of a ruler, but the ruler
who makes an end of the world powers of world power as such.[10]
He also says “Son of man” means one who as a human son of Man stands opposed to
the animal representatives of the four world kingdoms that precede his own
kingdom. However, as the Son of Man, he comes before the Ancient of Days as the
conqueror and judge of these four beasts. He rules over the kingdom of God and
is its personification. He considers whether the figure has its basis in Old
Testament enthronement hymns or in Persian myth. He does not think it a
significant decision for him as a theologian to make. For him, interestingly,
the Son of Man in Daniel is a personage equipped with all the marks of the
almighty action of God embodying the reign of God in its victorious coming into
a shaken world.[11]]
[The Son of Man as initially
presented is a Messianic figure. The individual comes from the heavenly world.
God authorizes the individual to rule the world. It receives a collective
interpretation as the saints of Israel. The "one in human likeness"
is not a real individual, but is a symbol of "the holy ones of the Most
High," a title given to the faithful Jews who courageously withstood the
persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The fact that the people of God have a
symbolic reference to a human being, and the empires of the world have a
symbolic reference to beasts, is an image to which we need to listen. The
author chose four horrifying and monstrous beasts as symbols of the four world
empires. He then purposely chose one in human likeness to symbolize the members
of the reign of God. A striking contrast is the result. The "one in human
likeness" did not descend or come from God as if an angel in divine
presence. Rather, the figure ascends to God. God brought the figure into the
presence of God. Faithful Israel will come into divine presence and enjoy
everlasting dominion in holiness, nobility, and grandeur, and thus replace the
depraved, brutal, and vile reign of worldly empires. At the end of the ages,
dominion over the world God hands over to angels. As Pannenberg suggests, this
promise of one coming as a “man” that is unlike earlier world empires expresses
the longing that moves all humanity. For him, only as the fulfillment of the
longings of the people's is Jesus the fulfillment of the eschatological
promises to Israel. Conversely, only in the way in which Jesus fulfills
Israel's eschatological promises in an anticipatory way are the longing that
moves humanity fulfilled in its real sense. He goes on to point out that rarely
are our hopes fulfilled in the ways that we expect. For him, then, Jewish
apocalyptic, and the specific ways in which the early church interpreted them,
will be fulfilled in unexpected ways.[12]]
[Verses 15-16, 28 have an explanation
of the dream.]
15 As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled
within me, and the visions of my head terrified me. 16 I approached one of the
attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would
disclose to me the interpretation of the matter:[Daniel is the interpreter
of dreams in 1-6, but an angel provides the allegorical interpretation for the
dream.] 28 Here the account ends. As for
me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly terrified me, and my face turned pale; but I
kept the matter in my mind.
[The predictions were given in 500's
and discovered 400 years later, in order to give faith to people in the one
genuine prophesy: God will destroy the pagan kingdom that is persecuting the
Jews and then the people of God will take possession of their kingdom.]
[For
Pannenberg, this passage, along with Daniel 2, is part of his proposition that
the ideal of an eschaton or end of history that is both end and completion of
history going back to Jewish apocalyptic. As he explains it, apocalyptic
expected the coming of the reign of God as the end of the preceding sequence of
worldly empires. The associated perspective fixes the background for an
understanding of the message of Jesus concerning the imminence of the coming
reign of God and also of the development of Christian eschatology. However,
under the conditions of thinking today, he admits, the thought that human
history will end has come into question.[13]]
[1] All Saints Day is an opportunity to give
thanks for all those who have gone before us in the faith. It is a time to
celebrate our history, what United Methodists call the tradition of the church.
Joe Iovino at UMC Communicaitons
[2] As G. K. Chesterton said,
one of the difficulties of modernity is that we keep talking about how free we
are. We have freed ourselves from our past. All that does, said Chesterton, is
that we have become slaves to that arrogant oligarchy of those who just happen
to be walking about at this moment.
[3] They
taught me the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. As much
as I may have changed in my life, I do not want that changed. These persons
always treated the Bible with honor and respect. We rarely discussed theories
about the Bible, but we put it at the center of our attempts to understand what
it means to follow Jesus today.
[4] The journey to Hades. I too have been in the
underworld, like Odysseus, and I shall yet return there often; and not only
sheep have I sacrificed to be able to talk with a few of the dead, but I have
not spared my own blood. Four pairs did not deny themselves to me as I sacrificed:
Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and
Schopenhauer. With these I must come to terms when I have long wandered by
myself; they shall tell me whether I am right or wrong; to them I want to
listen when, in the process, they tell each other whether they are right or
wrong. . . . (The Portable Nietzsche,
Walter Kaufmann, ed. & trans. [New York: Penguin Books], p. 66.)
[5] The body of the great
English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy rests in Westminster Abbey, but his
heart shares the grave of his first wife in the yard of the small parish church
of Stinsford, Dorset. It was on a summer's day with the tranquility of rural England
in the air that a man and his wife visited that church to pay their respect to
the memory of Hardy. Next to a series of Hardy family graves, he came upon the
tomb of another poet, Cecil Day Lewis. His stone was inscribed with five lines
of his poem, "Is It Far to Go?"
Shall I be gone long?
For ever and a day.
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say,
Ask my song.
"To whom there
belong?" is a bid to search for eternity through belonging. Because of the
hierarchical organization of nature, each of us belongs with matter around the
universe, with all forms of life around the globe, with all other humans of our
species, and also with different social groups. Each of these organizational
levels -matter, life, the human mind, and society - has its own temporality.
"Ask the stone to say"
is an invitation to explore time in the physical world.
The last line of the verse,
being also its bottom line in a figurative sense, tells us that the ultimate
reference of all inquiries, including that on the nature of time, is humanity,
the measurer and measure of time. Together, they serve as a chart and an
itinerary for our voyage of discovery.
-
J. T. Fraser, TIME the Familiar Stranger, Amherst, MA: The University of
Massachusetts Press, 1987.
[6] - William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell
Right From Wrong: Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education, New
York: Simon & Schuster
[7] Thomas
G. Long builds on the thought by saying that the saint is someone who somehow
manages to live in two worlds. The saint's faith has enabled him or her to
release some of the tight grip by which most people hold on to this world and
then is paradoxically able to receive this world as a gift. Eyes on the
infinite, the saint manages to be thoroughly involved in the finite. The saint
manages to chart his or her life by the stars, but walks on thoroughly solid
earth. (Thomas G. Long, "Preaching in the Middle of a Saintly
Conversation," The Journal of Preachers, Lent 1995, pp. 15-21.)
[8] (Jesus
God and Man, p. 61)
[9] (Adv.
Haer, 5.34.2)
[10] (Church
Dogmatics, I.2 [14.2], p. 99)
[11] (ibid.,
III.2, [43,2], p. 45)
[12] (Jesus
God and Man, p. 207)
[13] (Systematic
Theology, Volume Three, p. 587)
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