*This post was written after the project was complete
How do we experience God? How is he made known to us?
Jonathan Edwards wrestles through these questions in A Divine and Supernatural Light. Edwards believes that man has experiences the light though his own faculties (reason, natural conscious, etc.), but that it is immediately imparted to the soul by God. It’s by these faculties that we experience God. But what are these faculties? How do they come about? Continue reading
What is virtue? How does one practice it? Does virtue measure actions or a person?
One of the primary authorities in Torrey on virtue is Aristotle who examines virtue in Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle, a student of Plato, thought differently about virtues than Plato. Where Plato believed in forms of virtue, Aristotle believed in moderation.
Aristotle describes virtue as “a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency” (II.9). This is a sort of moderation or temperance, where one aims at the middle to achieve the goal. Aristotle applies to all virtues such as courage, generosity, and magnanimity. If courage is the median, then a deficiency of it is called cowardliness and an excess of it is rashness (Book III). For generosity, the deficiency is stinginess and the excess is wastefulness (Book IV). For magnanimity (essentially the virtue of knowing your place in society in relation to honor, or greatness of soul) the deficiency is smallness of soul while the excess is vanity.
Magnanimity is Continue reading
The two authors we spend the most time discussing in Torrey are Plato and Augustine, and rightly so as both have deeply affected Western thought. Much of the development of theology, East and West, has come out of Augustine. I’ve already stressed the importance of Plato in an earlier post, which I’ll be referencing throughout this one.
During my freshmen and sophomore years I wrote two papers on “The Call to Love” which took Plato and connected him to Christ’s command to love. While I am a better writer now, I believe the ideas in it have been the most important and fundamental to my spiritual growth as well as how I interact with the world around me. My thought forms around Plato’s tripartite soul and Christ’s command to love him and love others.
My theory originates from Mark 12:30. Continue reading
The other day I was reading from Our Daily Bread, a short daily devotional, and came across a devotional about running the race. The devotional talked about the annual Iditarod Trail Race in Alaska where sled dog teams traverse 1,049 miles from Anchorage to Nome. While the trek is long (8-15 days), the prize seems small (a cash prize and a new pickup truck). However, as Christians we strive for an imperishable prize, much larger than our efforts.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
I Corinthian 9:24-27
Paul was training himself, practicing self control, in order to win others over for Christ. Yet he also calls us to run the same way. We as Christians are to run for the ultimate prize, eternity with God, and in such a manner that we will attain it. However this race is not to be taken lightly. We must “exercise self control” so that we do “not run aimlessly… as one beating the air.” We need train ourselves for this race, but how?
As I was thinking about preparing ourselves for virtues, I was brought back to one man’s attempt to do it on his own, Continue reading
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