Matthew Henry on Job 13:15

I've made a goal of reading through the whole Old Testament this summer and to distinguish between Law and Gospel as marginal notes. Re-reading Job has been fascinating, there's so much depth to what he says, and the Authorized Version (KJV) that I read is so poetic it's been great. So many of the arguments and questions of Job remain for theologians both clerical and lay. Some passages have confused me, but I've found help in an unlikely source (for me). Matthew Henry was a dissenting minister in Restoration England, I've actually been to many of the places he lived without knowing it. For anyone who knows my sympathies in English History, he would be an unlikely source for me to turn to, but I've found his commentaries incredibly helpful. On Job 13:15 "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him..." Henry wrote beautifully: "Job resolved to cleave to the testimony his own conscience gave of his uprightness. He depended upon God for justification and salvation, the two great things we hope for through Christ. Temporal salvation he little expected, but of his eternal salvation he was very confident; that God would not only be his Saviour to make him happy, but his salvation, in the sight and enjoyment of whom he should be happy. He knew himself not to be a hypocrite, and concluded that he should not be rejected. We should be well pleased with God as a Friend, even when he seems against us as an enemy. We must believe that all shall work for good to us, even when all seems to make against us. We must cleave to God, yea, though we cannot for the present find comfort in him. In a dying hour, we must derive from him living comforts; and this is to trust in him, though he slay us." Perhaps I'll have to be kinder to the Puritans in the future.

Sola Scriptura ; Solo Traditio ; Sola Papa - Three Bad Answers to Some Good Questions

"so I send this commentary to your reverence, not because I think it due and worthy, but because I remember you asked for it and I promised to send it. Whatever your holiness finds half-baked or crude in its pages, please forgive it all the more quickly" - Pope St. Gregory the Great , teaching infallibly on matters of faith and morals ;)

The more of the Church Fathers I read, the less I feel bound to their authority. They seem adamant on telling us NOT to trust them on their own basis. The notion that they had some kind of hidden wisdom apart from Scripture, or were a part of the Word of God, as Papa Benny 16 likes to say, would probably seem blasphemous to them. Certainly the doctrine of justification by faith alone would seem blasphemous to a writer like St. Gregory (though not Chrysostom), but what seems always clear to me is how off course the Western Tradition went after St. Augustine. The Orthodox (I think at the moment) are quite accurate in their assertions that the Latin Tradition of theology is very different from the patristic consensus. If the Protestant Reformation went off course, then it had long precedence from the See of Rome, which changed many things, to the point that the generally acknowledged first tradition of the Church (The Sign of the Cross) was changed by Papal decree by Pope Innocent III. St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Benedict, St. Patrick, all did it the 'wrong' Orthodox way.

This is where you'd normally expect to see me talking about visiting my local Antiochan parish, but no, I don't find the Orthodox way convincing to the point of necessary conversion. I think in a contest of Tradition they'd beat the Romans, but the discrepancies between the two seem to only further my Latin/Catholic notions that Tradition -while important- should not have the last say in matters of faith and morals.

After all, if in the Sacred Tradition of the Church, the Pope tells us not to trust his dogmatic writing if it is in error, then what are we to use as the standard? Answering that question is fraught with problems, however I've chosen Sacred Scripture, and used a hearty textual realism to defend myself from the textual relativist claims of Rome. Everyone must make a choice though, and thus everyone must become a heretic (one who chooses). Though the heresies of today are not like those of Old. To be a Baptist is heretical, true enough, but even Baptists can sign the formula of Chalcedon, and assent to the Council of Ephesus (451) which in a sense makes them more 'Traditional', 'Catholic', and 'Orthodox' than the Coptic Church and all its bishops. It seems to be a realm where 'you pay your money and you take your chance' as an old pastor used to say.

You could 'pan' any of the Fathers for 'Confessional gold' and come up with some argument in your favour. So perhaps the Orthodox would use the initial quotation to attack Papal Supremacy and show the equality of bishops. Roman Catholics might look use this passage: "[Job's friends] speak to Job as if on the Lord's behalf, but they are not approved by the Lord; for all heretics struggle to defend God but really offend him." to show how Orthodox and Protestant heretics/Christians are in wanton disobedience to the papacy. Finally, Protestants who look for a self-verifying canon of Scripture against Catholic-Orthodox apologetics could read: "The authority of this book is made clear from the unshakeable sacred page itself." and shout Aha! Our Bible has been vindicated against the traditions of men.

To end things very Lutheran-ly, I'd say all of these modes are theologies of glory. There are many mysterious things which we do not perceive while we 'see through a glass darkly', but the fundamental character and substance of God remains apparent to Christians. Faith, Hope, and Charity are found in every communion, and in these, as in Christ we are to abide. For my part, I look at myself knowing that like Job's sons 'perhaps I have sinned in my heart'. I know I am a sinner, but I trust in the fact that Christ has christened, confirmed, confessed, and communed me Himself. That all my sins are his and all his righteousness is mine. I glory not in my own theological and historical polemics but in my Saviour and his cross.

I found most illuminating, a passage of St. Gregory's on the typology of Jobs daughters as weaker Christians (which is a horribly misogynistic spiritual reading perhaps, but still useful).

"And three daughters were born to him. (1.2)
"What shall we take the daughters for, if not the flock of less-gifted faithful? Even if they do not stay the course for the perfection of good works by strength and virtue, they cling tenaciously to the faith they know in the trinity." XIV. 20



May the Holy Spirit, the only author of faith, who proceeds from the Father, through the Son, make us all tenaciously cling to whatever faith has been graciously given us, and trust in the Holy Trinity in every trouble.

Mistakes & Troubles of the True Church

Theologians often talk about the marks of the True Church (unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity), however in re-reading the Scriptures, I've found a via negativa to answer this question that is actually quite meaningful.

Rather than simply look for positives, what are the negative attributes that Holy Writ ascribes to the True Church.


1. St. Paul asks the rhetorical question in Romans "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" (6:1). That's a question people should ask if you're preaching the Word rightly. Would anyone ask that of Aquinas or even Augustine? Obviously not. In Augustinian and Thomist soteriology, grace is lost the second one willfully sins. There is no room for sin and grace together, an utter repudiation of simul iust et peccator.

2. Do philosophers think your message is stupid? In Acts 17, St. Paul was mocked and called a babbler for his preaching. His message he called "foolishness" to those who were perishing and the Greeks (1 Cor 1). Is your Gospel foolish or is it sophistical and philosophically brilliant?

3. Beware false teachers and false Christs. CONSTANTLY throughout the New Testament Christ and the Apostles are warning about false teachers. If they asserted the indefectibility of the Church (Matt. 16) it was perhaps the most limitted type one could imagine (think Noah, or St. Athanasius). Otherwise, why would they warn so often about it?

4. Winston Churchill once said having enemies was a good quality because it means you stand for something. Christ said his true disciples would be hated by the world. This probably doesn't help anyone, as each Christian group is hated by any number of the other Christian groups let alone the world hating all Christians. Nonetheless hatred seems to be a mark of the true church.

Perhaps another useful ecclesiological tool would be to see the marks of a false church in the Bible.

Calvinistic St. Cyril

"Even Simon Magus once came to the Laver : he was baptized, but was not enlightened; and though he dipped his body in water, he enlightened not his heart with the Spirit: his body went down and came up, but his soul was not buried with Christ, nor raised with Him." - St. Cyril's Prologue to the Catechetical Lectures

It seems here that St. Cyril is teaching the same thing that John Calvin and St. Augustine taught, that baptized unelect are only baptized into God's wrath and not into salvation.

This is opposed to the Lutheran & Roman Catholic doctrine that the sacraments work objectively not subjectively.

The other day a worried Lutheran seminarian read aloud to me from St. Augustine's City of God, where the gracious doctor said that the prayers of the reprobate are not heard by God, which seems to contradict the scriptural promises of Jesus.

More and more I'm seeing the 'consensus' of the fathers to be a mix of great insights and average mistakes. Everything from pre-millenialism, to pelagianism (a lot of this), to Calvinism are common.

My new modus operandi for patristics is that of Pope St. Gregory the Great who told young St. Augustine of Canterbury: "For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things" - or reworded in this case: 'doctrine is not to be accepted for the sake of the fathers, but the fathers for the sake of good doctrine'.

Thank God we have the divine Scriptures which St. Cyril calls, "the Constitution" of the Church (Prologue to The Catechetical Lectures, 4).

Caius Fragment from Eusebius

Caius was a Roman presbyter some time in the 3rd century. His fragments can be seen here

"The sacred Scriptures they have boldly falsified, and the canons of the ancient faith they have rejected, and Christ they have ignored, not inquiring what the sacred Scriptures say, but laboriously seeking to discover what form of syllogism might be contrived to establish their impiety. And should any one lay before them a word of divine Scripture, they examine whether it will make a connected or disjoined form of syllogism; and leaving the Holy Scriptures of God, they study geometry, as men who are of the earth, and speak of the earth, and are ignorant of Him who comes from above. Euclid, indeed, is laboriously measured by some of them. and Aristotle and Theophrastus are admired; and Galen, forsooth, is perhaps even worshipped by some of them. But as to those men who abuse the arts of the unbelievers to establish their own heretical doctrine, and by the craft of the impious adulterate the simple faith of the divine Scriptures, what need is there to say that these are not near the faith? For this reason is it they have boldly laid their hands upon the divine Scriptures, alleging that they have corrected them.... For either they do not believe that the divine Scriptures were dictated by the Holy Spirit, and are thus infidels; or they think themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and what are they then but demoniacs? Nor can they deny that the crime is theirs, when the copies have been written with their own hand; nor did they receive such copies of the Scriptures from those by whom they were first instructed in the faith, and they cannot produce copies from which these were transcribed. And some of them did not even think it worth while to corrupt them; but simply denying the law and the prophets for the sake of their lawless and impious doctrine, trader pretexts of grace, they sunk down to the lowest abyss of perdition.

Heidelberg #1

Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Ephesians

"Think, where He sits? Above all principality and power. And with whom it is that you sit? With Him. And who you are? One dead, by nature a child of wrath. And what good have you done? None. Truly now it is high time to exclaim, "Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!""

Lutheran Satire of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeJZAb-kS-c&list=UU2-3Cf7Hw10b3NW05p2Z7IA&index=4&feature=plcp

This is good except for the cheap shot at the end about the sale of indulgences.

An Inspiring Figure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gilmour_%28missionary%29

Quote that Rad-Trads hate/love?

"In reading the Schema on the Liturgy, and in listening to the debate on it, I could not help thinking that, if the Church of Rome went on improving the Missal and Breviary long enough, they would one day invent the Book of Common Prayer."- Anglican Bishop of Ripon, John Moorman, an observer of the Second Vatican Council (1962-5)

That Old Liturgical Latitudinarian, Pope St. Gregory the Great

"You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman church in which you remember you were trained. But if you have found anything in either the Roman or the Gallican or any other church which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, I am willing that you carefully make choice of the same and diligently teach the English church, which is as yet new in the faith, whatever you can gather from the several churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places but places for the sake of good things. Select, therefore, from every church the things that are devout religious and upright, and when you have, as it were, combined them into one body, let the minds of the English be trained therein." (to St. Augustine of Canterbury) in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the British Isles

Great Passage From Ruth

Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. Then she said, Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord; for that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens. -Ruth 2:10-13

Augustine Quotation Stolen from Pr. Weedon's Blog

"But as I do not wish my reader to be bound down to me, so I do not wish my critic to be bound to himself. Let not the pious reader love me more than the catholic faith. Let not the critic love himself more than the catholic truth. I say to the pious reader, do not be willing to accept my writings as canonical Scriptures. But when you have discovered in the Scriptures what you did not previously believe, believe it unhesitatingly. While in my writings, unless you have understood certainly what you did not before hold as certain, be unwilling to hold it fast. I say to the critic, do not be wiling to amen my writings by your own opinion or argument, but [amend them] from the divine text or by unanswerable reason. If you apprehend anything of truth in them, its being there does not make it mine, but by understanding and loving it, let it be both yours and mine. But if you detect any falsehood, though it had once been mine in that I was guilty of error, now by avoiding it let it be neither yours nor mine." -St. Augustine "De Trinitate" 3.1

Read it for yourself, here

Early Gallicanism - Arnulf of Reims

"a very monster of iniquity, reeking with the blood of his predecessor, mounts the throne of Peter. True, he [Pope Boniface VII] is expelled and condemned; but only to return again... What would you say of such a one, when you behold him sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold? Must he not be the 'Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God'? Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity; he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek counsel.

But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope; nor even absolutely, and on all occasions, to a good one. Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for gold. Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own plenary prerogative and judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests assembled in council in different parts of the world... Why should he not be subject in judgment to those who, though lowest in place, are his superiors in virtue and in wisdom? Yea, not even he, the prince of the apostles, declined the rebuke of Paul, though his inferior in place, and, saith the great pope Gregory, 'if a bishop be in fault, I know not any one such who is not subject to the holy see; but if faultless, let every one understand that he is the equal of the Roman pontiff himself, and as well qualified as he to give judgment in any matter.'" - Abp. Arnulf of Reims A.D. 991

This speech was given in a Council which Pope John XV naturally declared null and void. Far be it from me to say this was an eschatological interpretation or that this and not Papal Supremacy was the majority opinion. However, it does seem to show how traditional and early Gallicanism had developed against Papal Supremacy.

"You Alone Are The Holy One"

"The work of the Redeemer is a perfect work: nothing can be added to it, and nothing must be taken away from it. It is everlasting in its duration and efficacy; upon this the eye of faith should be invariably fixed, and from thence comfort and support in every state is to be drawn. Christ's blood is a constant propitiation, his righteousness is a perfect covering; to these reader, have daily recourse for cleansing and recommendation before God; by these you may silence all the accusations of Satan, all the clamours of conscience, all the threatenings of the law; for in Christ the believer is complete, and here may he safely rest in his dullest and heaviest moments." - Carl Heinrich von Bogatzky

First Lutheran Confession Today: 'All May, Some Should, None Must'

You should speak to the confessor thus: Reverend and dear sir, I beseech you to hear my confession, and to pronounce forgiveness to me for God's sake.

Proceed!

I, a poor sinner, confess myself before God guilty of all sins; especially I confess

(insert sins here)

Then shall the confessor say:

God be merciful to thee and strengthen thy faith! Amen.

Furthermore:

Dost thou believe that my forgiveness is God's forgiveness?

Answer.

Yes, dear sir.

Then let him say:

As thou believest, so be it done unto thee. And by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive thee thy sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Depart in peace.

But those who have great burdens upon their consciences, or are distressed and tempted, the confessor will know how to comfort and to encourage to faith with more passages of Scripture. This is to be merely a general form of confession for the unlearned.

* These questions may not have been composed by Luther himself but reflect his teachings and were included in editions of the Small Catechism during his lifetime.

Ruminations on Roger Scruton's Essay: "What Losing Faith Really Means"

Paying Attention to the Sky has posted an essay by Roger Scruton

As a person of vastly inferior intellect to Dr. Scruton, and as an ally to many of his causes, I wish to offer not so much a critique as my own perspective on the matter.

Two starting quotations:

"Husserl insists, the perspectival givenness of physical objects does not merely reflect our finite intellect or the physical makeup of our sensory apparatus. It is, on the contrary, rooted in the things themselves. As Husserl writes, even God, as the ideal of absolute knowledge, would have to experience physical objects in the same perspectival manner. Otherwise it would no longer be physical objects that he was experiencing." - Dan Zahavi "Husserl's Phenomenology" p 34

"A man must do his own believing as he must do his own dying" - Martin Luther as translated by Jaroslav Pelikan in "Luther and the Dawn of the Modern Era" p.5 (Pelikan goes on to attack the interpretation of this phrase that I will use)

Faith is an immensely personal thing. It is intensely uncool in academic settings to be a fan of the individual, as that is perceived even by those on the left as being crassly modern. Obviously, hyper-individualism has been problematic, but after seeing its excesses and those of the hyper-conformists (confessionalistas?) as I'd call them, I have to say I prefer St. Augustine to Pope Boniface VIII.

This is because, in my experience, when push comes to shove, at the root of all Western Christendom, lies the Confessions of St. Augustine. Perhaps the most individualistic propagation of theology ever, that spawned western introspection and was itself a reflection of Socrates' own struggles with his beliefs philosophy.

There was a phrase of medieval soteriology which went as follows: in fine salvus consistet - meaning One's salvation consists in the end (meaning the last moment of one's life).

Graham Greene's novels "The Heart of the Matter", and "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh exemplify this in Catholic thought. In both cases it is the individual in the last moment who decides their salvation or damnation. I don't think there are funerals (even in the harshest Rad-Trad Catholic churches) for those knowingly outside a state of grace, or who had excommunicated themselves (perhaps divorcees), where you'd hear a pious theologian tell the bereaved that because their loved one was outside the visible bonds of the Church they were burning in Hell (and this was to be known with dogmatic certainty). Divorcees, after all, now receive Catholic funderals, and canon law allows priests to say masses for "anyone, living or dead" (Canon 901).

In "Brighton Rock" Graham Greene has a murderer constantly singing the Agnus Dei to himself in the car, and continually repeating to himself that 'between the horse and the stirrup' - in that last moment of death - there can be true repentance. Greene himself wrote that perhaps no one loses his faith, it merely appears under another mask. And similarly, Greene placed into the mouth of the priest at the end of "Brighton Rock" a great speech about Charles Peguy who is tacitly acknowledged as a saint though he never received any of the sacraments of the Church. Simone Weil is another figure Catholics particularly admire who was in the same boat.

All of this in the end, is because whether they want to admit it or not, all Christians know that faith is a matter of the heart. The elect after all, are "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). It's not visible or precisely measurable by human terms. In Catholicism interior contrition (true sorrow for sins) alone can save a person without any of the sacraments. In Protestantism interior saving faith alone (trust in Christ's meritorious death on the cross) can save a person, without any visible confession of it. As much as churches like to categorize faith by Confirmations, Confessions, and outward signs, it is all meaningless (as they admit) without the personal, the individual, and the interior. This is perhaps best displayed in Robert Bolt's classic work "A Man For All Seasons" about Sir/St. Thomas More who refused the act of Supremacy based on his personal religious convictions.

While churches, confessions, creeds, and confirmations all aim to give human guages to that invisible divine faith, they must always be remembered as provisional rather than definitive. St. Joan of Arc after all was condemned as a heretic and burnt at the stake only to later by canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint. As my father's friend liked to say "the heart has no dipstick".

If one wishes to guard against individuality I much prefer the way Luther proposed, when he wrote that:
"This is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive."

By resting in the promises of God, one avoids the proud arrogance of individualism, but places oneself in relation to the one individual who ties everything together. As Peter Kreeft liked to say, Christ is the center of Catholicism, and Christ is the center of Protestantism, and ecumenism must work outward from this unity. The Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, liked to say that the crucifix is the focal point of every Catholic church for a reason. To quote Chesterton: the cross is the crux of the matter.

In Christ we find unity, and become a part of the True Israel. Elijah could not break bread with the rest of Israel when he was off in the wilderness, but God fed him by ravens. Let us not be too hasty in our professions of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, to forget that as with Elijah, many scraps fall from the table of the feast of Abraham. Shame on us, if we reduce the invisible to the visible communion.

Thus faith can remain even in the hardest of hearts. Faith can do this because it is a resilient thing. It moves mountains. It has toppled empires. The righteous shall live by faith, even faith, as small as a mustard seed, and even the faith in the confession "I believe Lord, help thou mine unbelief".

An Old Lutheran Ecumenical Statement on Eastern Orthodoxy

"It was to destroy this sort of religion that Jesus Christ suffered himself to be nailed to the cross, and now we find it re-established under his name..." - Adolf von Harnack

Not Really Theology But...

I finished my last history paper of the semester. It was on English newspaper coverage of Anti-Clericalism in the Spanish Civil War, and about how reports of anti-clerical violence were used to smear Communism by Fascists, but also how Christian Socialists perceived the Spanish Roman Catholic Church's siding with the Nationalists as in a sense anti-clerical in that it attacked the laity who were in one sense a royal priesthood.

It's been a good 5 years writing essays on Catholics, and that was my last one. From now on I guess I'll write about Protestants, which is awkward because I really haven't dealt with them in a while... Or I could just continue writing about Catholics. Apparently there are Lutheran and Protestant historians of (Roman) Catholicism. Leopold von Ranke and J.N.D. Kelly I can think of from the top of my head.

We'll see...

Excerpts of The Delicious Destruction of Thomism by Paul Ricoeur

""repentance" belongs to the same thematic universe as trnsgression and merit, and it is no accident that it was precisely Judaism that laid emphasis on this concept. For "repentance" signifies that "return" to God, freely chosen, is always open to man; and the example of great and impious men who have "returned" to the Eternal attests that it is always possible for a man to "change his way." This emphasis on repentance is in conformity with the intepretation of "evil inclination" as occasion of sin and not as radical evil. The ethical universe of Pharisaism is already that of Pelagius: no great contrasts, as in Paul, Augustine, and Luther, between radical evil and radical deliverance, but a slow and progressive process of salvation, in which "pardon" is not lacking to "repentance," grace to the good will." - Paul Ricoeur "The Symbolism of Evil" (131)

"justice, although it is extrinsic to a man as far as its origin is concerned, has become something that dwells within him, as far as its operation is concerned; the "future" justice is already imputed to the man who believes; and so the man who is "declared" just is "made" just, really and vitally. Thus there is no ground for opposing the forensic and eschatological sense of justice to its immanent and present sense: for Paul the first is the cause of the second, but the second is the full manifestation of the first; the paradox is that the acme of outwardness is the acme of inwardness, of that inwardness that Paul calls new creature, or liberty. Liberty, considered from the point of view of last things, is not the power of hesitating and choosing between contraries, nor is it effort, good will, responsibility. For St. Paul, as for Hegel, it is being at home with oneself, in the whole, in the recapitulation of Christ." - Paul Ricoeur "The Symbolism of Evil" (148)

"Such is the symbol in the light of which the final experience of fault is perceived as something in the past that one has got beyond. It is because "justification" is the present which dominates the backward look on sin, that the supreme sin consists, in the last resort, in the vain attempt to justify oneself... Justification by faith, then, is what makes manifest the failure of justification by the law, and the failure of the justice of works is what reveals the unity of the entire domain of sin." - Paul Ricoeur "The Symbolism of Evil" (148)

"evil is not nothing; it is not a simple lack, a simple absence of order; it is the power of darkness; it is posited; in this sense it is something to be "taken way": "I am the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world," says the interior Master. Hence, every reduction of evil to a simple lack of being remains outside the symbolism of defilement, which is complete only when defilement has become guilt." - Paul Ricoeur "The Symbolism of Evil" (155)