Catechesis: Original Sin

We wanted to show that original sin also included these maladies: ignorance of God, contempt for God, the absence of the fear of and trust in God, and the inability to love God. These are the chief defects of human nature—in conflict especially with the first table of the Decalogue.—Ap II:14.

Catechesis: Original Sin, Apology

This passage (from AC II) testifies that we deny to those conceived and born according to the course of nature not only the act of fearing and trusting God, but also the ability or gifts needed to produce such fear and trust. For we say that those who have been born in this way have concupiscence and are unable to produce true fear and trust in God.—Ap II:3

Catechesis: Intro to Apology (Defense of the Augsburg Confession)

We take no pleasure in discord, nor are we unaware of our danger; the extent of which is evident from the bitter hatred inflaming the opponents. But we cannot surrender truth that is clear and necessary for the church. We believe, therefore, that we must endure difficulties and dangers for the glory of Christ and the good of the church. We trust that God approves our dutiful action, and we hope that posterity will judge us more equitably.—Ap Intro 16

Luther and Lewis

The sun, moon, stars, clouds, air, earth, and water are no longer so pure, and beautiful, and lovely as they were. But on that day all things will be made new and will once more be beautiful as St. Paul says in Romans viii.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1537

To the Materialist things like nations, classes, civilizations must be more important than individuals, because individuals live only seventy-odd years each and the group may last for centuries. But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races, civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 294. 

Luther and Lewis

And what is [the Christians’] offence? Their greatest sin is that they believe in Christ and praise and glorify the unspeakable grace which God has shown in Him to all the world, namely, that He alone can redeem us from sin and death and make us just and blessed, that they believe that human reason cannot of its own free will, its own might and good works prepare itself to receive the grace of God, much less merit eternal life.—Martin Luther, Exposition of 1 Peter

When it succeeds, I think the performers [musicians] are the most enviable of all men; privileged while mortals to honour God like angels, and for a few golden moments, to see spirit and flesh, delight and labour, skill and worship, the natural and the supernatural, all fused into that unity that they would have had before the Fall.—C. S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven, p. 292.

Luther and Lewis

How strange this saying sounds, ‘I die daily.’...But not every man knows and understand what he means, or what this dying is, or how it comes to pass, that he always carries death around his neck and is unceasingly tormented by it so that he feels more of death than of life. And yet at the same time he says he has the honour or glory of eternal life, although he has only a dim feeling of it, and often none at all. Thus there is a constant struggling and striving between life and death, sin and sanctity, a good and an evil conscience, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, faith and doubt; in short God and the devil, heaven and hell.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1532

It would be rash to say that there is any prayer which God never grants. But the strongest candidate is the prayer we might express in the single word encore.And how should Infinite repeat Himself? All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 289.

Luther and Lewis

But now God in His grace maketh us weary and tired of this life and gives us the comfort of a better—that is, that He will soon appear in the clouds with great power and glory, and lift us up out of all our misery to everlasting joy, so that as far as we are concerned nothing better or more to be desired could happen to us.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1531

I am beginning to feel that we need a preliminary act of submission not only towards possible future afflictions but also toward possible future blessings. I know it sounds fantastic; but think it over. It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 288 (Hence, the fruit you are eating is always the best fruit.)

Luther and Lewis

Because we have to live on earth, and so long as it is God’s will, we should eat, drink, woo, plant, build, and have house and home and what God grants, and use them as guests and strangers in a strange land, who know that they must leave all such things behind and take our staff out of this strange land and evil, homeward bound for our true fatherland where there is nothing but security, peace, rest, and joy forevermore.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1531.

It would be even worse to think of those who get what they for as sort of court favourites, people who have influence with the throne. The refused prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is answer enough to that.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 287.

Luther and Lewis

Alas, the blessed hope and the heavenly inheritance are all too often forgotten, but the temporal life and the transitory realm on earth are all too much remembered. This transitory life we have unceasingly before our eyes, we think about it and care for it and are happy in it, but we turn our backs toward the everlasting life.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1531

We are not mere recipients or spectators. We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the work, ‘to wield our little tridents.’ Is this amazing process simply Creation going on before our eyes? This is how (no light matter) God makes something—indeed, makes gods—out of nothing.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 287.

Luther and Lewis

But a Christian, on the other hand, as a new man, is equipped with very different and even contrary thoughts, so that he can be courageous and happy, even when he is passing through hard times; and in his heart he remembers that he possesses a great treasure even though he is poor; he is a powerful prince and lord when he is in prison; and surpassing strong when he is weak and ill, and in highest honour when he is disdained and reviled. Similarly, he will be quickened into newness of life, if he now has to die.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1532

‘God’, said Pascal, ‘instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.’ But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God’s mind—that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, pp. 286, 287.

Luther and Lewis

But our Lord says, Be of good cheer; it will indeed be a terrible sight, but it is not against you but against the devil and the unbelievers. To you salvation is come and the joy of redemption, for which you have so long been sighing and praying, that My kingdom might come to you, cleansing you from all your sins and redeeming you from all evil. And what you have so long been praying for with all your heart shall then be given to you.—Martin Luther, Sermon on Populus Sion, 1544

Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person. Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, and the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from that revelation. What He does is learned from what He is.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 286.

Luther and Lewis

All the Psalms give Christians strength in suffering—that is, they comfort us in our afflictions, so that our backs do not break, but we continue in hope and patience. Thus He lends to all Christians. That is His way. Any who does know that does not know what sort of a king Christ is.—Martin Luther, Sermon upon the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

There are, no doubt, passages in the New Testament which may seem at first sight to promise an invariable granting of our prayers. But that cannot be what they really mean. For in the very heart of the story we meet a glaring instance to the contrary. In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is commended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 284.

Luther and Lewis

If you judge the Church according to reason and outward appearance you are wrong, for you see men who are sinful, weak, afraid, sad, wretched, persecuted, and hunted out of house and home. But when you see that they are baptised, believe in Christ, give evidence of their faith by bearing good fruits, take up their cross with patience and hope, you have seen the truth. That is the true color by which men may know the Christian Church.—Martin Luther, Sermon upon the Beheading of St. John the Baptist.

The essence of a request, as distinct from a compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 283.

Luther and Lewis

For He must have enemies, and here on earth His Kingdom knows no settled peace. In the hereafter, in the life to come, there will be peace; but the Kingdom on this earth shall not know peace.—Martin Luther, Sermons, 1531

Well, here once again, the difficulty comes in thinking that God is progressing along the time line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the timeline. In that case, what we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call ‘today.’ All the days are ‘Now’ for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 281.

Luther and Lewis

And that sword, he says, is the Word of God. For a sword of steel and iron would avail us nothing against the devil; it must be the sword of the Spirit.—Martin Luther, Sermon 1531.

You cannot fit Christ’s earthly life in Palestine into any time-relations with His life as God beyond all space and time. It is really, I suggest, a timeless truth about God that human nature, and the human experience of weakness and ignorance, are somehow included in His whole divine life.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 280.

Luther and Lewis

Such is a Christian heart and such is its appearance and form, as St. Paul says in these words, namely, that from the bottom of his heart he is thrilled and delighted and gives thanks to God that others are coming into the fellowship of the Gospel; and he is full of confidence toward those who have begun to believe and takes their salvation to heart, and rejoices in it as much as in his own salvation and does not know how to thank God enough for it.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1544

God is not hurried along in the time stream of this universe any more than author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 279

Luther and Lewis

For where God through His Word and faith has gathered together a Church, the devil cannot be at peace, and where he cannot achieve her destruction through sectarianism he strikes at her with persecution and violence, so that we must risk our body and life in the fight, and all we have.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1544

People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic. He made them believe Him. They met Him again after they had seen Him killed. And then, after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not before. And when they worked it all out they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 277.

Luther and Lewis

No, my dear man, do not recommend to me peace and unity when thereby God’s Word is lost, for then eternal life and everything else would be lost. In this matter than can be no yielding, nor giving way, nor for love of you or any other person, but everything must yield to the Word, whether it be friend or foe.—Martin Luther, Sermon, 1531.

What man, in his natural condition, has not got, is spiritual life—the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the same word life for both: but if you though that both must therefore be the same sort of thing, that would be like thinking that the ‘greatness’ of space and the ‘greatness’ of God were the same sort of greatness.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 275.

Luther and Lewis

Thus, then, we must act. When they threaten our life we must suffer it and give love for hate and good for evil. But when they attack the Gospel, they attack God’s honour. Then love and patience must end and we must not remain silent, but we must also speak out.—Martin Luther, Sermons 1525

To beget is to become the father of; to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beg something of the same kind as yourself.—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 275.

Luther and Lewis

They [all Christians] fight against the devil who leads the world astray, and there is here on earth no other war than the fight against this seduction. And that is why this war is not waged with armour, sword, pike, or musket, or with bodily or human power, but with the Word alone, as it is written, ‘they overcame him by the word of their testimony.’—Martin Luther, Sermon 1544.

Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to Him?—C. S. Lewis, Business of Heaven, p. 273.