God Makes The World Not

... The Divine Knowing - What The Father Knows, And What The Word Says In Response To That Knowing, And What The Spirit Broods Upon Under The Speaking Of The Word - All That Eternal Intellectual Activity Isn't Just Daydreaming. It's The Cause Of Everything That Is. God Doesn't Find Out About Creation; He Knows It Into Being. His Knowing Has Hair On It. It Is An Effective Act. What He Knows, Is. What He Thinks, By The Very Fact Of His Thinking, Jumps From No-thing Into Thing. He Never Thought Of Anything That Wasn't.

Christianity Is Not A Religion. Christianity Is The Proclamation Of The End Of Religion, Not Of A New Religion, Or Even Of The Best Of All Religions. If The Cross Is The Sign Of Anything, It's The Sign That God Has Gone Out Of The Religion Business And Solved All Of The World's Problems Without Requiring A Single Human Being To Do A Single Religious Thing. What The Cross Is Actually A Sign Of Is The Fact That Religion Can't Do A Thing About The World's Problems - That It Never Did Work And It Never Will

Salvation Is Not Some Felicitous State To Which We Can Lift Ourselves By Our Own Bootstraps After The Contemplation Of Sufficiently Good Examples. It Is An Utterly New Creation Into Which We Are Brought By Our Death In Jesus' Death And Our Resurrection In His. It Comes Not Out Of Our Own Best Efforts, However Well-inspired Or Successfully Pursued, But Out Of The Shipwreck Of All Human Efforts Whatsoever.

With Jesus, However, The Device Of Parabolic Utterance Is Used Not To Explain Things To People’s Satisfaction But To Call Attention To The Unsatisfactoriness Of All Their Previous Explanations And Understandings.

Do You Seriously Envision St. Paul Or Calvin Or Luther Opening Bottles Of Welch's Grape Juice In The Sacristy Before The Service? Luther At Least Would Turn Over In His Grave.