Discontented beings are we

  Of night impatient we demand the day, 

The day arrives, and for the night we pray.

-- Richard Blackmore

Except Jesus the apocalyptic prophet never would have said it, let alone imagined it

 “This is my body; this is my blood” is one of the most philosophically challenging of all human utterances, forcing us to consider the meaning of substance, the modes of presence, the concept of embodiment, the relation of God and creation or heaven and earth, the metaphysics of change, and on and on.

More.

The difference between the Protestant version of Christian nationalism for America and the Catholic one

In the Protestant one at least you'll still be alive to not eat the actual body of the Lord and not drink his actual blood.

 

 

Hysteria characterizes academic literature on Christian nationalism today

 From the story here:

If a conservative Presbyterian who has long argued that the church should stay out of politics tests positive for Christian nationalism, someone could wonder if sociologists need an equivalent to what epidemiologists have in asymptomatic carriers of COVID. Can a class of Christian nationalists exist who have no strong symptoms of this political virus? If so, do they need to be in political isolation? 

It takes a Jesuit lol

 The point of being a Christian isn’t to make more Christians.

Here.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

-- Matthew 28:19f.

When the Son of Man comes in the clouds, it is too late for prayer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thou hast wrapped thyself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. 

-- Lamentations 3:44

Then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory;

-- Matthew 24:30

Impenetrable mysteries

 

 Like buoys, that never sink into the flood,

On learning's surface we but lie and nod.

-- Alexander Pope, The Dunciad

The Lutherans LCMS are having themselves a war over Black with a capital B and white in all lower case

 A Mighty Controversy Is This Lutheran Catechism -- Megan Fowler, Christianity Today

The root of iconoclasm is in The Ten Commandments, and some of its most ardent representatives remain Evangelical Protestants

 The Reformed Protestant view against images of any kind in worship or out is ably presented here, from which this important excerpt: 

Yet another strongly worded evangelical Protestant position against the creation of images of any member of the Trinity is found in the Westminster Larger Catechism, written in 1647. Question 109 asks, “What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?” The catechism answers as follows: “The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind or image or likeness of any creature whatsoever.” Here, one of the most respected and widely used catechisms in Protestant Christianity since the mid-17^th century notes, in no uncertain terms, no member of the Trinity may be represented by any physical or mental image. 

The numbering of the commandments varies, but they begin this way in Exodus 20:3ff.:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 

 

The ideas here are the whole basis of Judaism, and they are the reason why Jews regard the incarnational theology of the Christians as wholly impossible and anathema, and why Muslims came to the same conclusion.

Love endures death

 Richard Feynman's love letter to his dead wife:

 

νυνὶ δὲ μένει πίστις ἐλπίς ἀγάπη ... μείζων δὲ τούτων ἡ ἀγάπη