Time sanctifies everything, including monarchy

 

 Kings titles commonly begin by force,

Which time wears off and mellows into right.

 

-- John Dryden 

The times, they are not chang'd at all

 A man can hardly pass the streets, without having his ears grated with horrid and blasphemous oaths and curses.

-- John Tillotson 

 

A priest eschews AI confession for disembodying the Gospel, but misses how priests and sacraments started it all

 

The historical Jesus made forgiveness of sins a horizontal matter in a social relation of equals, and a predicate for divine forgiveness before the imminent end of the world foreclosed the opportunity.

The Christ of faith and early Catholicism turned forgiveness of sins into a vertical matter enclosed in a sacrament requiring elite intermediaries to administer it. 

But with a sacrament of confession to a priest the person actually wronged is simply bypassed and forgotten. Is there a better example of disembodying the Gospel? People who look for the origins of gnosticism and individualism should look here! 

The historical Jesus did not teach to confess one's sin to a priest, but to the person who was actually sinned against! Jesus' teaching everywhere stresses horizontal reconciliation without which there can be no vertical reconciliation.

Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

 -- Matthew 5:23f. 

... And forgive us [ἄφες] our debts, as we forgive [ἀφίεμεν] our debtors. ... For if ye forgive [ἀφῆτε] men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you [ἀφήσει]: But if ye forgive [ἀφῆτε] not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive [ἀφήσει] your trespasses.

-- Matthew 6:12, 14f.

So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive [ἀφῆτε] not every one his brother their trespasses.

 -- Matthew 18:35

And when ye stand praying, forgive [ἀφίετε], if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive [ἀφῇ] you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive [ἀφίετε], neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive [ἀφησεὶ] your trespasses.

 -- Mark 11:25f.

Confess your faults one to another . . ..

 -- James 5:16 

Forgiveness [ἄφεσις] is the social imperative of eschatological time, of the fullness of time proclaimed by Jesus the eschatological prophet when the kingdom of God was "at hand".

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance [ἄφεσιν] to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty [ἐν ἀφέσει] them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

-- Luke 4:18f.  

This forgiveness is offered unconditionally, without the "ifs" and conditions for forgiveness of later tradition. And Jesus himself models that meaning of unconditional forgiveness even to the bitter end of his life.

Father forgive [ἄφες] them, for they know not what they do.

-- Luke 23:34

This is why the disciple compelled to walk one mile walks two (Matthew 5:41). This is why the disciple struck on the one cheek offers the other also (Matthew 5:39). This is why the disciple robbed of his coat gives up also his cloke (Matthew 5:40).   

But retaining sins, withholding of forgiveness, would have simply been anathema to the historical Jesus. That just represents the intrusion of business as usual, the mere continuation of profane time, whose time was up. 

  

A Disembodied Gospel

Jim Morin, The Lamp

 

... For Catholics, the ordinary way to receive forgiveness of sins is by individual sacramental confession to a priest. We believe that Christ instituted this sacrament when he said to his apostles, “whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” [John 20:23] But what is the reason which stands behind Christ’s decision to make forgiveness dependent on a direct interaction with a priest? One can give psychological motivations: confessing sins to another person promotes self-examination and sharpens awareness of sin; hearing spoken words of mercy gives experiential knowledge of forgiveness. One can also give ecclesiological reasons: reconciliation with God is simultaneously reconciliation with the Church, and besides, confessors are theologically trained to judge repentance, to resolve moral doubts, to answer spiritual questions, and so on. ...        

The irony of the essay is that this priest really does seem to grasp in his conclusion that "we need real human communion rooted in the love of the Incarnate Word". It just never occurs to him that he might be standing in the way of it, just like AI.

It is not for you to know the times, or, the time is fulfilled?

 

And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

-- Acts 1:7

And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

-- Mark 1:15

Russell Moore safely chooses the Jesus of Acts, not the Jesus of Mark. Almost no one chooses the Jesus of Mark.

Why I Changed My Mind on Bible Prophecy and Politics

Russell Moore, CToday 

 

... I have no idea what will happen in Iran. I have no idea what will happen in the modern state of Israel. I have no idea whether we have 5 more minutes or 45 million more years before the Apocalypse. ... 

When the gales of November come early

 

Does anyone know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours? 

American Academe has a really bad case of truth decay

 

 

 

 

 They think, that whatever is called old must have the decay of time upon it, and truth too were liable to mould and rottenness.

 

-- John Locke

 

 

 

 

A watch's supernumerary power

 As in a watch's fine machine

Though many artful springs are seen,

The added movements which declare

How full the moon, how old the year,

Derive their secondary pow'r

From that which simply points the hour.

 

-- Matthew Prior

Time is an ocean

 

 

 I consider time as an immense ocean, into which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up, many very much shattered and damaged, some quite disjointed and broken into pieces.

 

-- Joseph Addison

"This too shall pass" has its own Anglo-Saxon history, independent of the "Persian"

Come what come may,

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

-- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3

Many of us have heard that the Geat's love for Maethild passed all bounds, that his love robbed him of his sleep.

That went away, this also may.

-- The Lament of Deor, late 10th century Exeter Book

Truth comes like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome

Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome. We all pay an involuntary homage to antiquity. ... To the great majority of mortal eyes, Time sanctifies everything that he does not destroy. 

-- Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, Volume 1 (London: 1841), p. 314. 

There was no TIME for a devout and holy life

 

 

 

 

 

And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

 

-- Luke 14:17

Time Out

Not for him was there ever any waiting for that wisest of all counselors. The old gray head was always a fool, and could never wait for anything.

Not for him at the end of days will grief do its work now, and bring its gift.

Not for him will loss mean standing alone for once, in command of himself. Only now, after all these years, is it plain that he is not a man in full.

It teaches all things as it grows old, but not to this old goat. He changes women like a pair of too tight pants, like a bull answering the rut before the ashes have even grown cold. Like an ever rolling stream, it has born her away. She flies, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.

Some of him is passed on because of you, because you were the same way once, and made the same mistakes. You may yet learn from yours, but he will never really know he made any.

It is said that the truth is the kindest thing we can give another in the end, but it is a pearl as surely trampled on by a certain sort as it is by others redeemed, and treasured, in time.