THE FAITH PURE, BOLD, PRACTICAL
Fear God,
it is the
beginning
of wisdom.
When you
fear only God
you don't
fear man
(and man's
opinion
of you),
which enables
you
to pursue
wisdom.
What are the conditions of admission into Christ's Kingdom? Simply practical recognition of the authority of the sovereign.
- A. A. Hodge
I'm taking a break from watching and exposing the Beast and the system of the Beast to read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Another novel I didn't want to read when I was in my novel-reading stage sometime back there in time...
Started Aug/7/08. Finished Sept/10/08.
Currently on page 542 (of 542).
Five solas, doctrines of grace, covenant of redemption (Covenant Theology is not the servant of infant baptism), Traditional Text, King James Version only; doing the two great commandments of Christ at the practical level (i.e. actually doing them); and recovering by degree the full image of God. This is the foundation I stand on and build upon.
ESSENTIAL I ~ II ~ III ~ IV ~ V ~ VI ~ VII ~ VIII ~ IX ~ X ~ XI ~ XII ~ XIII ~ XIV ~ XV ~ XVI ~ XVII ~ XVIII ~ XIX ~ XX ~ XXI ~ XXII ~ XXIII ~ XXIV ~ XXV ~ XXVI ~ XXVII ~ XXVIII ~ XXIX ~ XXX ~ XXXI ~ XXXII ~ XXXIII ~ XXXIV ~ XXXV ~ XXXVI ~ XXXVII ~ XXXVIII ~ XXXIX ~ XL ~ XLI ~ XLII ~ XLIII ~ XLIV ~ XLV ~ XLVI ~ XLVII ~ XLVIII ~ XLIX ~ L ~ LI ~ LII ~ LIII ~ LIV ~ LV ~ LVI ~ LVII ~ LVIII ~ LIX ~ LX ~ LXI ~ LXII ~ LXIII ~ LXIV ~ LXV ~ LXVI ~ LXVII ~ LXVIII ~ LXIX ~ LXX ~ LXXI ~ LXXII
STICK DRAWINGS & DIAGRAMS 1 (Note on 1) ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5
--Fuse the Word of God into Memory, Will, and Understanding Prayer and Fasting -- (of --) Acute Warring of the Holy Spirit with the carnal spirit -- (storms struggled through; extending limits to glorify God by doing it when it's most difficult) |
(Short Essay On My Reading History)
The practical, experimental level of the faith (the Puritans called it experimental Calvinism) is for those ready to leave off laying the foundation over and over and begin building the house (see Calvin's commentary on Hebrews 6:1).
Psalms 27:11 Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path...
"God examineth with trials, the devil examineth with temptations, the world examineth with persecutions."
- Henry Smith
"The word of God . . . is the light to our paths, the key of the kingdom of heaven, our comfort in affliction, our shield and sword against Satan, the school of all wisdom, the glass wherein we behold God's face, the testimony of his favour, and the only food and nourishment of our souls."
- Geneva translators, 10 April 1560
"When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth - when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us - when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts - when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for - then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men."
- John Owen
"Where the Puritans excelled was at bringing this high view of God
down to the level of ordinary life. One Puritan woman - the wife of a
soldier in Cromwell's army - defined Christianity as
'that universal habit of grace which is wrought in a soul by the
regenerating Spirit of God, whereby the whole creature is designed up
into the Divine will and love, and all its actions designed to the
obedience and glory of its Maker.'
By defining the Christian faith in this way, she was making a
connection between the doctrines of grace and daily experience."
- the Doctrines of Grace,
Boice/Ryken
"Previously, men had looked to the Church for all the trustworthy knowledge of God obtainable, and as well for all the communications of grace accessible. Calvin taught them that neither function has been committed to the Church, but God the Holy Spirit has retained both in His own hands and confers both knowledge of God and communion with God on whom He will."
- B. B. Warfield (from his essay Calvin as a Theologian)
A plain path puritan. That means the faith that is pure, bold, and practical. Five solas. Doctrines of Grace. Covenant of Redemption. Experimental Calvinism. No clericalism, ritualism, formalism, or moralism. The devil's nightmare.
Holy Bible, AV1611
Iliad & Odyssey - Homer
On War - von Clausewitz
Wealth of Nations - Smith
Fourth Way - Ouspensky
Lives - Plutarch
History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
"The fearful are in the forlorn of those that march for hell; the violent and valiant are they which take heaven by force: cowards never won heaven. Say not that thou hast royal blood running in thy veins, and art begotten of God, except thou canst prove thy pedigree by this heroic spirit, to dare to be holy despite men and devils."
- William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour
"As among all the doctrines of the gospel, there is none opposed with more violence and subtlety than that concerning our regeneration by the immediate, powerful, effectual operation of the Holy Spirit of grace; so there is not scarce anything more despised or scorned by many in the world than that any should profess that there hath been such a work of God upon themselves, or on any occasion declare aught of the way and manner whereby it was wrought... yea, the enmity of Cain against Abel was but a branch of this proud and perverse inclination."
- John Owen, A Discourse Concerning The Holy Spirit
The antithesis of vanity is: faith. The antithesis of worldly pride is: repentance. The antithesis of self-will is: descent-of-the-dove God's will.
5 Comments:
I don't 'sit back' and 'enjoy' novels by the way. I hunch over and labor over every sentence and paragraph. Until my eyes are bleeding.
But I must say this one is moving along at a pretty good clip. It's a crime novel afterall.
But, again, I don't look to be entertained. I am just taking in influences. It's fun to go back and read great novels - little complete cosmoses of human nature on display, at their best - when you have some understanding developed...
Crime and Punishment, Part 5, Chapter 1 is striking as another example that 20th century liberals could never have actually read Dostoevsky. In that chapter Dostoevsky gives (mockingly) in microcosm - in the conversation between Dounia's suiter and Lebeziatnikov - every trope and trite 'protest' of the 1960's "sexual revolution", feminism, communes and commune-theory, rebellions from the Mickey Mouse Club, disdain for 1950s-ism, overturning of human nature, everything new that the American baby boomers are so proud of themselves for bringing to the world. And ironically Crime and Punishment was published in 1866.
God help you people of the 2060's...when your generation brings these revolutionary things to the world for the first time...
When I was younger and in the midst of my literature-reading stage I read the Modern Library volume of the short works of Dostoevsky, but much preferred Tolstoy as a novelist/story teller (the inevitable comparison). I said at the time to a person who was actually angry that I was dismissing Dostoevsky: Tolstoy writes about mature people, Dostoevsky writes about immature, self-absorbed in a delinquent, vain way people. And each of the four great novels of D. that I started I couldn't finish.
I'm seeing with Crime and Punishment that my take back then was right on-the-mark. CandP is a bit of a juvenile production. It's almost comical in scenes where one supposes D. wants to portray something close to great suffering or angst or whatever (and D. is a smarter artist than this, in fact I suspect Brothers Karamazov is miles in elevation above CandP as a great novel, but I'm not going to launch into BK...I have to read the Bible seven times complete afterall...)
I'm really struggling to get up enthusiasm to finish CandP. I've got 100 pages to go as I write. But I wanted to finish at least one great Dostoevsky novel, and so I will.
But it really is kind of a novel about a self-absorbed uninteresting vain boy who has a novelist having difficulty portraying his inner life: "Raskolnikov reached for Sonia, he felt gratitude, suddenly he felt revulsion, he could see selfless love in her eyes, he hated her, he drew away, in the hall he felt more calm then he'd felt in days, then a sudden storm of agitation overcame him, he needed to get to his dark, little room, he felt himself drawn against his will to the N. bridge, he felt disgust...joy...delirium...he belittled his environment, but who is he to belittle his environment; he felt a desire to return to Sonya, then he felt a wave of annoyance at the thought, such love, he only knew he must stay away from his mother and sister who were too nice to him..."
OK, D., don't really know where you're going with this production do you?
I suspect what got D. his reputation as a great writer were the little vignettes he included in all his stories and novels that were little absurd, dream-like scenes of craziness or violence, which really turn on the immature artistic mind, and truth be told D. was very good at writing these little scenes. But they are gimmicky; or, maybe in more fairness to D. they are a staple of most bad fiction and drama and film and so forth and so common now that once they are taken off the table as unusual in his novels what is left seems like the padding...
Having said all that I know one always loses when writing off a classic work of literature, and taking for granted aspects that make it great. Dostoevsky, give him credit, was a bit of a prophet, or at least good observer of human types that were to rise to the forefront of history in the 20th century.
He could portray women well, it should be said.
The last 100 pages of this novel are tedious beyond endurance!!!
There is one theme emerging that is intriguing which is Raskolnikov coming inexorably to faith (whether he does or doesn't I don't know yet, but Sonya and even the detective hounding him are leading him there, and the subject of suffering is big in that direction...but...man! get on with it!!!)
I didn't think Raskolnikov was realized very well or completely, but finally, in the very last paragraphs of the novel, his heart is changed.
You can't know without having one to compare with the other, but I'd received advice from an internet correspondent to read Brothers Karamazov if I am going to just read one Dostoevsky novel. Of course that is his ultimate great novel of all his great novels, and now I can see why he said that. Crime and Punishment kind of reads like a bit of a juvenile exercise *at its core* while making up for that with the usual Dostoevsky artistic/novelistic virtues on the side.
When your main character is a self-absorbed, ungrateful, 'hell is other people' overly-intellectual delinquent *all the way to the final paragraphs of the novel* then...wait a minute...maybe I see myself there......no. No, I'm not THAT bad...
These are time-vetted influences, and you just engage them. Novels are not the highest of influences one can engage among the written word, but they do have - as a form - the uniqueness of being little contained cosmoses of human nature and the ways of the world, when they are truly classic works.
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