It is generally accepted — among those who accept Divine Authority — that having heard the Divine Voice is an advantage: that the religious legalist enjoys knowledge and favor above the rest of humankind. But Paul Envoy says that those claiming this advantage may be special mainly in that they are specially cursed among humankind: He writes to the Jews in Rome: “The name of God is defamed among the nations because of you … [who] boast of a Law” — and then most risibly can never keep it.
A “Yearly Meeting” document outlines the wedding practice of the Religious Society of Friends; reading it, I feel quite refreshed and charmed:
“The Friends’ marriage ceremony reflects our belief that the marriage contract is made by the couple themselves, completed and blessed by God. The simple Friendly wedding where the two concerned say their vows … without the help of a third person, is the natural expression of a way of life in which we believe. …
“The marriage itself … takes place in a meeting for worship, in which the bride and groom rise, usually toward the close of the meeting, take each other by the hand, and repeat the following promise …: ‘In the presence of the Lord and before these our Friends, I take thee, —- to be my (wife / husband), promising, with Divine assistance, to be unto thee a loving and faithful (husband / wife) so long as we both shall live.’”
Ah.
But, then, it continues:
“Note: Committees of oversight of marriages are urged to contact local officials [to assure that] the Friends involved are familiar with the relevant statutes and prepared to work within them. Friends should be aware that allowance is made in the statutes of some states, including Ohio, for marriages under the care of Friends without the officiation of a person legally registered to perform marriages.”
Such contrast; such (I will be unfair) cowardice. Reading it, I feel I have taken a blow.
| IV. |
Now we thank God, who always gives us triumph in Christ, and who makes the knowledge of himself pervasive, as though it were a fragrance, through us in every place. For we are, for God, a sweet fragrance of Christ—among them who are saved, and among them who perish:
Among them who perish we are the odor of death—to their death; among them who are saved we are the scent of life—to their life.
And who is equal to these things?
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| III. |
Do we try to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some do, letters of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you?
You are our letter, written in our hearts and readable by all people: for you are said obviously to be the letter of Christ delivered by us—written not with ink but with the Spirit of a living God, engraved not into stone tablets but into the human tablets of the heart.
And this is what we trust God for, through Christ: not that we are capable in ourselves to think anything, but our capability is in God—who has also made us capable to work for the New Promise—which is not of letters, but of spirit; for letters kill, but spirit gives life.
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| II. |
But if the work of a law of death, written and graved into stone tablets, was brilliant (so that Israel could not steadily look at Moses’s face for its brightness), and that brilliance was to be abolished, how is not the work of the spirit more brilliant? For if the work of condemning was brilliant, much more does the work of doing rightly exceed its brilliance: It might be said that the former had no brilliance at all, compared to the glory of the brilliance that exceeds it.
We have such a great hope, and so we use great plainness of speech:
Not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that Israel could not see that his law was to be abolished: This blinded their minds, and to this day the veil remains in their reading of the Old Promise—the veil is upon their hearts.
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| I. |
Now, the Lord is a Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.
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| II. |
We, with open faces seeing as in a mirror the shining image of the Lord, are changed into that image—from brilliance, to brilliance—by the Spirit of the Lord.
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| III. |
And so, since we have this work for the New Promise, we are given mercy and do not faint doing it. And we renounce all the hidden things of dishonesty: we do not act craftily, we do not handle God’s words deceitfully; but, by making the truth obvious, we do commend ourselves—to every person’s conscience, in full sight of God.
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| IV. |
But if our good news is hidden, it is hidden to those who do not believe—whose minds the god of this world has blinded lest the light of the brilliant good news of Christ—who is that mirror of God—should shine, to them.
We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ the Lord. Because God (who once commanded the light to shine out of the darkness) has shined in our hearts, and given us the light of the knowledge of the brilliance of God—in the face of Jesus.
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— An example of a Greek rhetorical style, from Paul Apostle
Exoristos
Porter Doran
Iannes
Epiktetos
Anonymous
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