
After receiving the most recent issue of the Journal of Christian Studies, a friend and journal subscriber asked me, “Which article should I start with?” Maybe you have wondered the same thing. It is difficult to answer, in view of the interests of each reader and the variety of articles and perspectives from the different authors in any given issue.
If I don’t have a clear idea of which article would most interest the inquirer, then I generally advise a reader to begin with the “Editor’s Note,” in which I describe the topic and set the table for the articles that follow. But that’s only a couple of pages. Then what?
Then this. Check out the final section, just before the Contributors page, called “In Other Words.” This regular feature could easily get skipped, but don’t skip this. Here, Todd Hall and I have collected salient quotations from the history of Christian thinkers, usually related to the theme of the particular journal issue. Typically, each quotation is sufficiently substantive on its own to be the subject of an article.
The quotations reflect wisdom from the past, and occasionally some from the present: Origen, Hosius of Cordova, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jacob Arminius, Søren Kierkegaard, Pope Paul VI, Neil Postman, Richard John Neuhaus, and David Bentley Hart have all made appearances so far, as well as so many others. These excerpts repay a close and careful reading, if not also a re-reading. For example, a few excerpts from the latest JCS, Theology of Suffering:
“I am corresponding with all the churches and bidding them all realize that I am voluntarily dying for God—if, that is, you do not interfere. I plead with you, do not do me an unseasonable kindness. Let me be fodder for wild beasts—that is how I can get to God. I am God’s wheat and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts to make a pure loaf for Christ. I would rather that you fawn on the beasts so that they may be my tomb and no scrap of my body be left. Thus, when I have fallen asleep, I shall be a burden to no one. Then I shall be a real disciple of Jesus Christ when the world sees my body no more. Pray Christ for me that by these means I may become God’s sacrifice. I do not give you orders like Peter and Paul. They were apostles: I am a convict. They were at liberty: I am still a slave. But if I suffer, I shall be emancipated by Jesus Christ; and united to him, I shall rise to freedom.”
Ignatius of Antioch, To the Romans
“Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake / To guide the future as He has the past. / Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; / All now mysterious shall be bright at last. / Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know / His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.”
Katharina von Schlegel
“But that the heavy suffering is beneficial—that must be believed; it cannot be seen. Later it perhaps can be seen that it has been beneficial, but in the period of suffering it cannot be seen, and neither can it be heard, even though ever so many people ever so lovingly keep on repeating it: it must be believed….
“Therefore, faith that the heavy suffering is beneficial is far more perfect than the expectation of a happy ending. The happy ending can fail to come, but the believer believes that the suffering is beneficial to him—thus the benefit cannot fail to come—when it is. The believer humanly comprehends how heavy the suffering is, but in faith’s wonder that it is beneficial to him, he devoutly says: It is light. Humanly he says: It is impossible, but he says it again in faith’s wonder that what he humanly cannot understand is beneficial to him. In other words, when sagacity is able to perceive the beneficialness, then faith cannot see God; but when in the dark night of suffering sagacity cannot see a hand-breadth ahead of it, then faith can see God, since faith sees best in the dark.”
Søren Kierkegaard, The Gospel of Sufferings: Christian Discourses
Try sipping on one quotation between each article, or imbibe them all at once. Either way, take time to reflect on these nuggets of wisdom that add theological and historical weight to the preceding articles. I can’t think of a better way to conclude each journal issue.
Keith Stanglin
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