Cynic

"The Church's One Foundation."

Lines such as "From Heaven he came and sought her" and "with God the Three in One" possibly kept the hymn out of Wayfer song books.

http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/c/h/chofound.htm

Bump.

(Where the heck's Another Dan?)

I couldn’t find onehymn.com, but found http://lutheran-hymnal.com/index.html , which has the hymn. It has a Java link, however, that I cannot copy and paste.

Another site, however, that has the hymn is http://www.ccel.org .

The hymns lyrics appear at http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/luth_hymnal/tlh377.htm

The hymn lyrics in Thomas’s post, as they appear – possibly somewhat bowdlerized -- at the lutheran-hymnal.com and ccel.org sites are:

It was a false, misleading dream

That God His Law had given

That sinners should themselves redeem

And by their works gain heaven.

The Law is but a mirror bright

To bring the inbred sin to light

That lurks within our nature.

Thomas,

I have no idea, but I like the pressing of the pedagogical purpose of the Law in those verses.

Hymns to this point:

“Glorious things of thee are spoken”

http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/g/l/glorious.htm

“Christ is made the sure foundation”

http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/c/m/cmadesur.htm

“Silent night”

http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/s/i/silntnit.htm

“And can it be that I should gain”

http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/c/acanitbe.htm

Is it"And Can it be that I should gain" ? If so, it is popular with Methodist and Baptist, but not found in Lutheran hymnals. Told you I have almost every denominational hymnal and companion(trying to get one from the Salvation Army). Also have Contemporary Praise songbooks such as WOW Worship, Maranatha Praise, Songs for Praise and Worship, Integrity's Worship Together series, plus Lutheran, Episcopalian, and Catholic types/versions of CCM, plus 3rd world global hymnody.

Yes. The hymn writer, as I figure you know, is Charles Wesley.

Thomas,

This one should be far too easy for you.

The second of the stanzas I have included became controversial after the rise of an identifiable kenotic Christology among some mid-19th century Lutheran figures who maintained the Son temporarily set aside his deity when he began his earthly tenure.

Because of a line in the stanza that can be taken in a kenotic sense, there are some who consider the hymn to be, at best, borderline heretical, although I suspect the hymn writer merely got carried away with the emotional impression of those few words and did not adequately consider their implications. Considering the writer used many sound and wonderful words in glorifying the Son of God, it isn’t in me to consider his use of these few poor words any other way.

The hymn writer lived and died before kenotic Christology arose. The old “blue” Trinity Hymnal apparently did not include the hymn at all, while the “red” Trinity Hymnal includes it, but replaces “emptied himself of all but love” with “humbled himself (so great His love!).”

By the way, don’t take my pointing out that an identifiable kenotic Christology arose in some Lutheran circles personally. Presbyterian and other Reformed denominations have seen a number of heretics, apostates, and crackpots.

'Tis mystery all: th' Immortal dies!

Who can explore his strange design?

In vain the firstborn seraph tries

to sound the depths of love divine.

'Tis mercy all! Let earth adore;

let angel minds inquire no more.

'Tis mercy all! Let earth adore;

let angel minds inquire no more.

He left his Father's throne above

(so free, so infinite his grace!),

emptied himself of all but love,

and bled for Adam's helpless race.

'Tis mercy all, immense and free,

for O my God, it found out me!

'Tis mercy all, immense and free,

for O my God, it found out me!

Tune [for those unfamiliar with the hymn): “Sagina” http://cyberhymnal.org/mid/s/a/sagina.mid

Thomas,

From a little I've read about Neale, I find him an intriguing figure. I would like to hear more of the old Latin hymns he translated (particularly some attributed to Ambrose of Milan), but my church uses the Trinity Hymnal, which has a few nice Psalter pieces, but does not seem to have great historical breadth in hymn selection.

(I’m no musician or music critic, but if I had anything to do with editing a hymnal, I would probably include more early church pieces and cut out just about everything written in the last half of the 1800s.)

As for your hymn, it is “Silent Night,” of course.

How nice, Excathedra! I figure getting her $100 back is a significant blessing to the young lady. Way to go!

*****

But in order to teach her a further lesson about the downside of careless living, maybe you could send me door-to-door witnessing in her neighborhood.

Thomas,

I have to disqualify myself, because I didn’t recognize the stanza you posted, and I pasted some of it a search engine. I am familiar with the hymn, but still wouldn’t come up with it from portions of it you have posted.

I thought the thread was dead. After starting it, I wished I had titled it “Name the hymn,” rather that “Name that hymn,” since the latter seems trivializing.

BTW,

I was aware from what I’ve read at www.cyberhymnal.org (formerly a great site, which seems to have become entangled with religious images) that Haydn’s tune, “Austria,” which probably for many years had been used for John Newton’s hymn, also was made use of for a German anthem of which Nazis made use.

IMO, the bastards neither get to confiscate it, nor send it into ruin.

*****

From http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/g/l/glorious.htm

Historical Note: Haydn orig¬in¬al¬ly adapt¬ed Austria for a pa¬tri¬ot¬ic song, Gott, er¬halte Franz, den Kai¬ser, first per¬formed for the em¬per¬or’s birth¬day, February 12, 1797. It is still used as the tune of the Ger¬man song Das Deutsch¬land¬lied. Be¬cause of the as¬so¬ci¬a¬tions the first stan¬za (Deutsch¬land, Deutsch¬land über alles…) de¬vel¬oped with the Nazis, the third stan¬za (Einig¬keit und Recht und Frei¬heit/Für das Deutsche Va¬ter¬land) is the one now used for the Ger¬man na¬tion¬al anthem.

I also found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Lied_der_Deutschen

WAG: Lewis Carroll

Its easier to understand if you think about it as being these peoples' religion. Religious folks (even intelligent ones) will accept all kinds of absurdities (just look at the stories in the Old Testament) and rationalize them to their satisfaction. Right now we even have people posting on this forum that think the earth and all life here is only 6000 years old or some such and that it was all done in 6 days. There's no use arguing with these people I've found.

sudo

Arguing with them, at worst, would seem no worse than debating those true believers who have rejected the “dogma” of mainstream nutritional science to rally around the Atkins Diet.

WordWolf,

If you spend much more time dawdling, there might be a petition going around to have a propeller cap placed on your icon for a full month.

Before and after stent placement:

I've been cleared to go back to the gym (to resume exercising)!!!

I had a myocardial infarction (a heart attack) in April of last year, due to two arterial blockages (one 80% and one 99%). I had a heart attack coming to me, due to my having gained 55 pounds after quitting smoking, due to my not exercising, and due to my having untreated triglyceride levels that were far beyond being merely “high.” Fortunately, the heart attack occurred when I was at home, where I was less than 15 minutes from a hospital where a first class cardiologist extracted a blood clot, inserted two arterial stents, and dispatched me with minimal heart damage from the cath lab.

Some comments on exercise:

The cardiac rehab folks set a specific heart-rate workout range for me, and, after monitoring my heart data during exercise, increased the range in several increments over a period of weeks. Exercise at too slow a heart rate reportedly doesn’t get results, while exercise at too fast a rate yields a risk of falling into the abyss of cardiac arrest. Supposedly, even with minimal heart damage, parts of the heart can go into “hibernation” for some time after an MI. That might have something to do with the protocol of taking some time to bring up the pace and the endurance.

IMO, a heart-rate monitor is nearly a must-have for exercise. The stopping-occasionally-and-checking-your-pulse-while-exercising routine is too occasional, too haphazard. The monitor I use is one by Polar. It has a transmitter unit that goes on as a strap around the chest, and a receiver that looks like a cheap wristwatch. Polar’s chest-strap transmitter also broadcasts to displays on some treadmills that are equipped to receive Polar signals.

http://www.polarusa.com

http://www.polarusa.com/Products/fseries/f...sp?cat=consumer

One of the things that inclined me towards Trinitarianism while I was still involved with TWI was coming to recognize what I later learned is referred to theologically as perichoresis, circumincessio (circumincession), or coinherence.

In John’s gospel, Jesus Christ declares that he is in the Father and that the Father is in him. What is he saying? He is revealing that he and the Father mutually indwell one another. That the Father and the Son are distinct, yet they interpenetrate one another. That they are inseparable.

Is it the Holy Spirit who comes and dwells in Christians? Is it Christ himself abiding in them? Is it God the Father who makes a habitation for himself in them? There are scriptural indications of each of these things, yet there seems to be in Scripture the particular indication of the Holy Spirit being sent by the Father and the Son to indwell Christian believers and glorify the Son who has glorified the Father. With one of the three divine persons, however, are the other two -- all three interpenetrating, dwelling with and in one another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perichoresis

Paul Tillich?

Unitarian is a broad term that can be used to refer to Ebionites, modalists, Arians, Socinians, Jews, Muslims, et al., and a term that is now probably used inappropriately (in the technical sense) where used to refer to UUs. “Jesus Only” folks (e.g. Oneness Pentecostals) also are Unitarian, though they enigmatically attempt to recognize Jesus as a unipersonal deity who is both Father and Son.

Unitarianism, as a theological term, is characterized by the view that God is unipersonal, rather than characterized by a Christological view. Any Unitarian view of God is, nevertheless, necessarily based either upon abject ignorance concerning Christ or upon aberrant, false views about Christ.

Mark Clarke’s tagline about “dream[ing] of a better tomorrow where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned” keeps reminding me of internet spoofs that suggest how various philosophers, authors, politicians, and other public figures might respond to the why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road question.

A number of such spoofs can be found by typing “why did the chicken cross the road” into a search engine. Two examples are http://nac.tamu.edu/x075bb/humor/chicken.txt and http://www.fun-with-english.co.uk/2008/06/...cross-road.html . (I particularly have enjoyed the responses given for Torquemada and Noam Chomsky.)

It is time for a GSC edition that anticipates how various posters whofrequent a fictional ex-cult message board, “The Oil Spill Grill,” might respond to the why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road question.

I, of course, will start:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

jayjay:

The chicken asserts that it crossed the road to spread special knowledge that will render chickens immune to salmonella. I have posted to my web site, however, a pathologist’s report that reveals the chicken is systemically infected with salmonella, along with photographic comparisons that establish that the chicken has stolen from other hens a large number of eggs that she has identified as her own products.

Geriatricsguy:

Why the concern about the chicken’s motive for crossing the road? The chicken provides me with eggs that I like, and that is what is important. It is irrelevant to my plate and my palate why the chicken crossed the road, whether the chicken has laid or stolen her eggs, or what the chicken does independently of her egg-providing with and/or to other chickens.

Benito:

Regardless of whether the chicken crossed the road legally or illegally, the chicken should not be subjected to contempt or de-legitimizing expressions. The chicken should be referred to in media reports simply as a “chicken.” The chicken should not have its chicken-ness diminished by phrases such as “illegal chicken,” nor should it undergo invalidation by being referred to as an “illegally-now-on-the-other-side-of-the-road chicken.” No chicken should experience “asphalt foot” or Bill O’Reilly.

Rochiavelli:

Since the chicken’s crossing of the road was mentioned on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, it is mere opinion that the chicken crossed the road. Opinions are not facts, although political perceptions are reality. The chicken never crossed the road, wingnuts. The chicken’s crossing of the road might have some significant political implications, and I, being very political and a gatekeeper of perception/reality, hereby invalidate as non-fact all purported perceptions of the road, the sides of the road, the crossing, the observer, the motive, and the chicken.

Jorge Eer:

If the chicken is a hen, I don’t have a clue. If it’s a rooster, crossing the road is obviously connected to getting feather.

Mutt USMC RET

SEE ES’s new pamphlet, Twenty-Two Reasons why the Chicken Crossed the Road” leaves no stone unturned in debunking traditional explanations about the chicken and the road, and arrives at the chicken’s real motive.

First author: the first quote has an elitist air, and appears to be from a fellow who has been taken up into the narcissism and pomposity of the artistic caste. In the second quote, there are implications that the author’s speculative abilities can penetrate beyond recorded history and gather a metanarrative that explicates the development of art, science, and religion. I hope the author is not someone I like (e.g. Dostoevsky), unless the author is merely penning pomposity and presumption into a character. My guess: Sigmund Freud.

The second author:

There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience . . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough...

The quote seems familiar, but, of course, its familarity could be due to something that reminds me of another author’s style. Here, I hope the author is not someone I dislike. My guess: I don’t know whether he gave lectures at American universities, but the snappy, confident, intelligent prose reads like it could be G. K. Chesterton’s.

Sounds like Russian angst - Dostoevsky?

Very good. Yes, it's Dostoevsky.

Not a bad guess, but no, it’s not Mark Twain -- or any other American cynic.

Here’s another quote from the author, who is having the narcissistic, criminal protagonist of one of his most well-known works articulate his views about extraordinary personalities having a right to act outside of moral constraints:

Raskolnikov smiled again. He saw the point at once, and knew where they wanted to drive him. He decided to take up the challenge.

"That wasn't quite my contention," he began simply and modestly. "Yet I admit that you have stated it almost correctly; perhaps, if you like, perfectly so." (It almost gave him pleasure to admit this.) "The only difference is that I don't contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In fact, I doubt whether such an argument could be published. I simply hinted that an 'extraordinary' man has the right... that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep... certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity). You say that my article isn't definite; I am ready to make it as clear as I can. Perhaps I am right in thinking you want me to; very well. I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty bound... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my article that all... well, legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop short at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed- often of innocent persons fighting bravely in defence of ancient law- were of use to their cause. It's remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed, of these benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage. In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals- more or less, of course. Otherwise it's hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what they can't submit to, from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it. You see that there is nothing particularly new in all that. The same thing has been printed and read a thousand times before. As for my division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it's somewhat arbitrary, but I don't insist upon exact numbers. I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word. There are, of course, innumerable sub-divisions, but the distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that's their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood- that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It's only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the legal question). There's no need for such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right, they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me- and vive la guerre eternelle- till the New Jerusalem, of course!"

From a literary figure who did not seem to have a rosy view of man:

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!

Jefferson?

Happy Birthday, BB.

Hope you're having a good one.