Man in God's World: The Faith and Courage to Live - or Die by Helmut Thielicke

Author:Helmut Thielicke [Thielicke, Helmut]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Christianity, Lutheran, Protestant
ISBN: 9780718844912
Google: ztTYDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: ISD LLC
Published: 2016-11-24T00:16:27.001524+00:00

Seek, seek him with all your heart! For God assures us: “You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).

____________________

* Stanza three of hymn by Heinrich Arnold Stockfleth (1690), “Wunderanfang, herrlich Ende,” based on Ps. 77:19. (Trans.)

IX.

FATE AND PROVIDENCE

When we contemplate the suffering and the devastation in this world of ours and ask what God’s will is and what his goals are, cherishing the hope that we shall receive an answer to our question, we find that in the last analysis his purposes are hidden from us. As natural men we never escape the vicious circle of thought in which we ask whether God could not achieve his ends in some, other way and how in a war, for example, he can allow both the sanctuaries and the gin-mills to be reduced to the same hideous ruins. For the same reason the Cross of Christ has always been for disciples and worldlings of all times either a crisis or a manifestation of faith: Could not God have achieved his great goal of reconciliation in some other, less bloody way? Why do we always have to go through blood and tears to reach the divine shore?

These questions lead us directly into the problem of providence and history, which is again a part of the great complex of the doctrine of creation and therefore of the first article of the Creed, which is the basic theme of this book.

Luther’s classical explanation of this first article of the Creed in his Small Catechism begins with the idea that creation is not something in the past, not merely a unique, nonrecurrent act at the beginning, which is concerned only with the ancient figures of Adam and Eve, but rather that creation is an ongoing, constantly recurring event of immediate concern to me. A quick review of his explanation will make this immediately clear.

I believe that God has created me and all that exists; that he has given and still preserves to me my body and soul, with all my limbs and senses, my reason and all the faculties of my mind, together with my raiment, food, home, and family, and all my property; that he daily provides me abundantly with all the necessaries of life, protects me from all danger, and preserves me and guards me against all evil; all of which he does out of pure, paternal, and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or. worthiness in me; for all which I am in duty bound to thank, praise, serve, and obey him. This is most certainly true.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.