Morning Prayer and Litany (1662 Book of Common Prayer)

For Psalm 18, Prof. Calvin talks about how David protected himself: devotion to the armor of God’s Law and Testimonies, to wit, the Canon that operated in his days.

ISBE on Exodus: Prof. R. K. Harrison suggests all these pieces written at or shortly after the event or promulgation and within one generation: Decalogue (20.1-17), the Book of the Covenant (20.22-23.33), the Songs of Moses and Miriam, the Tabernacle accounts, and the Priestly and moral sections.

For Genesis 1: Prof. Keil comments on the imago Dei, but it does not go far or in the depth of the Reformed systematicians or Confessions.

For Joshua 21, Joshua has finished the discussion of the land allocations.

For Isaiah 6.1-4, Prof. Henry comments on the Blinding Light of the heavenly throne room but the Utter Darkness away from the LORD.

ISBE on Mark: Dr. R. P. Martin notes that 1/3 of Mark’s Gospel is the Passion and Resurrection story.

For Mathew 5.1ff., Prof. Jamiesson wonderfully comments on the “poor in spirit”—meek, humble, reverential, yet rich in Christ. We would add that meekness does not mean a doormat to a pompous, poo-poo Poohbah.

For Romans, Prof. Hodge improves his performance as he summarizes 2.1-16, to wit, all, irrespective of place, rank or station has been, is, and will be judged by the Just Judge.

For Revelation 14.13-20, Prof. Henry describes the “blessedness” of those “who die in the LORD.” A beautiful rendition and view of the saints in the Church Triumphant.

For Systematic Theology (locus 2), Prof. Hodge fails, again, to assert the supremacy of theology over all other academic disciplines.

For Theology Proper (locus 2), Prof. Reymond opens up the discussion of the Trinity.

For Ecclesiology (locus 6), Prof. Berkhof notes discusses the Church Militant, Church Triumphant, Church Visible and Invisible.

For Apostolic Christianity, Vol. 1 (0-100) Prof. Schaff discusses Jerusalem, holding upwards of a million during Passovers in Jesus’s times.

For Medieval Christianity, Vol. 4 (590-1073), Prof. Schaff continues his colorful description of Mohammed’s young life. Artful.

For the Swiss Reformation Vol. 8 (1519-1605), Prof. Schaff begins the discussion of Peter Viret, pastor and reformer at Lausanne. He participates in the disputation in Oct 1536. Viret, Farel, Calvin, Fabri, Marcourt, and Caroli face off against several priests and monks. Bern and Lausanne decide for the Reformation.

EDT on Process Theology: Dr. Diehl claims “weakness of questionable features” about PT. (1) Identity about a person in process (DPV, God included). (2) Finitude and temporality of God. (3) God’s omnipresence. Weakness or questionable features? And Dr. Lewis, a pitchman for PT, demoting Jesus’s resurrection to an apostolic “hallucination?” The only weakness here is Dr. Diehl’s failure to call it. Much, much more could said. It’s “God on the assembly line and manufacturing plant.” Go for the 2022 model, not that 1925 Ford Model-T version of God.  

For the Creeds of Christendom, Prof. Schaff offers a letter of Quirinius, Letter 79, contemporaneous to Vatican 1. It pictures Bishop Kettler who “flung himself on his knees before the Pope” (Pio Nono or Pius 9). The letter gives a characterization of Pius: “firm and immoveable, smooth and hard as marble, infinitely self-satisfied intellectually, mindless and ignorant, without an understanding of the character of foreign nations, credulous as a man, with reverence for his own person as the organ of the Holy Spirit, an absolutist from head to heel and filled with the thought, `I and none beside me,’ a believer that the Holy Virgin who will indemnify him for the loss of land and subjects by the Infallibility doctrine, and a believer in emanations from St. Peter’s sepulcher.

Wonder what JP2 and B16 meant in the CCC, paragraph 2481, p. 65, to wit: “Boasting or bragging is an offense against the truth.” Fellas, can we talk about Pio Nono as a Proud Poo-Poo-Bah?

1994 CCC: gives a brief on the Scriptures, always “venerated” in the church.

Westminster Larger Catechism 121:

Q. 121. Why is the word Remember set in the beginning of the fourth commandment?
A. The word Remember is set in the beginning of the fourth commandment, partly, because of the great benefit of remembering it, we being thereby helped in our preparation to keep it, and, in keeping it, better to keep all the rest of the commandments, and to continue a thankful remembrance of the two great benefits of creation and redemption, which contain a short abridgment of religion; and partly, because we are very ready to forget it, for that there is less light of nature for it, and yet it restraineth our natural liberty in things at other times lawful; that it cometh but once in seven days, and many worldly businesses come between, and too often take off our minds from thinking of it, either to prepare for it, or to sanctify it; and that Satan with his instruments much labor to blot out the glory, and even the memory of it, to bring in all irreligion and impiety.