(just in case anyone forgot what 'steadfast' means.....)
2 : firm in belief, determination, or adherence
Friday, August 21, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
"Adam, preserved on the way to death and consumed with thirst for life, begets Cain, the murderer. The new thing about Cain, the son of Adam, is that man as sicut deus Cain himself lays violent hands on human life. The man who is not allowed to eat of the tree of life all the more greedily reaches out for the fruit of death, the destruction of life. Only the Creator can destroy life. Cain usurps this ultimate right of the Creator and becomes a murderer. Why does Cain murder? Out of hatred towards God. This hatred is great. Cain is great, he is greater than Adam, for his hatred is greater, and this means that his yearning for life is greater. The story of death stands under the mark of Cain.
Christ on the cross, the murdered Son of God, is the end of the story of Cain, and thus the actual end of the story. This is the last desperate storming of the gate of paradise. And under the flaming sword under the cross, mankind dies. But Christ lives. The stem of the cross becomes the staff of life, and in the midst of the world life is set up anew upon the cursed ground. In the middle of the world the spring of life wells up on the wood of the cross and those who thirst for life are called to this water, and those who have eaten of the wood of this life shall never hunger and thirst again. What a strange paradise is this hill of golgotha, this cross, this blood, this broken body! What a strange tree of life, this tree on which God himself must suffer and die- but it is in fact the Kingdom of Life and of the Resurrection given again by God in grace; it is the opened door of imperishable hope, of waiting and of patience. The tree of life, the cross of Christ, the middle of the fallen and preserved world of God, for us that is the end of the story of paradise."
-dietrich bonhoeffer
Creation and Fall
Christ on the cross, the murdered Son of God, is the end of the story of Cain, and thus the actual end of the story. This is the last desperate storming of the gate of paradise. And under the flaming sword under the cross, mankind dies. But Christ lives. The stem of the cross becomes the staff of life, and in the midst of the world life is set up anew upon the cursed ground. In the middle of the world the spring of life wells up on the wood of the cross and those who thirst for life are called to this water, and those who have eaten of the wood of this life shall never hunger and thirst again. What a strange paradise is this hill of golgotha, this cross, this blood, this broken body! What a strange tree of life, this tree on which God himself must suffer and die- but it is in fact the Kingdom of Life and of the Resurrection given again by God in grace; it is the opened door of imperishable hope, of waiting and of patience. The tree of life, the cross of Christ, the middle of the fallen and preserved world of God, for us that is the end of the story of paradise."
-dietrich bonhoeffer
Creation and Fall
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