Over at Faith and Theology, Ben Myers is doing his usual good job of nudging his blog visitirs towards books they havn’t heard of, or would never think of reading – to our loss. This time from a slim volume by Schleiermacher, Two Letters to Dr Lucke (1829), he highlights one of Schleiermacher’s rare one liners!
“[T]he verse John 1:14 is the basic text for all dogmatics, just as it should be for the conduct of the ministry as a whole.” (p. 59)
It’s the biblical reference that makes the statement meaningful let alone remarkable. The eternal Word embodied, incarnation of divine in human, creator in creature, living amongst us, exuding uncoercive glory, overflowing with grace and replete with truth. The basic text for ‘ministry as a whole’? There is an entire curriculum in that one Johannine testimony, "the Word became flesh"; and a lifetime’s vocation living out the meaning of "dwelling amongst" the people we are called to serve; a humbling unreachability for us to bear witness to the glimpsed glory of Christ, except – He is still "full of grace and truth", grace for our emptiness and truth for our evasions.
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