Friday, May 10, 2019

Preserve

5.11.19
Garden Gate

Preserve
Goodness
保持良好
Bǎochí liánghǎo
良さを保つ
Yosa o tamotsu
ps119.137+

Your judgments are secure and upright.
The shade of your shelter provides protection from ultraviolet light.

Justice has been decreed in faithfulness.
The path to citizenship has respect for due process.

Those who forget the cost for reform
are like enemies that seek to deform.

Your word has been tested in time.
Conservation is the value that is treated as prime.

I am one person in the greater scheme of things
yet the preservation of goodness gives reason wings.

Justice is the purpose for law that is true.
Augustness is corporate awe for what is due.

Distress has been the cause of trouble,
but progress in process allays scuffle that doubles 
the stress bubble.

Nobility in honor is a reward that lasts.
Grant me knowledge with understanding that I may stand fast.

I write loyalty on the tablet of my heart
to delight in the royalty that will be the habit for my practical art.

The Father loved you before the foundation of the world.
The Son let you see the consequence of pride unfurled.
Spirit builds appreciation for the grass that swirls.

Christ lives in the life of his people.
The grace of Jesus tends to that which is needful.            

The grace shown in the light of this love
commands attention like the sight of a dove.

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ps119:137+
Sadhe Justus es, Domine
You are just, Dominated

137 You are righteous, O Lord,
and upright are your judgments.
138 You have issued your decrees
with justice and in perfect faithfulness.
139 My indignation has consumed me,
because my enemies forget your words.
140 Your word has been tested to the uttermost,
and your servant holds it dear.
141 I am small and of little account,
yet I do not forget your commandments.
142 Your justice is an everlasting justice
and your law is the truth.
143 Trouble and distress have come upon me,
yet your commandments are my delight.
144 The righteousness of your decrees is everlasting;
grant me understanding, that I may live.

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Proverbs 3:3-4

Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you.
Bind them round your neck.
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
You will find favor and good repute
in the sight of God and people.

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Write loyalty on the tablet of your heart.
Delight in your royalty will be the habit for your practical art.

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John 17:24

Father, I desire that those whom you have given me may be where I am to see my glory which you have given because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

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The Father loved you before the foundation of the world.
The Son let you see the consequence of pride unfurled.
Spirit guides appreciation to the grass that swirls.

===================

The World

Johann Arendt
b. Ballenstedt, Germany 12.27.1555
d. Celle, Germany 5.11.1621

Johann Arndt was a German Lutheran theologian who wrote several influential books of devotional Christianity. He is seen as a forerunner of pietism as a movement within Lutheranism that gained strength in the late 17th century.

He was born near Ballenstedt, Germany.

Ballenstedt

Ballenstedt is west of the center of Germany. It is situated at the northern rim of the Harz mountain range. The Harz is hill forest. It is a relatively low mountain range with the highest elevations in Northern Germany. The rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.

Ballenstedt is a stop on the scenic Romanesque Road. The route takes the form of a figure-eight with a northern and a southern loop. The city of Magdeburg is at the center. The route links village churches, monasteries, cathedrals and castles built between 950 and 1250. The buildings represent the emergence of Christianity in this part of Germany.

Romanesque Architecture

The Romanesque architecture can be recognised by the angular shaped structures with the arched windows and doors.

The Ballenstedt citizens were vested with brewing rights by the Ascanian prince Wolfgang of Anhalt-Köthen in 1512. The Ascanians came from the House of Anhalt.

Wolfgang met with Martin Luther at the 1521 Diet of Worms. He became one of the first Protestant rulers in the Holy Roman Empire.

Ballenstedt Abbey was stormed and plundered during the German Peasants' War. The war consisted, like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, of a series of both economic and religious revolts in which peasants and farmers, often supported by Anabaptist clergy, took the lead.

The German Peasants' War was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789. The fighting was at its height in the middle of 1525.

Prince Wolfgang had the monastery secularised in 1525. He chose Ballenstedt as a residence and granted it town privileges in 1543. It received city walls in 1551.

Johann Arendt

Johann was born in Edderitz near Ballenstedt in Anhalt-Köthen.

The Reformation was in full swing. His parents were not satisfied with the training he would get in church schools when he was a young boy. They taught him themselves with special emphasis on the life of Christ in the believer. When he was older they deprived themselves even of basic necessities to put him through school.

Johann was studying medicine and science when he became ill with a painful disease. His physicians gave him no hope for recovery. He vowed at that juncture that if God would heal him, he'd devote his life to the Lord's service. He recovered and kept his word.

He studied in several universities. He was at Helmstedt in 1576 and at Wittenberg in 1577.

He took the side of Melanchthon and the crypto-Calvinists at Wittenberg when the controversy about the Eucharist was at its height. The term crypto-Calvinist described a segment of German members of the Lutheran Church accused of secretly subscribing to Calvinist doctrine in the decades immediately after the death of Martin Luther in 1546.

Martin Luther had published a treatise for the real presence of Christ against the Sacramentarians. The Sacramentarians denied not only the Roman Catholic transubstantiation but also the Lutheran sacramental union. The doctrinal standpoint admit to spiritual, not physical or corporeal presence.

The Calvinist Reformation was spreading across Europe. Calvinists wanted to help Lutherans to give up "remnants of popery", as they saw it. Calvinism had expanded its influence to southern Germany by this time. The work of Martin Bucer was influential. The Peace of Augsburg (1555) had given religious freedom in Germany only to Lutherans. The freedom was not officially extended to Calvinists until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in 1549, had accepted Calvin's much less radical view of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper. The Eucharist was to be more than a sign. Christ was truly present in it and was received by faith. This position was very close to the doctrine of the real presence.

Lutherans were more opposed to the political agenda of the Calvinist reform. The term crypto-Calvinist was against the anti-monarchical democracy. It is symbolically related.

Zwingli's reform was better than Calvin's in the sense that it allowed for greater organization within republican government. Calvin's democracy wouldn't admit to any authority outside the doman of a local council. The council was directly under the dominance of Providence.

Johann continued his studies in Strasbourg under the professor of Hebrew, Johannes Pappus (1549–1610). Pappus was a zealous Lutheran. The crown of his life's work was the forcible suppression of Calvinistic preaching and worship. Pappus had great influence over Arndt.

He studied theology under Simon Sulzer (1508–1585) in Basel. Sulzer was irenic like Philip  Melanchthon, the leader who succeeded Luther. He was a broad-minded divine of Lutheran sympathies whose aim was to reconcile the churches of the Helvetic and Wittenberg confessions.

When Johann had completed his education in the Lutheran universities of Germany (including Wittenberg) and the Reform universities of Switzerland, he accepted a pastorate at Badeborn, Anhalt in 1583.

He had to leave 7 years later. His Lutheran rituals irritated Duke John George, a Calvinist. He was deposed for refusing to remove the pictures from his church and discontinue the use of exorcism at baptism. Anhalt would become Calvinist in 1596.

Johann accepted an open pulpit at Quedlinburg. He lasted there nine years. He was transferred to St Martin's church at Brunswick in 1599. He later worked in Eisleben. He was general superintendent in Celle from 1611 until his death in 1621.

Arndt's fame rests on his writings. These were mainly of a mystical and devotional kind. His work was inspired by St Bernard, Johannes Tauler and Thomas à Kempis. His principal work, Wahres Christentum, i.e. "True Christianity" has been translated into most European languages. It has served as the foundation of many books of devotion, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.

True Christianity

Arndt wrote about the mystical union between the believer and Christ. Christ's life lives in his people.

This focus was intended to correct the purely forensic side of the reformation theology which paid almost exclusive attention to Christ's death as the atonement for sin. He encouraged his contemporaries to worship from the heart for the inward emotional component to reach true Christianity.

Arndt was held in very high repute by the German Pietists. The founder of Pietism, Philipp Jakob Spener, compared him to Plato. His  writing was used as a devotional book for two centuries or more by the Mennonites. He also influenced John Wesley.

Johann Arndt
S. 约翰阿恩特
T.  約翰阿恩特

约  Yue    treaty                約  yaku      promise         Yo     よ     ヨ            Yo  요 yo           
翰  han    writing              翰  kan        letter                han  はん  ハン      han 한 one
阿  A         ah                    阿  a             flatter              An   あ-ん ア-ン     A     아   ah 
恩  en      kindness            恩  on          grace                to     と        ト       leu  르  le       
特  te       special               特  toku      special                                              teu  트  the                                                               
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Christ lives in the life of his people.
The grace of Jesus tends to that which is needful.         

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Arndt Pointed to Pietism - Christianity Today
Wiki Bio Arndt

Jacob Bohme
b. 4.24.1575             
d. 11.17.1624

It is pronounced Bo meh in German. It almost sound like Bomb. Don't yell his name in a crowded theater.

Jakob Böhme was a German philosopher, Christian mystic and Lutheran Protestant theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition. His first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. His name may be spelled Jacob Boehme in contemporary English.

Böhme was born on 24 April 1575 at Alt Seidenberg (now Stary Zawidów, Poland). When he was 14 years old, he was apprenticed to become a shoemaker. He regularly prayed and read the Bible as well as works by visionaries such as Paracelsus, Weigel and Schwenckfeld, although he received no formal education.

He was master of his craft with his own premises in Görlitz by 1599. That same year he married Katharina Kuntzschmann. Together he and Katharina had four sons and two daughters.

Böhme had a number of mystical experiences throughout his youth. His mystic sensibility culminated in a vision in 1600 one day as he focused his attention on the exquisite beauty of a beam of sunlight reflected in a pewter dish. He believed this vision revealed to him the spiritual structure of the world.

It showed the relationship between God and man with respect for the importance of good and evil.
He chose not to speak of this experience openly at the time. He preferred to continue his work and raise a family. Böhme experienced another inner vision in 1610 in which he further understood the unity of the cosmos. He had received his calling to a special vocation from God.

Böhme began to write his first book, Die Morgenroete im Aufgang (The rising of Dawn) 12 years after the vision in 1600. The book was given the name Aurora by a friend. Böhme had originally written the book for himself. It was never completed. A manuscript copy of the unfinished work was loaned to Karl von Ender, a nobleman, who had copies made and began to circulate them.

Böhme wrote "De Tribus Principiis" or "On the Three Principles of Divine Being" in 1619. It took him two years to finish his second book. It was followed by many other treatises all of which were copied by hand and circulated only among friends.

The year 1622 saw Böhme write some short works. All of these were subsequently included in his first published book on New Year's Day in 1624. The title was Weg zu Christo (The Way to Christ).

The publication caused a scandal. It was followed by complaints from the clergy. Böhme was forced into exile in Dresden. He was accepted by the nobility and high clergy. His intellect was also recognized by the professors. He eventually returned home, but he fell terminally ill with a bowel complaint. He died on 17 November 1624.

The chief concern of Böhme's writing was the nature of sin, evil and redemption. It was consistent with Lutheran theology in important regards. Böhme preached that humanity had fallen from a state of divine grace to a state of sin and suffering. God's goal was to restore the world to a state of grace.

There are some serious departures from accepted Lutheran theology. He rejected sola fide (justification by faith alone). A difficulty with his theology is the fact that he had a mystical vision which he reinterpreted and reformulated. God exists without time or space. He regenerates himself through eternity.

Böhme restates the trinity as truly existing but with a novel interpretation. God, the Father is fire. He gives birth to his Son whom Böhme calls light. The Holy Spirit is the living principle or the divine life. Evil is seen as "the disorder, rebellion, perversion of making spirit nature's servant", which is to say a perversion of initial Divine order.

Jacob Bohme
雅各布·博姆
雅各布·博姆

雅 Ya      elegant                     雅  ga         gracious           Ya   や    ヤ           Jei  제이  moth     
各 ge      each                         各  kaku      each                  ko   こ     コ         kob  콥      cob               
布 bu      to announce             布  fu          linen                 bu   ぶ    ブ           Bo    보      bo       
博 Bo      obtain                      博  haku     command          Bo   ぼ-  ボ-          me   메      me     
姆 mu     governess                 姆  mo        wet nurse          mu  む     ム                                                             
--------------------------

The grace shown in the light of love
commands attention like the sight of a dove.

===================

Lectionary Bio Bohme
Wiki Bio Bohme

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