Ivan Karamazov Predicts Abortion Rights

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? (Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

Why that is exactly what modern Western civilization has staked "women's liberty" on, and therefore the modern future utopia.  Have we Westerners taken on the character of the god we really believe in?

As Jefferson said(?), "The tree of liberty must be nourished with the blood of unborn babies!"

"German Faith" against both Catholicism and Protestantism

It wasn't just Marxism's communist derivations that had no room for competing worldviews.  One of the Kulturkampf letters of the Confessing Church notes the complete lack of, well, Christianity, in the Nazis' "Positive Christianity" as stated in their periodical German Faith, as they sought to destroy the "confessions" or doctrinal centers of gravity for both Catholicism and Protestantism as Weltanschaungs that threatened the Nazi Weltanshauung:

from page 62 of Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936-1939  By Richard Bonney.   The newsletters deplored "the growing deChristianization of public life," the deChristianization of the schools," and "the deChristianization of legislation in the areas of family, marriage and education."*

that religion is a private matter

Is religion a private matter that shouldn't provide political commentary, or should be subject to non-profit status review?   Here is an entry from page 70 of Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity: The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936-1939  By Richard Bonney: about the conflict between the German Confessing Church and Hitler's Reich-church with its German Christianity:

The Sign of Jonah

For some higher criticism scholars, Jesus could not have preached love and forgiveness for the Gentiles, for Romans and Greeks, because he was a Torah-believing Jew who believed in the vengeful God of Elijah.

According to the New Testament canon, Jesus was seen post-resurrection by at most 500 people at one time.  His resurrection does not have near the direct publicity that the Gospel of John attributes to Lazarus.  Why is Jesus so shy of publicity?  Why not show the world?

After saying that an evil generation seeks a sign, Jesus claims that the sign that will be afforded his generation is the sign of the prophet Jonah.   I think most people focus on the obvious connection between Jonah's days and nights in the belly of the whale and the Son of Man's days and nights in the "belly of the earth."  But consider, Jonah's miraculous delivery from death at sea and from being swallowed whole takes place far, far away from the people of Nineveh.  When Jonah preaches to the Gentiles, the only sign is that it would have taken three days and nights in a whale to make a Jew travel to the heart of the enemy and deliver an opportunity at redemption.  Jonah, like a good Torah-believing Jew will set up camp on a hill watching for the certain destruction of Nineveh, and will reprove God when the Ninevans repent:  I was afraid from the beginning that this would happen because of Who You Are.

What then is the sign of the prophet Jonah?

Overlooking Nineveh, Jonah waits above for divine retribution.

sincere milk to grow thereby

Paul and Peter both seem to use the word "logikos" once each.  Peter tells his audience to "desire as newborn infants the sincere milk of the word" (in a popular translation), while Paul uses it to exhort the Roman Christians to respond to the mercies of God with a consecrated life "which is your reasonable service."  Many commentators state that "logikos" tends to convey the idea of "sensible, rational" in koine Greek.   One defense of the "milk of the word" translation is that there are enough meanings attached to "logos" that adjectivizing "logos" requires some context to unravel, as "logos" can mean concept, word, reasoning, idea, etc.

One sense of "logikos" could be what we mean by "natural" when we say that naturally A was followed by outcome B.  It is the sequitur in opposition to the non sequitur.  When one meditates on the mercy of God, as Paul does throughout Romans 11, then naturally one would respond with a submission to God's will, as indicated in Romans 12:1.  It is the sensible and obvious response.

And what about Peter?  In the 2nd chapter of his First Epistle, laying aside all presumptuous conceits, as newborn infants we should desire the guileless, logikon milk, if we have tasted that the Lord is good.   How can you crave the milk if you haven't tasted His goodness?  When you have tasted the goodness, you will crave the guileless milk.  It is the natural, sensible, visceral, obvious, and reasonably expected response.  It is His goodness that draws people to repentance.

One of the first-shall-be-last-last-shall-be-first ironies of the New Covenant is that in order to be mature, one must crave the milk of His goodness.  As with the Corinthians, trying to act like a Big Man only makes you a big baby in the kingdom of God.  But if you want to be a grownup in the kingdom of God, you must become a big baby for the milk of Divine kindness.  The guileless milk, if we desire it, immunizes us against the leaven of divisive self-importance which infected the Corinthian church.

Logikon doesn't need to be a direct reference to the Anointed Logos, to be about the Word.  The milk is certainly the life-giving revelation of His goodness that nourishes and sustains us.  Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds (present tense) from His mouth.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author warns the Messianic Jews that in order to not be derailed from entering the Divine Rest in His goodness, they need the milk of first principles: trust in God and repentance from dead works.  The just shall live by faith, so these are not things we outgrow but things we incorporate into everything that is built on the foundation of grace and trust.

It is in being yoked into Christ's lowliness and gentleness and guilelessness that we heavyladen find rest for our souls.  The Body of Christ grows, Paul tells the Colossians, when we hold fast to the Head of the Body.  We will be fruitful, Jesus tells the Apostles, when we abide in Him as the grape branches  abide in the vine.  The Body is unified and grows, rather than divides, as we realize Who gives increase.

the universalism of Christianity

The only two systems in which the mysteries and the philosophies come together are Hinduism and [Chris]tianity: there you get both Metaphysics and Cult (continuous with the primeval cults).  That is why my first step was to be sure that one or the other of these had the answer.  For the reality can't be one that appeals either only to savages or only to high brows.  Real things are like that (e.g. matter is the first more obvious thing you meet -- milk, chocolates, apples, and also the object of quantum physics).  . . .  But the weakness of Hinduism is that it doesn't really join the two strands.  Unredeemably savage religion goes on in the village: the Hermit philosophises in the forest: and neither really interferes with the other.  It is only [Chris]tianity wh[ich] compels a high brow like me to partake in a ritual blood feast, and also compels a central African convert to attempt an enlightened universal code of ethics.
 - C.S. Lewis 

and more divine humility

The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby at a peasant-woman’s breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorised Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as a great earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ’s life) are of a different sort: miles deeper or further in.
  - C. S. Lewis