Sexy Brains: Gerhard O. Forde

I used to check this blog periodically by this brilliant and funny woman (I forget her name, but she's quite famous in the blogosphere) who had posts every now and then titled "Sexiest Brain Alive" or something along those lines.  

I'm reading Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification (I know...) for my Dad's class and it's actually really really awesomely interesting.  At least the first chapter is.  It's the Lutheran view on sanctification* vs. justification** by Gerhard O. Forde.  I think I might just become a Lutheran because I like the way this guy thinks.  I am very easily seduced into views I don't necessarily agree completely with when someone is artful in their logic or thinking.

Forgive the typos.

"Even under the best of conditions, talk about sanctification in any way apart from justification is dangerous.  It has a tendency to become a strictly verbal exercise in which one says obligatory things to show one is 'serious about it' - but little comes of the discussion.  Perhaps one feels sanctified just by talking impressively about it.  The result of such talk is what I like to call 'the magnificent hot-air balloon syndrome.'  One talks impressively about sanctification, and we all get beguiled  by the rhetoric and agree.  'Yes, of course, we all ought to do that,' and the balloon begins to rise into the religious stratosphere solely on the strength of its own hot air.  It is something like bragging about prowess in love and sex.  It is mostly hot air and rarely accomplishes anything more for the hearers than rousing anxiety or creating the illusion that they somehow can participate vicariously.  We got started in that direction even in the above exercise in this thesis when we talked about how sanctification is 'spontaneous,' 'free,' 'self-forgetful,' 'self-giving,' 'uncalculating' and all those nice things.  Dangerous talk.  Dangerous because, like love, none of those things can actually be produced by us in any way.  Theology indeed obligates us to talk about them, to attempt accurate description, but unless we know the dangers and limitations of such descriptions, it leads only to presumption or despair.  So let the reader beware!"

*sanctification: the process by which we become more Holy on earth.

**justification: how we become a Christian, or, when we become cool with God because Christ died for us.