Packer on the Restraint of the Son's knowledge

J.I. Packer, in a slick argument, sets forth a rather winsome and elegant explanation of the Son's limited knowledge even though He was also fully God. Here it is in a quick one-two punch:

"The God-man did not know independently, any more than He acted independently."

"His knowing, like the rest of His activity, was bounded by His Father's will. And therefore the reason why He was ignorant of the date of His return was not because He had given up the power to know all things at the incarnation, but because the Father had not willed that He should have this particular piece of knowledge while on earth, prior to His passion." -pg. 55, Knowing God

This is a great way to explain how Jesus didn't fully know that He would rise after His death, but that He had believed what His Father told Him. Jesus had have faith (had to trust) in His heavenly Father just as we need to have faith in Him too.

My Wife, My Home

To Kate on her 24th Birthday, 2009.

My wife is my home,
Wherever we go, wherever we roam.
In our living room while she sits and she reads
I sit in my blue chair and consider her deeds.

Sometimes we are in the jungle, and she uses a machete
Cleaning out our bedroom, always on the ready.
She swings it high and she swings it low
She cuts up spiders in a single blow.
Then she picks up my clothes and swings out on a vine
Leaving our bed made and the room clean by nine.

Sometimes we are in a fairy tale, and she uses her magic skills
She plants every bean she finds, from here to the hills.
Then she waves her hands and she waters it all
And then she dances around, until the corn is nice and tall.
Then she whistles a tune and all the rabbits come out to see
As the amaryllis grows big and blooms prettily.

Sometimes we are at a construction site, and she uses big machines
They rumble and they growl and they blend food to smithereens.
Sometimes in the kitchen, food will fly as she cooks
So, she wears a pretty apron, just like all the books.
This makes her the boss and she tells me what to do:
Dice that onion and whip the moisture out of that potatoo.

Sometimes we are in a garden, and she weeds our house
She plucks up the chairs and vacuums and cleans like a mouse.
Then she rakes in my study and moves piles from here to there
So that when she is done, everything is in its place, even my hair.
Last she puts on a breathing mask and sprays down the shower
Calm and collected she blasts it clean in less than one hour.

This is my wife, this is my home.
Wherever we go, wherever we roam.

Teaching Quote

"Even in order to understand we have to invent, or, that is, to reinvent, because we can't start from the beginning again. But I would say that anything is only understood to the extent that it is reinvented." -Jean Piaget

If by reinvent he means rethought, rediscovered, thought out by oneself, then I think he has a good point. If he means tearing the old down and discarding it for the reinvention that might not be accurate to the original, then he needs to be qualified.

An additional thought: the next generation is able to reinvent what came before in a faithful way that accurately represents what that older generation was doing only by the ever present loving guidance of God.

Language Quotes

"Surely, learning the dictionary, as Gouin discovered, would never lead to the mastery of a language, and lists of disconnected words would not be helpful either toward the master of a language--if we consider mastery the ability to express one's own thoughts. " -pg. 107

"When the grammar-translation method was labelled tradional, old fashioned, and obsolete, both of the words, grammar and translation, took on a negative connotation and many teachers accepted the concept that 'language is something you do'. Therefore, they attempted to develop solely automatic responses and asked the students not to analyze what they were saying."-pg. 108

"We live in a system-oriented society where even the most humble worker needs to have a modicum of understanding of the system in which he is involved."-pg. 109

"Teaching the grammar of any language for grammar's sake is, hopefully, a thing of the past. There seems to be little value in memorizing rules verbatim, and the modern emphasis is better placed on the application of the rules: Nobody wants to eat the recipe, everybody prefers the cake!" -pg. 109

Teaching a Living Language, Ralph Hester ed.

Augustine

"Everything which does not decrease on being given away is not properly owned when it is owned and not given." -Augustine.

Is there a pithier way to say this?

The gift that is truly possesed is one that grows when it is given.

The Beginning of Knowledge

In order to become wise, you must first become foolish.

In order to learn, you must first be stupid.

The way up is first of all the way down.

From Infant to Lover

In order to speak about something, one must love it.

In order to love something, one must know it.

In order to know something, one must study it.

In order to study something, one must be with it.

In order to be with something, one must have leisure.

Boredom

"The true antithesis of love is not hate, but rather dispairing indifference; the feeling that nothing is important."

"A silent lover is one who doesn't know his job."

My Wife

The lightning behind all this thunder.

Augustine on Different Interpretations of Scripture

"How can it harm me if I understand the writer's meaning in a different sense from that in which another understands it? All of us who read his words do our best to discover and understand what he had in mind, and since we believe that he wrote the truth, we are not so rash as to suppose that he wrote anything which we know or think to be false. Provided, therefore, that each of us tries as best he can to understand in the Holy Scriptures what the writer meant by them, what harm is there if a reader believes what you, the Light of all truthful minds, show him to be the true meaning? It may not even be the meaning which the writer had in mind, and yet he too saw in them a true meaning, different though it may have been from this."

Confessions, St. Augustine, pg. 296.