Acts

The early days of the new Church are recorded in the book of Acts. After Jesus’ ascension to heaven, his followers received the gift of the Holy Spirit, who descended upon them at Pentecost. They then all begin to preach and share the gospel with the people. However, they face violent persecution from the Jewish leaders, even to the point of Stephen dying as a martyr. Saul of Tarsus becomes one of the most zealous persecutors of the Church until he meets Jesus on the road to Damascus. After that, he transforms into Paul, one of the greatest missionaries and teachers of the Church. Going to the Gentiles, he brings the saving message of Jesus’s gift to man from Antioch to Rome.

One of the most interesting stories from Paul’s journey, for me, was the story of Eutychus raised from the dead. Upon returning to fellow disciples in Asia, Paul proceeds to give a sermon. However, he talks all day until midnight. A young man named Eutychus falls asleep while sitting at the window and falls three stories to his death. “But Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him said, ‘Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him.’ Now when he had come up, had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed,” (20:10-11). Even though a young man had died, Paul was able to raise him back to life by the power of Christ. Just as Christ said, his followers are doing miracles and wonders.

However, what struck me most was the fact that Paul didn’t seem in the least bit bothered over it. Here he was, preaching and teaching the disciples when some sleepy kid gets himself killed. To me, this would be a big deal that someone died while I was speaking. Yet Paul, after raising him back to life, goes right back upstairs to finish his message until dawn. It seems that this miracle wasn’t that big of deal to Paul, almost like he realized that continuing to enlighten and exhort his fellow disciples was the greater good. Even the words he uses are almost dismissive in nature. What would our church be like if we were to have that same attitude, if we were to see the teaching of each other as more important that the performance of miracles? It would certainly be different.

Week 13 Harkins

5 Things I’ve Learned and Incorporated

How to promise things in the first sentence

How to discard sentences that are not relevant

How to gauge the effect of a sentence to produce a desired effect

How to play with sentences

How to appreciate additive style without particularly liking it

5 Things I Want Explained Further

How to use a Ford Maddox Ford in non-exercise writing

How to successfully use the additive style when one is accustomed to the subordinating style

Where one can use original aphorisms seamlessly

How satire can be used persuasively

Where subordinating and additive style sentences can intermingle

Joshua

The book of Joshua chronicles the advance and conquest of Canaan by the Israelites. After wandering in the desert for forty years, they have finally returned to claim their promised land. With Joshua, Moses’ assistant, as their new leader after Moses’ death, they go and begin their takeover with the defeat of the city of Jericho. They then continue to rout their enemies, so long as they follow the commands and laws that God has given them. When someone disobeys, the whole camp suffers. However, they prosper and succeed while they remain obedient. Under Joshua’s leadership, the Israelites remain faithful to God are able to come to the land that God had promised their forefather Abraham hundreds of years before

Before entering the Promised Land, however, Joshua gave a command to the Israelites. “Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you,” (3:5). This caught my eye because of the importance that we had read earlier about the sanctification of things as we had read in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. For God, and thereby the Israelites, sanctity of things was crucial. From one’s house to one’s animals to one’s body, everything had to be pure so as to set them apart from the nations they were conquering. They were to be held to a higher standard because they were the people dedicated to God.

Thus, it was interesting that Joshua would command that they sanctify, in other words purify, themselves before seeing a miracle. It would seem that their seeing this wonder of God, the parting of the Jordan River, was something that set them apart. God shows His power and might on behalf of the Israelites by parting the flooded Jordan River so that the surrounding nations would know that there is a mighty force behind this new nation. They are something special; this new nation is personally protected by the God who controls even the powerful elements of nature. They are a force to be reckoned with.

Paradise Lost - Part 3

Man was given one command while in Eden, to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At first, they follow God’s command and do not even think about going to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. However, Satan entices Eve and she falls for his deception. Upon eating, she takes the fruit to Adam as well. She asks him to eat of it as well and gives elation of mind and spirit as evidence of its goodness, despite its being forbidden by God.

Adam, debating with himself whether he ought to obey God or join Eve in her fallen state, chooses to be with Eve. In a beautiful speech of his decision, he says, “if death / Consort with thee, death is to me as life; / So forcible within my heart I feel / The bond of nature draw me to my own, / My one in thee, for what thou art is mine; / Our state cannot be severed, we are one, / One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself,” (IX.953-59). He feels so deeply a part of Eve that he cannot bring himself to be severed from her, even if it means going against God. He would rather face death together than continue on alone. To me, this was one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole epic. I will not say that his choice was founded well, however it does appeal to my romantic, till-death-do-us-part fantasy.

Yet, it all goes to pieces after the fall. After tasting the fruit, “carnal desire inflaming; he on Eve / Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him / As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn,” (IX.1013-15). Where once had been a sacrificial love, now self-gratifying lust reigns. After having given such a beautiful speech about desiring death to living alone, Adam falls from that height of love to its basest perversion of no longer seeing Eve as someone to be cherished but as something to be taken. How tragic.

Paradise Lost - Part 2

After Satan’s infiltration of Eden, God sends the archangel Raphael to warn man about their new adversary. Coming to the first parents’ home, the angel relays his message of warning. He advises them to be content with what they have been given and to obey and love their Creator. By doing so, they will remain happy and continue in their blessedness.

Adam’s response to Raphael’s admonition to remain obedient intrigued me. He says, “Can we want obedience then / To him, or possibly his love desert / Who formed us from the dust, and placed us here / Full to the utmost measure of what bliss / Human desires can seek or apprehend?” (V.514-18). For Adam, disobedience is unthinkable. Reason opposes the very idea of rebellion or adversity with his Maker. God gave man all things of the earth for his enjoyment; why should man ever desire to not obey Him?

How very differently people think now. Modern man asks why he should obey God at all when God has seemingly done nothing for him. Granted, mankind’s fall puts him at odds with God. However, that man would think it completely strange to want to not obey and love God goes to show just how far removed we’ve become from our original state. We desire happiness and chase after it through every avenue the human mind can imagine, except for the one place it can be found. Raphael and Adam show us that true happiness can only be found in obedience and love of God.

Week 11 Harkins

Chapter 8

In this chapter of How to Write a Sentence, Mr. Fish explains the importance of first sentences in any work. Fist sentences are totally unlimited and yet foreshadow everything that will follow it. Mr. Fish states that this hinting, or “an angle of lean” as he calls it, is what propels the reader forward into the rest of the work. “Even the simplest first sentence is on its toes, beckoning us to the next sentence and the next and the next, promising us insights, complication, crises, and, sometimes, resolutions” (100). Any first sentence, no matter what genre or style, will promise these things.

Chapter 9

Mr. Fish says that where the first sentence foreshadows, the last sentence brings closure. “Last sentences can sum up, refuse to sum up, change the subject, leave you satisfied, leave you wanting more, put everything into perspective, or explode perspectives,” (119). Though the last sentence brings everything to an end, it need not always be summary. Also, the last sentence is more constrained than the first sentence because it must follow everything that has happened. However, that need not mean that it is any less interesting, or important, than the first sentence.

Paradise Lost - Part 1

Paradise Lost provides a new perspective on the fall of man as described in Genesis 3. Beginning just after Satan and the other fallen angels’ expulsion from Heaven, it chronicles the events that eventually culminate in man’s removal from Eden. In the first third of the book, Satan and his cohorts discover their new dwelling place and decide what to do now. They have a council in which is decided that they will continue to war with God but will do it by disfiguring the rumored new creation called Earth and its inhabitants, man. Satan volunteers to find Earth and scout out how best to put their plan into action; he does not allow for questions. Beginning his journey, he weasels his way out the gates of Hell and across the chasm guarded by Chaos and Night and into the outer skies of creation.

As Satan makes his way towards earth, the Father sees him and tells his Son of man’s eventual fall. Understanding that man must be condemned for his treason against the Father, the Son asks for grace to be extended to them. The Father agrees and asks for a volunteer who will act as man’s sacrificial offering. No one answers except the Son. Then all of Heaven rejoices. Here is their praise of the Son: “Thee next they sang of all creation first, / Begotten Son, divine similitude, / In whose conspicuous cont’nance, without cloud / Made visible, th’ Almighty Father shines, / Whom else no creature can behold;” (III.383-87).

This abruptly caught my attention because of the first two lines, “of all creation first, Begotten Son.” This is the Arian heresy, that the Son was not the same as the Father but the first of all creation. To me, to have the idea that Jesus was the first of creation is to have an inadequate sacrifice for man’s transgression. It would be like sacrificing the lamb; it is just the death of one created thing for another. Though it is great and wonderful that the Son has chosen to die on man’s behalf, I don’t think that his death will be enough if he is not also divine.