Sartorius - The Doctrine of Divine Love

Ken McGuire
Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,074 ✭✭✭
edited November 20 in English Forum

Talking about Ethics is problematical in the Church today...  In fact, a significant treatment on this topic, namely, _You Lost Me_ was a vyrso freebie about a month ago.  Too many people hear our Christianity as just an out of date ethical system, and when they feel like they cannot relate to that system, just drift away.

In my personal opinion, for what little that is worth, it is simply because our Ethics has not been clearly Christian.  The old saying was Doctrine Divides, but Service unites.  Now we see that we aren't that united in Service either.

This is hardly a new problem.  It was, in fact a major problem in the Reformation era.  To pick a controversial point, the issues between Luther and the Peasant revolt in the sixteenth century.  The Lutheran fathers, as good Augustinians argued that it was only though trusting the promise of Christ that we are able to do truly good works - works done with no self-interest, but simply because it needs to be done.  As Sartorius argues, our dogmatics should be connected with our ethics.

This is the major text of Sartorius that has been translated into English.  As expected from the title, it is quite influenced by Augustine, as well as being a fairly traditional Lutheran.  As a 19th century scholar, he is not afraid to offer extended quotes in Latin, especially in the footnotes.  He usually references the Lutheran Confessions in the Latin.  I have tried to link it to the BookOfConcord datatype based on my limited Latin abilities.  He also references quite a bit of Augustine.  I have attempted links to De Trinitate and City of God, but do not have these texts in Logos, so cannot say if they actually point to the right sections.

As far as his importance today - well, again, I had not heard of him before the Jacobs book.  But this theme of Divine Love that creates a new reality in Jesus is certainly not one that has gone away.  And while the term "neology" is hardly in vogue today, that voice is certainly out there in the culture, in spite of a few world wars that should have at least tempered it.

Sartorius himself was quite up on the 19th century debates about the nature of "sacrifice" in the bible, even as he claimed that the old dogmatic views still had much to say about it...  This is admittedly difficult to manage, but still needed.

As a side note, this is earliest work I have worked on that seemed aware of Communism.  The Communist Manifesto was actually connected with the 1848 disturbances in Germany.  By no means is this a major theme in this work nor does it offer penetrating view of it, but it is there.

SDG

Ken McGuire

The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials

L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze

Tagged:

Comments

  • George
    George Member Posts: 479 ✭✭

    Thank you, Ken!  I love the quality of your work.  Keep them coming. [:)]

    Grace and peace!

  • Philana Crouch
    Philana Crouch Member Posts: 2,151

    This looks good...does Logos recognize the Scripture references? Or would we need to go in and manually tag them?

  • George
    George Member Posts: 479 ✭✭

    You don't have to do anything other than add it as a personal book and enjoy it.  Scripture references are already taken care of.

  • Ken McGuire
    Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,074 ✭✭✭

    Thank you for the kind words.  I do try to release decently quality texts.  I do try to check the scripture references to make sure that autotagging works - at least on my system, so all you should have to do with my releases is just compile.  You may want to add publisher info from the title page into the metadata and search for a cover graphic, but other than that, they should be good.

    Not sure what will be next, but I do have a few ideas...

    SDG

    Ken McGuire

    The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

    L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials

    L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze

  • Milford Charles Murray
    Milford Charles Murray Member Posts: 5,004 ✭✭✭


    Talking about Ethics is problematical in the Church today...  In fact, a significant treatment on this topic, namely, _You Lost Me_ was a vyrso freebie about a month ago.  Too many people hear our Christianity as just an out of date ethical system, and when they feel like they cannot relate to that system, just drift away.

    In my personal opinion, for what little that is worth, it is simply because our Ethics has not been clearly Christian.  The old saying was Doctrine Divides, but Service unites.  Now we see that we aren't that united in Service either.

    This is hardly a new problem.  It was, in fact a major problem in the Reformation era.  To pick a controversial point, the issues between Luther and the Peasant revolt in the sixteenth century.  The Lutheran fathers, as good Augustinians argued that it was only though trusting the promise of Christ that we are able to do truly good works - works done with no self-interest, but simply because it needs to be done.  As Sartorius argues, our dogmatics should be connected with our ethics.

    This is the major text of Sartorius that has been translated into English.  As expected from the title, it is quite influenced by Augustine, as well as being a fairly traditional Lutheran.  As a 19th century scholar, he is not afraid to offer extended quotes in Latin, especially in the footnotes.  He usually references the Lutheran Confessions in the Latin.  I have tried to link it to the BookOfConcord datatype based on my limited Latin abilities.  He also references quite a bit of Augustine.  I have attempted links to De Trinitate and City of God, but do not have these texts in Logos, so cannot say if they actually point to the right sections.

    As far as his importance today - well, again, I had not heard of him before the Jacobs book.  But this theme of Divine Love that creates a new reality in Jesus is certainly not one that has gone away.  And while the term "neology" is hardly in vogue today, that voice is certainly out there in the culture, in spite of a few world wars that should have at least tempered it.

    Sartorius himself was quite up on the 19th century debates about the nature of "sacrifice" in the bible, even as he claimed that the old dogmatic views still had much to say about it...  This is admittedly difficult to manage, but still needed.

    As a side note, this is earliest work I have worked on that seemed aware of Communism.  The Communist Manifesto was actually connected with the 1848 disturbances in Germany.  By no means is this a major theme in this work nor does it offer penetrating view of it, but it is there.

    SDG

    Ken McGuire


    Peace to you, Ken!                       and ..                   Always Joy in the Lord!                                       *smile*

                                Again(!) I send my thanks to you!  Am finally going to take a good look at Sartorious. 

                                          My Pastor is away this coming Sunday so I have honour of preaching and consecrating the Holy Eucharist.  So will be quite busy this week, but -- next Monday is devoted to Sartorius.                                                       

                                                                I continue to take you and your needs and your loved ones to the Throne of Grace in Christian Prayer and will continue to do so occasionally.

    Philippians 4:  4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand..........

  • Ken McGuire
    Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,074 ✭✭✭

    When the updated file for St. Augustine's Confessions came out, I saw that it was tagged with the new "Augustine" datatype in addition to the old "Confessions" datatype.  This had me thinking that I should get around to updating this release to the new standard datatype...  Then I found a "modem" in the text, and so I have incorporated the fix as well as type update.

    SDG

    Ken McGuire

    The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

    L8 Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox Silver, Reformed Starter, Academic Essentials

    L7 Lutheran Gold, Anglican Bronze