Monday 18 March 2013

Charles Williams on the implications of God's omnipotence

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From 'The Cross' in The Image of the City, and other essays; by Charles Williams (edited by Anne Ridler, 1958). Excerpted from page 136:

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Easter... began in the Cross. 

I say 'in' rather than 'on', for by the time it began He had become, as it were, the very profoundest Cross to Himself... The Cross was He and He was the Cross. 

His will had maintained, or rather His will in His Father's will had maintained, a state of affairs among men of which physical crucifixion was at once a part and a perfect symbol. 

This state of things He inexorably proposed to himself to endure; say, rather, that from the beginning He had been Himself at bottom both the endurance and the thing endured. 

This had been true everywhere in all men; it was now true of Himself apart from all men; it was local and particular...

He was stretched, He was bled, He was nailed, He was thrust into, but not a bone of  Him was broken...

It was the Cross which sustained Him, but He also sustained the Cross. 

He had, through the years, exactly preserved the growth of the thorn and of the wood, and had indued with energy the making of the nails and the sharpening of the spear; say, through the centuries He had maintained vegetable and mineral in the earth for this. 

His providence overwatched it to no other end, as it overwatches so many instruments and intentions of cruelty then and now.

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