Let the Bomb Go Boom!

"The Epistle to the Romans has sat around in the church since the first century like a bomb ticking away the death of religion; and every time it’s been picked up, the ear-splitting freedom in it has gone off with a roar.

The only sad thing is that the church as an institution has spent most of its time playing bomb squad and trying to defuse it. For your comfort, though, it can’t be done. Your freedom remains as close to your life as Jesus and as available to your understanding as the nearest copy. Like Augustine, therefore, tolle lege, take and read: tolle the one, lege the other–and then hold onto your hat. Compared to that explosion, the clap of doom sounds like a cap pistol."

     - Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace

Hat Tip: Liberate