I had an e-mail at work from Dr. John Eidsmoe yesterday. He was looking for the documentary source of a quotation from Luther that most of us have read more than once (I first saw it in Francis Schaeffer’s work):

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

John couldn’t find it, and he thought maybe I could help (not as hopeful a thought as he imagined). Still, I attacked our complete edition of Luther and its index, and found precisely nothing.

So I went online, and finally found this interesting discussion.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth in comments, but the upshot seems to be that the quotation doesn’t actually come from Luther (though he said something different on the same lines), but from a 19th Century novel called Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family, by Elizabeth Rundle Charles.

It’s human nature. When we hit on a quotation that’s really, really good, and we find out it comes from somebody we never heard of, we often “forget” the real source and attach it to somebody who seems more worthy of it. Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain have snagged quite a few undeserved attributions that way.

Ah, well.

James M. Kushiner at Mere Comments reports on a new book, no part of which, I suspect, will soon be attributed to Luther. It’s called Feeding Your Inner Monster, by Dr. David Picone.

Topics in Feeding Your Inner Monster include:

• Why Society defines the ‘good for society’ as the ‘good’, and the individual, as the individual, as the ‘bad’.

• Defining the inner monster—what is it and how to make it work for you. Understanding the aspects of ‘self’ that are socially exiled, defined as ‘monsters’, and gaining strength from the forbidden.

• Why Virtue and Vice are ineffective and outmoded devices.

• Where Vice can be good, and Virtue harmful.

• Analyzing the 10 commandments as village ethics rules, implemented for social order, and where the rules work and don’t work.

• Looking at a group as the village chief would, and designing social control mechanisms, such as a hierarchical religious structure, to keep the group focused on working.

I couldn’t help thinking of this as I heard and read today about the amazing (and appalling) story of poor Jaycee Lee Dugard.

I always feel deep sympathy for victims of childhood abuse (though my experience doesn’t come close to this case). Life will be better for her now, and thank God for it. But make no mistake—she’s scarred for life. There will be things other people do that she won’t be able to bring herself to do. And things other people don’t do that she will, causing some embarrassment. That’s just how it works.

Reports are that her abductor and abuser, Phillip Garrido, is a religious fanatic. No doubt much will be made of this. But I would call attention to the fact that this is California Religion. The basis of California Religion is a misunderstanding of the Bible. Because of the lack of English equivalents to the four Greek words for “love”—eros for erotic love, philia for friendship, storge for family love and agape for God’s love—Californians decided about half a century ago that “all kinds of love” were holy.

This causes bad—and sometimes horrendous—consequences.