I'll be reading through "The Ladder of Divine Ascent" by John Climacus, a 7th Century Eastern monk, for Lent this year. What follows for the next month will consist of a collection of quotations that I like from the work. Feel free to leave comments or add quotations of your own.

"It is risky to swim in one's clothes. A slave of passion should not dabble in theology."

"Anyone trained in chastity should give himself no credit for any achievements.... When nature is overcome it should be admitted that this is due to Him Who is above nature.... The man who decides to struggle against his flesh and to overcome it by his own efforts is fighting in vain.... Admit your incapacity.... What have you got that you did not receive as a gift either from God or as a result of the help and prayers of others?.... It is sheer lunacy to imagine that one has deserved the gifts of God."

-----John Climacus, "The Ladder of Divine Ascent"

"Where the evil of the existing order is recognized, revolution is born. The revolutionary would like to overthrow the old order, replacing it with 'justice'. But in that he does so, he too claims for himself that which no human being can claim. He treats the 'right' as a thing which he can control: 'he forgets that he is not the One, the Subject of that freedom for which he thirsts; . . . not the Christ who stands over against the Grand Inquisitor but, on the contrary, always only the Grand Inquisitor who stands over against the Christ.' The revolutionary aims at 'the Revolution, which is the impossible possibility.' But instead, he carries out 'the other revolution . . . the possible possibility of dissatisfaction, hatred, insubordination, rebellion, and destruction.' What is the Christian to do in the face of this 'possible possibility'? She is to witness to the Revolution, by her 'not doing'; by not becoming angry, by not attacking and not destroying. She is to deprive the existing order of pathos, thereby starving it out of existence. That is the 'the great negative possibility'."

-----Bruce McCormack, quoting and explaining Karl Barth, from his book, "Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology"