Quotes by Theologians - Page 15

Lucy's eyes began to grow accustomed to the light, and she saw the trees that were nearest her more distinctly. A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her. She knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on. She looked at a silver birch; it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing. She looked at the oak: he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah!- she would be the best of all. She would be a precious goddess, smooth and stately, the lady of the wood.
C.S. Lewis
All the trees of the world appeared to be rushing towards Aslan. But as they drew nearer they looked less like trees, and when the whole crowd, bowing and curtsying and waving thin long arms to Aslan, were all around Lucy, she saw that it was a crowd of human shapes. Pale birch-girls were tossing their heads, willow-women pushed back their hair from their brooding faces to gaze on Aslan, the queenly beeches stood still and adored him, shaggy oak-men, lean and melancholy elms, shock-headed hollies (dark themselves, but their wives all bright with berries) and gay rowans, all bowed and rose again, shouting, "Aslan, Aslan!" in their various husky or creaking or wave-like voices.
C.S. Lewis
Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. Soon, wherever you looked, instead of white shapes you saw the dark green of firs or the black prickly branches of bare oaks and beeches and elms. Then the mist turned from white to gold and presently cleared away altogether. Shafts of delicious sunlight struck down on to the forest floor and overhead you could see a blue sky between the tree tops. Soon there were more wonderful things happening. Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers- celandines. The noise of water grew louder. Presently they actually crossed a stream. Beyond it they found snowdrops growing.
C.S. Lewis
There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.
G.K. Chesterton
Of real sensational journalism, as it exists in France, in Ireland, and in America, we have no trace in this country. When a journalist in Ireland wishes to create a thrill, he creates a thrill worth talking about. He denounces a leading Irish member for corruption, or he charges the whole police system with a wicked and definite conspiracy. When a French journalist desires a frisson there is a frisson; he discovers, let us say, that the President of the Republic has murdered three wives. Our yellow journalists invent quite as unscrupulously as this; their moral condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the same. But it is their mental calibre which happens to be such that they can only invent calm and even reassuring things. The fictitious version of the massacre of the envoys of Pekin was mendacious, but it was not interesting, except to those who had private reasons for terror or sorrow. It was not connected with any bold and suggestive view of the Chinese situation. It revealed only a vague idea that nothing could be impressive except a great deal of blood. Real sensationalism, of whichI happen to be very fond, may be either moral or immoral. But even when it is most immoral, it requires moral courage. For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you. But the leaders of this movement have no moral courage or immoral courage; their whole method consists in saying, with large and elaborate emphasis, the things which everybody else says casually, and without remembering what they have said. When they brace themselves up to attack anything, they never reach the point of attacking anything which is large and real, and would resound with the shock. They do not attack the army as men do in France, or the judges as men do in Ireland, or the democracy itself as men did in England a hundred years ago. They attack something like the War Office--something, that is, which everybody attacks and nobody bothers to defend, something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers
G.K. Chesterton
Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
G.K. Chesterton
The wit taught by God to the beeIs withheld from the lion and the wild ass.
Jalaluddin Rumi
Now to enjoy the treasures of God in the similitude of God, is the most perfect blessedness God could devise. For the treasures of God are the most perfect treasures, and the manner of God is the most perfect manner.
Thomas Traherne
The great art of life is to moderate our passions. Objects of affection are like other belongings. We must love them enough to enrich our lives while we have them, not enough to impoverish our lives when they are gone.
C.S. Lewis
Your faces are very beautiful,but they are wooden cages.You had better run from me.My words are fire.
Jalaluddin Rumi
For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to rememver the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
G.K. Chesterton
I daresay that the gradual “decomposition” of scripture, its dissolution in more and more specialized and negative criticism, is a result of its alienation from the eucharist – and practically from the Church herself – as an experience of a spiritual reality. And in its own turn, this same alienation deprived the sacrament of its evangelical content, converting it into a self-contained and self-sufficient “means of sanctification.” The scriptures and the Church are reduced here to the category of two formal *authorities*, two "sources of the faith"--as they are called in the scholastic treatises, for which the only question is which authority is the higher: which "interprets" which.As a matter of fact, by its own logic, this approach demands a further contraction, a further "reduction." For if we proclaim holy scripture to be the supreme authority for teaching the faith in the Church, then what is the “criterion” of scripture? Sooner or later it becomes “biblical science” – i.e., in the final analysis, naked reason. But if, on the other hand, we proclaim the Church to be the definitive, highest and inspired interpreter of scripture, then through whom, where and how is this interpretation brought about? And however we answer this question, this “organ” or “authority” in fact proves to be standing over the scriptures, as an *outside* authority.
Alexander Schmemann
We unlearn the art of speaking well when we cease to speak with God.
John Calvin
Don't be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you've been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I haven't seen it myself. I couldn't prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority -because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.
C.S. Lewis
Smith. [Turning eagerly to the Doctor.] But this is rather splendid. The Duke's given £50 to the new public-house.Hastings. The Duke is very liberal.[Collects papers.Doctor. [Examining his cheque.] Very. But this is rather curious. He has also given £50 to the league for opposing the new public-house.Hastings. The Duke is very liberal-minded.
G.K. Chesterton
The human mind is generally farmore eager to praise and dispraise than to describe anddefine.
C.S. Lewis
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
C.S. Lewis
Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.
C.S. Lewis
Oh-my-Father-and-oh-the-delight-of-my-eyes," began the young man, muttering the words very quickly and sulkily and not at all as if the Tisroc were the delight of his eyes.
C.S. Lewis
In the third place he comes on to the chiefe Organ, that is, the instrument wherewith they should sing. It is not with the Organs of the Papists, no not with thy tongue; but it is with the heart, and with the affection of a well-ruled heart. Therefore as a fiddler, or any that playes on an Instrument tempers his Instrument, that a sweete harmonie may be heard of it: Even so before thou sing, temper thou thy heart; and let thy song rise, not from thy throte, but from the depth of thine heart, that is from thine affections set upon God.
Robert Rollock
Rather than attack the Christian faith directly, many films undermine foundational Christian principles, including the human need for salvation. These films present a false "gospel" that leads people away from the truth. Recognizing these messages in movies can help us avoid being adversely influenced by them. Just as importantly, the messages in these stories can provide us with starting points for sharing the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Douglas Beaumont
You invaded Narnia. You have no more right leading than Miraz does. Peter Pevensie: You, him, your father! Narnia's better off without the lot of you!
C.S. Lewis
Boredom is a form of evil; perhaps one of Kierkegaard's characters was more correct when he said, "Boredom is the root of all evil." Boredom is a preview of death, if not itself a form of death, and when trapped in prolonged boredom, even the most saintly of us will hope for, pray for, or even engineer relief, however demonic.
Fred B. Craddock
How dreadful boredom is — how dreadfully boring; I know no stronger expression, no truer one, for like is recognized only by like… I lie prostrate, inert; the only thing I see is emptiness, the only thing I live on is emptiness, the only thing I move in is emptiness. I do not even suffer pain… Pain itself has lost its refreshment for me. If I were offered all the glories of the world or all the torments of the world, one would move me no more than the other; I would not turn over to the other side either to attain or to avoid. I am dying death. And what could divert me? Well, if I managed to see a faithfulness that withstood every ordeal, an enthusiasm that endured everything, a faith that moved mountains; if I were to become aware of an idea that joined the finite and the infinite.
Søren Kierkegaard
All men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. . . . The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.
Søren Kierkegaard
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers.
G.K. Chesterton
What does it mean to care? Let me start by saying that the word care has become a very ambivalent word. When someone says: 'I will take care of him!' it is more likely an announcement of an impending attack than of a tender compassion. And besides this ambivalence, the word is most often used in a negative way. 'Do you want coffee or tea?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to stay home or go to a movie?' 'I don't care.' 'Do you want to walk or go by car?' 'I don't care.' This expression of indifference toward choices in life has become commonplace. And often it seems that not to care has become more acceptable than to care, and a carefree life-style more attractive than a careful one.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.
Erasmus
Myth is not about whether something is fact or fiction; myth is more about truth. Good myth, according to the old adage, is about something that continues to be true again and again, over time.
Randy S. Woodley
The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.
Bede
The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story. It is where we are now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through the sufferings which form the gateway to life.
N.T. Wright
Now love doesn't stop at death - or if it does, it's a pretty poor sort of love! In fact, grief could almost be defined as the form love takes when the object of love has been removed; it is love embracing an empty space, love kissing thin air and feeling the pain of nothingness. But there is no reason at all why love should discontinue the practice of holding the beloved in prayer before God.
N.T. Wright
I have zero tolerance for people with zero tolerance.
Tim Heaton
Contrary to popular definitions, true tolerance means 'putting up with error' - not 'accepting all views'. We don't tolerate what we enjoy or endorse - say, chocolate, or roses, or Mozart's music. By definition, we tolerate what we don't approve of or what we believe to be false.
Paul Copan
Piaget-....A stage then, we may say, is an integrated set of operational structures that constitute the thought processes of a person at a given time. Development involves the transformation of such " structures of the whole" in the direction of greater internal differentiation, complexity, flexibility and stability. A stage represents a kind of balanced relationship between a knowing subject and his or her environment. In this balanced or equilibrated position the person assimilates what is to be "known" in the environment into her or his existing structures of thought. When a novelty or challenge emerges that cannot be assimilated into the present structures of knowing then, if possible, the person accommmodates, that is , generates new structures of knowing. A stage transition has occured when enough accommodation has been undertaken to require ( and make possible) a transformation in the operational pattern of the structural whole of intellectual operations.
James W. Fowler
Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged
Jalaluddin Rumi
It is more important to be than to do, for if I am what God wants me to be, then I will do what He wants me to do. If I try to promote a program, however well-meaning, without personal holiness, it will be tainted by the defects of my life. It may lack the direction of full knowledge of the Word, or the discernment of maturity, or the direction that comes through unclouded fellowship with the Lord. Primarily we do not need to develop programs, but people.
Charles C. Ryrie
If you take a book into your hands, be it 'God's book, or any other useful good book,' rely on God to make it profitable to you. Do not waste time reading unprofitable books. When you read, do so not out of vain curiosity but with love for God's kingdom, compassion for human beings, and the intent to turn what you learn into prayers and praises.
Matthew Henry
Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years.
C.S. Lewis
You all know," said the Guide, "that security is mortals' greatest enemy.
C.S. Lewis
Everything. Everywhere. Every moment. That is the scope of God's call on our lives, and that is the dignity our lives enjoy.
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
On the one hand the younger son realizes that he has lost the dignity of his sonship, but at the same time that sense of lost dignity makes him also aware that he is indeed the son who had dignity to lose," (pp. 49).
Henri J.M. Nouwen
The proper name for the thing is modesty; but as we live in an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names, we will yield to a more modern nomenclature and call it dignity.
G.K. Chesterton
[On what young husbands should say to their wives:] I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us... I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.
John Chrysostom
Law will take over because law always carries with it a sense of security and manipulative power.
Richard J. Foster
You can't ever be your heroes, but you can love their gifts.
John Piper
As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a [person].
John Chrysostom
The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
G.K. Chesterton
I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that while they are always talking of things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is. A real problem only occurs when there are admittedly disadvantages in all courses that can be pursued. If it is discovered just before a fashionable wedding that the Bishop is locked up in the coal-cellar, that is not a problem. It is obvious to anyone but an extreme anti-clerical or practical joker that the Bishop must be let out of the coal-cellar. But suppose the Bishop has been locked up in the wine-cellar, and from the obscure noises, sounds as of song and dance, etc., it is guessed that he has indiscreetly tested the vintages round him; then indeed we may properly say that there has arisen a problem; for upon the one hand, it is awkward to keep the wedding waiting, while, upon the other, any hasty opening of the door might mean an episcopal rush and scenes of the most unforeseen description.
G.K. Chesterton
In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility. The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behaviour must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it's a primitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise man. And so he discovered that two enemies are better than one.
G.K. Chesterton
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata--of creatures that worked like machines--would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.
C.S. Lewis
The answer to the question raised in the title of this essay - Is salvation a matter of divine determination or human responsibility? - is not divine determination or human responsibility. The only thoroughly biblical answer is yes. Scripturally, it is not an 'either-or' but a 'both-and' proposition. Why is this so hard? For one thing, it is logically unsatisfactory and apparently contradictory. Our insatiable appetite for order and answers makes it difficult to admit...that God's ways are not our ways, and leave it at that. (Isaiah 55:9). We don't mind applying this principle in a general, hypothetical way to God's wisdom or methods. But we balk when interferes with our theological system, our obsession with pigeonholing every Bible fact into a neat, orderly arrangement that leaves no questions unanswered. God transcends our logic. He is supra-logical. His thinking, His design, His way, His theology is infinitely above our intellect, beyond the grasp of our comprehension, out of the reach of our clever rationalizations. God is theo-logical. Man is anthropo-logical.
Layton Talbert
No attempt should be made to "reconcile" Yahweh's hardening of Pharaoh's heart (plagues 6,8,9,10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, that Pharaoh has already demonstrated his recalcitrance, so Yahweh merely helps the process along, or that he is doing what Pharaoh would have done on his own anyway. Rather, 9:12 is a striking reminder of what God has been trying to teach Moses and Israel since the beginning of the Exodus episode: He is in complete control. However Pharaoh might have reacted is given the chance is not brought into the discussion. He is not even given that chance. Yahweh hardens his heart. It is best to allow the tension of the text to remain.
Peter Enns
If God did not arrange [the world] this way, then there must be an independent factor in the universe. And if there is such, one consequence and perhaps two follow. First, the doctrine of creation must be abandoned. A creation ex nihilo would be completely in God's control. Independent forces cannot be created forces, and created forces cannot be independent. Then, second, if the universe is not God's creation, his knowledge of it--past and future--cannot depend on what he intends to do, but on his observation of how it works. In such a case, how could we be sure that God's observations are accurate? How could we be sure that these independent forces will not later show an unsuspected twist that will falsify God's predictions? And, finally, on this view God's knowledge would be empirical, rather than an integral part of his essence, and thus he would be a dependent knower. These objections are insurmountable. We can consistently believe in creation, omnipotence, omniscience, and the divine decree. But we cannot retain sanity and combine any one of these with free will.
Gordon H. Clark
So saving grace, converting grace, for Augustine, is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever it delights in most fully, but it is not within the power of our will to determine what that sovereign joy will be.
John Piper
The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged in unassailable freedom. Ransom could not for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heart on the subject.
C.S. Lewis
And because God's love is uncoercive and treasures our freedom - if above all he wants us to love him, then we must be left free not to love him - we are free to resist it, deny it, crucify it finally, which we do again and again. This is our terrible freedom, which love refuses to overpower so that, in this, the greatest of all powers, God's power, is itself powerless.
Frederick Buechner
Nothing could be more irrational than the idea that something comes from nothing.
R.C. Sproul
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady on the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.
Frederick Buechner