Quotes by Theologians - Page 22

The sweetest poison doth often bring the surest death (645).
Richard Baxter
One hardly need believe that the events in your life are actually planned as bolts from the blue, sent special delivery from a deity who is testing and training you like a lab rat! And that is what we are saying when we fretfully ask, "What can God be trying to teach me through this tragedy?
Robert M. Price
The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.
Albert Schweitzer
God is calling us to live for the sake of Christ and to do that through suffering. Christ chose suffering; it didn’t just happen to Him. He chose it as the way to create and perfect the church. Now He calls us to choose suffering. That is, He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him on the Calvary road and deny ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of ministering to the church and presenting His sufferings to the world.
John Piper
The point of the mission trip is to invite young people to act in ways that witness to the promise of God's action, which will make all things new.
Andrew Root
Apathy sets in when our passion for the future is miscarried.
Andrew Root
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love “the lost”. You can’t feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as “all lost people”.Don’t wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.
John Piper
Lack of interest in mission is not fundamentally caused by an absence of compassion or commitment, nor by lack of information or exhortation. And lack of interest in mission is not remedied by more shocking statistics, more gruesome stories or more emotionally manipulative commands to obedience. It is best remedied by intensifying peoples’ passion for Christ, so that the passions of his heart become the passions that propel our hearts.
Tim A. Dearborn
God desires that we be like living signs of the kingdom, to provide visual aids of what life will look like one day when the kingdom is here fully. We will not bring the Kingdom or build the kingdom, but our privilege is to live out previews of “coming attractions,” revealing what this Kingdom will look like.
Tim A. Dearborn
Up until the 1950s the subject of the missionary movement was referred to as "missions" in the plural form. In fact, the term "missions" was first used in its current context by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century. But the International Missionary Council discussions in the 1950s on the missio- Dei convinced most that the mission of the Triune God was prior to any of the number of missions by Christians during the two millennia of church history. Consequently, since there was only one mission, the plural form has dropped out of familir usage and the singular form, "mission," has replaced it for the most part. Nevertheless, most churches and lay-persons hang on the plural missions. For that reason, and to make our point clear here, we will refer to it in this work from time to time while alerting believers to the coming change.
Walter C. Kaiser Jr.
The writers in the newspapers could sounds smart because they did not have the responsibilities of decision, and they could sound bold by enunciating positions which they were not required to implement.
Elton Trueblood
The truth is not that we need the critics in order to enjoy the authors, but that we need the authors in order to enjoy the critics.
C.S. Lewis
I am called to enter into the inner sanctuary of my own being where God has chosen to dwell. The only way to that place is prayer, unceasing prayer, Many struggles and much pain can clear the way but I am certain that only unceasing prayer can let me enter it.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
That's all YOU know,' said Digory. 'It's because you're a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged.
C.S. Lewis
The essence of our salvation is found in this phrase: Simul justus et pecator.
R.C. Sproul
For in our hope we are saved.
Augustine of Hippo
It is the Godfather, not God the Father, who makes you an offer you can’t refuse.
Peter Kreeft
God does not believe for us, but through His Spirit He creates spiritual life in us so that we can believe. Faith is the gift of God. It's part of the whole salvation package that God gives to us through the work of Christ for us and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It's not our contribution, so to speak, to God's great plan of salvation. God does it all. It's part of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Jerry Bridges
... no person can be his own saviour ... An individual must come before God in penitence, confess his sin and obtain pardon from a merciful God who repudiates sin but shows covenant love to the sinner.
R.K. Harrison
For a Catholic understanding of the faith there is no reason why the basic concern of Evangelical Christianity as it comes to expression in the three “only's” should have no place in the Catholic Church. Accepted as basic and ultimate formulas of Christianity, they do not have to lead a person out of the Catholic Church. . . . They can call the attention of the Catholic church again and again to the fact that grace alone and faith alone really are what saves, and that with all our maneuvering through the history of dogma and the teaching office, we Catholic Christians must find our way back to the sources again and again, back to the primary origins of Holy Scripture and all the more so of the Holy Spirit.
Karl Rahner
By the grace of God we will never pluck unripe fruit. We will never press people to decision, because we'll lead them to damnation and not salvation.
Jonathan Edwards
Justification has so dominated the landscape of Christian thought that adoption has been marginalized. We don't hear much about our adoption at all. We hear a lot about forgiveness, but very little about the staggering reality of our inclusion in Jesus' relationship with his Father in the Spirit.
C. Baxter Kruger
To explain the matter I will employ a simile, which yet, I confess is very dissimilar; but its dissimilitude is greatly in favour of my sentiments. A rich man bestows, on a poor and famishing beggar, alms by which he may be able to maintain himself and his family. Does it cease to be a pure gift, because the beggar extends his hand to receive it? Can it be said with propriety, that 'the alms depended partly on THE LIBERALITY of the Donor, and partly on THE LIBERTY of the Receiver,' though the latter would not have possessed the alms unless he had received it by stretching out his hand? Can it be correctly said, BECAUSE THE BEGGAR IS ALWAYS PREPARED TO RECEIVE, that 'he can have the alms, or not have it, just as he pleases?' If these assertions cannot be truly made about a beggar who receives alms, how much less can they be made about the gift of faith, for the receiving of which far more acts of Divine Grace are required!
James Arminius
The work of redemption is applied to individuals definitively (in justification), progressively (in sanctification), and completely (in glorification). In the same way, the work of redemption is applied universally to the kingdom definitively (in its inauguration), progressively (in its expansion), and completely (in its consummation).
Keith A. Mathison
He who falls, falls by his own will; and he who stands, stands by God's will.
Augustine of Hippo
If a sight of Christ's outward glory might give a rational assurance of His divinity, why might not an apprehension of He is spiritual glory do so too?
Jonathan Edwards
One may be "outside" the church, but one can never be "outside" of God's love.
Clark H. Pinnock
Tis a more glorious effect of power to make that holy that was so depraved and under dominion of sin, than to confirm holiness on that which before had nothing of the contrary.
Jonathan Edwards
If God is love (1 John 4:7) but intended Christ’s atoning death to be the propitiation for only certain people so only they have any chance of being saved, then 'love' has no intelligible meaning when referring to God. All Christians agree that God is love. But believers in limited atonement must interpret God’s love as somehow compatible with God unconditionally selecting some people to eternal torment in hell when He could save them (because election to salvation and thus salvation itself is unconditional).
Roger E. Olson
He who aspires to divine realities willingly allows providence to lead him by principle of wisdom toward the grace of deification. He who does not so aspire is drawn, by the just judgement of God and against his will, away from evil by various forms of discipline. The first, as a lover of God, is deified by providence; the second, although a lover of matter, is held back from perdition by God's judgement. For since God is goodness itself, he heals those who desire it through the principles of wisdom, and through various forms of discipline cures those who are sluggish in virtue.
St. Maximos the Confessor
If you want to be saved look at the face of your Christ.
Thomas Aquinas
If you want to be saved look the face of your Christ.
Thomas Aquinas
There is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity. You may see it in many modern religions
G.K. Chesterton
If anything keep thy soul out of heaven, which God forbid, there is nothing in the world liker to do it, than thy false hopes of being saved, while thou art yet out of the way to salvation(234). (III.III)
Richard Baxter
[I]f thou loiter when thou shouldst labour, thou wilt lose the crown. O fall to work then speedily and seriously, and bless God that thou hast yet time to do it; and though that which is past cannot be recalled, yet redeem the time now by doubling thy diligence (260).
Richard Baxter
Man is saved if he opens himself to God and to others, even if he is not clearly aware that he is doing so. This is valid for Christians and non-Christians alike -- for all people. . . . We can no longer speak properly of a profane world. A qualitative and intensive approach replaces a quantitative and extensive one.
Gustavo Gutiérrez
But if subjective pietism is not the real crux of this all-important Gospel, if it is instead belief in the plan of salvation, how are we not dealing with "salvation by (cognitive) works" and Gnosticism (salvation by special knowledge)? Fundamentalists hotly deny it, but isn't it finally a matter of believers in the right religion being saved and everyone else being disqualified?
Robert M. Price
You have one business on earth – to save souls.
John Wesley
the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.
N.T. Wright
I'm afraid that in the United States of America today the prevailing doctrine of justification is not justification by faith alone. It is not even justification by good works or by a combination of faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death. All one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die.
R.C. Sproul
Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion."I am dying of thirst," said Jill."Then drink," said the Lion."May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?" said Jill.The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic."Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?" said Jill."I make no promise," said the Lion.Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer."Do you eat girls?" she said."I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it."I daren't come and drink," said Jill."Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion."Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.""There is no other stream," said the Lion.
C.S. Lewis
No, like worldly contempt, worldly honor is a whirlpool, a play of confused forces, an illusory moment in the flux of opinions. It is a sense-deception, as when a swarm of insects at a distance seem to the eye like one body; a sense-deception, as when the noise of the many at a distance seems to the ear like a single voice.
Søren Kierkegaard
His soul swayed in a vertigo of moral indecision. He had only to snap the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous society, and all his life could be as open and sunny as the square beneath him. He had, on the other other hand, only to keep his antiquated honour, and be delivered inch by inch into the power of this great enemy of mankind, whose very intellect was a torture-chamber. Whenever he looked down into the square he saw the comfortable policeman, a pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he looked back at the breakfast-table he saw the President still quietly studying him with big, unbearable eyes.
G.K. Chesterton
Perhaps we are both doing what we think right. But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession. There is nothing possible between us but honor and death.
G.K. Chesterton
If there is such a things as "race", there is only the Human one.
Tim Heaton
Our political discourse has degenerated into anxieties about whether giving benefits to those people over there will take money out of the pockets of my kind of people over here, even when the changes are those from which we would all benefit.""The church is one of the few remaining institutions in the American scene that normalizes the effects of slavery, with most Christians preserving these segregated spaces in the interests of cultural comfort. Racially separate churches violate the interdependence that should characterize authentic Christian communities. Further, this individualism blocks churches from the blessings of gifts preserved in separate traditions. For example, segregated white churches celebrate the confessions and the rich legacies of the intellectual giants of the faith, but too often preach a weak and disembodied gospel that reduces spirituality to symbolism, and that separates material concerns from moral choices and the pursuit of righteousness.""Indeed, we have reached a sad state of affairs when we are all unwilling to be challenged when we go to church." "We should not move too quickly to a cheap reconciliation that forgets the past rather than honoring it as a clay vessel that contains a refined treasure bearing witness to the presence of Jesus at the margins. We need to make space for the histories of ethnic pain to be shared and revered among whites and all peoples of color, and to be instructed by them. That is, we need to understand how our past impinges on the present before we can move forward together toward our future. We cannot be who we are called to be unless we can gain access to the treasures of the gospel that have been preserved in the separate traditions of now segregated ethnic churches. We will not testify to the glory of God and the manifold riches of his mercy to the nations until we do.
Love L. Sechrest
The new vantage from which Christian theology as a discourse on Christian identity must operate in the modern world, then, is the Christological horizon of Mary-Israel. To be Christian is to enter into this horizon. But where is the horizon concretely displayed, where is it made visible if not in despised dark (and especially dark female) flesh? Is this not the flesh of homo sacer . . .the flesh that is impoverished, "despised and rejected of men," flesh that in shame we "hide our faces from" (cf. Isa. 53:3)? But if this is the case, it follows that the poverty of dark flesh is where one finds the wealthy God. . . In (Christ"s) taking on the form of the slave, the from of despised dark (female) flesh there is the diclsoure (sic) of divinity, a disclosure that undoes the social arrangement of the colonial-racial tyranny (tynannos,), as the seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor called it, that is the darker side of modernity
J. Kameron Carter
When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me." - John Wesley
John Wesley
I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have formerly judged to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon as to evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this - because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if judge him to be in a swoon, though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.
John Owen
[O]ur English divines are sounder in it than any in the world, generally: I think because they are more practical, and have had more wounded, tender consciences under cure, and less empty speculation and dispute (336-7).
Richard Baxter
Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.
G.K. Chesterton
The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.
G.K. Chesterton
As the uneasiness and... reluctance to face [his problems] cut him off more and more from all real happiness... habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo... All the healthy and outgoing activities [he shouldn't want to avoid] can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may... "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked." The Christians describe [Heavenly Father] as one "without whom Nothing is strong." And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in [dire] sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them... in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
C.S. Lewis
Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on [our Heavenly Father's] ground... It is His invention... He made the pleasures... All [Satan and his devils] can do is to encourage... humans to take the pleasures which our [God] has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence [they] always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for and ever diminishing pleasure is the formula... To get a man's soul and give him nothing in return - that is what really gladdens [the heart of Satan and his devils].
C.S. Lewis
In contrast we let go of existence, meaning, and the sublime as categories to describe the object “God.” Instead these become ways in which we engage with the world. Yet, as we affirm the world in love, we indirectly sense that in letting go of God we have, in fact, found ourselves at the very threshold of God.
Peter Rollins
A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
So often when people hear about the suffering in our world, they feel guilty, but rarely does guilt actually motivate action like empathy or compassion. Guilt paralyzes and causes us to deny and avoid what makes us feel guilty. The goal is to replace our guilt with generosity. We all have a natural desire to help and to care, and we simply need to allow ourselves to give from our love without self-reproach. We each must do what we can. This is all that God asks of us." - , God Has a Dream, p. 87-88
Desmond Tutu
The esoteric finds the Absolute within the traditions, as poets find poetry within the poems.
Frithjof Schuon
I cannot tell you how much I love you. But that which of all things I have most at heart, with regard to you, is the real progress of your soul in the divine life. Heaven seems to be awakened in you. It is a tender plant. It requires stillness, meekness, and the unity of the heart, totally given up to the unknown workings of the Spirit of God, which will do all its work in the calm soul, that has no hunger or desire but to escape out of the mire of its earthly life into its lost union and life in God. I mention this, out of a fear of your giving in to an eagerness about many things, which, though seemingly innocent, yet divide and weaken the workings of the divine life within you.
William Law
Brand-new truths are probably not Truths.
John Piper