Doctrine Quotes

How absurd to try to make two men think alike on matters of religion when I cannot make two timepieces agree!

Charles V

The most frustrating thing about our doctrine in the modern church is that the unbelievers who have never been to church, the agnostics, those who are out rightly atheist, don’t have to fight with whether they are supposed to dominate the earth or not, they just go ahead and do it

One century's saint is the next century's heretic ... and one century's heretic is the next century's saint. It is as well to think long and calmly before affixing either name to any man.

This doctrine of total inability which declares that men are dead in sin does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that anyone is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is equal in itself, nor that man’s spirit in inactive, and much less does it mean that the body is dead. What is does mean is that since the fall, man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God, or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive, but not necessarily intensive. It is in this sense that man, since the fall, is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, wholly inclined to all evil. He possesses a fixed bias of the will against God, and instinctively and willingly and turns to evil. He is an alien by birth, and a sinner by choice. The inability under which he labors is not an inability to exercise volition, but an inability to be willing to exercise holy volitions. And it is this phase of it which led Luther to declare that ‘free will’ is an empty term, whose reality is lost; and a lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all.

Loraine Boettner

Mfalme Sulemani alikuwa mtu mwenye hekima kuliko wote ulimwenguni. Anatushauri, “Adui yako akiwa ana njaa, mpe chakula; Tena akiwa ana kiu, mpe maji ya kunywa; Maana utatia makaa ya moto kichwani pake; Na BWANA atakupa thawabu (Mithali 25:21-22). Yesu anasema jambo fulani linalofanana sana na hilo katika mafundisho Yake yaliyofuata (Mathayo 5:44-45). Kitendo cha kutukanwa, kupigwa, kushtakiwa au kulazimishwa kubeba mzigo mzito usio wa kwako kinaweza kusababisha mafutu mabaya kabisa katika asili ya binadamu. Yaani, chuki, hasira, ukatili na hata vurugu. Lakini pale wale waliobarikiwa kuwa na hekima wanapojikuta katika majaribu makubwa kama hayo tabia yao haitakiwi kuwa ya shari, inda au ya kulipiza kisasi. Bali inatakiwa kuwa ya kusaidia, kuwa na ridhaa ya kutenda mambo mema, na kuwa mwema kwa wengine siku zote.