Scripture Quotes

A glory gilds the sacred page Majestic like the sun It gives a light to every age It gives but borrows none.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

Bible

We search the world for truth we cull The good the pure the beautiful From all old flower fields of the soul And weary seekers of the best We come back laden from our quest To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read.

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

Dan Brown

Better a little with righteousnessthan much gain with injustice.

In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right,until someone comes forward and cross-examines.

What are they fighting about?” Saba listened for a moment and closed her eyed in frustration. “They’re arguing scripture.” “Your brother is arguing scripture? With an angel?

The recasting of the Origin Myth as a story about the perils of disobedience precipitated a kind of decoupling of scripture from religious experience: when religious authorities began to insist on the literal truth of scripture, they were effectively promoting a kind of secular rationalism that states that one does not need to have a religious experience of any kind to live a moral life: all one has to do is declare one’s faith in scripture, in the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity and such, and accept the authority of the Holy Catholic Church as God’s representative on Earth.

Daniel Waterman

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

If there is one Christian left who holds out hope that a God honoring, biblically accurate, mainstream Hollywood movie will emerge, I have some advice for you…stop waiting, it’s not going to happen, move on. If you want authentic Scripture, read the Scripture.

But if the Bible is not everywhere literally true, which parts are divinely inspired and which are merely fallible and human? As soon as we admit that there are scriptural mistakes (or concessions to the ignorance of the times), then how can the Bible be an inerrant guide to ethics and morals? Might sects and individuals now accept as authentic the parts of the Bible they like, and reject those that are inconvenient or burdensome?

Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.

Saint Augustine … insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity.

Karen Armstrong

Believers who come to know the Scripture in a living way, in both knowledge and Spirit, can in turn, use this Word to minister to people around them.

Henry Hon

To explain God after merely reading the scriptures is like explaining the city of New York after seeing it only in a map.

In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of Greek mythology), that great Excalibur which they had forged with infinite pains and skill—the method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty 'two-handed engine at the door' of the theologian is warranted to make a speedy end of any and every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing that, taken allegorically or, as it is otherwise said, 'poetically' or, 'in a spiritual sense,' the plainest words mean whatever a pious interpreter desires they should mean.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Why do we live out every day as if there is no hope to overcome our chaos and no possibility for living a stressed-less life when Scripture repeatedly reassures us that God has the power and the peace to make that happen?

Too often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving. (Look again at 2 Corinthians 8:14 and 9:11).

...if I try to make only enough money for my family' immediate needs, it may violate Scripture. ...Even though earning just enough to meet the needs of my family may seem nonmaterialistic, it's actually selfish when I could earn enough to care for others as well.

The only reason that the devil can read scripture, is that it was written with him in mind.

Anthony T.Hincks

it means what it say," Ethel said. "It means that a Hebrew may not enslave a Hebrew. But the sons of Ham are not of that tribe. The were cursed, with black skin and tails. Where the Scripture condemns slavery, it is not speaking of negro slavery at all.

Colson Whitehead

Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need.

Forget organized religions. Forget scriptures. Forget Gods, Fathers, Sons and Spirits. Forget all dogmas taught by the representatives of theoretical religion, and then only you shall be able to visualize the true core of religion.

Every scripture, no matter how ancient, must go through rigorous human scrutiny.

The present moment is the definition of eternity. It has never not been the present moment. This isn't scriptural or unscriptural - it is merely a logical fact.

Religious fundamentalists belong in a museum at the exhibit of medieval antiquities, not in any nation.

Even though the Bible is an ancient document, every person in every situation in every society that’s ever existed can find in this book things that endure forever. Here’s a book that never needs another edition. It never needs to be edited, never has to be updated, is never out of date or obsolete. It speaks to us as pointedly and directly as it ever has to anyone in any century since it was written. It’s so pure that it lasts forever.

John F. MacArthur Jr.

We have to grow into Scripture, like a young boy inheriting his older brother's clothes and flopping around in them, but he gradually builds out and grows up. Perhaps it's a measure of our maturity when parts of Scripture that we found odd or even repellent suddenly come up in a new light. Our sense is overtaken by a sense of the whole thing, wide, multicolored, and unspeakably powerful.

Second, you should examine the Scriptures for principles that relate to the issue at hand. The Lord will never ask you to do anything that is morally wrong or in contradiction to His Word. If what you are considering violates a concept you find in the Word, you can forget it.

James C. Dobson

When the Guard convinced you fate was not on our side, you parted ways with me and saw fit to make me suffer,' Percy stated. The pain on Alexi's face worsened, and he opened his mouth to refute her. She put her hands lovingly on his cheeks. 'We survived. Our love survived. And we shall again.'He stared at her in wonder. 'How did my dear girl grow so brave?'Percy grinned. 'Didn't you hear? The meek shall inherit the earth.

Leanna Renee Hieber

Scripture was given to the church, and theology is a necessary work of the church, by the church, in the church, and for the church.

Kenneth S. Kantzer

My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God. I never thought it to be any very great crime to seem to be inconsistent with myself; for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it a great crime to be so inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture. God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When someone uses Philosophy as an indispensable tool for tackling Theology and knows no other way for approaching that scripture-related Science, then you must have already figured out by now that he is a gentile who is standing right before you.

Ibrahim Ibrahim

The Sabbath day of rest establishes the reality that God's people live by God's grace and not by their own labors.

Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen

The Bible provocatively evokes desire.

Jen Pollock Michel

So walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Anonymous

On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. ... In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. ~ 14th Dalai Lama in his talk to the Society for Neuroscience in 2005 in Washington.

By-passing all scriptures and all that any teacher has to say, we shall, while respecting every finger that points to the moon, be mindful only of the moon. This habit will make it easier to understand the truth that every statement is wrong, whenever made by any man, for it was made in duality and is therefore one-sided, incomplete, and in the final synthesis its opposite is just as true!

Christmas Humphreys

Paul Ricoeur has wonderful counsel for people like us. Go ahead, he says, maintain and practice your hermaneutics of suspicion. It is important to do this. Not only important, it is necessary. There are a lot of lies out there; learn to discern the truth and throw out the junk. But then reenter the book, the world, with what he calls 'a second naivete'.' Look at the world with childlike wonder, ready to be startled into surprised delight by the profuse abundance of truth and beauty and goodness that is spilling out of the skies at every moment. Cultivate a hermaneutic of adoration - see how large, how splendid, how magnificent life is.And then practice this hermaneutic of adoration in the reading of Holy Scripture. Plan on spending the rest of our lives exploring and enjoying the world both vast and intricate that is revealed by this text.

Eugene H. Peterson

It is useful to reflect that the word 'liturgy' did not originate in church or worship settings. In the Greek world it referred to publish service, what a citizen did for the community. As the church used the word in relation to worship, ti kept this 'public service' quality - working for the community on behalf of or following orders from God. As we worship God, revealed personally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our Holy Scriptures, we are not doing something apart form or away from the non-Scripture=reading world; we do it for the world - bringing all creation and all history before God, presenting our bodies and all the beauties and needs of humankind before God in praise and intercession, penetrating and serving the world for whom Christ died in the strong name of the Trinity.

Eugene H. Peterson

Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions.

Eugene H. Peterson

The mindset of a believer every time he opens the Bible must be the conviction that whatever the Bible says is true. We cannot trust our reason to determine what is true or false, right or wrong.

Michael P.V. Barrett

Interestingly enough, every time I corner a fanatic with scientific facts which they cannot argue or disprove, they either dismiss me as 'anti-God' and a 'secular humanist' or they start spouting reams of misapplied and irrelevant 'scripture' at me, like good little sheeple and like that will in any way, shape or form prove anything... Which just proves to me that common sense and actual reason doesn't come into it. Only hatred.

Christina Engela

Ye shalt knoweth the truth and it shalt set thy free.

Whatever else in the Bible catches your eye, do not let it distract you from Him.

So Encourage Each Other and Build Each Other Up-Positive Connections.

Anonymous

Though you recite much scripture, If you are unaware and do not act accordingYou are like a cowherd counting others' cattle, Not a sharer in the wanderer's life.

Anonymous

Our superintendence in instruction and discipline is the office of the Word, from whom we learn frugality and humility, and all that pertains to love of truth, love of humanity, and love of excellence. And so, in a word, being assimilated to God by participation in moral excellence, we must not retrograde into carelessness and sloth. But labor, and faint not.

Clement of Alexandria

[T]here is no greater strengthener of sin, and destroyer of the soul, than Scripture misapplied (317).

What The Scriptures Refer To As Sin, In The Medical World It’s Responsible For Disease

In the search for an author [of Hebrews] we are virtually stumbling over Priscilla. No longer is it feasible to pretend she isn't there.

Who can find a virtuous woman?For her price is far above rubies.

Anonymous

Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own n

Jinasena

We should all live as though someone is writing a book about us.

J.R. Rim

In the Old Testament…God is the owner of the vineyard. Here He is the Keeper, the Farmer, the One who takes care of the vineyard. Jesus is the genuine Vine, and the Father takes care of Him…In the Old Testament it is prophesied that the Lord Jesus would grow up before Him as a tender plant and as a root out of the dry ground. Think how often the Father intervened to save Jesus from the devil who wished to slay Him. The Father is the One who cared for the Vine, and He will care for the branches, too.

J. Vernon McGee

Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's

Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

Jonathan Edwards

Your attitude toward Scripture can reveal your attitude toward the Savior. When your passion for God's Word runs high, your passion for God does as well.

Dillon Burroughs

Good docents often begin by asking the viewer, “What do you see in this work?” The idea that the expert should be allowed to constrain the interpretation of others rightly offends our sensibilities about museums and art. It ought to offend us just as much when applied to Scripture.

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