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Quotes by Theologian
"We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer."
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"Christ does not save us by acting a parable of divine love; he acts the parable of divine love by saving us. That is the Christian faith."
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"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility."
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"My visit this autumn is an opportunity to continue that rich tradition of visits between Canterbury and Rome."
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"The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies."
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"All Church power arises from the indwelling of the Spirit; therefore those in whom the Spirit dwells are the seat of Church power. But the Spirit dwells in the whole Church, and therefore the whole Church is the seat of Church power."
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"If God and man are in themselves one, and if religion is the human side of this unity then must this unity be made evident to man in religion, and become in him consciousness and reality."
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"Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet."
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"I always have the feeling we are merely fearfully trying to save room for God; I would rather speak of God at the center than at the limits, in strength rather than weakness, and thus in human life and goodness rather than in death and guilt."
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"Our first remark on this subject is that the ministry is an office, and not merely a work."
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"The real difference in the believer who follows Christ and has mortified his will and died after the old man in Christ, is that he is more clearly aware than other men of the rebelliousness and perennial pride of the flesh, he is conscious of his sloth and self-indulgence and knows that his arrogance must be eradicated. Hence there is a need for daily self-discipline."
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"Church practice has been more influenced by Plato than by Jesus. We invariably prefer the universal synthesis, the answer that settles all the dust and resolves every question even when it is not entirely true over the mercy and grace of God."
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"Love . . . includes fellowship in suffering in joy and in effort."
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"If the mystery of the Trinity is the template of all reality, what we have in the Trinitarian God is the perfect balance between union and differentiation, autonomy and mutuality, identity and community."
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"The tragedy in a man's life is what dies inside of him while he lives."
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"You don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too."
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"If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise, just bogus self - improvement on our own terms."
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"Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come."
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"Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God's own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us."
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"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace."
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"He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself."
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"Prayer for many is like a foreign land. When we go there, we go as tourists. Like most tourists, we feel uncomfortable and out of place. Like most tourists, we therefore move on before too long and go somewhere else."
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"The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it."
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"Organized religion is no longer good news for most people, but bad news indeed. It set us up for the massive atheism, agnosticism, hedonism, and secularism we now see in almost all formerly Christian countries."
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"True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways."
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"There can, therefore, be no doubt that Presbyterians do carry out the principle that Church power vests in the Church itself, and that the people have a right to a substantive part in its discipline and government."
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"First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat."
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"Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals."
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"The dearest friend on earth is a mere shadow compared to Jesus Christ."
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"Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder."
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"Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others."
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"At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workmanlike regard for knives."
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"A lot of us pray as if prayer is really twisting the arm of God or convincing God to do something. We think by saying more words we'll talk God into it. We think, 'If I say it one more time, God will agree with me. That very attitude is an alienating attitude. It keeps us in the role of doing it 'right or often enough to convince an unready or unwilling God. Wrong, wrong, wrong!19 minutes ago"
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"If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being able to hear the real voice of God."
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"The Church cannot be content to live in its stained-glass house and throw stones through the picture window of modern culture."
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"The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there."
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"Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man."
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"Older women are like aging strudels - the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling has come at last into its own."
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"No man ever did, nor ever shall, truly go forth to convert the nations, nor to prophesy in the present state of witnesses against Antichrist, but by the gracious inspiration and instigation of the Holy Spirit of God."
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"We look upon the enemy of our souls as a conquered foe, so he is, but only to God, not to us."
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"To substitute Scripture for the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the living Word."
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"In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bis."
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"Religion is more like response to a friend than it is like obedience to an expert."
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"The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behavior 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."
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"I do not think you should get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you."
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"Classical philosophical theism maintained the ontological distinction between God and creative world that is necessary for any genuine theism by conceiving them to be of different substances, with particular attributes predicated of each."
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"Right words make all of us feel falsely important. Right action keeps all of us forever beginners."
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"I do feel that federation, loose parallel processes, are less than we've got, less than we could have and, in the very long run, less than what God wants in the Church."
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"Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me."
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