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Quotes by Theologian
"Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life."
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"O heavenly Father,protect and bless all thingsthat have breath: guard themfrom all evil and let them sleep in peace."
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"Custom is second nature."
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"The sight of nature fascinates, the family tie has a sweet enchantment and patriotism gives the religious spirit a fiery devotion to the powers that it reveres."
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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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"The temptation of Christ was harder, unspeakably harder, than the temptation of Adam; for Adam carried nothing in himself which could have given the tempter a claim and power over him. But Christ bore in himself the whole burden of the flesh, under the curse, under condemnation; and yet his temptation was henceforth to bring help and salvation to all flesh."
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"Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and boundaries, but from the outside."
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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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"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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"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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"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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"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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"Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future."
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"The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer."
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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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"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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"The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day."
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"It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer - lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on."
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"Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ."
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"But in Christianity, by contrast, the freedom of the children of God was also freedom from all important worldly interests, from all art and science, etc."
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"When I am not king, then THE Kingdom has its best chance of breaking through."
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"We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties."
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"It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own."
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"Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor."
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"Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ."
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"Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross, he waited until one of them turned to him."
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"The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another."
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"Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man."
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"Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested."
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"Some saints cannot do menial work while maintaining a saintly attitude because they feel such service is beneath their dignity."
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"In the second half of life, people have less power to infatuate you. But they also have much less power to control you or hurt you."
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"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother and sister when we learn to listen to them."
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"To say that 'prayer changes things' is not as close to the truth as saying, 'prayer changes me and then I change things.' God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things."
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"If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves."
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"The temple of God is the holy people in Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ is the living temple of God and of the new humanity."
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"We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune."
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"Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him."
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"If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all."
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"What is worse than doing evil, is being evil (Ethics, p.67). To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his twisted world. This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that "(i)t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie (Ethics, p.67)."
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"It's true all the time everywhere or it's not true! And that one truth is always Mystery."
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"We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself."
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"It is not that God's help and presence must still be proved in our life; rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, in God's Son Jesus Christ, than to discover what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I will die. And the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of judgment."
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"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace."
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"We become side-tracked if we make physical health our aim and imagine that because we are children of God we shall always be perfectly well."
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"Religion is more like response to a friend than it is like obedience to an expert."
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"One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one's own strength, one has to inquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us."
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"The sympathy which is reverent with what it cannot understand is worth its weight in gold."
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