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From the beginning Christianity has been a proclamation, not a thesis supported by various logical arguments. The Doctrine of God (109)
Our faith in God is not just a philosophical belief in a supreme being; it is a life-changing experience of the one who has made us what we are.God is Love
there are those who say that the language of election is figurative. In Christ, everyone has been chosen, whether they know it or not. This view, or variations of it, has been popular in modern times, when it has became associated with Karl Barth and his followers, but there are at least two problems with it. The first one is that the Bible never says anything like this. From the beginning to the end, it is clear that God has chosen some people and not others... The second one is that it denies human freedom, even as it claims to be asserting the worth of every human being. What if I do not want to go to heaven?God Has Spoken 895
Today the doctrine of the Holy Spirit's personal divinity is seldom given much attention. Books about him tend to gloss over who he is and concentrate almost entirely on what he does. This is a pity, because the works of the Holy Spirit cannot be understood unless his divine personhood is acknowledged.God Has Spoken (725)
The early Christians understood the scope for misunderstanding on this point and were uncomfortable about identifying God too closely with the supreme being of the philosophers. A small (but telling) difference shows us what the root of their problem was and how they reacted to it. The philosophers spoke of their supreme being as to on (the thing that is) but Christians changed the neuter participle to the masculine ho ōn, which to them was the equivalent of Yahweh ("he who is").3 By doing this, they made it clear that the supreme being is a person who relates to us in personal ways, not an abstract deity—a vital difference that distinguished and still distinguishes Christianity from any kind of philosophy.God is Love, 136
should be common to the faith of every believer. The love of God reaches out to each of us individually, and no one person's experience will be exactly the same as another's. But we all have a great deal in common because we know and love the same God. Theology does not focus on us and our feelings but on God and the way he has revealed himself to us.God is Love, 81
Many other examples of the misuse of a text can be cited, but it is remarkable how they usually all boil down to one of two things. Either the hermeneutical method being used is faulty, or the issues being discussed are not in the text to begin with.God is Love, 59
What do the genealogies reveal about God? They tell us that he is a faithful Lord, who keeps his covenant from one generation to another. Whoever we are and however far we may have descended from the source of our human life in Adam, we are still part of God's plan. Over the centuries we have developed differently, we have lost contact with one another, and we have even turned on each other in hostility, but in spite of all that, we are still related and interconnected in ways that go beyond our immediate understanding or experience.God is Love, 59
"Infallibility" emerged as a way of saying that the Scriptures do not teach error, and "inerrancy" makes it more precise by insisting that they do not contain it either.God is Love, 28
True theologians are sheep who hear their Shepherd's voice and interpret his words for the benefit of the rest of the flock. In this task, theology will continue until the time comes when it will no longer be needed. When that happens we shall know all things, and be enfolded forever in the unchanging and all-encompassing love of God.God is Love, 28
What we call "theology" is a work in progress. It is not a fixed body of knowledge that can never grow or develop; it continues to expand as our relationship with God deepens. At the same time, it does not change, because God does not change. Theologians may have to express themselves in new ways when challenged by fresh discoveries that raise questions our ancestors never dreamed of.God is Love, 28
A child cannot talk about his parents in the dispassionate way that a biographer would, but a child knows things about his parents that no outsider can fully understand. It is the same in our relationship with God. The Bible never speculates about whether God exists, because it was written by people who knew him and who would have found such a question absurd.God is Love, 26
When dealing with matters pertaining to God, humility is essential. If our attempts to discover his ways are dissociated from a spirit of reverent worship, what we are seeking will remain hidden from us and the task to which we have been assigned will be left for others to accomplish. In doing theology, we are talking about someone with whom we live in relationship, with all the complexities that any relationship involves. We cannot objectify God and analyze him any more than we can distance ourselves from our parents, spouse, or children and examine them as if our ties to them were purely intellectual. As with our close human relations, our knowledge of God is embedded in a context that we must recognize and respect.God is Love, 25-26
The good theologian must know how to recognize the boundaries of our understanding, and must remind curious souls not to stray beyond the limits that God has imposed on our learning.God is Love
a true Christian is not a sheep who has gone looking for the Good Shepherd and found a man who seems to fit the bill, but someone who has been looked for and found by God.God is Love
To conclude, therefore, let no man out of weak conceit of sobriety, or in ill applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works.
We must never think that the Christian base hindered science. Rather, the Christian base made modern science possible.How Should We Then Live, 152
Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton and the early members of the Royal Society were religious men, who repudiated the sceptical doctrines of Hobbes. But they familiarized the minds of their countrymen with the idea of law in the Universe and with scientific methods of enquiry to discover truth. It was believed that these methods would never lead to any conclusions inconsistent with Biblical history and miraculous religion; Newton lived and died in that faithEnglish Social History (1942)
because the early scientists believed that the world was created by a reasonable God, they were not surprised to discover that people could find out something true about nature and the universe on the basis of reason.How Should We Then Live?, 147
The foundation for modern science can be said to have been laid at Oxford when scholars there attacked Thomas Aquinas's teaching by proving that his chief authority, Aristotle, made certain mistakes about natural phenomena.How Should We Then Live?, 144
Most of the major figures who jump-started modern science were devout Christians—Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Newton.
In a 2003 study, sociologist Rodney Stark identified the fifty-two top "stars" who did groundbreaking work to launch the scientific revolution. Turning then to biographical documents, he discovered that all but two of them were Christian.
Today many people assume that science and religion are inherently in conflict. But historians of science have turned that assumption upside down. Today most historians agree that the scientific outlook actually rests on fundamental concepts derived from a biblical view of nature.
Consider, for example, the idea of "laws" in nature. Today that idea is so familiar that we consider it common sense. But historians tell us that no other culture—East or West, ancient or modern—has ever come up with the concept of laws in nature.
It appeared for the first and only time in Europe during the Middle Ages, a period when its culture was thoroughly permeated with biblical assumptions.
As historian A. R. Hall notes, the use of the word law in the context of natural events "would have been unintelligible in antiquity, whereas the Hebraic and Christian belief in a deity who was at once Creator and Lawgiver rendered it valid."https://twitter.com/NancyRPearcey/status/1744561510628618539
Gospel accounts, which most scholars think were written after these events, are curiously open-ended. If the destruction of Jerusalem had been the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy, then surely the Gospels would have said so. But the warnings given to the disciples remain applicable because at bottom they are spiritual in nature.Bray, Gerald. God Is Love (p. 726). Crossway
The message of the letter to the Hebrews is that Jesus Christ is the culmination of Jewish history, the end point to which the prophets of old had pointed and the perfect fulfillment of what had up to then been revealed only partially and sporadically.Bray, Gerald. God Is Love (pp. 724-725). Crossway
The fundamental problem that Arius set out to resolve was how God could enter his creation, and then suffer and die within it, without ceasing to be divine. As he saw it, the only way to do this was to reduce or dilute divinity so as to make communication with a finite world possible, but not to remove it altogether (as Paul of Samosata apparently did)God Has Spoken, 244
the view that the Son who made himself known in Jesus Christ was a divine being who could become a man because, although he was closer to God than anyone else, he was not God himself. He was "divine" in the moral sense of being perfectly good and holy, but he did not possess the characteristics of God that would have prevented him from entering the created world--infinity, eternity, immutability, and so on.God Has Spoken, 232
Top Authors
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