Gerald Bray (47)
From the beginning Christianity has been a proclamation, not a thesis supported by various logical arguments. 
Gerald Bray
The Doctrine of God (109)6.8K
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
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)
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
It may be too much to attribute the rise of modern scientific thought exclusively to the influence of Christianity, but it is hard to deny that the two are connected. Belief in an orderly universe preceded the discovery and application of that order, and for that belief the teaching of the Bible was largely responsible. Many early Christian writers examined the world around them in great detail, and by claiming that everything they observed went back to the providence of a good Creator they were able to make sense of the universe to a degree that had not been achieved before.God Has Spoken, 165
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
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
A major problem for Process Theology is the moral question of good and evil. If everything is in constant flux and individuals are able to participate in creating their own future, and if this creativity is inextricably linked to God, it is hard to see what place there can be for the concept of evilGod Has Spoken, 1179
The creation of a professional celibate priesthood was the ultimate triumph of tradition over Scripture, and helps to explain why it was such a target for the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century. What is perhaps less well appreciated is that the priest so consecrated was believed to stand in the place of Christ in the church, performing a ministry analogous to hisGod Has Spoken, 790
We do not know who those men were, but their legacy was the so-called Donation of Constantine, a forged document that purported to be a grant form the first Christian emperor to the bishop of Rome, giving him jurisdiction over the whole Western empire. It was frequently used by later popes to support their claims, not least in the quarrel with Cerularius. The donation was followed in about 850 by a compilation of papal pronouncements now known as the False DecretalsGod Has Spoken, 782
The most fascinating thing about this legislation is that the canonists who approved it recognized that it contradicted not only the New Testament but a number of earlier councils that had allowed for married clergy and bishops.God Has Spoken, 780
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What makes the Scriptures holy is not their historical accuracy or even their content, but the presence of God in them.God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology (p. 43). Crossway
One of the persistent criticisms made by Western theologians of Eastern Orthodoxy is that it tends to put too much emphasis on the limitations of creaturely finitude as the cause of mankind's alienation from God and not enough emphasis on sin and disobedience. This kind of imbalance is not possible if the Holy Spirit is thought to proceed from the Son as well as from the Father, because then the Son's redemptive work is just as important to the Spirit's mission as the original creation is.God Has Spoken (726)
What estimation can be made of Photius? His logic is almost impeccable, but it is also completely self-contained. He did not know Augustine's arguments, nor did he reflect seriously on the Western tradition, which was a closed book to him. He allowed himself to be carried away by his own reasoning and came up with an analysis of the Filioque that his Latin contemporaries would not have recognized, even if they had been able to read his work. More seriously still, he never answered the positive challenge of the Filioque, which was to define how the Son and the Spirit were related. If the Spirit does not proceed from the Son, what is the nature of the connection between them?God Has Spoken, 669
Photius is one of the most controversial figures in church history. In the East, he is regarded as a saint who defended the theological tradition when it was under serious threat, but in the West he has traditionally been seen as the man mainly responsible for splitting the church into its Eastern and Western halves. What both sides agree on is that he was a brilliant scholar and a consummate politician who used his gifts for what he saw as the best interests of his church.God Has Spoken, 666
it is by no means uncommon to hear people echoing sentiments similar to [Abelard] about the "injustice" of Christ's blood sacrifice and condemning the notion of the Father's pleasure at such a thing as sadistic. But then as now, people who think like that suffer the same drawback as Anselm's dialogue partner Boso: they have not considered how serious sin is.God Has Spoken 453
Adam and Eve did not decide to disobey God by themselves, but were tempted by Satan and ensnared by him in a way that Jesus never was. Putting things right with God therefore meant destroying Satan's power over us as well as paying the price of our wrongdoing. Jesus' propitiation for our sins would hardly have been the definitive solution to the problem of evil if the cause of that evil had not been dealt with as well.God Has Spoken 438-439
There is a great deal about us as indviduals that we have not chosen. None of us has been asked to decide in what century we would be born, who we would have as parents, or what our sex, color, and nationality would be. All this and more has been given to us without our consent, and we have to make the most of our inheritance, whether we like it or not. In the world of time and space we have no freedom to alter these basic facts, and whatever "free will" we may possess is obliged to function within these parameters.God Has Spoken (430)
After 800 there was a definite pause in theological creativity as the churches absorbed the lessons of the past and appropriated their inheritanceGod Has Spoken (399)
John of Damascus was talking about the objective being (ousia) of God, not about the way he relates to us in moral and spiritual terms, and this is how his impassibility must be understood. God could not be made to suffer because of some inherent weakness in his constitution that an external force might discover and manipulate, nor could he be influenced by human sacrifices on his behalf, as Elijah had long ago demonstrated to the prophets of Baal.God Has Spoken, 315
it is not true to say that Christians capitulated to the mind-set of the surrounding philosophical culture. On the contrary, the philosophers whom they are accused of imitating were the last people in the ancient world to accept the gospel message. SO reluctant were they, in fact, that in 529 the emperor Justinian closed the remaining philosophical schools and exiled their members to Persia. If Christianity had been little more than another philosophy, it is hard to see why resistance to it would have been that strong.God Has Spoken, 311
It is important to realize that the encounter between Greek philosophical thought and Christian theology did not lead to a Hellenization of Christianity. Rather, it led to the development of a mysticism whose prime concern was to avoid such intellectual idolatry by ensuring that the worship of God did not get reduced to philosophical categories that corrupted it by their inadequacy.God Has Spoken, 306
Very few people realize it, but the six days of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis, known in Greek as the hexaemeron, was the part of the Bible most frequently commented on in the early church.God Has Spoken, 164
There can be no doubt that the career of Origen marked a decisive turning point in the history of Christian theology. Before his time there were apologists who discussed particular aspects of the subject, often (though not always) in response to the challenges posed by heretics and opponents, both Jewish and Christian. With Origen, however, we come to the work of a theologian whose main concern was to develop the internal logic of God's self-revelation and show how its different parts come together in a coherent whole.God Has Spoken, 147
The appearance of the Montanist sect in Asia Minor around AD 170 brought that question to a head. Montanus and his followers claimed to be prophets with messages from God, but they were rejected on the ground that revelation of that kind had come to an end.God Has Spoken, 143
The opponents of Gnosticism all recognized that the root of the problem lay in the opposition the Gnostics made between God the Father and the creator, whom they regarded as an inferior being.God Has Spoken, 130
"Gnostic" is the name now used to describe people who believed that the pathway to salvation lay through esoteric knowledge that was given only to a few enlightened ones, who were truly spiritual... The rest remained unspiritual, or "soulish"... and of course they were the great majority, even within the church.God Has Spoken (122)
The apostles were horrified and urged Simon to repent of his wickedness, which he apparently did. No more is heard of him in the New Testament, but a century later he was credited with having invented a creation myth that had become the origin of the so-called Gnostics.God Has Spoken (122)
It is no exaggeration to say that Christian theology began when Jesus called God his Father and taught his disciples to do the same. That was something previously unknown in Israel, and the Jews who heard Jesus say this reacted against him because of it.God Has Spoken (99)
Of all the prophets and teachers of Israel, he [Jesus] was the only one who came to speak about himself. When talking with the Pharisees, he reproached them for claiming to have a knowledge of the Scriptures but failing to see that they spoke about him.God Has Spoken (65)
our tendency to skip over this issue and go directly to that of the work of the Spirit is unbalanced and unhelpful - the work which the Spirit does is directly dependent on who the Spirit is.Double Procession, 423.
the pressure was on Platonism to adapt to the challenge of Christianity, not the other way round.32
it cannot be claimed that the influence of Greek philosophy drove Christians to develop a corresponding theology; Jews and Muslims were exposed to the same influences, but with very different results. This suggests that there is something in the nature of Christianity itself which led to this development.The Doctrine of God (20)
Scientific atheism of the type practised until recently in Eastern Europe is just as untenable as natural theology. It depends for its superficial validity on the unwarranted assumption that scientific methods are adequate to explain everything that exists in the real world. The Doctrine of God(107)
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