Quotes from James Sire

For is it not the common experience of all of us - you and I - that we do no incorporate the truth of these propositions in our lives? We say we know, but we do not do as we know. We say we believe, but we do not act like it.

Life is short, but art is long. Sophocles is dead, but Oedipus lives on…Each of us when we read a great piece of literature is a little more human than before.

So what is a worldview? Essentially this: A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) that we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.

Well-wrought poems and works of imaginative literature can do for us what stone-cold prose can never do. They can help us grasp the full dimension of ways of life other than our own.

Removed the "God-given" from this conception and made "reason" the sole criterion for truth.

Theism, however, teaches that not only is there a moral universe but there is an absolute standard by which all moral judgments are measured. God himself-his character of goodness (holiness and love)-is the standard.

But nothing external to God can possibly constrain him. If he chooses to restore a broken universe, it is because he "wants" to, because, for example, he loves it and wants the best for it. But he is free to do as he wills, and his character (Who He Is) controls his will.

A fearless honesty should characterize both our self-analysis-where we are now-and our pursuit of truth.

Artists operating within the theistic worldview have a solid basis for their work. Nothing is more freeing than for them to realize that because they are like God they can really invent. Artistic inventiveness is a reflection of God's unbounded capacity to create.

One thing the Bible does not do: it does not denigrate the mind. The Bible is not anti-intellectual. Rather it gives the reason why all of us know what we know, why we can think with some degree of accuracy, and why we fail to think with complete accuracy.

There is another limitation in many arguments Christians use to prove the rationality of belief in God. The God who is "proved" is only a transcendent, impersonal God, maybe a Creator, but not necessarily personal. Only a God whose existence is important to human understanding or human flourishing is worth troubling about.

Universes fashioned by words and concepts that work together to provide a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought and action.