Quotes from Hans Boersma

The modesty that theology needs is the recognition that we cannot rationally comprehend God.

What we need is evangelicals and Catholics who discern the primary demand of our time: a celebration of our heavenly participation in the eternal Word of God. Only a heavenly minded Christian faith will do us any earthly good.

The rise of modernity corresponded with the decline of an approach that regarded the created order as sacramental in character. The patristic and medieval mind recognized that the heavenly reality of the Word of God constituted an eternal mystery; the observable appearances of creation pointed to and participated in this mystery.

Augustine's concept of time was sacramental: time participates in the eternity of God's life, and it is this participation that is able to gather past, present, and future together into one.

The ecclesial body was the sacramental reality to which the Eucharist pointed and in which it participated.

Once modernity abandoned a participatory or sacramental view of reality, the created order became unmoored from its origin in God, and the material cosmos began its precarious drift on the flux of nihilistic waves.

We have heard the fact; let us seek the mystery.

The entire cosmos is meant to serve as a sacrament: a material gift from God in and through which we enter into the joy of his heavenly presence.

The central paschal event - Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension - is something Christians participate in: God "made us alive with Christ," Paul insists (Eph. 2:5). He "raised us up with Christ" (Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1). The result of this sharing in Christ is that believers participate in heavenly realities. We are seated with Christ "in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6; Eph. 1:3).

Precisely because heaven is already present on earth, the moral lives of Christians on earth are to reflect their heavenly participation.

Everything in the so-called world of nature is meant to lead us back to God. In that sense, created matter is meant to serve eucharistically. By treating the world as a eucharistic offering in Christ, received from God and offered to him, we are drawn into God's presence.

The primary task of theology (and let's forget here about the distinction between biblical and dogmatic theology) is not to explain the historical meaning of the text but to use the Scriptures as a means of grace in drawing the reader to Jesus Christ.