Quotes from Kevin Vanhoozer

The true martyr/witness testifies in word and deed, life and death. This is the cost of apologetics. Cheap apologetics is the defense of Christian truth without martyrdom.

For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God" (Rom. 13:1). God

Public theology is first and foremost a reaction against the tendency to privatize the faith, restricting it to the question of an individual's salvation. As we shall see in later chapters, the church is not a collection of saved individuals but the culmination of the plan of salvation: to create a people of God.

Christian doctrine grows disciples by teaching them to perceive, name, and act in ways that demonstrate the reality of the gospel, speaking and showing what is "in Christ.

Imagination is biblical reasoning in its Sunday best, lost in wonder at the creativity of the Creator. Being

Pastor-theologians know something that others do not know, and they know it because the Bible tells them so. To be instructed by the Spirit in the school of the Scriptures is to be, as Peter and John had been, "with Jesus." What pastor-theologians know is something quite particular (what God was doing in Christ) but has enormous, even universal, implications.

Christian doctrine is what the church believes, teaches, and confesses as it prays and suffers, serves and obeys, celebrates and awaits the coming of the kingdom of God. —Jaroslav Pelikan

The English term "martyr" comes from the Greek martys, "witness." Søren Kierkegaard defines witness as "someone who directly demonstrates the truth of the doctrine he proclaims—directly, yes, partly by its being the truth within him, … partly by his volunteering his personal self and saying: See, now, if you can force me to deny this doctrine.

Pastor-theologians should not have to choose between a "social" and a "spiritual" gospel, for there is only one gospel (Gal. 1:6—7), "an eternal gospel" that concerns the heavens and the earth (Rev. 14:6). The

Being in Christ is both gift and task, privilege and responsibility. Exaggerate the gift, and you risk antinomian complacency; exaggerate the responsibility, and you risk legalistic anxiety.

the church, like television, is always educating; the only question is, What is it teaching?

What is the message? Can faith bereft of specific beliefs speak understanding? If so, understanding of what? My concern is that the only thing Cox has to say to young people seeking spirituality is "Do good."13 But why should we do good? And what is the good if it is not somehow rooted in the nature and work of God? Cox's Age of the Spirit needs a normative Word. For while belief without faith is empty, faith without belief is blind.