Quotes about History

History is still waiting for the Christian mind to "shift" back to what has always been true since the initial creation, which is the only thing that will ever make it a universal (or truly catholic) religion. The Universal Christ was just too big an idea, too monumental a shift for most of the first two thousand years.

Francis "without having a specific feminist program…contributed to the feminizing of Christianity."2 French historian André Vauchez, in his critical biography of Francis, adds that this integration of the feminine "constitutes a fundamental turning point in the history of Western spirituality."3

Do a violent people want, create and need a violent God, or has the textual presentation of a sometimes violent God legitimated and even blessed our own violent history?

If my underlying thesis in this book is true and Christ is a word for the Big Story Line of history, then the incarnational worldview held maturely is precisely the Good News!

True transcendence always includes the previous stages and does not dismiss them or punish them, as most reforms and revolutions have done in history. This is true reconciliation, healing or forgiveness and always characterizes mature believers. They afterward seem to thank God for the pain and the trial.   good

Without an evolutionary worldview, Christianity does not really understand, much less foster, growth or change. Nor does it know how to respect and support where history is heading.

A person who has found his or her True Self has learned how to live in the big picture, as a part of deep time and all of history. This change of frame and venue is called living in "the kingdom of God" by Jesus, and it is indeed a major about-face.

Much of patriarchal Christian interpretation has been trying to avoid pain, trying to avoid being poor, trying to avoid powerlessness. That's why we couldn't hear Jesus. If we had had an image of God as the great mother who is giving birth—as in Romans 8:22—I think history as process, pain, patience, guided destiny would have come more naturally. As it is, we have seen history as a linear obstacle course, something to be conquered, exploited and won. A

Resurrection is about the whole of creation, it is about history, it is about every human who has ever been conceived, sinned, suffered, and died, every animal that has lived and died a tortured death, every element that has changed from solid, to liquid, to ether, over great expanses of time. It is about you and it is about me. It is about everything. The "Christ journey" is indeed another name for every thing.

if you believe Jesus's main purpose is to provide a means of personal, individual salvation, it is all too easy to think that he doesn't have anything to do with human history—with war or injustice, or destruction of nature, or anything that contradicts our egos' desires or our cultural biases.

He is giving us his full Jesus-Christ self—that wonderful symbiosis of divinity and humanity. But the vehicle, the medium, and the final message here are physical, edible, chewable—yes, digestible human flesh. Much of ancient religion portrayed God eating or sacrificing humans or animals, which were offered on the altars, but Jesus turned religion and history on their heads, inviting us to imagine that God would give himself as food for us!

Trinity. It wasn't until the third century that Tertullian (150—240), sometimes called "the founder of Western Christian theology," first coined this word Trinity from the Latin trinitas, meaning "triad," or trinus, meaning "threefold." Again, the word itself is not found in the Bible; it took history awhile to find a proper word for this always-elusive "rubber band.