Quotes about Understanding

One of the great gains of biblical scholarship this last generation, not least because of our new understanding of first-century Judaism, is our realization that the temple was central to the Jewish worldview.

Transcending "Revelation" All this alerts us to the fact that scripture is more than simply

A fully Christian view of the Bible includes the idea of God's self-revelation but, by setting it in a larger context, transforms it. Precisely because the God who reveals himself is the world's lover and judge, rather than its absentee landlord, that self-revelation is always to be understood within the category of God's mission to the world, God's saving

Perhaps, indeed, that is what "holy scripture" really is — not a calm, serene list of truths to be learned or commands to be obeyed, but a jagged book that forces you to grow up in your thinking as you grapple with it.

How would you describe a mature person?

there is no such thing as a god's-eye view (by which would be meant a Deist god's-eye view) available to human beings, a point of view which is no human's point of view.

is simply a reminder of what the greatest systematic theologians have always known and recognized — that theology is a matter of loving God with our minds and that loving does not mean merely admiring or 'being intellectually interested in'.

Saying "It's true for you" sounds fine and tolerant. But it only works because it's twisting the word "true" to mean, not "a true revelation of the way things are in the real world," but "something that is genuinely happening inside you.

My main argument in this book is that when we understand the Christian message, we will see that it does indeed "make sense" of our world, because it helps us both to understand the world the way it is and to be able to contribute fresh "sense" through our own lives.

Someone who truly understands who he or she is in Christ is further along the road to genuine holiness than someone who, in confusion, anxiously imagines that the new life is the result, rather than the starting-point, of the daily battle with temptation.

Forgiveness doesn't mean that we don't take evil seriously after all; it means that we do.

Forgiveness doesn't mean "I didn't really mind" or "it didn't really matter.