Quotes about Understanding

Since we cannot stop reading the gospels without ceasing to be proper Christians, we have developed all kinds of strategies for making alternative sense of the gospels and so screening out the dangerous and challenging picture they are actually sketching. That is at the heart of the problem I have been trying to identify.

so far as I can tell, most people simply don't know what orthodox Christian belief is.

It all becomes so complicated, people grumble—when what they really mean is, "I am so used to reading this passage one way that I find it hard to switch and consider other options.

God's kingdom had already been launched through the events of Jesus's life. Unless we get this firmly in our heads, we will never understand the inner dynamic of Paul's mission.

Saul had been absolutely right in his devotion to the One God, but absolutely wrong in his understanding of who that One God was and how his purposes would be fulfilled.

Only those who have tried to understand and expound the Bible, and especially Paul as a man of his own day, only those who have happily escaped the dangers which threaten us on these two sides (exposition and application), are entitled to cast the first stone.

The aim, as in all theological and biblical exploration, is not to replace love with knowledge. Rather, it is to keep love focused upon its true object.

Arguments about God are] like pointing a flashlight toward the sky to see if the sun is shining.

Many of the questions we ask God can't be answered directly, not because God doesn't know the answers but because our questions don't make sense. As C.S. Lewis once pointed out, many of our questions are, from God's point of view, rather like someone asking, "Is yellow square or round?" or "How many hours are there is a mile?

When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven't yet really understood who he is or what he's done.

As Schaeffer once wrote, there is nothing uglier than theological orthodoxy without understanding or compassion.

When the only form of cultural commentary Christians offer is moral condemnation, no wonder we come across to non-believers as angry and scolding.