Quotes about Context

The Macedonians gave in the context of their lack of resources.

Here is a method that deserves a whole chapter. Read history! Try to get the viewpoint of ten thousand years—and see how trivial YOUR troubles are, in terms of eternity!

Hearing God cannot be a reliable and intelligible fact of life except when we see his speaking as one aspect of his presence with us, of his life in us. Only our communion with God provides the appropriate context for communications between us and him.

Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.

An act of faith in the biblical tradition is always undertaken in an environment of knowledge and is inseparable from it.

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

A theological articulation can be fruitful in one place at one time but not at that same place at a different time or at a different place at the same time.

The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.

you have to discover the meaning of a word you do not understand by using the meanings of all the other words in the context that you do understand.

On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

One of the most important principles of handling the Word properly and studying the Bible inductively is to interpret Scripture in the light of its context. Why? Because context always rules in interpretation.

Aion" may mean "age" in the New Testament and it may mean "world.