Quotes about Christianity

But, in spite of all confusion and difficulty in regard to details, it is generally agreed to divide the history of Christianity into three principal parts—ancient, mediaeval, and modern; though there is not a like agreement as to the dividing epochs, or points of departure and points of termination. I. The history of Ancient Christianity, from the birth of Christ to Gregory the Great. A.D. 1—590.

The Calvinistic system involves a positive truth: the election to eternal life by free grace, and the negative inference: the reprobation to eternal death by arbitrary justice. The former is the strength, the latter is the weakness of the system. The former is practically accepted by all true believers; the latter always has been, and always will be, repelled by the great majority of Christians.

Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.

Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive.

Beware of the tendency to preach about Christianity, and try to preach Christ.

Dad truly believed that Christians should be involved in the political process and should make their voices heard.

If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and the Bible is of no more authority than any other uninspired volume, how is it that the book is what it is?

True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is found to praise and honour and glory.

When our motivation to obey becomes an oppressive pressure to do the right thing, to do what's expected of us as Christians, then it breeds serious problems. Obedience that is only seen as rule-keeping ruins the love relationship between us and the Lord. Why? Even though the rules may be biblically based, we will end up obeying them rather than God. Concern with the letter of the law will cause us to lose the spirit of love.

The poet Yeats felt we were living in the last of a great Christian cycle. His poem "The Second Coming" says, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Whether Jewish or Christian, our religions have stressed too strongly the strictly historical aspect, so that we are, so to say, in worship of the historical event, instead of being able to read through that event to the spiritual message for ourselves. People turn to Oriental religion because therein they find the real message which has been closed by excessive literalism and historicism in their own religion and which is now open to them

Christianity takes for granted the absence of any self-help and offers a power which is nothing less than the power of God.