Quotes about Truth

As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton says: 'God is far too real to be met anywhere other than in reality.

God is far too real to be met anywhere other than in reality.

Notions of absolute truth and ultimate authority are fiercely attacked, and the Bible itself is no longer accorded unconditional respect in Western societies.

In this present book, we are taking what Christian philosopher Gary Habermas, in another context, calls "the minimalist facts approach." We are only going to say what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. We are not going to present a hagiography of George Washington, i.e., we will not make him into an ecclesiastical saint. But we do believe that his own words and actions show that he was a Christian and not an unbelieving Deist.

For Christians, then, the question is not "Who gets the Bible right?" The question is and has always been, "Who gets Jesus right?" The Gospel writers and Paul couldn't have made that any clearer.

Ours is a historical faith, and to uproot the Bible from its historical contexts is self-contradictory.

If we let the Bible be the Bible, on its own terms—on God's terms—we will see this in-fleshing God at work, not despite the challenges, the unevenness, and ancient strangeness of the Bible, but precisely because of these things. Perhaps not the way we would have written our sacred book, if we had been consulted, but the one that the good and wise God has allowed his people to have.

When you read the Bible on its own terms, you discover that it doesn't behave itself like a holy rulebook should.

Readers who come to the Bible expecting something more like an accurate textbook, a more-or-less objective recalling of the past—because, surely, God wouldn't have it any other way—are in for an uncomfortable read. But if they take seriously the words in front of them, they will quickly find that the Bible doesn't deliver on that expectation. Not remotely.

As Jesus, the Word, is of divine origin as well as a thoroughly human figure of first-century Palestine, so is the Bible of ultimately divine origin yet also thoroughly a product of its time.

The Bible—from back to front—is the story of God told from the limited point of view of real people living at a certain place and time.

When knowing what you believe is the nonnegotiable center of true faith, questions and critical self-examination pose a threat.