CHRISTIANITY & CULTURE

'We do not need more political, moral, and cultural crusades. Instead, what we need are "salty" Christians whose robust faith and discipleship shape the way they think, live, and exercise their gifts, training and wisdom in their callings. We do not need more churches called to active duty in the culture wars. What we need are more churches that are resalinization instead of desalinization plants, churches that are dedicated to making disciples who are not only forgiven and renewed in Christ but also well taught and actually active in the world - in their families, neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, and volunteer organizations, loving their neighbors through their vocational excellence as well as through their witness to Christ.'

Michael Horton, The Great Commission, p.242.  

CHRISTIANITY

'I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen - not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything.'

CS Lewis in Michael Horton, The Great Commission, p.238.

CHURCH

'...the resalinization plant for the people of God...'
Michael Horton, The Great Commission, p.227.

KNOWLEDGE

'It's possible to have "head knowledge" without "heart knowledge," but it's impossible to have the latter without the former.'

Michael Horton, The Great Commission, p.187.

PREACHING

'The church is not a pen-house but a mouth-house...'
Martin Luther in Michael Horton, The Great Commission, p.167.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

'There is no doctrinal proposition or spiritual programe that will conform us to the image of Christ. The gospel must transform us over a lifetime of quite ordinary and sometimes even plodding habits that we cannot always even articulate.'

Michael Horton, The Great Commission, p.158.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

'Drama, doctrine, discipleship: these are the aspects of our high calling that must be integrated. Conservatives may be tempted to abstract the doctrine from its dramatic narrative, doxological practice and discipleship. Much of evangelical worship over the last generation has focused on praise without adequate grounding in the drama, doctrine, of discipleship. And now the current emphasis on discipleship is threatened by an inadequate grounding in these other important aspects of Christian maturity.'

Michael Horton, The Great Commission, p.143.  

DISCIPLESHIP

'Discipleship on the theological right has come to mean preparation for soul winning, under the direction of parachurch efforts that had discipleship farmed out to them because the local church wasn't really doing it. On the left, discipleship has come to mean some form of social activity or social service, from serving soup lines to political protests to...whatever. The term "discipleship" has currently been ruined so far as any solid psychological and biblical content is concerned.'

Dallas Willard in Michael Horton, The Gospel Commission, p.137.

MEN

'That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.'

Abigail Adams in My Dearest Friend, p.110.

GOVERNMENT

'" ...you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists: they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have laways objected to being governed at all."'

GK Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, p.141.

MARRIAGE

'...there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy.'

GK Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, p.94.

PHILOSOPHERS

'"...We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous crininals. We remember the great poisoning princes of the  Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential idea of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish that the property to become their property that they might more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property, they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Muderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's."'

GK Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, p.44.