EVERYONE INTERPRETS

'Wrong interpretation is dangerous, and we must strive to avoid it. But lack of awareness that one is interpreting and that one interprets in community, within a tradition, is more dangerous. It is a danger to which evangelicals - with all their innovations and individualism - are particularly prone.'

Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination, p.255.

THE EVANGELICAL CRISIS OF CREDIBILITY

'If the Reformation was a crisis of authority - one that rightly gave the highest authority to the Bible rather than the priests - then this reckoning (or perhaps even a new reformation) is one of credibility: Do we who profess to believe in the authority of the Word present ourselves as credible witnesses of that Way, Truth, and that Life?'

Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination, p.231.

EVANGELICALISM & IMPERIALISM

'...the spread of the gospel during the missionary age is so intertwined with the West's expansion through imperialism that it is almost impossible to imagine an evangelical movement that is not an empire-building enterprise, not a movement rooted in political and cultural domination, and not propagated by the power of money, business, and capitalism rather than the power of the Holy Spirit. (It is almost, but not quite, impossible to imagine such a movement; it is possible because such a movement is there in Scripture in the early church.'

Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination, p.200.

UBELIEVABLE DEATH

'Of course, he had always known he was going to die. He never, however, believed it.'

Annie Dillard, The Living: A Novel, p.323.

WHEN POWER GOES UNDERGROUND

'The failure to recognize power that doesn't look like power creates conditions ripe for the abuse of power.'
Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination, p.148.

THE POWER OF METAPHOR

'Metaphors are hard.

To discover similarities, to find connections once unseen, comprises some of the holiest work we can do as human beings, for it is a work of reconciliation. But this truth also entails the obverse: making wrong connections can be as dangerous as attaching the wrong cable clamp to the wrong battery terminal.'

Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination: How stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis, p.49. 

WE NEED THEOLOGIANS & POETS

'...when we seek to enter into the mystery of our faith we must call the poets to the table as well as the theologians.'

Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil, p.51

WHAT YOU SEE IN THE SUN

'"When the Sun rises, do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?"
O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty."
William Blake in Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God, p.14.

UNION WITH GOD

'Union with God, in Christian thinking, is not a dissolving of the self. Union is not the absorption and dissolution of the human being into the substance of God. On the contrary, the human person is never more herself as when she is closest to God. The presence of God is a personal presence. It is an intimacy of relationship between two ontologically distinct persons. It is an intimacy that is closer than relationships between two human beings. God knows each human being perfectly. God also knows without measure. To be known and yet to be loved is the foundation of intimacy.'

Gregory E Granssle, Our Deepest Desires, p.130.

HOPE DEFINED

'Real hope involves a confident vision of my future prospects as good.'
Gregory E Ganssle, Our Deepest Desires, p.123.

BEAUTY GREETS US

'Beauty presents itself to us. We do not look for beauty as if it were a static thing waiting to be found. Beauty encounters us. It is the beautiful that initiates, that moves, that captures our attention. We do not make the first step. Beauty, in some sense, seeks us. We may put ourselves in places that leave us open to beauty, but it is the beautiful that acts on us.'

Gregory E Ganssle, Our Deepest Desires, p.74.

THE PROBLEM OF GOODNESS

'Perhaps goodness is invisible because we expect it to be there. We expect the world to be good and our lives to be rewarding. It is only when something interferes with the goodness that we are startled into noticing. Evil is an intrusion into the normal. When something intrudes, we want to know why. When nothing intrudes, we do not ask questions about why things are the way they are,. It is not until the normal is disturbed that we begin looking for explanations.

The expectation that things will be good makes it easy for us to forget that we ought to seek an account for the existence of goodness as well as evil.'

Gregory E Canssle, Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations, p.54.