DISCERNMENT GIFTS

'The good news is that nearly everyone develops talents as they grow up, although sometimes they are a little harder to identify due to certain life experiences. Another way of thinking of these talents is that they aren't what you can do, but what you can't help yourself doing.'

James Lawrence in Nay Dawson, She Needs: Women flourishing in the church, p.20.

THE CHRISTIAN AS A HOLY OBJECT

'...If you wish to boast of a holy object, why do you not praise the holy object that Jesus Christ, God's Son, has touched with His own body? What does He touch? My living and dying; my walking, standing; my suffering, misfortune, and trials - all of which He experienced, bore, and passed through.'

Martin Luther in John W Kleinig, Wonderfully Made, p.68.

LUTHER ON MALE & FEMALE

'God divided mankind into two classes, namely male and female, or a he and she... Therefore each of us must have the kind of body God has created for us. I cannot make myself a woman, nor can you make yourself a man; we do not have that power. But we are exactly as he created us; I am a man and you are a woman. Moreover, he wills to have his excellent handiwork honored as his divine creation, and not despised. The man is not to despise or scoff at the woman or her body, nor the woman the man. But each should honor the other's image and body as a divine and good creation that is well pleasing unto God himself.'

Martin Luther in John W Kleinig, Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body, p.23.

BIBLICAL REALISM

'...what is going on in Christianity? What other system (religious or ideological) is so fastidious about systematically pointing out the real, concrete, serious flaws of its leaders? In a culture where sorry is the hardest word to say, not only among politicians but also in the workplace and frequently at home as well, the Bible offers us a rogues gallery of flawed heroes who lie, steal, commit adultery, covet, hate, kill, and find 1,001 ways not to love God with all their hearts, souks, minds, and strength. This is so pronounced in the Bible, and so relatively rare outside of it, that we may call it a distinctive biblical figure.'

Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, p.128.

THE VARIETY IN CREATION

'God made a riotous universe of fabulous functionality and superabundant systematicity, a perfect marriage between a tie-die bohemian artist and a round-spectacled besuited mathematician.'

Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, p.72.

THE GOSPEL AS GIFT

'The Bible's picture of human beings is not as wheelers and dealers in the corporate boardroom, signing contracts with the gods or ultimate reality in order to get ahead; instead, we are joyful children on Christmas morning, receiving unexpectedly lavish gifts from loving parents. Free gift, not contractual obligation, is at the heart of the Bible's picture of reality, just as it at the heart of the Bible's picture of redemption. If this principle is followed through, it yields a world in which the poor, the weak, and the aged are not cast aside because they have nothing to put on the table in the great business deal of life, but they are cared for and honored. God gives freely to those who cannot stand on their own two feet, those who cannot cut a deal with him.'

Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, p.64.

SHADES OF GREY

'..if no one is thoroughly unredeemable but the devil alone, and if the two cities are intermingled until the final judgement, then the Christian will be predisposed to expect any and every aspect of human culture to contain some mixture of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood, and will refuse to give absolute allegiance to any human ideology, value, or institution. That refusal and the affirmation of God on which it rests give the Christian a wonderfully open but critical mind to engage with culture in all its diversity. In other words, if we begin and end with a black and white antithesis (God and creation, city of God and earthly city) we find many fine shades of grey in between.'

Christopher Watkin, Critical Thinking: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, p.20.

GOD'S GOODNESS MUST RUB OFF ON US

'You cannot have [a] relationship with a good God without becoming a better man.'
Michael Green, 2 Peter and Jude, p.119.

MIRACLES & BELIEF

'Miracles don't make people believe!...It's the belief that is the miracle.'

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower, p.84.

THE HOLY SPIRIT'S SPECIAL WORK

'To persuade a poor, sinful soul that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him and only has thoughts of kindness towards him is an expressible mercy.

This is the special work of the Holy Spirit and by this special work we have communion with the Father in his love, which is poured into our hearts.'

John Owen, Communion with God, p.210. 

THE WIDE EMBRACE OF CHRISTIANITY

'Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. 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 else.'

CS Lewis in 'Is Theology Poetry?', Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church, p.21.

THE REALISM OF CHRISTIANITY

'Christianity does not merely offer a new way of beholding our world, but an enhanced capacity to live within that world and cope with its uncertainty and complexity, as well as our own frailty and failings. It enables us to confront glib and shallow accounts of our situation, such as the superficial rationalism of the Enlightenment or the facile optimism of an ideology of 'positive thinking', which seeks to exorcise any recognition of the darker and more disturbing aspects of human nature or creation. Reality is complex and ambivalent; wisdom demands that we recognise this, rather than crudely forcing it to be uniformly simple and positive. Intellectual violence is unable to suppress this darker truth about our world, which Christianity has afformed and confronted, rather than implausibly denied.'

Alister McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.207.

THE SELF-INTEREST IN ATHEISM

'It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.'

Thomas Nagel in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.173.

WE ARE MEANING SEEKING CREATURES

'We cannot simply eat, sleep, hunt and reproduce - we are meaning seeking creatures. The western world has done away with religion but not with religious impulses; we seem to need some higher purpose, some point to our lives - money and leisure, social progress, are not not enough.'

Jeanette Winterson in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.165.

THE NEWNESS OF FACTS

'...facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth century invention.'

Alasdair MacIntyre in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly: Journeys through Science, Faith & Doubt, p.158.