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.