THE PASTORAL EPISTLES

'Why has modern criticism remained so especially defensive toward the Pastorals? What about them was so offensive to modernity? Why were they singled out for some of the most unreasonable and virulent attacks and speculative pseudo-scientific treatment of all New Testament documents? Is it because they were concerned with transmission of tradition, with the ordering of the church and its leadership, and with the rigorous resistance of false teaching?'

Thomas C Oden, First and Second Timothy and Titus, p.11. 

THE GOSPEL

'The gospel is a story about a king who appears as a plumber's assistant.'
Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.265.

HERESY

'The providential reason God allows heresy among the faithful, according to the ancient Christian writers, is to challenge the worshiping community to correct its exaggerations so as to bring it back into the balanced consensus.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.165.

MODERNITY VS. ORTHODOXY

'Modernity has only lasted less than a dozen generations, while orthodox Christianity has already flourished for more than four hundred generations and shows no sign of fatigue. Yet orthodoxy seems like the newcomer in the university and to the cultural elites, since that is where it has been most forgotten. 

The list of modernities since the patristic period that have been transcended by orthodoxy is too long to describe here. Tribalism, feudalism, nominalism and social utopianism provide examples.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.164.

CLASSIC CHRISTIANITY

'The gift of classic Christianity will only be received when people are ready to receive it and be comforted by it. In order for that to happen, they must be willing to let modern consciousness collapse of its own weight. This recognition is happening on a person-by-person basis.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.164.

THEOLOGY

'Theology is the study of God. The study of God is simply to be enjoyed for its own incomparable subject, the One most beautiful, most worthy, to be praised. Life with God delights in its very acts of thinking, reading, praying and communing with the One most worthy to be beheld, pondered and studied, not for its written artifacts or social consequences but for joy in its object.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.147.

CHRISTIAN TEACHING

'What the ancient church teachers least wished for Christian teachers is that they would become focused on self-expression or become an assertion of purely private inspiration, as if those might claim to be some decisive improvement on apostolic teaching.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart, p.144.

THOMAS ODEN

'In the Epiphany of 1971 I had a curious dream in which I was in the New Haven cemetery and accidentally stumbled upon my own tombstone with this puzzling epitaph: "He made no new contribution to theology." I woke refreshed and relieved.'

Thomas C Oden, A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir, p.143.