Fergus Kerr > Quotes

“Footnoting references, signalling quotations, and so on were no part of a 13th-century scholar's duty. He could recycle his own and his predecessor's work without a qualm. He knew nothing of copyright and plagiarism, which are 17th-century inventions.”
― Fergus Kerr, Thomas Aquinas: A Very Short Introduction

“It is because people exult and lament, sing for joy, bewail their sins and so on, that they are able, eventually, to have thoughts about God. Worship is not the result but the precondition of believing in God. Theological concepts, like all concepts, are rooted in certain habitual ways of acting, responding, relating, to our natural-historical setting. The very idea of God depends on such brute facts as that, in certain circumstances, people cannot help shuddering with awe or shame, and so on. It does not follow that the idea of God has a place in the conversation simply because we enjoy singing hymns: but if we cannot imagine what it is to observe rites, enjoy singing hymns and the like, the nature of religion is bound to remain opaque”
― Fergus Kerr, Theology After Wittgenstein

“On Thomas’s view, we pray in order to dispose ourselves so as to receive properly what God wills to give us.”
― Fergus Kerr, Thomas Aquinas: A Very Short Introduction