Robert Terrell > Robert's Quotes

“Wright's point was that the God of the Israelites is not the God who speaks, if speaking is a means of conveying a word that can be dissociated from acts, and thereby "dissociated from history and dealt with as an abstraction" for theological contemplation.”
― William Dean, The American Spiritual Culture: And the Invention of Jazz, Football, and the Movies

“First, any term applied to God is only ana analogy; when this is forgotten, any God-defining term is sacrilegious.”
― William Dean, The American Spiritual Culture: And the Invention of Jazz, Football, and the Movies

“By normal standards, Jesus' modus operandi was virtually an atheistic modus operandi, so that he could live through the irony of atheism, first divesting himself of a standard theism, then undergoing an ironic reversal toward a new theism.”
― William Dean, The American Spiritual Culture: And the Invention of Jazz, Football, and the Movies

“Whether it is Paul defending Judaism, Augustine pursing philosophical learnedness, Luther attempting complete ritual self-abasement, each finally realized he had given himself to secular forms of self-salvation and to a world filled with human achievement but empty of God.”
― William Dean, The American Spiritual Culture: And the Invention of Jazz, Football, and the Movies

“The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.”
― Karl Barth

“In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.”
― Karl Barth

“Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way”
― Karl Barth

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”
― Karl Barth

“Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”
― Karl Barth

“This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.”
― Karl Barth, The Humanity of God

“As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give glory to God”
― Karl Barth

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.”
― Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

“The Bible is clear: amnesia produces apostasy.”
― Dale Ralph Davis, Judges: Such a Great Salvation

“You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian

“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“I was smart enough to know it was wrong, but not brave enough to stop them.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, Sleeping Giants

“They imagined that with a rightly honored commodity they could “purchase” security in a world that seemed devoid of the creator. “Godmaking” amid anxiety is a standard human procedure! But”
― Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now

“Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms. Whereas Israelites are always tempted to acquisitiveness, Sabbath is an invitation to receptivity, an acknowledgment that what is needed is given and need not be seized.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now

“Justice for everyone is an alarming thought because it raises the possibility that it might come upon oneself after all. As the author of Ephesians puts it, “by nature” we are all “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3).”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

“Grace knocks us flat, preventing any form of self-congratulation. All the good we achieve is to be attributed to God rather than to ourselves. What makes our lives good is not anything we are ourselves but the presence within us of what we are not, a divine presence never ours by right because never ours by nature. All the glory for the good we exhibit in our lives should therefore be reserved for God.”
― Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key

“While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

“On feeling guilty about lack of 'productivity':
"In a time of infirmity, the illness IS one's work. Taking care of all the disciplines that our health problems require IS the other part of the small daily fidelity to which we are called, beside the faithfulness of being attentive to God. We can be well simply by our diligence in being who we are at the moment."
--Marva Dawn, Being Well When We're Ill pg 137”
― Marva Dawn

“I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps these remarkable molecules might be wasted on the young, that they may have more to offer us later in life, after the cement of our mental habits and everyday behaviors has set. Carl Jung once wrote that it is not the young but people in middle age who need to have an “experience of the numinous” to help them negotiate the second half of their lives.”
― Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“If I wanted to find out whether a man was a Christian, I wouldn’t go to his minister. I would go and ask his wife. We need more Christian life at home. If a man doesn’t treat his wife right, I don’t want to hear him talk about Christianity.”
― Dwight L. Moody, The Overcoming Life: Updated Edition