David > David's Quotes

“Faith includes both an immediate awareness of something unconditional and the courage to take the risk of uncertainty upon itself. Faith says "Yes" in spite of the anxiety of "No."

Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality”
― Paul Tillich

“There is ... a great wisdom in our language. It is the embodiment of innumerable experiences of the past. It is not by chance alone that we use certain visible symbols and do not use others. Therefore, it is often useful to find the reasons for the choices of the collective mind of former generations.”
― Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations

“[a] characteristic of a symbol is that it opens up levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us.

[a symbol] also unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul which correspond to the dimensions and elements of reality. A great play gives us not only a new vision of the human scene, but it opens up hidden depths of our own being.”
― Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith

“if the teachings of Christianity were genuinely to take root in human hearts ... we should have no desire for war, should hate injustice worse than death, and should find indifference to the sufferings of others impossible.”
― David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions

“A philosophical system may stand on the coherence or persuasiveness of its propositions. The church is otherwise. It is not a collection of propositions or sayings; but a people transformed by the Word, the people of God.”
― George W. Forell, The Protestant Faith

“Without the presuppositions of the Christian faith the individual is either nothing or becomes everything.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man