John Funnell > John's Quotes

“What Herod realizes is that this Child and the message he brings of universal forgiveness and reconciliation with God do not offer a rival source of power and order but a radical alternative to what the classical world understands as “power” and “order.” They do not seek to replace him on the throne of his kingdom but to usher in a wholly new Kingdom, not providing “spiritual benzedrine for the earthly city” but replacing that city with a new one: the City of Man passes away, the City of God abides forever.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis

“our dear old bag of a democracy” is sustained, not by itself, but by belief in something deeper and greater than itself.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis

“It is easier to think in a foreign language than to feel in it. Therefore no art is more stubbornly national than poetry.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis

“I have suggested that the cultural health of Europe, including the cultural health of its component parts, is incompatible with extreme forms of both nationalism and internationalism. But the cause of that disease, which destroys the very soil in which culture has its roots, is not so much extreme ideas, and the fanaticism which they stimulate, as the relentless pressure of modern industrialism, setting the problems which the extreme ideas attempt to solve. Not least of the effects of industrialism is that we become mechanized in mind, and consequently attempt to provide solutions in terms of engineering, for problems which are essentially problems of life.35”
― Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis

“Henry Wallace: “The idea of freedom . . . is derived from the Bible with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity.”39 And Christianity is the only genuine source and sustainer of democracy”
― Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis

“Women were especially drawn to Christianity because it offered them a life that was so greatly superior to the life they otherwise would have led.”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“DURING THE SUMMER OF THE year 64, the emperor Nero sometimes lit up his garden at night by setting fire to a few fully conscious Christians who had been covered with wax and then impaled high on poles forced up their rectums. Nero also had Christians killed by wild animals in the arena, and he even crucified a few.”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“In addition, local authorities were ordered to seize each Christian man, to pluck out his beard and to tattoo a black mark on his shoulder. When few Christians defected in response to these measures, the Khān then ordered that all Christian men be castrated and have one eye put out—which caused many deaths in this era before antibiotics, but did lead to many conversions.37”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“To sum up: Western history consists of four major eras: 1) classical antiquity, then 2) the Dark Ages when the church dominated, followed by 3) the Renaissance-Enlightenment which led the way to 4) modern times. For several centuries that has been the fundamental organizing scheme for every textbook devoted to Western history,9 despite the fact that serious historians have known for decades that this scheme is a complete fraud—“an indestructible fossil of self-congratulatory Renaissance humanism.”10”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“As the distinguished medievalist Warren Hollister (1930–1997) put it in his presidential address to the Pacific Historical Association, “to my mind, anyone who believes that the era that witnessed the building of Chartres Cathedral and the invention of parliament and the university was ‘dark’ must be mentally retarded—or at best, deeply, deeply, ignorant.”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“the truly fundamental basis for the rise of the West was an extraordinary faith in reason and progress that was firmly rooted in Christian theology, in the belief that God is the rational creator of a rational universe.”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“The truth is that not only did Christianity not impede the rise of science; it was essential to it, which is why science arose only in the Christian West!”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“The great British philosopher concluded his remarks by noting that the images of God and creation found in the non-European faiths, especially those in Asia, are too impersonal or too irrational to have sustained science.”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“As Augustine pointed out in his Confessions, the basic Christian message is so simple that it can easily be grasped by children, while its theological ramifications are sufficient to challenge the most powerful intellects.”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“As one of China’s leading economists put it, “in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”42 Neither do I.”
― Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion

“I would rather dip my bread in salt and look at the sun than dip it in butter and look at my feet.”
― Panaït Istrati, On the Docks in Braila

“What God is like to Him I serve? What Saviour like to mine? O never let me from Thee swerve, For truly I am Thine.”
― Stephen Lee, Puritan Prayers, Poems & Meditations: Collection of Authentic Puritan Prayers, Poems & Devotions

“Of all the crowns JEHOVAH bears, Salvation is his dearest claim; That gracious sound well-pleas'd he hears, And owns EMMANUEL for his name.”
― Stephen Lee, Puritan Prayers, Poems & Meditations: Collection of Authentic Puritan Prayers, Poems & Devotions

“Reports from witnesses including the landlady of the King’s Head in Ratcliffe say that the Protestants met in a back room of the inn, ordered a fire, beer and a roasted pig, and then sat and stood around the table, while one read a selection of psalms and the minister preached and shared bread and wine. The staff also noticed that deacons collected money for the poor and prisoners, and that members called each other ‘brother’.”
― Stephen Tomkins, The Journey to the Mayflower: God's Outlaws and the Invention of Freedom

“He'll swallow up in victory, Grim death, the king of fears From faces all the Lord most high Will wipe away the tears;”
― Stephen Lee, Puritan Prayers, Poems & Meditations: Collection of Authentic Puritan Prayers, Poems & Devotions

“Sweet was the hour I freedom felt To call my Jesus mine; To see his smiling face, and melt In pleasures all divine.”
― Stephen Lee, Puritan Prayers, Poems & Meditations: Collection of Authentic Puritan Prayers, Poems & Devotions

“For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. C. S. LEWIS, “ON THE READING OF OLD BOOKS”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“If you’ve ever read John Bunyan’s famous allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, then you know that picking the right friends to travel with can be the difference between reaching the celestial city and not. Friends can corrupt us, or they can lead us home.”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“We are speaking of God. Is it any wonder if you do not comprehend? For if you comprehend, it is not God you comprehend. Let it be a pious confession of ignorance rather than a rash profession of knowledge. To attain some slight knowledge of God is a great blessing; to comprehend him, however, is totally impossible.”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“some believed they could determine who God is simply by means of using their reasoning powers alone. The Bible could be set aside for good; reason was enough. As time passed, it became evident that the Enlightenment experiment had failed. War, for example, exposed the fact that humanity is not morally neutral but corrupt. The ill use of reason demonstrated that humanity was desperately in need of special revelation after all. Autonomous reason was not so autonomous, as it turned out. In fact, it was idolatrous, attempting to remove God from his throne and replace the Creator’s authority with the creature’s intellect instead. The follies of the Enlightenment should forever remind us that attempting to scale the ladder of heaven to pull God down is the height of human hubris. It is the tower of Babel all over again. A much better approach couples the quest for knowledge with humility, a humility that looks to God’s revelation of himself for understanding. It is the approach of faith seeking understanding.”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“In him [God] all that we are is possessed in a higher, fuller, purer, and limitless way.” God is the one who “donates everything that we are to us out of his infinite plenitude of being, consciousness, and bliss.”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“Sin against an infinite God cannot be atoned for by a Savior who has emptied himself of his divine attributes. No, it is his divine attributes that qualify him to make atonement in the first place. Sin against an infinite God can be met only by a Savior who is himself deity—and all the perfections identical with that deity—in infinite measure.”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“What good news it is, then, that the gospel depends on a God who does not depend on us.”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“Christianity is not about coming to God so that he can direct us to something or someone better than himself, some other thing that will make us ultimately happy. No, God himself is the one in whom all our joy, pleasure, and happiness are found.”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God

“No matter where you flee, he is there. You would flee from yourself, would you? Will you not follow yourself wherever you flee? But since there is One even more deeply inward than yourself, there is no place where you may flee from an angered God except to a God who is pacified. There is absolutely no place for you to flee to. Do you want to flee from him? Rather flee to”
― Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God