Pilgrim Theology Quotes

“Many Christians assume that we can just experience God in a personal relationship apart from doctrine, but that’s impossible. You cannot experience God without knowing who he is, what he has done, and who you are in relation to him. Even our most basic Christian experiences and commitments are theological. “I just love Jesus,” some say. But who is Jesus? And why do you love him?”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“When we meet God in the gospel, we first encounter him as a stranger, come to rescue us from a danger we did not even realize we were in.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“Whether you realize it or not, you are a theologian. You come to a book like this with a working theology, an existing understanding of God. Whether you are an agnostic or a fundamentalist — or something in between — you have a working theology that shapes and informs the way you think and live. However, I suspect that you are reading this book because you’re interested in examining your theology more closely. You are open to having it challenged and strengthened. You know that theology — the study of God — is more than an intellectual hobby. It’s a matter of life and death, something that affects the way you think, the decisions you make each day, the way you relate to God and other people, and the way you see yourself and the world around you.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“The triune God is the sun on this horizon, and we orient ourselves to this sun, not the other way around. Instead of starting with ourselves — our plans, purposes, dreams, and accomplishments — and seeking to learn how God can serve our goals and desires, we begin with God, who is life, and who freely created, sustains, and directs history to his ends.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“The gospel is not something you can just tack on to another worldview. On the contrary, it makes you rethink everything from the ground up, from the center out.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“The gospel isn’t just enough to justify the ungodly; it’s enough to regenerate and sanctify the ungodly. However, only because (in the narrower sense) the good news announces our justification are we for the first time free to embrace God as our Father rather than our Judge.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“As Paul argues, it is the righteousness of God that is revealed in the law, and this condemns us all (Ro 1:18 – 3:20), while the gospel reveals the righteousness from God, namely, that we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Ro 3:24).”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“Only when we start with the gospel — the most controversial point of Christian faith — are we ready to talk about who God is and how we know him.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“Reason quite properly rejects contradiction, but rationalism abhors mystery, which every heresy attempts in its own way to resolve.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“the Bible is not primarily concerned with me and my quest for personal meaning and fulfillment. It’s a story about God, who is good enough to tell us about himself, about ourselves, and about this world, and to give us the true meaning of history. Yes, in the process of being swept away into this story, we do indeed find personal meaning and fulfillment for ourselves in ways that we could never have imagined, much less arranged. But we don’t get those things by starting with them. Instead, we need a compass to guide us.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“To study theology involves entering into a long, ongoing conversation, one that we did not begin. Others have been talking about God long before you or I entered this discussion. We do not read the Bible somewhere off by ourselves in a corner; we read it as a community of faith, together with the whole church in all times and places.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“I do not believe the gospel because I believe in God; rather, I believe in God because of the gospel.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“In the doctrine of the Trinity,” wrote Herman Bavinck, “beats the heart of the whole revelation of God for the redemption of humanity.” As the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, “our God is above us, before us, and within us.” The doctrine of the Trinity — God as one in essence and three in person — shapes and structures Christian faith and practice in every way, distinguishing it from all world religions.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“In other words, the canon is inspired; the community is illumined to understand, embrace, interpret, and obey it. Jesus taught that there is a qualitative distinction between the prophets and the tradition of the elders who were Israel’s teachers after the Old Testament canon was closed (Mt 15:2, 6). Similarly, Paul distinguishes between the foundation-laying era of the apostles and the building-erecting era of the ordinary ministers who follow after them (1Co 3:11 – 12). Although Paul could appeal to no human authority higher than his own office, he encouraged Timothy to recall the gift he received at his ordination, “when the council of elders [presbyteriou] laid their hands on you” (1Ti 4:14). None of us, today, is a Moses. None is a Paul or a Peter. We are all “Timothys,” no longer adding to the apostolic deposit, but guarding and proclaiming it (1Ti 6:20). The apostolic era has now come to an end; the office was a unique one, for a unique stage of redemptive history, a period of time used by God for the drafting of the new covenant constitution.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“The authority of the Scriptures does not depend on the decision of the church or the individual to validate it. To paraphrase the Westminster Confession, we receive it as the word of God because of what it is, not because of what we make of it.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“True faith calls on the name of Jesus for salvation from death, hell, sin, and Satan. Therefore, sound theology has its source in a founding drama with its revealed doctrines. Through the drama and the doctrine together the Spirit produces doxology — repentance and trust — and brings us into the unfolding story of God, no longer as spectators, but as disciples on pilgrimage to the everlasting city.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“And even though the resurrection of Jesus, by itself, is meaningless apart from the unfolding biblical drama that begins with creation and leads to the consummation, nevertheless, by beginning with this unique event in history, we are led to a particular claim that can unsettle our settled assumptions. So that is where we must begin: with the particular and unique claim that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“All of our faith and practice arise out of the drama of Scripture, the “big story” that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable nouns — doctrines. From what God does in history we are taught certain things about who he is and what it means to be created in his image, fallen, and redeemed, renewed, and glorified in union with Christ. As the Father creates his church, in his Son and by his Spirit, we come to realize what this covenant community is and what it means to belong to it; what kind of future is promised to us in Christ, and how we are to live here and now in the light of it all. The drama and the doctrine provoke us to praise and worship — doxology — and together these three coordinates give us a new way of living in the world as disciples.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“We do not read the Bible somewhere off by ourselves in a corner; we read it as a community of faith, together with the whole church in all times and places.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“So everything turns on whether the reported events actually happened. No other religion bases its entire edifice on datable facts. The events it reports either happened or they didn’t, but the result is that the gospel creates heralds, not speculative pundits, mystics, and moralists. Jesus Christ does not create a school or a pious community for the spiritually and morally gifted. Rather, he brings a kingdom — the kingdom of God — which casts down the proud and lifts up the downcast.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“the gospel is alien to us, even counterintuitive. As a surprising announcement of God’s free mercy, it requires a lot of words — many sermons — for God to preach Christ into our hearts. When people call for “deeds, not creeds,” asking, “What Would Jesus Do?” without much interest in the query, “What has Jesus done?” identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” they are asking for the law without the gospel.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“Many Christians assume that we can just experience God in a personal relationship apart from doctrine, but that’s impossible. You cannot experience God without knowing who he is, what he has done, and who you are in relation to him.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“The Bible knows nothing of any contrast between truth and experience, head and heart, theology and practical living.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“We will never know anything exactly as God knows it. Instead, we know things as he has revealed them to us, accommodating his knowledge to our feeble capacity to understand.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“We do not have even 1 percent of that kind of power. Rather, we have 100 percent of the natural freedom that God deemed appropriate to the creatures he made in his own image. Instead of pieces rationed between God (a larger portion) and creatures (a smaller portion), God has his “pie” (sovereign, Creator-style freedom) and we have our own as well from him (dependent, creature-style freedom). Our freedom is like his, but always with greater difference. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Ac 17:28), so even our ability to think, will, and act is dependent on God’s sovereign gift.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“An implication of God’s independence from the world is that he is who he is eternally and will always be. All of God’s acts are consistent with his nature. God determines the world’s course; the world does not determine God’s course.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“Throughout God’s acts revealed in history, from creation to the exodus to the exile to redemption and on into the consummation, we discern a clear pattern: every good gift comes from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. The Father is the origin of the Son and the Spirit and therefore of all the works that they accomplish. The Father created and upholds the world in his Son (Jn 1:1 – 3; Col 1:15 – 17; Heb 1:1 – 4; Rev 19:13). The Spirit is at work within creation to bring about its appropriate response.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“If the eternal Son could become fully human without sin (Heb 4:15), then surely God can communicate his truth through thoroughly human ambassadors while preserving their writings from error.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“12. Historians today rely on classics like Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Caesar’s Gallic War, and Tacitus’s Histories. The earliest copies we have for these date from 1,300, 900, and 700 years after the original writing, respectively, and there are eight extant copies of the first, ten of the second, and two of the third. In contrast, the earliest copy of Mark’s gospel is dated at AD 130 (a century after the original writing), and there are 5,000 ancient Greek copies, along with nearly 20,000 Latin and other ancient manuscripts. The sheer volume of ancient manuscripts provides sufficient comparison between copies to provide an accurate reproduction of the original text. Ironically, a number of fashionable scholars attracted to the so-called gnostic gospels as an “alternative Christianity” have far fewer manuscripts, and the original writings cannot be dated any earlier than a century after the canonical Gospels.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples

“As we discussed earlier, the gospel is “folly to Gentiles” (1Co 1:23) not only because of its message (namely, a crucified Messiah crowned King of kings in his bodily resurrection as the beginning of the new creation) but because of its very form.”
― Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples