Cross Vision Quotes

“to say that a passage is divinely inspired is not to say that it necessarily reflects an unclouded vision of God.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“Jesus is what God looks like when there are no clouds in the way.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“people who have a loving mental representation of God tend to have a greater capacity to think objectively about controversial matters and to make rational decisions than do people who have a threatening mental representation of God.[”
― Gregory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“When Paul instead defines the power of God as the self-sacrificial love revealed on the weak-looking cross (1 Cor 1:18, 30), you know this message had to be from God because it’s not the kind of thing humans would ever make up on their own! In fact, it flatly contradicts the kind of coercive power people have typically ascribed to God/gods throughout history—including, unfortunately, throughout most of church history.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“there is no aspect  of  God  that  is  not  characterized  by  the  nonviolent,  self- sacrificial, enemy-embracing love that is revealed on the cross.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“It’s been said that “God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“There is no greater extremity to which the perfected united and all-holy God could have gone on our behalf than to become our sin and curse.  Indeed, as beautifully mysterious as it is, Paul reveals that on Calvary, God went to the extreme of experiencing his own antithesis!”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“Jesus viewed the OT as a divinely inspired authority that was under, not alongside, his own divine authority.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“Everything we need to know and can know about God is found in Christ.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“While I continue to affirm that the whole Bible is inspired by God, I’m now persuaded that the Bible itself instructs us to base our mental representation of God solely on Jesus Christ.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“In fact, there is mounting neurological evidence that a person’s mental representation of God significantly affects their quality of life, for better or for worse. For example, it’s a neurological fact that people who have a loving mental representation of God tend to have a greater capacity to think objectively about controversial matters and to make rational decisions than do people who have a threatening mental representation of God.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of a believer’s mental representation of God, for the way you imagine God largely determines the quality of your relationship with God. The intensity of your love for God will never outrun the beauty of the God you envision. Related to this, the depth of your transformation into the likeness of Christ will never outrun the Christlikeness of your mental representation of God.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“For Jesus, the key to understanding the Old Testament
was located in his own life and work,
for everything pointed to himself.
—David Dockery”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“God is Christlike, and in him is no un-Christlikeness at all.
—A. M. Ramsey”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“Origen taught that when we come upon a biblical passage that seems unworthy of God, we must humble ourselves before God and ask the Spirit to help us find a deeper meaning in the passage that is worthy of God.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence

“Scripture’s violent portraits of God will continue to pollute our mental images of God until we find a way to reconcile them with Jesus’s supreme revelation of God. And the thing about polluted mental images of God is that they inevitably compromise the vibrancy of our relationship with God, which in turn compromises the passion with which we live out our faith in God.”
― Gergory A. Boyd, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence