Quotessence
Home / Authors / Robert Farrar Capon
Robert Farrar Capon

Robert Farrar Capon Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllGraceWorldJesusIfsCreationGoodnessCookingTasteChristEvilFoodHomeMadeSinChurchEndsFactsHumansKnowsLovers

Famous Robert Farrar Capon Quotes

“What God effects in the reconciliation does the work of forgetting without the danger of forgetting. He does better than forget: he remembers our evil in grace as the only read thing it ever could have been. He takes away the flaming sword between us and our self-knowledge, and brings us home to ourselves.”

RememberEvilForgetGraceGoodReconciliation
Book:Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace
Create image

“There is indeed no horror, no wickedness, no evil - no cruelty, no torture, no holocaust in the whole history of the world - that is not, under the sovereignty of grace, already reconciled in Jesus. And there is no perpetrator of any horror, wickedness, evil, et cetera (up to and including Hitler and your dreadful brother-in-law) who is not, in Jesus, forgiven. That is the Gospel, the Good News, without which we are all obviously dead ducks. But it is also, from where we sit, the most outrageous piece of bad news the world has ever heard because it says quite clearly that, on the basis of anything we can know or feel about the goodness of creation, God is bad.”

EvilGraceCreationGoodnessGospel
Book:Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace
Create image

“Straight theologizing about grace is more, not less, outrageous than parabolic theologizing. The more clearly you make grace sovereign over human life, the more unacceptable become your efforts to harmonize it with life as we know it. The farther you go in expounding grace as the ultimate goodness of God, the deeper you find yourself mired in the manifest badness of God.”

GraceGoodnessTheologyParable
Book:Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace
Create image

“judgment, as it is portrayed in the parables of Jesus (not to mention the rest of the New Testament) never comes until after acceptance: grace remains forever the sovereign consideration. The difference between the blessed and the cursed is one thing and one thing only: the blessed accept their acceptance and the cursed reject it; but the acceptance is already in place for both groups before either does anything about it.”

JesusGraceJudgmentParables
Book:The Parables of Judgement
Create image

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.”

ReligionFaithGrace
Book:Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace
Create image

“[Heaven] is not something other than this world; it is this world as it is perfectly offered now in the land of the Trinity. It is all the moments of time and all the conjunctions of space as Christ holds them reconciled for the praise of the glory of the Father's grace. And it is all of them held for our endless exploration of their depths - depths which we, even at our best, even at the moment of seeing the beloved's eyes, have only just begun to suspect.”

HeavenGraceReconciliationTrinity
Book:Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace
Create image

“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”

WorldWayLastsUniverseGraceDoorsStreetsBrotherHappeningsWindowEarsFingersCosmicCelebrationSweetnessFloatingEldersShoutingCelebrate LifeProdigalsBashCelebration Of LifeHilarity
Book:Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace
Create image

“But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace - the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors - makes all infirmities occasions of glory.”

NeedsMadeTwoHomeJesusBitsAbilityMistakeAttitudeGraceFailingOne ThingNeededGloryDrawsErrorsOccasionsRepentanceCandleSovereignImperativesJerusalemJust ListenInfirmityTwo Bit
Author:Robert Farrar Capon
Create image

“The life of grace is not an effort on our part to achieve a goal we set ourselves. It is a continually renewed attempt simply to believe that someone else has done all the achieving that is needed and to live in relationship with that person, whether we achieve or not. If that doesn't seem like much to you, you're right: it isn't. And, as a matter of fact, the life of grace is even less than that. It's not even our life at all, but the life of that Someone Else rising like a tide in the ruins of our death.”

IfsBelievePersonsMatterDoneFactsSeemsGoalEffortGraceOur LivesAchieveNeededRuinsRisingTidesMatter Of Fact
Author:Robert Farrar Capon
Create image

“The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.”

WorldHumansMeanLongFactsHomeHandsReligionPassionResponsibilityGraceCookingSalvationScaredWitFormulasDevotedRecipesDrowningHuman Hands
Author:Robert Farrar Capon
Create image

“Lord, please restore to us the comfort of merit and demerit. Show us that there is at least something we can do. Tell us that at the end of the day there will at least be one redeeming card of our very own. Lord, if it is not too much to ask, send us to bed with a few shreds of self-respect upon which we can congratulate ourselves. But whatever you do, do not preach grace. Give us something to do, anything; but spare us the indignity of this indiscriminate acceptance.”

IfsGivingEndsSelfShowsAsksCan DoLordToo MuchGraceAcceptanceComfortPleaseBedCardsMeritSelf RespectThe End Of The DaySparesRedeemingIndignity
Author:Robert Farrar Capon
Create image