“I feel as though I am trying to describe a three-dimensional experience while living in a two-dimension world. The appropriate words, descriptions, and concepts don't even exist in our current language. I have subsequently read the accounts of other people's near-death experiences and their portrayals of heaven and I am able to see the same limitations in their descriptions and vocabulary that I see in my own.” PeopleWorldFeelsTryingTwoGodAbleChristianThreeLanguageHeavenReligiousMy OwnConceptsAccountsCurrentsLimitationDimensionsAppropriateDescriptionVocabularyNear DeathPortrayalNear Death Experience Author:Mary C. Neal
“When our Lord says, 'I have not spoken of Myself' (Jn. 12:49), and again, 'As the Father said to Me, so I speak' (Jn. 12:50), and 'The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's Who sent Me' (Jn. 14:24), and in another place, 'As the Father commanded Me, even so I do' (Jn. 14:31), it is not because He lacks deliberate purpose or power of initiative, nor yet because He has to wait for the preconcerted key-note, that He employs language of this kind. His object is to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father.” KindSaidChristianPurposeFatherSpeakLanguageWaitingLordObjectsMinesKeysUnionsNotesConnectedOrthodoxInitiativeDeliberateOur LordOrthodox Christian Author:Saint Basil
“Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience - a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.” SelfPhilosophyGovernmentWantedChristianPoliticalLanguageNationsGrowthVirtueGrowingReflectionTraditionEnlightenedFacultyRomeSelf ControlAntiquitySelf-governmentIncorrigiblePolitical Wisdom Author:Lord Acton
“Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted.” MenWorldArtPhilosophyStoriesChristianEnergyLanguageStarsAnimalMankindWallFitNewsRelationConstantMythCirclesGreekIntimateReportsCompanionBelongingCavesDnaAcquaintanceRumorEgyptianSpeechlessReligion ChristianPrehistoricZodiacNews StoriesHindu ReligionGreek PhilosophyChristian Art Author:Lewis H. Lapham
“when Christian theology becomes traditionalism and men fail to hold and use it as they do a living language, it becomes an obstacle, not a help to religious conviction. To the greatest of the early Fathers and the great scholastics theology was a language which, like all language, had a grammar and a vocabulary from the past, but which they used to express all the knowledge and experience of their own time as well.” MenWellsHelpingUseChristianPastUsedReligionFatherLanguageReligiousFailingConvictionObstaclesTheologyVocabularyGrammarKnowledge And ExperienceChristian TheologyScholastics Author:Lily Dougall
“problematic within post-Reformation dogmatics. Is faith something I `do' to earn God's favour, and, if not, what role does it play? Once we release Paul's justification-language from the burden of having to describe `how someone becomes a Christian', however, this is simply no longer a problem. There is no danger of imagining that Christian faith is after all a surrogate `work', let alone a substitute form of moral righteousness. Faith is the badge of covenant membership, not something someone `performs' as a kind of initiation test.” IfsKindDoePlayProblemChristianFormLanguageMoralRolesDangerTestsBurdenReleasePostsRighteousnessSubstitutesJustificationFavourCovenantReformationChristian FaithBadgesMembershipInitiationSurrogates Author:N. T. Wright
“The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity.” FactsChristianMotherLanguageIdentityHolyIslamTongueParadoxMother Tongue Book:In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong Source: In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
“Imagine an American Hans Christian Andersen, conceive of the Brothers Grimm living in Missouri, and you will approximate Howard Schwartz, a fable-maker and fable-gatherer seduced by the uncanny and the unearthly. In Lilith's Cave, he once again reaches into a magical cornucopia of folklore and fantasy and spreads before us, in enchanting language, the marvels and shocks of dybbuks, ghosts, demons, spirits, and wizards.” ChristianSpiritLanguageFantasyImagineBrotherSpreadGhostDemonShockMakersCavesWizardsFablesFolkloreUncannyEnchantingMissouriLilithGrimmBrothers Grimm Author:Cynthia Ozick
“Have been reading "Genesis" several Sundays, not as a Christian reads for "spiritual consolation," "instruction," etc., not as aninfidel reads to carp and quarrel and criticize, but as one who wishes to be informed and furnished in the earliest and most wonderful of all literary productions. The literature of the Bible should be studied as one studies Shakespeare, for illustration and language, for its true pictures of man and woman nature, for its early historical record.” MenShouldHas BeensChristianSpiritualReadingLiteratureLanguageWishStudyRecordsWonderfulBibleMen And WomenHistoricalProductionsEtcSundayCriticizeInstructionConsolationQuarrelsGenesisIllustrationCarp Author:Rutherford B. Hayes
“If you're a writer and you are at all inclined to speak as a Christian in some way, you realize very quickly that the conventional language is pretty much useless. It takes a long time to get past that, or it has taken me a long time. People in conventional Christianity have spoken lightly and sometimes frivolously of God for a long time. It's a word that needs to be used sparingly, in my opinion.” PeopleIfsWayNeedsLongSometimesChristianPastUsedSpeakLanguageRealizingChristianityOpinionTakenLong TimeUselessConventional Author:Wendell Berry