Obiter Dicta
"an incidental or passing remark, opinion, etc." ~ Dictionary.com

Posted January 2016

• "Let the lie come into the world, even dominate the world, but not through me." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; via Os Guinness, Time for Truth,   19
• "Furthermore, consider all the other things we can settle once we know that Jesus is God and that his words are God’s words. We then have an authoritative answer to all our most important questions: Is there a personal God who loves us? What is our duty in life? How do we become children of God? Why did Jesus die? Is there life after death?" ~ Ronald  H. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas, 154

Posted April 2016​

• ". . . the world of the Enlightenment has been ready with its counter-Christian polemic. 'What good,' it asks, 'has the church ever done for us. It's produced nothing but squabbles, crusades, inquisitions, and witch burnings. The church is part of the problem, not part of the solution.' . . . But the failure of Christianity is a modern myth, and we shouldn't be ashamed of telling the proper story of church history, which of course has plenty of muddle and wickedness, but also far more than we normally imagine of love and creativity and beauty and justice and healing and education and hope. To imagine a world without the gospel of Jesus is to imagine a pretty bleak place, . . ."   ~   N. T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels, 162-163
• "Loving one’s enemy does not leave the enemy as he is: it wants him not to go on being an enemy for ever, but to change him. By contrast hatred does not seek the end of enmity. It needs a picture of the enemy and must constantly keep it in full view: it wants the enemy as an enemy but in order finally to make an end of him." ~  Klaus Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ, 71; via David Garland, Luke, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the NT, 288-289

Posted June 2016

• "It is . . . not surprising that for several generations the precise status of a few books remained doubtful. What is really remarkable is that, though the fringes of the New Testament canon remained unsettled, a high degree of unanimity concerning the greater part of the New Testament canon and was attained within the first two centuries among the very diverse and scattered congregations not only in the Mediterranean world, but also over an area extending from Britain to Mesopotamia."  ~ Bruce M. Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content, 3rd ed., 78
• "It is the simple truth to say that the New Testament books became canonical because no one could stop them doing so." ~ William Barclay, The Making of the Bible, 78

Posted  June 2016

• "The truth is we are sometimes afraid of getting too close to the cross.  We had rather wear one around our neck than carry one on our back.  We want to be well-adjusted to society.  We want the world to know that Christians can be intellectual, up–to-date, successful, liberated, stylish, socially acceptable and fun-loving.  We allow ourselves to be seduced by the world into practicing ‘conditional discipleship.’  We say, ‘Okay God, I’ll establish the terms of the contract.  You can have this much of me.’  The result?  We develop a synthetic faith!” ~  Randy Daugherty, “Acts in Action in Today’s World,” Acts: The Spreading Flame, 27

Posted July 2016

• "If one believes in a supernatural God who rules the universe, miracles are a natural (though not necessary) corollary of such theism. If one believes in a closed universe where every event is determined by a mechanistic system of cause and effect, the Gospel miracles will be incredible.” ~  Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey, 2nd ed. [2009], 309-310
• "You can’t just play at it when you ‘feel like it’. Christian service isn’t a hobby, though people sometimes think of it like that; it’s a divine calling, and if that calling is to make cups of coffee after church, that needs to be done with energy, care and flair (and, I hope, using coffee that’s been produced according to Christian standards of justice and fair trading)." ~ N. T. Wright,  Paul for Everyone, Romans Part Two: Chapters 6-16, Kindle Edition

Posted August 2016

• "Sir Walter Scott is reported to have said that the Bible is ‘The Book.’ To me, as for many throughout the centuries, this means that — if indeed it is a book — a basic narrative can be drawn from its pages. I would suggest that the Old and New Testaments constitute a unity by telling the story of God’s relationship with Israel, the people of God. To put it in its simplest form, this narrative takes the reader from the origin of Israel through a complicated development to a vision of its anticipated consummation. Herein rests the unity.” ~  Allan J. McNicol, “The Israel of God,” Christian Studies 27 (2015): 16

Posted September 2016

• ". . . the two [Emmaus road; Luke 24:13-35] disciples are wrong to be discouraged but right to have hoped for Jesus to be the one who would redeem Israel. In their puzzled disappointment, they truly name Jesus’ identity without realizing what they are saying, for the Redeemer of Israel is none other than Israel’s God. And Jesus, in truth, is the embodied, unrecognized, but scripturally attested presence of the One for whom they unwittingly hoped.” ~ Richard B. Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness, 74

Posted November 2016

• "We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord’s Prayer; it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don’t forgive you will not be forgiven. No part of His teaching is clearer, and there are no exceptions to it. He doesn’t say that we are to forgive other people’s sins provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t, we shall be forgiven none of our sins.” ~ C. S. Lewis,  “On Forgiveness,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, rev., paperback ed., 178

Posted March 2017

• “Jesus is a model of how to pursue righteousness. He encourages those who feel out of touch with God so that they can know him. Though he points out sin, he also points the way to righteousness, simply noting the consequences of a failure to respond. Spirituality is not demanded, it is offered, though he makes clear the accountability one undertakes by failing to respond. In our battle with our culture, which often thinks little of spiritual discipline, honesty, integrity, and justice, the church can learn from Jesus’ model of forthright but gentle persuasion.”
  - Darrell L. Bock, Luke, NIV Application Commentary, 335
• “People with a gift of teaching shouldn’t just expect to be able to stand up and say whatever they think at the time; they should think it through, prepare their material, always be working at filling in gaps, seeing a larger picture, and being able to communicate it better."
  ~ N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part Two (Chapters 6-16), p. 76

Posted May 2017

• ​“Prayer has always been difficult, but the difficulty of prayer in the modern western world has its own specific profile. The fundamental reason why prayer became difficult in the modern period was humanity’s modern self-image as those who, especially through technology, have gained control over the world. Rather like affluence, this assumed position of mastery over the world has deluded modern people into trusting their own capacity to achieve all human ends and has promoted a sense of autonomy and self-sufficiency to which prayer is alien. Whereas petitionary prayer is recognition of the limits of human abilities, the modern age has encouraged the sense that all problems have human solutions and that all human desires may in the end be realizable by human means, especially through the unlimited potentialities of technology. While problems and desires with which human resources can deal are constantly being created by advertising, problems which have no solutions and desires which cannot be met are suppressed” -- Richard Bauckham, James. Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage, 207
• “For those of us who do believe that the miraculous events of the account did occur, there still exists the danger that our efforts to defend the historicity of the accounts will distract us from a real reading of the text. We may miss the account’s emerging messages with the emphases that the evangelists gave to it. Our apologetic to defend the more miraculous aspects of these texts can deflect us from reading the hearing the account’s actual story.”
  ​-- Darrell L. Bock, Jesus According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels,  53

Posted June 2017

• “Gods and ‘Idols’ - This is particularly where the religious beliefs and stance of early Christianity stand out as a different [from practices in Greco-Roman culture]. Christians were expected to avoid taking part in the worship of any deity other than the one God of the biblical tradition. . . . Given the ubiquitous place of the gods and their rituals in Roman-era life, however, it would have been difficult for Christians simply to avoid all such rituals without being noticed. Christians likely also had to refuse to join in the worship of the various divinities and so had to negotiate their relationships carefully, especially ,no doubt, those involving family and close acquaintances.” — Larry W. Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World, 49
• “This refusal to reverence the many gods that was demanded of early Christians would have included refusing to offer worship to household divinities, to the tutelary deities of cities, to the traditional gods of the various cities and peoples of the Roman world. and even to the deities that represented the empire itself, such as the goddess Roma, and the conferred legitimacy to Roman rule. Indeed, Christians were expected to treat all the many deities of the Roman world as ‘idols,’ from the Greek term eidōlon, meaning ‘image’ or ‘phantom.’ That is, Christians were to treat all the various traditional gods as beings unworthy of worship, as false and deceptive entities, or, even worse, as demonic beings masquerading as deities. In short, precisely that which was generally considered piety (religio or eusebeia), reverencing the many gods, was, for early Christians, idolatry, impiety of the gravest sort.” — Larry W. Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World, 49-50

 
Posted April 2018

• Discussing Jesus’ teaching in Nazareth as recorded in Luke 4:16-30 -- “In turning the tables on these expectant people, Jesus confronted them with a choice even as he offered them great hope. To accept him and his message was to acknowledge their failure and need. To share in the opportunity of deliverance, a person had to acknowledge his or her own unrighteousness and distance from God. Grace comes not to those who deserve it but to those who know they have no right to it. The message of hope also held out a prospect of judgment if one did not respond.”
  ~ Darrell L. Bock, Jesus According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels, 97-98.
• “The assumption that Christianity and complexity don’t mix seems to be shared not just by religious skeptics, but also by many Christians. Yet it actually gets things precisely backward. Complexity is not an embarrassment for Christianity; it is Christianity’s natural element.”
  ~ David Skeel, True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World, 10

Posted July 2018

• “Culturally, then, we are no longer careful, close readers of texts, sacred or secular. We scan for information, but we do not appreciate literary craftsmanship. Exposition is therefore virtually a lost art. We don’t really read texts to enter the world of the author and perceive reality through his vantage point; we read texts to see how they confirm what we already believe about reality. Texts are mirrors that reflect ourselves; they are not pictures that are appreciated in themselves. This explains, in part, the phenomenon that many Christians will read their Bibles daily for fifty years, and not have one opinion that changes in the entire fifty years.”
  - T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, 49
• I find myself aware that in reading the Hebrew Scriptures I am handling something that gives me a closer common link with Jesus than any archaeological artifact could do.
                                    “For these are the words he read. These were the stories he knew. These were the songs he sang. These were the depths of wisdom and revelation and prophecy that shaped his whole view of ‘life, the universe, and everything.’ This is where he found his insights into the mind of his Father God. Above all, this is where he found the shape of his own identity and the goal of his own mission. In short, the deeper you go into understanding the Old Testament, the closer you come to the heart of Jesus.” -  Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 11
• “Truth matters supremely because in the end, without truth, there is no freedom. Truth, in fact, is not only essential to freedom; it is freedom, and the only way to a free life lies in becoming a person of truth and learning to live in truth. Living in truth is the secret of living free.” - Os Guinness, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin, 14

Posted August 2018

• ​​“We in the West try to deny the ugliness of suffering — just as we try to deny death. In nineteenth-century America, suffering and death were a normal part of life. This is one reason death and personifications of death figure so prominently in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. (‘Because I could not stop for death—/He kindly stopped for me.’) In our era, we export suffering to hospitals, where it is hidden from those who are healthy. According to one recent estimate, roughly 80 percent of all deaths in America take place in a hospital or nursing home. But the separation of the healthy from the unwell does not diminish the ugliness and indignity of suffering; it often makes it worse for those who are suffering.” - David Skeel, True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World, 105
• ​“Truth, because it is our basic human handle on reality, is vital to us all — teenagers as well as teachers, mothers as much as judges, cab drivers and school janitors no less than journalists and university professors.”  - Os Guinness, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin, 14)

Posted September 2018

• “Although moral considerations varied among the Hellenistic religions of the first century, it is fair to say that morality did not play a major role in the common religiosity of the period.  Christianity (and Judaism) differed markedly in this regard.  Christianity made exclusivist claims and called its members to follow a rigorous and distinct way of behaving.  Conversion was not simply a matter of participating in a rite of initiation and accepting certain traditions.  Rather, conversion involved a fundamental alteration in one’s basic perception of reality, in one’s values, and in the structure of the self.”
  - Michael R. Weed, “Evangelism, Ethics, and Eschatalogical Existence,” Christian Studies 19 (1989): 48.​​

Posted December 13, 2018

• “For Paul, faith that ignores Jesus would be a disobedient or ignorant faith, not because Paul was simply narrow in mind-set but because for him faith was always to be shaped in response to God’s revelatory actions, of which Jesus is the climactic one.” - Larry W. Hurtado, God in New Testament Theology, 15
• “Those who cling to life on earth as it is are not ready for the reformation that salvation brings.  Jesus saves us not just to grant us a place in heaven but to transform us here and now into new people, separated from the world (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 2:20; 6:14; Titus 2:11-14).  The disciple cannot hang onto the old life and be prepared for the rigors of discipleship.... Salvation is not a road paved with ease, for true spirituality takes discipline”  - Darrell L. Bock, Luke, NIV Application Commentary, 285

Posted January 29, 2019

• “If we feed ourselves only on proof texts, role models, types, and ‘thoughts for the day,’ we restrict our ability to know God, for only proper interpretation will bring the full benefit of God’s self-revelation. If God has truly spoken, it is incumbent on us as his creatures to get so absorbed in his Word that it becomes second nature to us. It can convict us, challenge us, and confront us as long as we discharge our responsibility to study the Scriptures conscientiously.”
  - Andrew E. Hill & John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, 3rd ed., p. 30
• “Job’s three friends were a comfort to him for a full week. They were silent, but there (2:13). When they spoke they were ‘worthless physicians’ (13:4) and ‘miserable comforters’ (16:2).
                “A little girl was ‘adopted’ as a grandchild by a couple next door. The wife died; the girl went next door and sat outside with the old man for a couple of hours. When she came home, her mother asked, ‘What did you say to him?’ ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I just sat with him and helped him cry.’  
                   “When death or other tragedies occur, often there are no appropriate words to say. To be of genuine comfort, just be there.” - Cecil May, Jr., Preacher Talk, Spring 2018: 1

Posted February 21, 2019

•     “Christians believe that the sensations we associate with beauty reflect the deepest reality of our existence: that we are finite but made in the image of a transcendent God and that we long for him and yet have rebelled against him.”
  - David Skeel, True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World, 79
• “The message is clear and consistent throughout the Bible. The covenant promise of God is axiomatic and fundamental, and all our hope of salvation hangs upon it. But no doctrine of election, no covenant theology, no personal testimony of redemption, can take away the imperative necessity of faith proving itself in active obedience.”
  ~ Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 77

Posted March 26, 2019

•    “Though lamentable, it is not at all surprising to me that the church in a trivial culture becomes a trivial church with trivial liturgy.” (T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, 59)
• “… [John] White writes, ‘If I knew how to make you tremble and quake in his presence, I would.’ That is not the usual way that people invite us to encounter God these days. The tendency in our culture is to turn God into a cozy comforter or bosom buddy, not One Whom we might fear.
           “White doesn’t leave us in fear though. Instead, by encouraging us to relearn the eternal God’s mighty sovereignty and awe-full preeminence, he enables us to find a sounder basis for our prayer than in some wimpy notion of a cuddly Trinity. Part of our problem, White shows, is that we have confused genuine intimacy with a counterfeit familiarity.”
  - Marva Dawn, “Foreword,” to John White, Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, IVP Classics update edition, 9-10.

Posted May 11, 2019

•      “If old Protagoras was right that ‘man is the measure of all things,’ then beliefs make truths. But what tiny truths they would be—no bigger than a mortal’s meandering mind.” - Douglas Groothuis, Philosophy in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic, 144
• “For the Old Testament is much more than a promise box full of blessed predictions about Jesus. It is primarily a story—the story of the acts of God in human history out of which those promises arose. The promises only make sense in relation to that history.” - Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 38

Posted June 20, 2019

• “‘The law written on the heart’ [Jer 31:31-34] means much more than a new upsurge of sincerity in keeping it. We have already seen that the Old Testament from the beginning had called for obedience from the heart. The popular parody of the Old Testament as a religion of external legalism is far from the truth.” ~ Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 104
• “The emphasis now is on surface, not depth; on possibilities, not qualities; on glamour, not convictions; on what can be altered endlessly, not achieved for good; on what can be bought and worn, not gained by education and formation. To be a person is therefore to be a project. . . . Character may be its own reward, but personality is what wins friends, gets jobs, attracts lovers, catches the camera’s eye, and lands the prize of public office.”  ~ Os Guinness, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin, 47

Posted August 19, 2019

• “‘What is truth?’ someone will immediately ask. Let me answer straightforwardly. In the biblical view, truth is that which is ultimately, finally, and absolutely real, or the ‘ way it is,’ and therefore is utterly trustworthy and dependable, being grounded and anchored in God’s own reality and truthfulness. But this stress on the personal foundation of truth is not—as in postmodernism—at the expense of the propositional. Both accuracy and authenticity are important to truth.” - Os Guinness, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin, 78
• “Israel’s God is revealed as One who has a plan for history and who intervenes to ensure that the plan is executed. While Israel’s neighbors believed that their gods at times intervened in history, the interventions were generally done to maintain a status quo. The God of Israel, however, intervened at times to work toward a goal that had never yet been achieved. He also intervened to punish his own people when necessary. All God’s intervention is focused toward a single goal: the execution of his plan.” - Andrew E. Hill & John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, 3rd ed., 212

Posted September 22, 2019

• “Modern man does not have an answer to the question of why [we suffer]. Our society is the first one that simply does not give us any answer to the problem of suffering except a thousand means of avoiding it.” - Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering,12
• “Observe [in 1 Peter 1:13] that the mind of the Christian is to be concentrated, stiffened, freed from impediment. Attempts to dissociate heart and mind in the experience and testimony of the Christian are as futile as they are foolish. We are given minds to use and apply, and the current exaltation, in some quarters, of ‘experience’ and emotion is only occult sloth, an avoidance of hard thinking.” - E. M. Blaiklock, 1 Peter: A Translation and Devotional Commentary, 34

Posted October 21, 2019

• “The God of Sinai is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is immutable. He does not mellow with the passage of time. He is the God of law. He is the God of grace. He is the God who demands nothing less than holiness of his people. His self-appointed public relations experts have done us and him a blasphemous disservice in toning down the harsh outlines of his image, making him more suitable to our preference in gods. His image has changed with the times. We are worshipers of a golden calf. We need to be reminded, as were the subjects of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia tales, that ‘Aslan is not a tame lion.’ We cannot pray if we fail to recognize these things.”
  - John White, Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, IVP Classics update edition, 53.
• “Resistance thinking is a term adapted from a 1945 essay by C. S. Lewis on “Christian Apologetics.” It is a way of thinking that balances the pursuit of relevance on the one hand with a tenacious awareness of those elements of the Christian message that don’t fit in with any contemporary age on the other. Emphasize only the natural fit between the gospel and the spirit of our age and we will have an easy, comfortable gospel that is closer to our age than to the gospel—all answers to human aspirations, for example, and no mention of self-denial and sacrifice.”
  - Os Guinness, Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance, 20

Posted November 20, 2019

• “We are impatient with Mystery, especially with a capital M. We read a fathomless profundity like the Book of Job and we say, ‘But what’s the bottom line?’” - Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, 27
• “The whole point about a relationship with God is not what one gains in personal safety or material prosperity, but in fellowship with him and peace of mind.” - John White, Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, IVP Classics update edition, 40.

Posted February 17, 2020

• “The historical facts about Christ are our court of appeal both for the rebuttal of error and for the establishment of truth. No pronouncement by ecclesiastical authority can carry such weight as these.” — F. F. Bruce, The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament, rev. ed., 86
• “The life of the pagan, then as now, was one of ignorance, for what ignorance is as deep and damaging as that which cannot recognize life’s purpose and goal? It is a life governed by base desires, for there is in it no governance of an informed and enlightened mind over the animal self and desires of the body.” - E. M. Blaiklock, 1 Peter: A Translation and Devotional Commentary, 36-37

Posted March 21, 2020

•      “If there is one thing which should be quite plain to those who accept the revelation of God in Nature and the Bible it is that He is never in a hurry. Long preparation, careful planning, and slow growth would seem to be the leading characteristics of spiritual life. . . .
• “It is refreshing, and salutary, to study the poise and quietness of Christ. His task and responsibility might well have a driven a man out of his mind. He was never in a hurry, never impressed by numbers, never a slave of the clock. He was acting, He said, as He observed God to act—never in a hurry.” — Both from J. B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small (Macmillan Paperbacks, 1961), 55-56

Posted May 31, 2020
​

• “Paul’s whole theology of mission was founded on his understanding of the crucial importance of the promise to Abraham and its universal significance. Galatians is a clear witness to this. For Paul, the gospel itself began not with Jesus but with Abraham. For what, after all, was the good news? Nothing other than God’s commitment to bring blessing to all nations of humanity, as announced to Abraham. ‘Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you”’ (Gal 3:8).” (Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 73-74)
• “Paul concludes his words to these Gentile believers: ‘If you belong to Christ [the Messiah], then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’ (Gal 3:29, Wright's italics.)
• “Today, just as much as back in the days of the apostle Paul, every Gentile believer who enjoys a relationship of sonship to God as Father does so as a living proof of the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise in Jesus the Messiah.” (Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 74)

Posted June 24, 2020

• “Evangelical Christians are far too ready to treat God as a heavenly buddy. We are blind to his glory and deaf to the voice that is the sound of many waters. If I knew how to make you tremble and quake in his presence, I would.” - John White, Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, IVP Classics update edition, 114​
• "We may point out the great difference that has come to exist between the Christianity of the early days and that of today. To us it has become a performance, a keeping of rules, while to the men of those days it was, plainly, an invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether.” — J. B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small (Macmillan Paperbacks, 1961), 119

Posted July 24, 2020

• “In the Gospel it says, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’ It is fascinating, astounding. What does this mean: It means that the path to freedom lies not in the fact that the parliament makes a law of greater freedom today, but [rather] that you have to go through the truth. And if you go through truth just a little, then you will no longer say things such as, ‘Well, if the people are good, truth doesn’t matter.’”
  ​— Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, in David Aikman, “One Word of Truth: A Portrait of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn,” Unriddling Our Times: Reflections on the Gathering Cultural Crisis, ed. Os Guinness, p. 110
• “Christ appeared on earth ‘once for all, at the consummation of the ages, to put away sin by his self-sacrifice’ (Heb. 9:26). It is not that the consummation of the ages was the time when, as it happened, he appeared; it is rather that his coming and achievement made that particular time the consummation of the ages. In this way the finality of God’s revelation in him is emphasized.” — F. F. Bruce, The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament, rev. ed., 90

Posted December 18, 2020

• “. . . we have an unscientific attitude toward science, a religious attitude toward science. There is no scientific proof that only scientific proofs are good proofs; no way to prove by the scientific method that the scientific method is the only valid method. — Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, 93
• “The tangled crisis of the Western church in the modern world bristles with ironies. For a start, the church that has conformed uncritically to the very world that it helped to create is strenuously working to dig its own grave. Which means that even in countries such as the United States, where the church still represents a large majority of the people,  it has less influence on society than tiny minorities that are a fraction of its size. And as the church staggers around dazed and hurt over its rejection, many Christians add insult to their own injury through their fatuous attempts to remain relevant to the modern world in ways that only accelerate their irrelevance.“  — Os Guinness, Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times, 89

Posted January 15, 2021

• “Christians are Christians by virtue of certain acts of God which took place at a definite time in the past, but these acts of God have released a dynamic force which will never allow Christians to stay put or stick in the mud. The faith once for all delivered to the saints is not something which we can catch and tame; it is something which is always leading us forth to new ventures in the cause of Christ, as God calls afresh.” - F. F. Bruce, The Defense of the Gospel in the New Testament, rev. ed., 97
• “The Church lived, as it will always live, if the abiding Word is kept intact within her. Lose this, and all is lost.” - E. M. Blaiklock, 1 Peter: A Translation and Devotional Commentary, 44

Posted May 27, 2021

• ​“To be reconciling and restorative, justice must be pursued with an eye to the possibility of genuine repentance, genuine forgiveness, and genuine reconciliation—and thus with hearts that are freed from bitterness.” — Os Guinness, Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times, 95-96
• “Without a thorough and deeply rooted understanding of the biblical view of truth as revealed, objective, absolute, universal, eternally engaging, antithetical and exclusive, unified and systematic, and as end in itself, the Christian response to postmodernism will be muted by the surrounding culture or will make illicit compromise with the truth-impoverished spirit of the age.” — Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Post-modernism, 81-82

Posted October 13, 2021

• “Technologically Western civilization has advanced to the age of space and cyberspace, but ethically we have regressed. ‘We have been thrown back,’ Christina Sommers writes, ‘into a morals Stone Age; many young people are totally unaffected by thousands of years of moral experience and moral progress.’” - Os Guinness, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin, 27
• “Thought is important because it is not just subjective, not just a process inside our heads, but it allows us to live in reality, in truth. Thought contacts truth, however fitfully. It opens our inner eyes to the light. God is truth, God is light, God is ultimate reality. Therefore thought is a lifeline to God. That is its ultimate importance.” - Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, 29

Posted January 6, 2022

• “Nothing of public importance can be covered in ten minutes; few important matters can even be adequately introduced in ten minutes.” - T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, 53-54)
• “Where you do not experience profound emotion in prayer, ignore your emotions. Faith is an attitude of will which says, ‘Whether I feel that God is there or not, whether I feel he will heed me or not, his Word tells me he hears and answers and I am going to count on that.” - John White, Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, IVP Classics update edition, 43.

Posted April 3, 2022

• “We should remember that history’s first social critics were the Hebrew prophets, who had a key role in Israel’s, and therefore history’s, earliest ‘separation of powers.’ Standing over against the power of the kings and the power of the priests, the prophets had a dual task. First, and more positively, their responsibility was to keep calling the nation back to the ideals and terms of Israel’s founding constitution, the covenant. Second, and more negatively, their equal responsibility was to challenge any and all forms of the corruptions of power, whether by the kings, the priests, the people, or the false prophets.” ~ Os Guinness, Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times, 67-68
• “Faith is not built by preaching introspectively (constantly challenging people to question whether they have faith); faith is not built by preaching moralistically (which has exactly the opposite effect of focusing attention on the self rather than on Christ, in whom our faith is placed); faith is not built by joining the culture wars and taking potshots at what is wrong with our culture. Faith is built by careful, thorough exposition of the person, character, and work of Christ.” - T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, 75-76

Posted May 7, 2022

• “. . . Nietzsche mounted a furious assault on the traditional view of truth and ethics from two sides. From one better-known side he relativized truth through his notion of ‘perspectivism’: ‘There are many kinds of eyes, and consequently there are many kinds of “truths,” and consequently there is no truth.’” Os Guinness, Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin, 30
• “To be sure, the study of Scripture requires diligence—in other words, work!—but what ought to motivate our efforts is the payoff at the end of our research: a better understanding of the history, literature, and theology of the NT writings for the purpose of cultivating, in the power of the Holy Spirit, a deeper spiritual life in ourselves, our families, and our churches. This, in turn, will result in a more authentic and authoritative proclamation of the biblical message so that God's kingdom may be advanced in this world and so others may be subjected to his reign in their lives.” — Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum, & Charles L. Quarles, The Cradle, The Cross, and The Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament (B&H Academic, 2009), xv

Posted November 1, 2022

• “There is certainly a paradox in the Bible’s view. We may be ‘creatures of dust,’ small in size, absurdly dwarfed by history and outnumbered by our fellow creatures, but we are made in the image of God, and ‘breathed into by the Spirit of God.’ So we each have momentous worth and significance, and our little lives make glorious sense—even if it is not always apparent to us within the limited horizon of the here and now.” — Os Guinness, Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times, 75
• “Spiritual growth may follow a similar course to physical growth. At earlier stages the Christian is more concerned about himself, his experiences, what other people think about him and what God’s Word does for him. With spiritual maturing comes an increasing concern for others, and for the honor and glory of God. To the degree that we are mature spiritually, our prayers will become theocentric, that is, God-centered.” - John White, Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, IVP Classics update edition, 100

Posted January 25, 2023

• “False teaching, in time, produces unethical practice and, in turn, defective ethics are evidence of warped doctrine.” ~ E. Earle Ellis, The World of St. John: The Gospels and the Epistles, 1984 repr. (University Press of America, 1995), 84
• “Trouble should always be treated as a call to consider one’s ways. But trouble is not necessarily a sign of being off track at all: for as the Bible declares in general that ‘many are the afflictions of the righteous’ (Psalm 34:19), so it teaches in particular that following God’s guidance regularly leads to upsets and distresses which one would otherwise have escaped.” ~ J. I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1973), 217-218

Posted February 23, 2023

• ​“Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves; and with our author and our end.
      “Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man.” ~ Blaise Pascal, Penses., ed. Albert Krailsheimer (Penguin Books, 1966), 620/146, p. 235 [in Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Post-modernism (InterVarsity Press, 2000), 173] — Added February 27, 2023
• Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow [Hebrews xiii. 8]) in the particular language of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity.” ~ C. S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics,” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Eerdmans, 1970), 93.

Posted August 12, 2023

• “Humility starts with God, then leads to a level heart, a level look, and a level goal. It is being all that God has made you to be, not ‘You can be whatever you want to be’; being how God esteems you, not how you are esteemed by self. Humility is being shaped by God in your hearts, eyes, and plans; it is an attitude, a look, a dream. It is not being lifted up, like Icarus flying too close to the sun. Neither is it saying, ‘Do not fly,’ much less ‘Do not dream.’ It is saying, in your heart, eyes, and goals, be who you were made to be, …“  ~ Josh Moody, Journey to Joy: The Psalms of Ascent (Crossway, 2013), 138
• “The church in the West is unquestionably in poor shape today, but this is neither the first time nor will it be the last. Like an eternal jack-in-the-box, the church will always spring back. No power on earth or in the church can keep the gospel down, not even the power of Babylonian captivity and confusion, ‘At least five times,’ G. K. Chesterton notes, ‘the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.’” - Os Guinness, Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance (Baker Books, 2003), 109.

Posted September 27, 2023

• “The tendency to translate with the word ‘happy’ is a misguided effort to avoid unclear ‘religious’ language and should be resisted. A person who is ‘blessed’ may not be ‘happy’ at all. For our emotional state may and will vary with the circumstances of life, but we can be assured that, whatever those circumstances, if we endure them with faith and commitment to God, we will be recipients of God’s favor.”  ~ Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2000), 69-70
• “… to encounter God may excite even more wonder, ecstasy, terror or shame than an exposure to his physical creation, however, new or dramatic. John fell as if dead at the feet of the glorified Christ (Rev 1:17). Daniel found ‘no strength … left in’ him under similar circumstances (Dan 10:8). Isaiah cried, ‘Woe is me! For I am lost’ (Is 6:5). No one who has encountered God in such a way can ever forget what happened. It is a brightly colored page among the black and white of his biography.” - John White, Daring to Draw Near: People in Prayer, IVP Classics update edition (IVP Books, 1977), 119.

Posted February 23, 2024

• “In the contemporary idiom, Michael Jordan is ‘awesome,’ movies are ‘awesome,’ rock groups are ‘awesome.’ When we say ‘God is awesome’ we do not redefine ‘awesome,’ we redefine God. God is like Michael Jordan, movies, and rock groups. Do we call this being relevant?” ~ Mike White, University Chemistry Professor and church leader, via Christian Studies 17 (1999): 81-82
• “In a subject such as early Christianity, it stretches credibility for scholars to claim to have no personal stake. We can, however, aim for accuracy in presenting the data and even more so in referring to the views of those with whom we disagree.” ~ Larry W. Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion (Eerdmans, 1999), ix

​Posted June 22, 2024

• ​“The problem with our Sunday schools is our teaching, not the Scriptures. The correction to our ‘just the facts’ approach is not the current insipid, topical discussion classes where unprepared students share their ignorance. The solution is to go back to the Bible and rediscover its great themes of sin, salvation, calling, covenant, responsibility, and God’s love, themes relevant to any age.” ~ Gary Holloway, “From Scripture to Sharing: Sunday Schools in Churches of Christ,” Christian Studies 12 (1992): 46-47
• “People with a gift of teaching shouldn’t just expect to be able to stand up and say whatever they think at the time; they should think it through, prepare their material, always be working at filling in gaps, seeing a larger picture, and being able to communicate it better.” ~ N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part Two (Chapters 6-16), (Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition, 2004) 76