christian-philosophers

"I have a reason for trusting my mind at least in part because it is ultimately the product of the vast intelligence of a personal God as is the Universe out there; and that's why the two match together."

"There's a very interesting statement that Paul made that the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who don't believe that there is an enemy who sets the thought forms of the world and Paul analyzes the intellectual darkness that comes about in Romans when people reject God they end up worshiping stones and inanimate things. They ascribe creatorial power to Nature because they don't believe in God and some of it is utterly absurd; and yet that is what happens and I would describe it as intellectual Darkness, but there's an enemy behind it."

"The evils perpetuated by some professing branches of the Christian church have died hard."

"Take the whole of the Bible, how much of it was written at a time when there was no persecution and trouble? Very little and we have had an experience in Europe, at least until relatively recently, without war for an unusual period of time and unfortunately into the vacuum there has poured all this kind of stuff postmodernism, atheism, all the rest of it."

"Why is there something rather than nothing? Why, in particular, does the universe exist? Where did it come from and where, if anywhere, is it heading? Is it itself the ultimate reality behind which there is nothing or is there something 'beyond' it? Can we ask with Richard Feynman: 'What is the meaning of it all?" Or was Bertrand Russell right when he said that 'The universe is just there, and that's all'?"

"... energy, light, gravity, and consciousness ... You believe in these things because of their explanatory power as concepts. ... God is not a monolith ... God is Himself a fellowship ..."

"I think atheism undermines science very seriously because if you think of the basic assumption that all of us who are scientists have, that is, we believe in the rational intelligibility of the universe. And, it's interesting to me that scientists of the eminence of Eugene Wigner and Albert Einstein used the word “faith.” They cannot imagine a scientist without this faith because, of course, they point out that you've got to believe in the rational intelligibility of the universe before you can do any science at all. Science doesn't give you that."

"It was belief in God that motivated the advance of science in the 16th and 17th centuries. Gallelo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton expected to find law in nature because they believed in a great law giver. Now so often we hear the new atheists talk about faith, depricating it. I want to tell you that scientists are all people of faith. As Einstein saw, they believe that the universe is accessable to the human mind and physics can not explain that for the simple reason that you can't do physics without believing that the universe is intelligable. So science required faith."

"All people are people of Faith. Everybody's got a world view that they believe and this really exposed one of the biggest problems we have in our culture -- that Christians are regarded as people of faith. That means they believe where there's no evidence but atheists -- they're not people of Faith, they're rational and fighting against that is one of the things I've been doing for a long time."

"If God be in all things, as in all men, the wicked as the godly, wherein then is the state of the wicked worse than the godly? Yea, if God be in both, why have they both one title, but one wicked, another godly?"

"The very title Sin, it is only a name without substance, hath no being in God, nor in the creature, but only by imagination; and therefore it is said, the imaginations of your hearts are only evil continually. It is not the body, nor the life, but the imagination only, and that not at a time, or times, but continually. Herein sin admitting of no form in itself, is created a form in the estimation of the creature; so that which is not to God, is found to be in a something creature; as you have it related, One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike: what to one is pure, to another is impure; herein it appeareth but a bare estimation."

"I have travelled from one end of England to another, and as yet could find very few that could define unto me the object of their worship, or give me a character what that God is, so much professed by them; yet notwithstanding I could come into no city, town, nor village, but there I heard the name God under one form or another, worshipped that for God, which I had experience was no God: So that in the period of my pilgrimage, I concluded there was gods many, and lords many, although to me but one God: Therefore at my return, I was carried out by God to hold forth to the creature, the God yesterday, to day, and for ever."

"We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. ... If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived."

"Love of wealth is insatiable, desire for honour knows no fulfilment; possessions destined to meet with a speedy end are sought endlessly. But divine wisdom, heavenly riches, immortal honours we neglect in our indifference and sloth, and, as for spiritual riches, either we do not touch them at all or, if we get a slight taste of them, we at once suppose that we have had enough. The divine Wisdom invites us to its feasts in quite different terms: Those who eat me, she says, will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more (Sir.24.21). No one can have enough of such feasts or ever suffers from squeamishness because he has had too much: the more he drinks from that source the greater will be each man's capacity and eagerness for more."

"Their faith alone will not profit them, because they have not done works of righteousness."

"When will a man guilty of any crime or sin accept with a tranquil mind that his wickedness is a product of his own will, not of necessity, and allow what he now strives to attribute to nature to be ascribed to his own free choice? It affords endless comfort to transgressors of the divine law if they are able to believe that their failure to do something is due to inability rather than disinclination, since they understand from their natural wisdom that no one can be judged for failing to do the impossible and that what is justifiable on grounds of impossibility is either a small sin or none at all."

"Under the plea that it is impossible not to sin, they are given a false sense of security in sinning ... Anyone who hears that it is not possible for him to be without sin will not even try to be what he judges to be impossible, and the man who does not try to be without sin must perforce sin all the time, and all the more boldly because he enjoys the false security of believing that it is impossible for him not to sin ... But if he were to hear that he is able not to sin, then he would have exerted himself to fulfil what he now knows to be possible when he is striving to fulfil it, to achieve his purpose for the most part, even if not entirely."

"If you depart from evil but fail to do good, you transgress the law, which is fulfilled not simply by abominating evil deeds but also by performing good works."

"Unless a man has despised worldly things, he shall not receive those which are divine."

"Let no man judge himself to be a Christian, unless he is one who both follows the teaching of Christ and imitates his example."

"Do you consider a man to be a Christian by whose bread no hungry man is ever filled?"

"He is a Christian"

"Whenever I have to speak on the subject of moral instruction and conduct of a holy life, it is my practice first to demonstrate the power and quality of human nature and to show what it is capable of achieving, and then to go on to encourage the mind of my listener to consider the idea of different kinds of virtues, in case it may be of little or no profit to him to be summoned to pursue ends which he has perhaps assumed hitherto to be beyond his reach; for we can never end upon the path of virtue unless we have hope as our guide and compassion."

"It was because God wished to bestow on the rational creature the gift of doing good of his own free will and the capacity to exercise free choice, by implanting in man the possibility of choosing either alternative. ... He could not claim to possess the good of his own volition, unless he was the kind of creature that could also have possessed evil. Our most excellent creator wished us to be able to do either but actually to do only one, that is, good, which he also commanded, giving us the capacity to do evil only so that we might do His will by exercising our own. That being so, this very capacity to do evil is also good – good, I say, because it makes the good part better by making it voluntary and independent, not bound by necessity but free to decide for itself."

"Yet we do not defend the good of nature to such an extent that we claim that it cannot do evil, since we undoubtedly declare also that it is capable of good and evil; we merely try to protect it from an unjust charge, so that we may not seem to be forced to do evil through a fault of our nature, when, in fact, we do neither good nor evil without the exercise of our will and always have the freedom to do one of the two, being always able to do either."

"Nothing impossible has been commanded by the God of justice and majesty. ... Why do we indulge in pointless evasions, advancing the frailty of our own nature as an objection to the one who commands us? No one knows better the true measure of our strength than he who has given it to us nor does anyone understand better how much we are able to do than he who has given us this very capacity of ours to be able; nor has he who is just wished to command anything impossible or he who is good intended to condemn a man for doing what he could not avoid doing."

"Whenever I have to speak on the subject of moral instruction and the conduct of a holy life, it is my practice first to demonstrate the power and quality of human nature."

"We can never enter upon the path to virtue unless we have hope as our guide and companion."

"The best incentive for the mind consists in teaching it that it is possible to do anything which one really wants to do."