Gnosticism is undeniably pre-Christian, with both Jewish and gentile roots. The wisdom of Solomon already contained Gnostic elements and prototypes for the Jesus of the Gospels...God stops being the Lord of righteous deed and becomes the Good One...A...
Few people can present a completely secular argument detailing why abusing toddlers is objectively wrong. But that hardly stops them from recognizing this moral truth even if they can't articulate their reasons in strictly secular terms.
What makes humans valuable in the first place? Science can't answer that question because science deals only with things we can measure empirically though the senses. If you want an answer, you'll have to do metaphysics.
To an unbelieving person nothing renders service or work for good. He himself is in servitude to all things, and all things turned out for evil to him, because he uses all things in impious way for his own advantage, and not for the glory of God.
Fight vigorously against the wolves, but on behalf of the sheep, not against the sheep. And this you may do by inveighing against the laws and lawgivers, and yet at the same time observing these laws with the weak, lest they be offended, until they s...
Being by his faith replaced afresh in paradise and created anew, he (the believer)does not need works for his justification, but that he may not be idle, but that he may exercise his own body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the...
The common Christian practice compartmentalizing knowledge into sacred and secular is unbiblical and leads to the dangerous notion that secular knowledge is somehow less important, worldly, and hence unfit for the spiritual Christian.
There is little taste for 'high culture' especially in Evangelicalism, where the tendency has long been toward translation - making things accessible to the largest number of people.
Truth is rarely simple and seldom obvious, which is why mature institutions recognise the importance of conflict and disagreement. Christianity was born in conflict, and it has been characterised by conflict ever since. The Church's obsession with he...
But to enjoy him we must know him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when the fog clears and you find yourself on the brink of some vast precipice.
He tastes of white wine and apple pie and Christian. I run my fingers through his hair, holding him to me while our tongues explore and curl and twist around each other, my blood heating in my veins.We're breathless when Christian pulls away.
The more that science unravels about the wonder of life and the universe, the more i am in are of it. the beauty and wonder of the universe and all that surrounds us offers proof of God. I like that idea
I am bundled in the warmth of the price and the purchase, and its solid completion, as in royal robes-- marvelous these royal robes! These robes are authority that can decree that trouble, sin of my heart, and the deceptive obstruction of will and re...
As we see the beauty of God and feel His weightiness in our hearts, our hearts begin to desire Him more than we desire sin. Before the Bible says, "Stop sinning," it says, "Behold your God.
Hell was never God's intention. It is man's invention. It is a human-manufactured religious icon, no less idolatrous than deifying a statue.
So many people, if the truth were known, live their lives on two levels. The principles they fight about are often at odds with the complicated and often frustrated lives they live. This is why there is so much intensity.
Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.
I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.
...the words alone, lonely, and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language...those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the so...
Financial crashes happen precisely because the people who remember the last one have either died or retired and thus are no longer around, with memories and character formed by that previous experience, to warn people not to be irresponsible.
I am most interested in encouraging Christians to think and read well. Christians, of all people, should reflect the mind of their Maker. Learning to read well is a step toward loving God with your mind. It is a leap toward thinking God’s thoughts ...
