Alister E. McGrath Quotes
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For Calvin, the creation reflects its Creator at every point. Image after images flashed in front of our eyes, as Calvin attempts to convey the multiplicity of ways in which the creation witnesses to its Creator: it is like a visible garment, which the invisible God dons in order to make himself known; it is like a book in which the name on the Creator is written as its author; it is like a theater, in which the glory of God is publicly displayed; it is like a mirror, in which the works and wisdom of God are reflected.
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Beneath all the rhetoric about relevance lies a profoundly disturbing possibility - that people may base their lives upon an illusion, upon a blatant lie. The attractiveness of a belief is all too often inversely proportional to its truth... To allow "relevance" to be given greater weight than truth is a mark of intellectual shallowness and moral irresponsibility.
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At Oxford University, the certainties of my atheist faith (and atheism is a faith) began to crumble
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We must not think that religious concerns swamped all other social activities. They simply provided a focal point for them.
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Our desires cannot be, and were never meant to be, satisfied by earthly pleasures alone.
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The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.
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The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation.
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Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.
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The most radical question which anyone can be asked is not how much their possessions cost, but whether they have found something of value - that is, something that makes living worthwhile.
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One of the best introductions to the history and ideas of Calvinism, packed with insight and wisdom.
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Suffering does not call into question the "big picture" of the Christian faith. It reminds us that we do not see the whole picture, and are thus unable to fit all of the pieces neatly into place.
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Within each of us exists the image of God, however disfigured and corrupted by sin it may presently be. God is able to recover this image through grace as we are conformed to Christ.
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The hallmark of intelligence is not whether one believes in God or not, but the quality of the processes that underlie one’s beliefs.
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The true believer is not someone who disengages from this world in order to focus on heaven, but rather the one who tries to make this world more like heaven.
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Manz, formerly one of Zwingli's closest allies, held that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. Refusing to recant his views, he was tied up and drowned in the River Limmat.
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If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into the sharpest focus? This is not an irrational retreat from reason. Rather, it is about grasping a deeper order of things which is more easily accessed by the imagination than by reason.
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Our present world contains clues...to another world-a world which we can begin to experience now, but will only know in all its fullness at the end of things.
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Hope is rooted in the trustworthiness of God.
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Deep down within all of us is a longing to work out what life is all about and what we're meant to be doing.
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A failure to understand something does not mean it is irrational. It may simply mean that it lies on the far side of our limited abilities to take things in and make complete sense of them.
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Faith is not something that goes against the evidence, it goes beyond it. The evidence is saying to us, 'There is another country. There is something beyond mere reason'.
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The Christian faith allows us to see further and deeper, to appreciate that nature is studded with signs, radiant with reminders, and emblazoned with symbols of God, our creator and redeemer.
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The idea of ‘calling' was fundamentally redefined: no longer was it about being called to serve God by leaving the world; it was now about serving God in the world
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Christianity israrely understood by those outside its bounds. In fact, this is probably one of the greatest tasks confronting the apologist–to rescue Christianity from misunderstandings.
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When the old poets made some virtue their theme, they were not teaching but adoring.
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All the important things in life lie beyond reason... and that's just the way things are.
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If there is no ultimate reality, it's pointless to think about how we might get there.
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For Luther, it (faith) is an undeviating, trusting outlook appointment life, a constant stance of the trustworthiness of the promises of God.
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Puzzles lead to logical answers; mysteries often force us to stretch language to its limits in an attempt to describe a reality that is just too great to take in properly.
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Imagination is the gatekeeper of the human soul.
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