Quotes from Bruce L. Shelley

The schools, the courts, the media - all seem determined to erase Christian influence from public life and confine religion to the four walls of the church or home.

Christianity is the only major religion to have at its central event the humiliation of its God.

Reason, said Butler, provides no complete system of knowledge, and in ordinary life it can offer us only probabilities.

Those who live most devoutly for the world to come are often in the best position to change the present.

yardstick by which to judge who might be saved: participation in the two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper; an upright moral life; and a public profession of the faith. These were adequate for a disciplined church on earth.

The church, said Calvin, is not subject to secular government except in obviously secular matters. On the other hand, the church has the obligation under the sovereign God, to guide the secular authorities in spiritual matters. Such a vision sent Calvin's followers throughout Europe as a spiritual conspiracy seeking the overthrow of false religion and restrictive governments.

In as early as the second century, Irenaeus offered theological reflection on Mary as the "second Eve" who, through her radical submission and obedience to God, reversed the deadly consequences of Eve's rebellion.

The mystery of the God-man was central to Christian worship long before it became central to Christian thinking. "A deep instinct," J. S. Whale once told the undergraduates at Cambridge University, "has always told the Church that our safest eloquence concerning the mystery of Christ is in our praise. A living Church is a worshiping, singing Church; not a school of people holding all the correct doctrines.

Calvin saw the old doctrine of predestination—taught by Paul, Augustine, and Luther—as a source of religious devotion. More than a problem of the mind, Calvin considered divine election to eternal life the deepest source of confidence, humility, and moral power.

On the contrary, said Paul, if they really have accepted Christ by faith, they have accepted the way of Christ and the mind of Christ. The man who really loves God can do as he chooses, for if he really loves God he will choose to do the will of God.

Dear dying Lamb," believers sing, "thy precious Blood Shall never lose its power, Till all the ransomed Church of God Be saved to sin no more.

Pride, which we have called the root of vices, far from being satisfied with the extinction of one virtue, raises itself up against all the members of the soul, and as a universal and deadly disease corrupts the whole body.