Quotes from Justo L. González

It seems to me that the matter of the origin of evil has been solved and clarified, as well as the nature of evil actions themselves. If I am not mistaken, as has been argued, evil has its origin in the free decision of the will. But I still ask you whether the very will of which we are speaking and from which there is no doubt that sin originates, can be actually given to us by the one who made us. It would seem certain had we not been given such a will we would not have sinned, and it would

Finally, Christians were accused of being subversive, for they refused to worship the emperor and thus destroyed the very fiber of society. The apologists answered that it was true that they refused to worship the emperor or any other creature, but that in spite of this they were loyal subjects of the empire. What the emperor needs—they said—is not to be worshiped, but to be served; and those who serve him best are those who pray for him and for the empire to the only true God.

Miserable Aristotle, who gave them dialectics! He gave them the art of building in order to tear down, an art of slippery speech and crude arguments . . . which rejects everything and deals with nothing.15

Even before the incarnation, and from the very moment of the first sin, God has been leading humanity toward closer communion with the divine. For this reason, God curses the serpent and the earth, but only punishes the man and the woman.

Martin is usually represented in the act of sharing his cape with the beggar. This is also the origin of the word chapel—for centuries later, in a small church, there was a piece of cloth reputed to be a portion of Martin's cape. From that piece of cape—capella—the little church came to be called a "chapel," and those who served in it, "chaplains.

The earliest Christians did not consider themselves followers of a new religion. All of their lives they had been Jews and they still were. This was true of Peter and the twelve, of the seven, and of Paul. Their faith was not a denial of Judaism but was rather the conviction that the messianic age had finally arrived.

Luke had a theological reason for this, for in his view the story he was telling shall not come to an end before the end of all history.

Thus, the theme of the book commonly called Acts of the Apostles is not so much the deeds of the apostles, as the deeds of the Holy Spirit through the apostles (and others). Luke has left us two books, the first on the deeds of Jesus, and the second on the deeds of the Spirit.

This triune God created humankind according to the divine image. But the human creature itself is not the image of God; that image is the Son, in whom and by whom we have been created.