Quotes from Terence E. Fretheim

Quite simply, if God knows me better than I know myself, what point is there [in] pretending I am other than I am before God? Prayer is not the place for pretended piety; prayer is the place for getting down to brass tacks. . . . Thus we might as well acknowledge our true state when we pray. We pray to God from where we are, not from where we consider we should be. And God, who knows us where we are, can lead us to where we can be.17

We pray to God from where we are, not from where we consider we should be. And God, who knows us where we are, can lead us to where we can be.17

We pray to God from where we are, not from where we consider we should be. And God, who knows us where we are, can lead us to where we can be.

Each created entity is in symbiotic relationship with every other and in such a way that any act reverberates out and affects the whole, shaking this web with varying degrees of intensity.

God works from within a committed relationship with the world and not on the world from without in total freedom.

The life of God will forever include the life of the people of God as well as the life of the world more generally.

Creation is not simply past; it is not just associated with the beginning.

The human is not a fixed entity from the beginning but, along with the rest of creation, is in the process of becoming.

Sin and evil have their origins in the human will, not in God or in God's plan. At the same time, when sin and evil do enter into the life of the world, they do not become constitutive of what is means to be human (or any other creature).

At the least, the volume of material demonstrates the importance of worship to the narrator. Moreover, the movement in the book of Exodus as a whole is one from slavery to worship, from service to Pharaoh to service of God.

Our most basic images of God will shape our lives, willy-nilly, including how we think about the larger environment in which we live.

God is the God of the entire cosmos; God has to do with every creature, and every creature has to do with God, whether they recognize it or not.

T]hese people lived close to the ground, if you will, and the natural world filled their lives. Creation was a lived reality for them prior to the development of specific ideas about creation.

C]reation is not simply viewed as a matter of origination or a divine activity chronologically set only in the beginning.

God works creatively with already existing realities to bring about newness. This understanding also entails the idea that the present (and future) is not wholly determined by the past; God does bring the new into existence. [...] God also creates in and through creaturely activity.

T]he creativity of the human creature is such that genuinely new realities are regularly brought into being.