Quotes from Thomas C. Oden

The confessor can nullify the exquisitely seasonable moment of confession by talking instead of listening. When he sees pedagogy and advice as more important than simple listening, he diverts the stream of confession.

The great variety of moral qualities attributed to God by Scripture revolves particularly around two—holiness and love. These may be said in summary form to constitute the moral character of God

The most urgent and demanding question for Christian believers is not whether "a supreme being of some kind" exists, but rather whether this incomparably good and powerful and compassionate source and end of all things truly is as revealed in Scripture

God the Son, by being truly human without ceasing to be truly God, is both equal to the Father and less than the Father—equal by nature and less by volition to service. By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down.

Gregory of Nazianzus was amused by any who would insistently hold "God to be a male" which he regarded as a misplaced analogy.

I consistently found the pacifist dream intimately connected with the dream of wealth redistribution. My fellow dreamers and I thought we had better ideas than did the masses we imagined we were protecting. In our hubris we thought we were embodying great intelligence and common sense that surpassed all traditional ideas.

Every experienced pastor knows that what the penitent heart says about itself is much more consequential than well-made truthful sentences that shout from the outside of the inner voice of conscience. No element of confession is more crucial than the discipline of listening. The attentive listener is a chosen agent of divine reconciliation. When the moment for keen listening is offered, take it as an inestimable gift.

You cannot conclude that God, because Father, is therefore male.

By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down.

Nor can you conclude that "Deity is feminine from the gender of the word, and the Spirit neuter," since the designation "has nothing to do with generation.

In the Godhead all historical inequalities are finally transcended.

Yet to decide that this One exists is not quite like deciding that anything else exists. For this decision assumes a wider implication that the decider shall order his or her life around the existence of this One, if this One exists at all. It is not merely a casual or theoretical decision that makes no necessary difference to the way one lives the rest of one's life

Rightly understood, it is an all-embracing, intrusive question, and for this reason many prefer to dodge it or to proceed as if it were an abstract, theoretical question.

The worshiping community confesses and intercedes on the basis of, not the theory of God's existence, but the experience of a multigenerational community of witnesses.

One trains the eye of confession most closely on what is hurting. If sin is present it will be aching. Confession begins where the raw anguish of conscience is rubbing against the primordial awareness of God's holiness.

A delicate balance is required: keep the penitent tautly close to the point of recognizing sin, and then allow the relief of that pressure to flow through forgiveness. Confession increases this tautness, only to clear the path for release.

You will remain theologically uneducated until you study carefully Athanasius, Augustine and Aquinas.

God permits sin to come into human life, but only on behalf of a greater good—namely, freedom—and God overrules sin wherever it appears to threaten God's greater purpose

In this sense every serious choice has a tragicomic dimension. For it is impossible to be a human being without choosing, and it is impossible to choose without value denials, and it is impossible to deny values without guilt. That is a very simple though, but it forms the core definition of guilt: an awareness of significant value loss for which I know myself to be responsible. Guilt is the self-knowing of moral loss.

All of that happened while I was reading, just reading. I was being guided by the Spirit toward an integral sense of Scripture based on the consensus of the early Christian interpreters of sacred Scripture.

Neurotic guilt scans the horizons of the past relentlessly seeking out the most deplorable, hideous, and culpable acts which are least consistent with one's self image. This process is similar to the infinite passion of intensified anxiety for seeking the worst conceivable possibilities in order to alert the whole organism to potential danger.

Soon I reveled in the very premises I had set aside and rationalized away: the preexistent Logos, the triune mystery, the radical depth of sin passing through the generations, the risen Lord and the grace of baptism.

When congregations hold passive views of human responsibility, the evidence is that they are not growing. If some teaching claims to be the Gospel but does nothing in response, does not elicit any compassionate action, then it is surely not the Gospel. The fantasy of a gospel that does nothing is not the good news of the New Testament.

A critical, probing faith is a necessary and useful stage toward an assured and confirmed faith (Job 3:1–26; Clement of Alex., Stromata 8.9; Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel).