Quotes from Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Sola scriptura means at least this: that the church's proclamation is always subject to potential correction from the canon. It is for this reason that we resist simply collapsing the text into the tradition of its interpretation and performance.

To get a doctorate, you need only have a modicum of intelligence and the ability to grind it out. I'm afraid you may only be qualified to be an academic, not a pastor. Ministry is a lot harder than scholarship.

To make disciples is to teach people how to keep the faith. One keeps faith by following Jesus' words rather than merely knowing faith's content.

All television is educational television. The question is merely, 'What is it teaching?

Of ultimate importance, then, is not that I become good, or that the condition of the world be improved by my efforts, but that the reality of God show itself everywhere to be the ultimate reality.

theology is the serious and joyful attempt to live blessedly with others, before God, in Christ, through the Spirit

Desire for God without doctrine is blind; doctrine without desire is empty. The

In sum: the church exists to be a living exhibit of the reality of the gospel.

the twenty-first-century evangelical church is on the verge of selling its Protestant birthright, sola scriptura, for a mess of pottage, sola cultura.

The church has become the theater of the gospel, and in this theater, there are no passive spectators, only engaged participants, acting out what is in Christ.

The church is biblical, therefore, when it seeks to embody the words in the power of the Spirit and so become a living commentary.

Right worship, the kind that is pleasing to God, acknowledges the grace that is in Jesus Christ not only with our lips but also with our lives. Christ's own sacrifice makes possible the right kind of offering and proper worship: the sacrifice of the whole of our lives, a thanksgiving existence that proceeds from a mood of gratitude. Worship

Christian identity, the role disciples have been called to play, requires being with others. It takes two or three gathered in Christ's name fully to represent him. It takes a company.

The theory-practice dichotomy that still bedevils many a theological curriculum serves neither seminary nor church. There is a debilitating dichotomy between what Christians believe (doctrine) and how they live their lives (discipleship).

As Søren Kierkegaard says in the opening pages of The Sickness unto Death (the sickness in question is despair): "Everything essentially Christian must have in its presentation a resemblance to the way a physician speaks at the sickbed.

Jesus is a person, not a proposition; however, language is the means the Spirit uses to enable the gospel to become the all-encompassing framework that allows disciples not only to think but also to situate themselves in relation to the truth, goodness, and beauty of what is in Christ.

Unless the word of God enlighten men's path, the whole of their life is enveloped in darkness and obscurity, so that they cannot do anything else than miserably wander from the right way.

A theologian is one who prays—and stays awake.

Doctrine forms disciples when it helps the church to act out its new life in Christ.

There is too much concern with what works and sells than with gospel truth. It is tempting, and better for one's self-esteem, to be "like other nations" (1 Sam. 8:20) than to be a resident alien, a marginalized weakling, or a fool.

Chrysostom at length expressed the need for the overseer of God's people to preach true doctrine and refute false teaching:

In our scientific age, a materialist picture of the world now holds many captive. Add to that the postmodern suspicion that all truth claims are in fact disguised bids for power and you get a potent mix of skepticism and cynicism, a cocktail guaranteed to make one's blood run old before its time.

The true martyr/witness testifies in word and deed, life and death. This is the cost of apologetics. Cheap apologetics is the defense of Christian truth without martyrdom.

For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God" (Rom. 13:1). God