Quotes from Robert Farrar Capon

At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workmanlike regard for knives.

Both heaven and hell are populated entirely and only by forgiven sinners. Hell is just a courtesy for those who insist they want no part of forgiveness.

Everybody, even the worst stinker on earth, is somebody for whom Christ died.

People always assume that the church's primary business is to teach morality. But it isn't; it's to proclaim grace, forgiveness, and the free party for all. It's to announce the reconciling relationship of God to everybody and to invite them simply to believe it and celebrate it.

The new heavens and the new earth are not replacements for the old ones; they are transfigurations of them. The redeemed order is not the created order forsaken; it is the created order - all of it - raised and glorified.

Paradox is the only basket large enough to hold truth:

we are saved by Christ alone who raises us from the dead - from the absolution of our death. We come before him at the judgement with no handwriting whatsoever against us. It's simply cheating to say you believe that and then renege on it by postulating some list of extra-rotten crimes for which Christ has to send you to hell. He, the universal Redeemer, is the only judge; as far as he's concerned, the only mandatory sentence is to life and life abundant.

We are supposed to represent a Lord who came not to judge the world but to save it. Our business should be simply to keep everybody in the net of his kingdom until we reach the farther shore. Sorting is strictly his department, not ours.

a world in which no sparrow falls unknown, but-so much for the neatness of our diagrams-it is the Father's will that sparrows fall.

To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste.

The reason for not going out and sinning all you like is the same as the reason for not going out and putting your nose in a slicing machine: it's dumb, stupid, and no fun.

There is only one unpardonable sin, and that is to withhold pardon from others.

As I observed earlier, the greatest evils are, with alarming regularity, done in the name of goodness. When we finally fry this planet in a nuclear holocaust, it will not have been done by a bunch of naughty little boys and girls; it will have been done by grave, respectable types who loved their high ideals too much to lay them down for the mere preservation of life on earth. And lesser evils follow the same rule.

It cannot be said too often that in the New Testament, the opposite of sin is not virtue, it is faith.

It turns out that what makes history come out in triumph is some dumb sheep that couldn't find its way home.

judgment, as it is portrayed in the parables of Jesus (not to mention the rest of the New Testament) never comes until after acceptance: grace remains forever the sovereign consideration. The difference between the blessed and the cursed is one thing and one thing only: the blessed accept their acceptance and the cursed reject it; but the acceptance is already in place for both groups before either does anything about it.

We were never told that it would not hurt, only that nothing would ever finally go wrong; not that it would not often go hard with us but that there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.

People converted by fear-mongering are people converted from evil, not to the truth.

Jesus obviously does not answer many questions from you or me. Which is why apologetics is always such a questionable enterprise. Jesus just doesn't argue.

The Christian religion is not about the soul; it is about man, body and all, and about the world of things -with- which he was created, and -in- which he is redeemed. Don't knock materiality. God invented it.

Let a man fast until he is free to eat like a true son of Adam. Let him take but one meal a day; let him fast in good earnest. But then let him take meals worthy of the name. It is bread that strengthens man's heart; it is the valleys thick with grain that laugh and sing. It is only when a man, by feast and fast, lays a firm grip on the fatness of the earth that he himself will return to sanity and substance.

Jesus not only revealed himself, he hid himself at the same time.

In this vale of sorrows, we should be careful about allowing abundance to con us out of hunger.

Jesus didn't shy away from sinners, so why should the church? And don't tell me the church welcomes sinners. I know better. It welcomes only sinners who repent and then never seriously need forgiveness again.