Quotes from Robert Farrar Capon

Religion, therefore - despite the correctness of its insistence that something needs to be done about our relationship with God - remains unqualified bad news: it traps us in a game we will always and everywhere lose.

it is precisely our sins, and not our goodnesses, that most commend us to the grace of God.

We are saved gratis, by grace. We do nothing and we deserve nothing; it is all, absolutely and without qualification, one huge, hilarious gift.

It is us he saves, not our lives. It is the person he dies for, not the suit of clothes in which the person hides from the bare truth about himself. He does not save you or me as we dress ourselves up at high noon on a good day; he saves us only as we stumble naked and uncombed from lumpy mattress to cold shower after a long, hard night - as, that is, we limp in faith from the bed of our death, through the blood of the cross, to the joy of his resurrection.

God in Jesus didn't prevent sinners from sinning, he went around forgiving them right and left.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He has taken the cleanup entirely into his own hands. He has just gone and done it without waiting for us; and he invites us simply to trust that he has it all accomplished for us in Jesus—and to proclaim that trust by acting as if we really believed it.

Omnes dii gentium daemonia sunt; Dominus autem coelos fecit. Deliver us, O Lord, from religiosity and Godlessness alike, lest we wander in fakery or die of boredom. Restore to us Thyself as Giver and the secular as Thy gift. Let idols perish and con jobs cease. Give repentance and better minds to all pagans and secularists; in the meantime, of Thy mercy, keep them out of our cellars.

Onions die quietly, Cabbages shed no blood; All plants forgive: By the waters that comprise them They wash man's hands And let him walk away.

Because the creative Word is the eternal contemporary of every moment of the world's existence, the kingdom is catholic in time as well as space. The Word who restores humanity to its status as a kingdom of priests is the same Word who made Adam a priestly king to begin with.

Grace cannot prevail until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.

Well, if you find yourself living by something that can't forgive ... then you die to it and look around for something that can.

In Jesus' death and resurrection, God has declared that he isn't the least interested in examining anybody's books ever again, not even his own: he's nailed them all to the cross. Accountability, however much it may be a buzzword now, is not one of his eschatological categories.

If the church preaches faith in anything other than the resurrection - if it gives so much as the impression that anything else, be it political action, moral achievement, or spiritual proficiency, can save the world - it becomes just one more false, parochial prophet leading the world away from the catholic parousia of Christ in the universal death of history.

judgment falls not on the unacceptable but only on those who will not accept acceptance

In the Bible, as a matter of fact, God does so many ungodly things - like not remembering our sins, erasing the quite correct handwriting against us, and becoming sin for us - that the only safe course is to come to Scripture with as few stipulations as possible.

the Bible is about the mystery of the kingdom - a mystery that, by definition, is something well hidden and not at all likely to be grasped by plausibility-loving minds.

Older women are like aging strudels - the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling has come at last into its own.

The truth that makes us free is always ticking away like a time-bomb in the basement of everybody's church.

I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm.

Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with Give us pasta with a hundred fillings.

The shock of unemployment becomes a pathology in its own right.

If you take all your meals seriously, none of them gets a chance to matter.

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

Even to this day, grace remains hard to swallow. Religiosity and moralism go down easier than free forgiveness.