Quotes from Gregory A. Boyd

The extent to which we experience our freedom from condemnation in Christ is the extent to which we will realize there is no life in performing.

God wants everyone to be saved. He takes no delight in the destruction of any soul, however wicked (Ezek. 18:32; 33:11). From

If we hope to be transformed, we have to allow God's Word to have more credibility than our present feelings. Take

The first demand which is made of those who belong to God's Church is not that they should be something in themselves, not that they should, for example, set up some religious organization or that they should lead lives of piety, but that they shall be witnesses to Jesus Christ before the world. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The fact that the prohibited tree was placed in the center of the garden, right next to the Tree of Life (Gen. 2:9), symbolizes that the life that God intends for us revolves around our honoring God's prohibition as much as trusting God for his provision.The

Knowing that something is true does not in and of itself ensure that this truth will make a significant difference in our lives. The

I believe one of the most pervasive problems in contemporary Western Christianity is that we mistakenly assume that information automatically translates into transformation.

History teaches that the best way to destroy the Church is to give it political power.

I ask him to sanctify my imagination and help me experience the real Jesus "with all five senses." The

Love is the central command in Scripture and judgment the central prohibition. Indeed, judgment is the "original sin" in Scripture. This is why the forbidden tree in the center of the garden—the prohibition around which life in the garden revolved—was called the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The flesh is not a nature that is essential to someone's identity. It is rather a deceptive way of seeing and experiencing oneself and one's world and thus a deceptive way of living in the world.

Every day we choose not to commit suicide we are manifesting our fundamental conviction that life is worth it, despite all the pain we may experience.

The "days" of Genesis 1 are part of a literary structure that serves to support the theological claim that Yahweh-God alone is Creator-King! They are not meant to satisfy modern curiosity as to how long it took God to create the world. 3.

In the first few centuries of church history, theologians reacted strongly against the prevalent opinion that things happen by fate. As a result, they emphasized human freedom and tended to believe that God did not control everything that happened. Augustine

The idol from which we strive to get life determines what behaviors we must display and what realities we must conceal. The

We can think of the Matrix as the total web of lies we've internalized that keep us living in contradiction to our true self— the self that is defined by God through Christ alone.

There is no single, all-determinative divine will that coercively steers all things, and hence there is here no supposition that evil agents and events have a secret divine motive behind them. Hence too, one need not agonize over what ultimately good, transcendent divine purpose might be served by any particular evil event.

The literary framework view not only avoids this problem but actually explains it. The order of the days is not meant to reflect the chronology of creation. It is rather meant to express thematically the problems of darkness, watery abyss, formlessness, and void expressed in Genesis 1:2. 4.

How do we reconcile the fact that Jesus was fully God with the fact that Jesus was fully human? It is an issue that has been discussed in Christian circles throughout the church's history. All Christians believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. This doctrinal belief was formalized with the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 and became one of the central beliefs of Christianity.

When New Testament authors stress that salvation is not arrived at by works, as first-century Jews, these authors are referring to works of the law. They are saying that God's righteousness does not come by external obedience to the law, as some Jews of their day supposed.

Disagreements over the interpretation of Genesis 1 are not new. Early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine wrestled with this issue hundreds of years ago. However, the debate within Christian circles over the age of creation has intensified during the last 150 years, largely in response to the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Rather, it provided a literary framework within which the author could effectively express the Hebraic conviction that one God created the world by bringing order out of chaos. He was interested in thematic rather than chronological organization. The

We are to see a need and meet it—no questions asked. We are to love even our enemies with an unconditional, nonjudgmental love, and, thereby, offer everlasting life to all who are thirsty. To do this means we must refrain from doing what Jesus never did: namely, positioning ourselves as wiser, morally superior guardians and "fixers" of others. Moral guardianship is what the Pharisees did—not Jesus.

They are descriptions of what real life looks like, not prescriptions for how to get life.