Quotes from Peter J. Gomes

The Bible is not God, nor is it a substitute for God, and to treat it as if it were God or a surrogate of God is to treat it in the very way that it itself condemns over and over again.

The resurrection is God's way of getting our attention.

The question should not be "What would Jesus do?" but rather, more dangerously, "What would Jesus have me do?" The onus is not on Jesus but on us, for Jesus did not come to ask semidivine human beings to do impossible things. He came to ask human beings to live up to their full humanity; he wants us to live in the full implication of our human gifts, and that is far more demanding.

Mystery is not an argument for the existence of God; mystery is an experience of the existence of God.

To some, the temporal triumph of the Christian community in the world is a sign of God's favor and the essential righteousness of the Christian position. The irony of the matter, though, is that whenever the Christian community gains worldly power, it nearly always looses its capacity to be the critic of the power and influence it so readily brokers.

In reality, the world have played too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

The parables, however, and indeed, the miracles and the healings, are all teaching devices, exercises in interpreting the larger principles

when we understand that the Bible comes to us as a trust both from God and from the people of God. It is the record of holy encounters between people and God, encounters that have been reckoned to be decisive and compelling, and that have been preserved from generation

We trust the text not because it is "true" in the sense of fact, but because in its infinite variety it points to the truth and communicates truth because it comes from the truth which

The question should not be 'What would Jesus do?' but rather, and more dangerously, 'What would Jesus have me do?'...As Mark Twain is said to have remarked, 'It is not what I don't understand in the Bible that troubles me; it is what is perfectly clear that does.

The Bible is not God, nor is it a substitute for God, and to treat it as if it were God or a surrogate of God is to treat it in the very way that it itself condemns over and over again.

language of the Bible is meant always to point us to a truth beyond the text, a meaning that transcends the particular and imperfectly understood context of the original writers, and our own prejudices and parochialisms that we bring to the text. Literalism is not part of the solution to this

than not, that we read scripture not only in the light of our own culture but as a means of defining and defending that very culture over and against which scripture by its very nature is meant to stand. In other words, scripture is invariably used to support the status

Says Freud: We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do that without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally, from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other. Morality

This relationship among author, text, and reader is known in the literary trade as

They believe the "Bible to be God's written revelation to his people," and that "it records in human words what God desires." Their

How can one interpret a Bible "full of alien genealogies, barbaric practices, strange prophecies, and eccentric epistles"? While we

What was concealed in the Old is revealed in the New." The New Testament itself is

scripture that Jesus was intending to convey. The Sermon on

The Ethiopian replied, "How can I, unless someone guides

Interpretation is the fuel that drives understanding. The making of meaning is what

When I [see] Christmas lights being strung . . . and Santa Clauses in the store windows, I [know] Thanksgiving [is] not far away.

The Bible is silent about abortion, but the religious zeal of the protestors at abortion clinics is based upon what they believe to be the plain and clear meaning of Exodus 20:13, where in many English translations the familiar commandment says, "Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt do no murder," and the distinction between murder and killing is not a small one. Murder, in the Hebrew language and culture, refers to the premeditated taking of a life outside the womb; killing had to do with the ritual