Quotes About Faith

God has vindicated Jesus.

Easter is God's 'yes' to Jesus against the powers who killed him" (2006, 205; italics in original).

One story is Christianity; the other is best described as Jesusanity. It is an important difference, because Jesus is a very distinct figure in each story and, as a result, often inspires people in quite diverse ways.

The central idea of Christianity is the claim that Jesus is the Anointed One sent from heaven.

However, the documentary reveals how far people will go to try to make Christianity into Jesusanity;

That is why the question of enthroning or dethroning Jesus is so important. Might our spiritual quest to find God be tied to which Jesus leads us and where?

Mark "had neither heard the Lord, nor had he followed him

With repentance comes a change of mind that effects a change of direction, since one's orientation of life is directed in faith to God.

Twelfth is a brittle fundamentalism that has caused many who came from such a background to eventually grow out of and renounce it.

SO WE SEE THAT THERE ARE MORE COMPELLING REASONS TO view the Jesus story as confirmation of the roots of Christianity from its early sources than there is proof of a well-rooted Jesusanity in this earliest period.

These images may be well motivated, but they still lack the personal contact with a living God that fuels and solidifies religious expression and life.

No accountability to God comes to mean no accountability to anyone other than those to whom I choose to be accountable.

So the second divorce is between God and the potential of his revelation to make us, as his creatures, accountable.

Lessing's ditch, which argues for a canyon between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith

between Jesus and history or between Jesus and the witness of his followers within history.

It is the divorce between Jesus' entire message and the practice of the church.

Dethroning Jesus seeks to determine whether we have the right to get to that kind of a discussion or whether Lessing's ditch is so great that we should simply throw up our hands and do the best we can to muddle through.

In sum, our book is a look at the tale of two stories and a consideration of whether one or the other story places us closer to the real Jesus, closer to our Creator, and, as a result, closer to ourselves.

Darrell L. Bock

I kept reverting to my basic question: how does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don't have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly and sometimes (many times!) incorrectly?

underscore that

Postmillennialism expects the proclaiming of the Spirit-blessed gospel of Jesus Christ to win the vast majority of human beings to salvation in the present age. Increasing gospel success will gradually produce a time in history prior to Christ's return in which faith, righteousness, peace, and prosperity will prevail in the affairs of people and of nations.

One factor is skepticism about institutional religion of all sorts

Daily life becomes a discipline of asking how one may move more squarely into the realm of God's reign and how one may welcome and receive it into the fabric of one's life this day more than ever before.