Quotes About Faith

Everyone who must contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices for the devil to have lost his game.

UNSETTLED QUESTIONS FOR THEOLOGY TODAY (1920)

But be warned! The book is an inconceivably impressive sharpening of the commandment 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain'.

Faith is rather a freedom, a permission. It is permitted to be so—that the believer in God's Word may hold on to this Word in everything, in spite of all that contradicts it.

The greatest hindrance to faith is again and again just the pride and anxiety of our human hearts.

Evangelical theology is modest theology, because it is determined to be so by its object, that is, by him who is its subject.

In the Credo the Church bows before that God Whom we did not seek and find—Who rather has sought and found us.

Theology must have the character of a living procession.

the concrete actuality of God's revelation in Word and Act.

There is not other relation to God save that which appears upon the road along which Job travelled.

He reconciles them with God through His death. That means that in His own death He makes their peace with God--before they themselves have decided for this peace and quite apart from that decision. In believing, they are only conforming to the decision about them that has already been made in Him.

Durch das Leid hindurch, nicht am Leid vorbei, geht der Weg zur Freude.

No science of religion (history, psychology, or sociology of religion) understands the reality of religion. Science can know and understand religions without the investigator's belonging to or having faith in any of them. Real faith is not knowable.

For one wishing to philosophize, it is of particular, indeed of crucial importance to ascertain the difference between the object cognition that is achieved in the sciences and the transcending thought that characterizes philosophy......which transcend[s] the limits of the knowable and of the world as a whole, so that through these limits we become aware of the phenomenality of empirical existence and hence of the Comprehensive nature of being, thus entering into the area of faith.

For one wishing to philosophize, it is particular, indeed of crucial importance to ascertain the difference between the object cognition that is achieved in the sciences and the transcending thought that characterizes philosophy......which transcend[s] the limits of the knowable and of the world as a whole, so that through these limits we become aware of the phenomenality of empirical existence and hence of the Comprehensive nature of being, thus entering into the area of faith.

For one wishing to philosophize, it is particular, indeed of crucial importance to ascertain the difference between the object cognition that which is achieved in the sciences and the transcending thought that characterizes philosophy......which transcend[s] the limits of the knowable and of the world as a whole, so that through these limits we become aware of the phenomenality of empirical existence and hence of the Comprehensive nature of being, thus entering into the area of faith.

Can truth be found? Is it possible to live with truth? All life-force stems from blindness. It grows from imagined knowledge, in myth taken for faith, and in the substitute myths; in unquestioning acceptance, and in mind-narrowing untruths. Within the human predicament the quest for truth presents an impossible task.

Cuando tenía dieciocho años me vino el pensamiento de abandonar la Iglesia. Era para mí una exigencia de autenticidad, porque el pertenecer a la Iglesia no constituía algo indiferente, sino realmente una confesión, y una confesión tal, que fomentaba mucha necedad en el mundo, puesto que con ella existía una institución que sembraba el error. (...) Entre el destino y la voluntad / Schicksal und Wille

Martin] Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.

The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself.

If the State is to have reality as the ethical, self-conscious realization of spirit, it must be distinguished from the form of authority and faith. But this distinction arises only in so far as the ecclesiastical side is in itself divided into several churches. Then only is the State seen to be superior to them, and wins and brings into existence the universality of thought as the principle of its form.

This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; the philosopher has never finished with incarnations.

In the so-called Christian State it is true that alienation counts, but not the individual. The only individual who counts, the king, is a being specially distinguished from other individuals, who is also religious and directly connected with heaven, with God. The relations which here prevail are still relations of faith. The religious spirit is therefore not yet really secularized.

inner" healing and changing of belief systems must take place before the disease is eradicated.