Quotes About New Testament

There are two billion Christians out there, Sean, and a lot of them think of the Bible as God's words. His actual words. They think the twenty-seven texts that make up the New Testament were handed down to us by God himself, to help us lead better lives and achieve eternal salvation. They don't realize that nothing could be farther from the truth and that what we call the Bible was actually

Three centuries of early Christian and Jewish documentation, not to mention the nearly unanimous opinion of contemporary scholars, recognize James the brother of Jesus as the head of the first Christian community.... Why then has James been almost wholly excised from the New Testament and his role in the early church displaced by Peter and Paul in the imaginations of most modern Christians?

Because the concept of the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament (the term was coined by one of the oldest and most formidable church fathers, Tertullian of Carthage, early in the third century C.E.), it was neither widely adopted nor universally construed by the early Christian communities.

The American biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, in a book whose subtitle is The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why, unfolds the huge uncertainty befogging the New Testament texts.

Notwithstanding his somewhat dodgy family values, Jesus' ethical teachings were—at least by comparison with the ethical disaster area that is the Old Testament—admirable; but there are other teachings in the New Testament that no good person should support. I refer especially to the central doctrine of Christianity: that of 'atonement' for 'original sin'. This

So far, so vindictive: par for the Old Testament course. New Testament theology adds a new injustice, topped off by a new sadomasochism whose viciousness even the Old Testament barely exceeds. It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. Lenny

Jezus, de Logos, zou de functie van de verwoeste tempel overnemen en de plaats waar de joden de goddelijke aanwezigheid konden ontmoeten[...]. Het jodendom en zijn heiligste symbolen waren vervangen door een triomfantelijk, strijdbaar christendom. Er loopt een spoor van haat door het Nieuwe Testament. Het is niet juist om de christelijke Bijbel te kenschetsen als antisemitisch want de schrijvers waren zelf joden.

To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament.

Of course the New Testament is very small. Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made.

A religion without the Holy Ghost, though it had all the ordinances and all the doctrines of the New Testament, would certainly not be Christianity.

THE BOOK OF Malachi was given about 430 BC (see Bible Dictionary, under "Malachi"). It is the last book of the Old Testament. After Malachi, there is about a 430 year gap in the Bible, until the New Testament.

God appeared to His people in the Old Testament and dwelt with His people in the New - and now abides in us by His Spirit.

God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.

Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion.

Angels are spirit beings who are mentioned more than 250 times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament of the Bible.

The New Testament picks up from the Old the theme that God intends, in the end, to put the whole creation to rights.

The world was created by God as the abode of human beings. As created by God it is good, but as our abode it bears the mark of our sin. Therefore, in the New Testament, the term world is used to denote the order of things that are alienated from God.

Now love was to be the outstanding royal law, and free grace was to antiquate Sinaitic ordinances. And why now? In both cases, because Jesus was about to die. His death would be the seal of the New Testament, and it would exemplify and ratify the new commandment

Has not the Word of God, in the most energetic and awful terms, doomed the New Testament Babylon? And has it not equally declared, that those who share in Babylon's sins, shall share in Babylon's plagues? (Rev. xvii.4.)

Whether God speaks promises, teachings of truth, or commandments, faith accepts them, because it trusts Him. Christ is revealed to us for our faith by the doctrinal statements of the New Testament. But we must grasp Himself, as so revealed, if we are to have faith which saves the soul.

New Testament, Christianized elders are not mere representatives of the people; they are, as the passages above show, spiritually qualified shepherds who protect, lead, and teach the people. They provide spiritual care for the entire flock. They are the official shepherds of the church.

the New Testament offers more instruction regarding elders than on other important church subjects such as the Lord's Supper, the Lord's Day, baptism, or spiritual gifts. When you consider the New Testament's characteristic avoidance of detailed regulation and church procedures (when compared to the Old Testament), the attention given to elders is amazing.

THE TENTH COMMANDMENT signals a revolution and prepares the way for it. This revolution comes to fruition in the New Testament. If Jesus never speaks in terms of prohibitions and always in terms of models and imitation, it is because he draws out the full consequences of the lesson offered by the tenth commandment. It is not due to inflated self-love that he asks us to imitate him; it is to turn us away from mimetic rivalries.

I would propose the following minimal guideline: extrabiblical sources stand in a hermeneutical relation to the New Testament; they are not independent, counterbalancing sources of authority. In other words, the Bible's perspective is privileged, not ours. However tricky it may be in practice to apply this guideline, it is in fact a meaningful rule of thumb that discriminates significantly between different approaches to New Testament ethics.