Quotes About Doctrine

It is much easier to trust in the sovereignty of God when it is the other person who is hurting. We need to be like Jesus, of whom it was said, "A bruised reed he will not break" (Matthew 12:20). Let us not be guilty of breaking a bruised reed (a heavy heart) by insensitive treatment of the heavy doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

Then suddenly—or so it seemed to me—in the past two years Calvinism began emerging as an issue everywhere. Perhaps I am just waking up, but it seems to me that this peculiar doctrine is being promoted far more widely and aggressively now than I was ever aware in the past.4

Since Protestant theology makes no claim that the Bible is crystal clear beyond that minimal knowledge necessary for salvation, it implicitly acknowledges that Christians may differ without having to accuse each other of intellectual weakness or moral corruption.

In studying the psychological significance of a religious or political doctrine, we must first bear in mind that the psychological analysis does not imply a judgement concerning the truth of the doctrine one analyzes. This latter question can be decided only in terms of the logical structure of the problem itself.

This holds true for the whole of a doctrine or of a theoretical system as well as for a single concept, like love, justice, equality, sacrifice. Each such concept and each doctrine has an emotional matrix and this matrix is rooted in the character structure of the individual.

Heresy is the foe of countenance

who think of themselves as "spiritual rather than religious" tend to equate religion with belief, and therefore with doctrine and authority; with

The best thing about religion is that it makes for heretics.

beyond all the obvious ways of testing the truth of Orthodox doctrine – conformity with the sacred Scriptures, with the witness of the Holy Fathers, with the creeds, with the dogmas proclaimed at the Œcumenical Councils of the Church – there is another, more immediate test: Does what we believe find its counterpart in the way we pray in the divine liturgy?

Like god, for example. Believing in a god isn't necessarily the same as believing in a god that intervenes in daily life. That's where most religions defer. They all believe in some kind of supernatural being, but they can't agree in what he does for a living. Does he kill children with typhoid?

Protestants now recognize that the Reformation itself had deeply pastoral roots. The concern was not for the reformation of doctrine and the church as such, but for the care of people in their lives before God, with the realization that thinking wrongly about God leads us to live wrongly.

My hatred of Bolshevism and Bolsheviks is not founded on their silly system of economics, or their absurd doctrine of an impossible equality. It arises from the bloody and devastating terrorism which they practise in every land into which they have broken, and by which alone their criminal regime can be maintained.

The most damning charge against the doctrine is that it changes the words of Christ Himself: "But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me" (John 15:26). Jesus did not say, "who proceeds from the Father and the Son," but only, "who proceeds from the Father.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

winning battles by means of a rapid escape from the battlefield is permissible from the point of view of most military doctrines. The

We should question our beliefs continually—not God Himself, not Christ our Lord, but what other men tell us about God and Christ. Otherwise we are little more than the frozen statues you see in so many churches.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

It must be wonderful to have your way carved out for you. [...] To have a pathway ready hewed through the mountains, and follow it happily masticating in your nosebag - blinkers on the trail. And all the awesome pomp. The sweet-smelly smoke, and those nose-picking plebeian acolytes toddling round with watering-cans tinkling little bells. Then the doctrine of happy accommodation - flexible as any bulrush when the emotional gales of March are blowing. Ah, blessed idiosyncratic interpretation!

Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.

What makes you a Christian is whether or not you really are in accord with biblical theology and whether you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour.

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP. It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind - the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy.

We're not opposed to Catholics having pride in their church, but that doesn't mean that every church that doesn't join them isn't a church.

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.