Quotes About Doctrine

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

Christianity is not a doctrine, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For 'consciousness of sin' is a real event an so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.

Unbelief in the supernatural is a belief in its own nature.

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god.

The fatal mistake we make is looking for a paradise that endures … What remains is a fleeting paradise that lives on for all time, having no need of doctrines.

Doctrines, though useful, are the product of analytical dissection; they recast the original, equivocal, historical material into abstract, less fully realized categories of meaning. In short, doctrines are not as richly meaningful as that which they are doctrines about.

Knox could not fail to see what was so patent: many books of the German reformers may have come in his way; no more was wanted than the preaching of George Wishart in 1543-45, to make him an irreconcilable foe of the doctrine as well as the discipline of his Church.

It may be said, "Surely these passages cannot be taken literally, for how then would the people of God be able to survive in the world?" The state of mind of John 7:17 will cause such objections to vanish: If anyone desires to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it is of God or whether I speak of myself. I believe that whoever is willing to act out these commandments of the Lord literally, will be led with me to see that taking them literally is the will of God.

Our world is dangerously riven by religious doctrines that all educated people should condemn, and yet there is more to understanding the human condition than science and secular culture generally admit.

On almost every page, the Koran instructs observant Muslims to despise nonbelievers.

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.

A close study of these books, and of history, demonstrates that there is no act of cruelty so appalling that it cannot be justified, or even mandated, by recourse to their pages.

They believe in the literal truth of the Koran.

literal reading of the Old Testament not only permits but requires heretics to be put to death.

Biblical worldview.

Can we rely on the authority of the pope? Millions of Catholics do, of course. He is, in fact, infallible in matters of faith and morality. Can we really say that Catholics are wrong to believe that the pope knows whereof he speaks? We surely can.

Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y.

El catolicismo es la doctrina de las abuelas y los policías de esquina. Mejor piensa en el mundo en que vivimos. ¿Qué cosa tan difícil de entender esta realidad, ¿no crees?

Luther's point was that, according to Scripture, salvation is not a bake sale:

I am willing without further exercise in pain to open my heart. And this needs no doctrine or theology of suffering. We love apocalypses too much, and crisis ethics and florid extremism with its thrilling language. Excuse me, no. I've had all the monstrosity I want.

the Catholic Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world.

Norman Geisler, R. C. Sproul, and Francis Schaeffer

Paul emphasizes the importance of the doctrine of the Real Presence and sees dire consequences in unbelief: "Any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself" (1 Cor 11:29).

Ours is a non-creedal church—not because we have no beliefs, but because we will not be restrained in our beliefs.