Quotes About Doctrine

Two or three of the ladies had pronounced views on points of doctrine, particularly sin and damnation, which they never learned from me. I blame the radio for sowing a good deal of confusion where theology is concerned. And television is worse. You can spend forty years teaching people to be awake to the fact of mystery and then some fellow with no more theological sense than a jackrabbit gets himself a radio ministry and all your work is forgotten. I do wonder where it will end. p. 208

It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.

Now, that is probably my least favorite topic of conversation in the entire world. I have spent a great part of my life hearing that doctrine talked up and down, and no one's understanding ever advanced one iota. I've seen grown men, God-fearing men, come to blows over that doctrine. The first thought that came to my mind was, Of course he would bring up predestination!

There were two further points I felt I should have made in our earlier conversations, one of them being that doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief, and the other being that the Greek word sozo , which is usually translated saved, can also mean healed, restored, that sort of thing. So the conventional translation narrows the meaning of the word in a way that can create false expectations.

doctrine is not the same as belief, it is simply a way talking about it; beliefs are lived

Marilynne Robinson has written a deeply romantic love story embodied in the language and ideas of Calvinist doctrine. She really is not like any other writer. She really isn't Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Robinson has created a small, rich, and fearless body of work in which religion exists unashamedly, as does doubt, unashamedly.

Doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief.

Galileo was right, and the Church in this case abused its disciplinary power. As Pope John Paul II admitted in 1992: "This led them [the theologians who condemned Galileo] unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith, a question which in fact pertained to scientific investigation." Such acknowledgments, however, didn't come for almost four centuries.

Su defensa de la sociedad civil, de la democracia y de la libertad política, ignoró una pieza clave de la doctrina liberal, aquella que había revelado Adam Smith: que sin libertad económica y sin una garantía legal firme de la propiedad privada y de los contratos, la democracia política y las libertades públicas están siempre mediatizadas.

El liberalismo es una doctrina que no tiene respuestas para todo, como pretende el marxismo, y admite en su seno la divergencia y la crítica, a partir de un cuerpo pequeño pero inequívoco de convicciones. Por ejemplo, que la libertad es el valor supremo y que ella no es divisible y fragmentaria, que es una sola y debe manifestarse en todos los dominios —el económico, el político, el social, el cultural— en una sociedad genuinamente democrática.

recuérdese las encíclicas papales y los pronunciamientos de la Iglesia católica contra él, que todavía perduran pese a la existencia de tantos creyentes liberales— y, luego, del socialismo y el comunismo

NDEs seem instead to provide direct evidence for a type of mental functioning that varies "inversely, rather than directly, with the observable activity of the nervous system." Such evidence, we believe, fundamentally conflicts with the conventional doctrine that brain processes produce consciousness, and supports the alternative view that brain activity normally serves as a kind of filter, which somehow constrains the material that emerges into waking consciousness.[

Correct division should be preferred over corrupt unity.

Then in the fifth century an Algerian bishop, Augustine of Hippo, wrote the enduring apologia for murder on the battlefield, the concept of "just war." Augustine, considered one of the fathers of the Catholic Church, declared that the validity of war was a question of inner motive. If a pious man believed in a just cause and truly loved his enemies, it was permissible to go to war and to kill the enemies he loved because he was doing it in a high-minded way.

Since this book hails thinkers for their lights, and pays scant heed to their stripes, I should acknowledge here that Judaism and Christianity, like other great religions, have irreconcilable doctrinal differences, both within and without. Rabbi Pinhas: "The principal danger of man is religion.")

Every dogma has its day.

The Master made it his task to destroy systematically every doctrine, every belief, every concept of the divine, for these things, which were originally intended as pointers, were now being taken as descriptions. He loved to quote the Eastern saying When the sage points to the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.

There are certain statements which, though they are false as hell, must be treated as though they were true as gospel.

I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color--something which exists before all forms and colors appear... No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.

When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly surprised at the weakness of his intellect.

The first is the Credo quia absurdum of the early Father. It would imply that religious doctrines are outside reason's jurisdiction; they stand above reason. Their truth must be inwardly felt: one does not need to comprehend them.

Basil, The Holy Spirit sees how much difficulty mankind has in loving virtue, and how we prefer the lure of pleasure to the straight and narrow path. What does he do? He adds the grace of music to the truth of doctrine. Charmed by what we hear, we pluck the fruit of the words without realizing it.39

The facts of religion were convincing only to those who were already convinced.

Not only do we assert that the existentialist doctrine permits the elaboration of an ethics, but it even appears to us as the only philosophy in which an ethics has its place.