Quotes About Doctrine

The negative attitude toward the description of ultimate reality by words is common to all Buddhist doctrine. The dictum used by Bodhidharma is only a drastic way of bringing people to this original attitude which underlines the importance of direct spiritual experience and discredits intellectual speculation.

In other words, Judaism is not Calvinism.

If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx's doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I'm rightwing.

Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that before one can have any comprehension of the loyalty and trust of faith, one must first force one's mind to accept a host of incomprehensible doctrines. But this is to put the cart before the horse.

The theory I have in mind is one which does not proceed, as it were, from a doctrine of the intrinsic goodness or righteousness of a majority rule, but rather from the baseness of tyranny; or more precisely, it rests upon the decision, or upon the adoption of the proposal, to avoid and to resist tyranny.

The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.

The perseverance of the saints is not primarily a theoretical problem but a confession of faith ... a song of praise to God's faithfulness and grace.

In the doctrine of Providence, we have a specific Christian confession exclusively possible through faith in Jesus Christ. This faith is no general, vague notion of Providence. It has a concrete focus: 'If God is for us, who is against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?' (Rom.8:31, 32).

The object of Christology is not a purely theoretical knowledge but a profitable, wholesome knowledge of the salvation of God in Jesus Christ.

Bonhoeffer's emphasis on the deep this -worldliness of Christianity does not lead to de-eschatologizing the gospel.

I am of the opinion that … one can judge soundly of the scriptural doctrine of election only when one rejects this symmetry (i.e. the 'equal ultimacy' of election and reprobation) ... as an unbiblical distortion of the message of the Divine election.

Myth is that which "diminishes the truth of salvation

The authority of Scripture is never established by means of a rationalistic apologetic. It is established through the testimony of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of Biblical authority as not a conservative testimony in fear of facts, but … a conviction of faith.

While Genesis borrows the science of its day, it does so in order to make its main points about Who created the world and What it is made up of--nature, human nature, supernature. Failure to distinguish between these two kinds of issues has caused people to miss the doctrine and concentrate instead on its wrappings.

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

Every doctrine of violence and machinery of reaction has relied on his frightening it is to contemplate the crushing of hope. Far safer to expel hope altogether. More sensible than the painful un-numbing of imagining other possibilities.

God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are asserted side by side in Scripture (Acts 2:23; 4:27–28). Whether or not we can put them together in our minds, we must accept both truths.

However, with rare exception RT does not accurately address how the body of Christ was formed and in existence before Christ—"the head" and "the first-born" of "the body, the church"—was raised from the dead (Col. 1:18).

if you remove the cross from Christianity, all that remains is some wise moral teaching not terribly different from any other religion.

This segregation has erected denominational walls and impoverished many Christians. Unless you happen to be born into just the right tradition, you're brought up to feed on somebody else's diet.

Every story is informed by a worldview.

According to the Evangelical Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the final authority of doctrine, not tradition, believers are obligated to first find out what the Bible text says and then adjust their theology to be in line with Scripture, not the other way around. All too often we find individuals ignoring or redefining a Biblical text because it does not fit their preconceived notion of what the Bible should say, rather than what it actually says.

Biblical writers did not teach their cosmography as scientific doctrine revealed by God about the way the physical universe was materially structured, they assumed the popular cosmography to teach their doctrine about God's purposes and meaning. To critique the cosmic model carrying the message is to miss the meaning altogether, which is the message.

John Finnis observed that, since there is no doctrine of subjective rights in Aquinas and there is such a doctrine in Suarez, a "watershed" must be situated somewhere between the thirteenth century and the seventeenth. But this view rests on the fallacy, widespread among modern jurists and philosophers who are not medieval specialists, that if an idea is not to be found in Aquinas it is not really a medieval idea at all.