Quotes About Christianity

Understanding is the reward of faith," Saint Augustine says. "I believe, in order that I may understand" will be the catchphrase of the early Middle Ages. It is the summing-up of Augustine's final authoritative fusion of Neoplatonism and Christianity.

What Ficino had proved (or at least seemed to prove) was that there was no real clash between Christian and pagan systems of theology. In the end, they arose from the same source: the soul's love of beauty and perfection and its relentless aspiration for knowledge of God and therefore of ourselves.

For Augustine, all true community depends on God's grace. Someday, perhaps Christianity and Christendom will be the same. But not yet, he said to himself

Christianity also offered a hereafter, in which every soul would be judged according to its merits, just as Plato related in his Republic: except that the judges were not mythic figures from a shadowy pagan underworld, but the awesome team of Father and Son and Their heavenly angels.

It was time for Constantine to make a decisive intervention of his own. He cast aside his invincible sun god without a second thought. From this point on, he would consider himself a Christian in belief and deed. A month or two later, he issued his imperial Edict of Milan, which brought religious toleration to everyone in the empire, including Christians.

The Sistine ceiling contains no direct references to Christianity or Christ. Michelangelo the Platonist didn't feel the need for any, because his message is more universal. Instead all the scenes are from the Old Testament, which every Renaissance Platonist knew to be the ground zero of docta religio, the true religion shared by all peoples and faiths.

To Boethius, Augustine's "Christian liberty" grated against more ancient ideals of liberty. For one thing, it seemed to strip men of the power of free will.7 If we are going to be happy, we have to be free to act in the world, even if that means we make mistakes.

Thanks to Boethius, Aristotle's logic was now available to apply the same test to Christianity's weightiest assertions about God, heaven and hell, and the Church's most cherished views about human beings and nature.

Afflictions are light when compared with what we really deserve. They are light when compared with sufferings of the Lord Jesus. But perhaps their real lightness is best seen by comparing them with the weight of glory which is awaiting us.

There is a greater difference between the genuine Christian and the deceived professing Christian than there is between a living man and a corpse. None need remain in doubt if they will honestly measure themselves by the Holy Word of God.

The principal prayer and aim of Christians should be that we "walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God" (Col 1:10).

The substitution of so-called "practical" preaching for the doctrinal exposition which it has supplanted is the root cause of many of the evil maladies which now afflict the church of God. The reason why there is so little depth, so little intelligence, so little grasp of the fundamental verities of Christianity, is because so few believers have been established in the faith, through hearing expounded and through their own personal study of the doctrines of grace.

We are unprofitable servants" (Luk 17:10)—our obedience has profited God nothing.

The law was given that grace might be sought; grace was given that the law might be fulfilled" (Augustine).

Here then is a sure resting-place for the heart. Our lives are neither the product of blind fate nor the result of capricious chance, but every detail of them was ordained from all eternity, and is now ordered by the living and reigning God. Not a hair of our heads can be touched without His permission. "A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps" (Pro 16:9). What assurance, what strength, what comfort this should give the real Christian!

This writer was once present at a service where a hymn was sung, the chorus of which ran, "Oh, how I love Jesus." But I could not conscientiously join in singing it. None in heaven are guilty of lauding themselves or magnifying their graces, nor should any Christians do so here upon earth.

Hence, as John Owen said: Sin's proper formal object is God It hath, as it were, that command from Satan which the Assyrians had from their king: "fight neither with small nor great, save only with the king of Israel," that sin sets itself against. There lies the secret, the formal reason of all opposition to good, even because it relates unto God.... The law of sin makes not opposition to any duty, but to God in every duty.

To countless thousands, even among those professing to be Christians, the God of the Scriptures is quite unknown.

Christ died not in order to make God love us, but because He did love His people, Calvary is the supreme demonstration of Divine love.

We heartily agree with Charnock: "In that one word love, God hath wrapped up all the devotion He requires of us.

The Son of God became man so that we might become God.

I believe that all people are born with natural gifts, whereas Christians receive spiritual gifts at their new birth (conversion).

The mission of the church, according to Matthew 28:19–20, is to make disciples, and that includes evangelism as well as other functions.

But in reality, according to an article in Christianity Today, 80 percent of the churches in America that are growing are experiencing transfer growth, not conversion growth.1 They're merely "reshuffling the Christian deck.