Quotes from Kevin Vanhoozer

To make disciples is to teach people how to keep the faith. One keeps faith by following Jesus' words rather than merely knowing faith's content.

Christian doctrine grows disciples by teaching them to perceive, name, and act in ways that demonstrate the reality of the gospel, speaking and showing what is "in Christ.

The theory-practice dichotomy that still bedevils many a theological curriculum serves neither seminary nor church. There is a debilitating dichotomy between what Christians believe (doctrine) and how they live their lives (discipleship).

O conhecimento bÃ

The English term "martyr" comes from the Greek martys, "witness." Søren Kierkegaard defines witness as "someone who directly demonstrates the truth of the doctrine he proclaims—directly, yes, partly by its being the truth within him, … partly by his volunteering his personal self and saying: See, now, if you can force me to deny this doctrine.

The call to self-emptying will always be unpopular to those whose pockets and closets are full. What

Desire for God without doctrine is blind; doctrine without desire is empty.

The true martyr/witness testifies in word and deed, life and death. This is the cost of apologetics. Cheap apologetics is the defense of Christian truth without martyrdom.

North Americans think they know how to speak Christian, but what they say is actually a gross distortion. Either people do not know Christian words at all, or they have heard them but do not know what they mean, or they think they know what they mean when in fact they mean something completely different.

Being a systematic theologian allows me to indulge all my interests - in literature, film, art, music - by relating them all to God.

The church is biblical, therefore, when it seeks to embody the words in the power of the Spirit and so become a living commentary.

Pastor-theologians know something that others do not know, and they know it because the Bible tells them so. To be instructed by the Spirit in the school of the Scriptures is to be, as Peter and John had been, "with Jesus." What pastor-theologians know is something quite particular (what God was doing in Christ) but has enormous, even universal, implications.