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.

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).

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.

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 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

If actions speak louder than words, it is because they lend the weight of behavior (real assent) to belief (nominal assent).

O conhecimento bÃ

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

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

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.

Public theology is first and foremost a reaction against the tendency to privatize the faith, restricting it to the question of an individual's salvation. As we shall see in later chapters, the church is not a collection of saved individuals but the culmination of the plan of salvation: to create a people of God.