I feel about John ['s gospel] like I feel about my wife; I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her. (Following Jesus, p. 27.)

Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it 'moral blackmail,' but it has nothing to do with morals, only with the implied juvenile threat of having a tantrum unless everyone else gives in.

Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.

As St. Paul says, what matters isn't so much our knowledge of God as God's knowledge of us; not, as it were, the god we want but the God who wants us. God help us, we don't understand ourselves; how can we expect to understand that Self which stands beside our selves like Niagara beside a trickling tap?

The author compares rationalism and much of organized religion do a dictator who paves over natural springs in order to dispense water in a more organized fashion. The pushback of the world hungry for wonder may be compared to the break out of those springs from their constraints. Not everything they produce is healthy, but the overreaction of eliminating them is worse.

The most important decisions we make in life are not made by post-Enlightenment left-brain rationality alone.

Our philosophies have tended to split the world in two: "science" deals only with "hard facts," while the "arts" are imagined to deal in nebulous questions of inner meanings. Equally, in popular culture, inner feelings and motivations (" discovering who you really are" or "going with your heart") are regularly invoked as the true personal reality over against mere outward "identities.

Transcending "Revelation" All this alerts us to the fact that scripture is more than simply

If we thought that because we now lived in the 'modern world' we were exempt—that our science and technology had now produced 'progress' that would eliminate all such things—we were obviously wrong. Just like those at the end of the nineteenth century who thought that Western society was now advancing smoothly towards the Kingdom of God. So, throughout Church history, Jesus' followers have usually avoided such lines of thought.

our confidence is not in the solidity of Western culture or the basic goodness of modern democracy. Our confidence is in Jesus and him alone.

there is no such thing as a god's-eye view (by which would be meant a Deist god's-eye view) available to human beings, a point of view which is no human's point of view.

Agendas are what get people, even historians, out of bed in the mornings, though one might hope that, once at the desk, they allow the data to challenge the hypotheses they have dreamed up overnight.