Quotes about Understanding

Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind.

Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.

The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.

This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.

Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.

The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable.

A teacher who cannot explain any abstract subject to a child does not himself thoroughly understand his subject; if he does not attempt to break down his knowledge to fit the child's mind, he does not understand teaching.

Nothing ever happens in the world that does not happen first inside human hearts.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Scripture ... does not derive its authority from the fact that we use it, not even when we use Scripture in faith.

We can hardly say that the Pharisees had an accurate 'knowledge' of man when they pointed to the sins (the real sins) of publicans and sinners. This judgment, which separated knowledge of man from self-knowledge, was as nothing in God's eyes. The Jew did not have a better understanding because he was able to judge the heathen. In the sphere of abstract morality this could possibly be said, but this is not Biblical morality - O man, who judgest others!

The church's ... certainty is bound to certain norms and ... a feeling of subjective certainty does not guarantee irrefutable certainty ... it is not the certainty, but the truth in the certainty that makes us free ... there is a way of understanding Holy Scripture that does not estrange us from the gospel.