Quotes about Understanding

In his famous Letters and Papers from Prison, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.

It didn't take the abbé long to get to the bottom of things, and once their identities were cleared up, Lageard put himself at their disposal, asking how he might improve their situation.

What he needed desperately was someone to whom he might unburden himself, someone who would understand and know what to do, someone with the wisdom to remind him of what he needed to be reminded of just now—of God's grace—of the upside of God's love.

But this other side of God's love—the good news, as it were—he seems not to have heard at all. At least not yet.

One day we shall know and see what today we believe; one day we shall hold a service together in eternity.

Understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously. Understanding this claim means taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment. And it is now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment.

There ought to be no awkwardness or embarrassment to either of us, tho' there may be some anxiety: and if you will open to me fairly the whole state of your mind on these subjects, tho' I shall venture to state to you fairly the points where I fear we may differ, and to desire you to re-examine your own ideas where I think you are mistaken, I will not importune you with fruitless discussion on any opinion which you have deliberately formed.

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith.

Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.

It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.

Knowledge is the key that unlocks all the doors. You can be green-skinned with yellow polka dots and come from Mars, but if you have knowledge that people need instead of beating you, they'll beat a path to your door.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.