Quotes about Orthodoxy

A 'conservative believer' must be someone who believes that Jesus was truly human as well as truly divine.

Rome is burning, Jesus says. Drop your fiddle, change your life and come to Me. Let go of the good days that never were - a regimented church you never attended, traditional virtues you never practiced, legalistic obedience you never honored, and a sterile orthodoxy you never accepted. The old era is done. The decisive inbreak of God has happened.

Because we approach the gospel with preconceived notions of what it should say rather than what it does say, the Word no longer falls like rain on the parched ground of our souls. It no longer sweeps like a wild storm into the corners of our comfortable piety. It no longer vibrates like sharp lightning in the dark recesses of our nonhistoric orthodoxy. The gospel becomes, in the words of Gertrude Stein, … a pattering of pious platitudes spoken by a Jewish carpenter in the distant past.

Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism.

Many a modern preacher is far less concerned with preaching Christ and Him crucified than he is with his popularity with his congregation. A want of intellectual backbone makes him straddle the ox of truth and the ass of nonsense. Bending the knee to the mob rather than God would probably make them scruple at ever playing the role of John the Baptist before a modern Herod. The acids of modernity are eating away the fossils of orthodoxy.

Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.

Evangelicalism as a movement is rushing headlong toward theological ambiguity, which is another way of saying apostasy.

While some who downplay Christ's divinity have imagined Jesus as a great social worker 'being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children,' orthodox Christianity has not wanted Jesus to have a political message.

Faith is either something that informs one at all times or it isn't anything at all, really. When the Chinese government tells its citizens that they can worship in a certain building on a certain day, but once they leave that building they must bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state, you have a cynical lie at work. They've substituted a toothless "freedom of worship" for "freedom of religion".

There is no substitute for the Word of God — for the true power of the Gospel (see Romans 1:16). But neither is there a substitute for the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. In fact, these two go together as one. If the Spirit's presence and power are removed, all that's left is orthodoxy and religious works. But religion will never raise the dead, cast out demons, heal the sick, or turn cities and nations to Jesus Christ!

I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition, I concluded that someone needed to run and challenge the liberal orthodoxy.

That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson.