Quotes about God

It is true that God desires all men to be saved (2 Peter 3-9), but that they have to choose to love him and believe in him. Now God can't force anyone to love him. Forced love is a contradiction in terms.

Love must be free: it is a free choice. So in spite of God's desire, some men do not choose to love him. All who go to hell do so because of their free choice. They may not want to go to hell, but they do will it.

We can know what we know about God because thought applies to reality. In that context, knowledge is possible. If thought does not apply to reality, then we can know nothing. Logic is a necessary presupposition of all thought. Without logic (the laws of thought), we can't even think

Surely, no one who believes in an all-good God, who wants all to do good, could consistently claim that God gave Lucifer the desire to rebel against Him. Perish the thought!

There are some things even God cannot do. He cannot force anyone to freely accept Him. Forced freedom is a contradiction in terms.

this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object, in other words by God himself. (Pensees, #148)

Faith is the soul looking upward to God, hope is looking forward to the future, and love is looking outward to others.

Forcing people to "freely" believe is a contradiction in terms. God is love (1 John 4:16), and love cannot work coercively — only persuasively.

All moral choices are free choices. No one can be praised or blamed for an act in which they had no free choice. If they were forced to do it, then they can't get either credit or blame. Hence if God destroyed all freedom, He would be destroying all possibility to love, praise, and worship Him — to say nothing of destroying all possibility of our enjoying His or other people's love, praise, and sacrifice on our behalf.

Yes, God is the author of everything, including evil, in the sense that He permits it, but not in the sense that He produces it. Evil happens in His permissive will, but He does not promote evil in His perfect will.

While God does want to reach our hearts, He does not bypass our minds in the process.

God has provided enough evidence in this life to convince anyone willing to believe, yet he has also left some ambiguity so as not to compel the unwilling