Quotes about Paradox

to have faith is precisely to lose one's mind so as to win God.

The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.

In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is 'to a certain degree'.

for our times are not satisfied with faith and not even with the miracle of changing water into wine - they 'go right on,' changing wine into water.

To believe is indeed to lose the understanding in order to gain God.

one cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally impossible for him to seek for what he does not know. For what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek.

The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.

If Hegel had written the whole of his logic and then said, in the preface or some other place, that it was merely an experiment in thought in which he had even begged the question in many places, then he would certainly have been the greatest thinker who had ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic.

To live in the unconditional, inhaling only the unconditional, is impossible to man; he perishes lioke the fish forced to live in the air. But on the other hand, without relating himself to the unconditional, man cannot in the deepest sense be said to 'live'.

Christianity will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as that is too little to offer to a god. Neither does it even want to be the paradox for the believer, and then surreptitiously, little by little, provide him with understanding, because the martyrdom of faith (to crucify one's understanding) is not a martyrdom of the moment, but the martyrdom of continuance.

If the sphere of paradox-religion is abolished, or explained away in aesthetics, an Apostle becomes neither more nor less than a genius, and then--good night, Christianity! Esprit and the Spirit, revelation and originality, a call from God and genius, all end by meaning more or less the same thing.

But now how can an Apostle prove that he has authority? If he could prove it physically , then he would not be an Apostle. He has no other proof than his own statement. That has to be so; for otherwise the believer's relationship to him would be direct instead of being paradoxical.