Quotes about Normative

The New Testament, that is, was made by the Church; the Church was not made by the New Testament. That is why, speaking generally, Catholics differ from Protestants in the importance given to the authority of the Bible on the one hand, and to the authority of the Church on the other. Therefore, Catholics more than Protestants would tend to say that the community has authority over its normative literature.

Beyond my immediate context of relationships, the central question my friends and I began asking was quite simple: How could the soul health and transformation available to us become normative in our experience as a church community? While such experience of soul transformation has certainly been normative in seasons throughout history and even today, it is largely absent, or at least rare and idiosyncratic, in many environments where I have served.

Our theology is insufficiently Christian—and less revealing of the truth than it should be, if Christian claims are indeed true (as we believe them to be)—when we repeat in religious idiom normative stances that nontheologians advocate, often with better arguments and greater rhetorical power.

What is the message? Can faith bereft of specific beliefs speak understanding? If so, understanding of what? My concern is that the only thing Cox has to say to young people seeking spirituality is "Do good."13 But why should we do good? And what is the good if it is not somehow rooted in the nature and work of God? Cox's Age of the Spirit needs a normative Word. For while belief without faith is empty, faith without belief is blind.

With no fact as a referent, what is normative is purely a matter of preference.

Just as the normative standard for the good and for the true is God, so the ultimate standard of beauty is God.