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In a Church or community where only ecclesiastical officials rather than all the members of the community are active, there is grave reason to wonder whether the Spirit has not been sacrificed along with the spiritual gifts. —Hans Küng, Church, 187 in James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 598.

The psalmist doesn’t try to explain evil. He doesn’t try to minimize evil. He simply says he will not fear evil. For all the power that evil has, it doesn’t have the power to make him afraid. —Frederick Buechner, “The Clown in the Belfry” in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, 128.

Scripture is the only book which is essential to our engagement with Christ, but reading Scripture is not the same as engaging Christ; the book is not a substitute for a personal engagement with the living Savior. —Victor Shepherd, Interpreting Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Thought, 246.

When a ditchdigger trades his shovel for a backhoe, his arm muscles weaken even as his efficiency increases. A similar trade-off may well take place as we automate the work of the mind. —Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, 217.

The gospel as the true treasure of the church is also constitutive of the church; that is, the gospel determines the parameters of the church, and not the other way around. Where the gospel is heard and upheld and cherished, the church exists; without the gospel, the church is nothing. —Victor Shepherd, Interpreting Martin Luther: [...]

Eternity is not the opposite of time but “the quality of God in virtue of which he contains in himself the meaning of time.” —Karl Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, 436 in Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 162.

The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection. —John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 238 in Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 220.

When Christians get their theology wrong, they cannot help but get their lives and their accounts of the world wrong as well. —Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 215.

If we would find ourselves in the presence of God, we are ill advised to pursue strategies which exacerbate the conditions of his absence from our world. —Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary, 89 in Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 64.

Teach us to drop the weapons we carry in our hands, in our hearts, and on our tongues. Enable us to be soldiers of your who destroy the weapons of our oppressors with your grace. Amen. —Shane Claiborne, Common Prayer, July 4.