I don’t write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.

“Curiouser and curiouser!”

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

In general my position has developed theologically to the right and politically to the left of modern liberal Protestantism.

But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.

Man cannot receive an answer to a question he has not asked.

The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. (…) Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.

Putting it crudely, it [i.e., church history] is to stop you going mad. Those who have no history are always on the verge of insanity. When individual people lose their memory, they find it a very distressing experience; (…) When a nation forgets its history, or worse still, invents a history to take the place of the facts, the consequences are tragic.

God is not only greater than our mind, he is also greater than our heart, and just as we have to avoid the temptation of adapting God to our small concept we also have to avoid adapting him to our small feelings.

Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἡρῴδης ἐταράχθη καὶ πᾶσα Ἱεροσόλυμα μετ’ αὐτοῦ
(When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him)

For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we continually stand. Before God and with God we live without God.

All of these traditions [i.e., biblical traditions, heretical traditions, mainstream denominational traditions, non-Christian Near Eastern and Greco-Roman traditions, and critical post-Christian traditions] are sexist. All provide intimations of alternatives, equivalence and mutuality between men and women, between classes and races, between humanity and nature.