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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
8fdfa53	Imagination is the gatekeeper of the human soul.		passion	Alister E. McGrath
7a5a093	On Tolkien: "His fussiness threatened to overwhelm his creativity."		spontaneity	Alister E. McGrath
db4c8e4	The English experience suggested that nobody really doubted the existence of God until theologians tried to prove it.		god proof theology	Alister E. McGrath
d535818	The imaginative is produced by the human mind as it tries to respond to something greater than itself, struggling to find images adequate to the reality.			Alister E. McGrath
3d4be44	When the old poets made some virtue their theme, they were not teaching but adoring,		passion leadership	Alister E. McGrath
2aa6693	One of the most effective ways of changing the way people think is to change the way they worship.		worship emotion work thought-life	Alister E. McGrath
aa556c7	The study of the past helps us to appreciate that the ideas and values of our own age are just as provisional and transient as those of bygone ages. The intelligent and reflective engagement with the thought of a bygone era ultimately subverts any notion of "chronological snobbery". Reading texts from the past makes it clear that what we now term "the past" was once "the present", which proudly yet falsely regarded itself as having found th..		perspective timelessness	Alister E. McGrath
4739e7b	Literature offers us a different way of seeing things. The reading of literature opens our eyes, offering us new perspectives on things that we can evaluate and adopt. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. . . . In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.[94]			Alister E. McGrath
12508d6	Protestantism developed its sense of identity primarily in response to external threats and criticisms rather than as a result of shared beliefs. In one sense, the idea of "Protestantism" can be seen as the creation of its opponents rather than of its supporters."		religion protestantism	Alister E. McGrath
e18b394	Faith reaches out to where reason points and does not limit itself to where reason stops.			Alister E. McGrath
cd1e401	The reading of old books enables us to avoid becoming passive captives of the Spirit of the Age by keeping "the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds."415"			Alister E. McGrath
3eb858b	Curiously, Dawkins and Dennett remain firmly committed to the outmoded notion that science and religion are permanently in conflict--an idea often referred to as the "warfare" thesis. This is now regarded as quite unacceptable by historians of science, chiefly because it is so difficult to reconcile with the facts of history.8"			Alister E. McGrath
ed6e5c3	The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation.		morality grace-and-law	Alister E. McGrath
85ed06c	The essential unity of the formal and material principles of the Reformation lies in the fact that to affirm that Christianity was, formally and materially, solus Christus was perceived by the Reformers ultimately to depend upon the concurrent affirmation that Christ and his benefits could be known sola scriptura.		sola-scriptura protestantism reformation jesus-christ	Alister E. McGrath
ca3977e	For Christian writers, religious faith is not a rebellion against reason, but a revolt against the imprisonment of humanity within the cold walls of a rationalist dogmatism.		rebellion faith reason dogmatism rationalism revolt liberalism	Alister E. McGrath
b16f4c9	From the outset, Protestantism rejected the critical medieval distinction between the 'sacred' and 'secular' orders. While this position can easily be interpreted as a claim for the desacralization of the sacred, it can equally well be understood as a claim for the sacralization of the secular. As early as 1520, Luther had laid the fundamental conceptual foundations for created sacred space within the secular. His doctrine of the 'priesthoo..		christianity work martin-luther priesthood-of-all-believers protestantism sacred vocation secular	Alister E. McGrath
58b4b16	Clergy had a vested interest in retaining the old, ways, which made few demands of them as teachers, as spiritual guides, or as moral examples or agents.		spiritual-leadership heresy	Alister E. McGrath
5d0fd34	Lewis rightly points out that this desire to be part of the "Inner Ring" is not really about friendship at all. It is about our own insecurity and yearning to matter. It is about using "friends" as tools to gain what we want. We value someone, not because of who they are, but because of what they can do for us. We want them to boost our self-esteem and self-importance and get us privileged access to things we might otherwise not be able to ..			Alister E. McGrath
04872b5	We must not think that religious concerns swamped all other social activities. They simply provided a focal point for them.			Alister E. McGrath
6a13e59	Manz, formerly one of Zwingli's closest allies, held that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. Refusing to recant his views, he was tied up and drowned in the River Limmat.		religion	Alister E. McGrath
3126dcb	New ideas can be supremely bad ideas, and by the time people realize how bad they are, it is sometimes difficult to get rid of them.		conventional-wisdom	Alister E. McGrath
8e6c86d	Martin Luther arrived at his earthshaking conclusions imbued with biblical exposition. As a professor, he taught the book of Psalms verse by verse from 1513 to 1515, Romans from 1515 to 1516, Galatians from 1516 until 1517, the book of Hebrews from 1517 to 1518 and then the Psalms again from 1519 until 1521.		exposition transformation	Alister E. McGrath
3d40c69	The rising influence of lay piety is particularly marked upon the Mariological controversies of the late medieval period. Two rival positions developed: the maculist position, which held that Mary was subject to original sin, in common with every other human being; and the immaculist position, which held that contrary view that Mary was in some way preserved from original sin, and was thus to be considered sinless. The maculist position was..		christianity immaculate-conception lay-religion mariology virgin-mary original-sin middle-ages mary theology	Alister E. McGrath
bfb5bdb	In short, an astonishingly broad spectrum of theologies of justification existed in the later medieval period, encompassing practically every option that had not been specifically condemned as heretical by the Council of Carthage. In the absence of any definitive magisterial pronouncement concerning which of these options (or even what range of options) could be considered authentically catholic, it was left to each theologian to reach his ..		christianity reformation justification theology	Alister E. McGrath
fd410e8	Lewis's mental map of reality had difficulty accommodating the trauma of the Great War. Like so many, he found the settled way of looking at the world, taken for granted by many in the Edwardian age, to have been shattered by the most brutal and devastating war yet known." (51) Part (McGrath suggests) of Lewis's well-documented search for truth and meaning, that search that ultimately led him to Christianity, emerges from the desire to make..		stress world-war-i ptsd trauma	Alister E. McGrath
acf7866	Christianity tells a big story. It allows us to see our own story in a new way.		renewal regeneration narrative story-telling	Alister E. McGrath
de8ae9e	The medieval period based its scriptural exegesis upon the Vulgate translation of the Bible. There was no authorized version of this text, despite the clear need for a standardized text that had been carefully checked against its Hebrew and Greek originals. A number of versions of the text were in circulation, their divergences generally being overlooked. It was not until 1592 than an 'official' version of the text was produced by the churc..		exegesis humanists protestants medieval-church vulgate renaissance reformation	Alister E. McGrath
58905ad	For the humanists, whatever authority Scripture might possess derived from the original texts in their original languages, rather than from the Vulgate, which was increasingly recognized as unreliable and inaccurate. In that the catholic church continued to insist that the Vulgate was a doctrinally normative translation, a tension inevitably developed between humanist biblical scholarship and catholic theology...Through immediate access to ..		catholic-church medieval-church vulgate reformation scripture theology	Alister E. McGrath
bef1be2	For Lewis, people are too easily taken in by the latest cultural and intellectual fashions. Wanting to be "up to date" in their thinking, they uncritically accept the latest ideas they read about in the media. Reading older books, Lewis argues, helps us to realise that "basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods." We need to remember that the ideas we tend to regard as hopelessly old fashioned and out of date were once..			Alister E. McGrath
7c95f2b	It's the difference between utility and virtue. Many policy makers now think of education in functional terms. It's about learning skills that will help students find employment--such as using a word processor or spreadsheet. Yet what about helping people to figure out the meaning of life? Or become good people? Or make a difference to others? Is education for a stage in life, completed once we find jobs, or should it be a lifelong pursuit?			Alister E. McGrath
e759b20	For Calvin, the creation reflects its Creator at every point. Image after images flashed in front of our eyes, as Calvin attempts to convey the multiplicity of ways in which the creation witnesses to its Creator: it is like a visible garment, which the invisible God dons in order to make himself known; it is like a book in which the name on the Creator is written as its author; it is like a theater, in which the glory of God is publicly dis..		glory-of-god theology	Alister E. McGrath
43d0c32	Christianity, rather than being one myth alongside many others, is thus the fulfilment of all previous mythological religions. Christianity tells a true story about humanity, which makes sense of all the stories that humanity tells about itself.			Alister E. McGrath
de969cf	A god that can be reduced to what reason can cope with is not a God that can be worshiped.		intellectualism logic	Alister E. McGrath
2322ece	In one sense, faith is about embracing this bigger story and allowing our own story to become part of it.			Alister E. McGrath
1314398	The explicit royal stipulation that all forms of annotation would be excluded ensured that the difficulties created for the establishment by the Geneva Bible would be avoided--or so, at any rate, it was thought.			Alister E. McGrath
6a0256c	The teaching authority of the magisterium had been seriously weakened through the obvious difficulties raised for such a concept of authority by the Great Schism, with the result that, in the absence of any magisterial guidance, theological opinions became confused with catholic dogma...Accompanying this erosion of the teaching authority of the church was an apparent disinclination (whether through unwillingness or inability) on the part of..		christian-authority east-west-schism great-schism reformation dogma magisterium	Alister E. McGrath
7edddff	Take Lewis's "argument from desire." He basically argues that we experience desires that no experience in this world seems able to satisfy. And when we see these experiences through the lens of the Christian faith, we realise that this sort of experience is exactly what we would expect if Christianity is true."			Alister E. McGrath
ed7d6e5	Lewis helps us to appreciate that apologetics need not take the form of deductive argument. Instead, apologetics can be an invitation to step into the Christian way of seeing things, and explore how things look when seen from its standpoint. Lewis's approach says, "Try seeing things this way!" If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into sharpest focus?"			Alister E. McGrath
88c4a60	Jan van Leyden announced that a new world order [anabaptism] had been revealed to him and promptly began to implement it. Money was abolished; polygamy was legalized; marriage was made compulsory for women. Those who dissented faced execution.		christianity reformation	Alister E. McGrath
e42d8d5	Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.			Alister E. McGrath
171c945	Lewis had experienced more trauma than most of his modern readers ever will.		suffering envy nostalgia	Alister E. McGrath
250ca05	Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.			Alister E. McGrath
23b7396	Erasmus produced a new Latin translation of the New Testament in 1516, based on the original Greek texts.			Alister E. McGrath
da91c2e	The real problem lay with the extensive marginal notes, which offered guidance to the reader as to how the text was to be interpreted and applied. Although the Geneva Bible dated from two generations earlier, its critique of the abuse of monarchical powers might have been written with Charles I's reign in mind.			Alister E. McGrath

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