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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5f9ad77 | Just as God stepped out of his nature to become a partaker of our humanity, so we are called to step out of our nature to become partakers of his divinity" (Hilary of Arles, Intro. Comm. on 2 Pet. 1.4)." | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 96b4884 | Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor.. | church confession ministry pastoral-care sin | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 0aba6be | Sins of ignorance or infirmity are to be admonished in a different way than intentional sins of malice of intention. The assurance of forgiveness is not to be offered carelessly by those whose conscience is seared, but to penitents who come contritely to the table of the Lord. | forgiveness sin sins-of-commission sins-of-omission | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 453e9f2 | Because cultures and languages are constantly changing and because the apostolic testimony must be attested in ever-new circumstances, it is a necessary feature of the apostolic tradition that it both guard the original testimony and make it understandable in new culture settings. Failing either is to default on the apostolic tradition. Far from implying unbending immobility, apostolicity requires constant adaptation of the primitive aposto.. | christianity evangelism missions the-gospel | Thomas C. Oden | |
| dd0a0e9 | Eternal God, the refuge of all your children, in our weakness you are our strength, in our darkness our light, in our sorrow our comfort and peace. May we always live in your presence, and serve you in our daily lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Boniface FURTHER | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 1e48009 | God has left a trail of language behind a stormy path of historical activities. That language is primarily the evidence with which theology has to deal--first with Scripture, then with a long history of interpretation of Scripture called church history and tradition, and finally with the special language that emerges out of each one's own personal experience of meeting the living God | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| fa1e631 | The theater in which God has chosen to meet rational creatures quietly is the inward realm of conscience, moral reasoning, prayer, and study, especially study of the revealed Word. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 3ab2c8d | the faithful are called through grace to be partakers of God's holiness (Heb. 12), restored to their primordial capacity to reflect, like a mirror, the radical holiness and purity of God, even though their mirroring is always imprecise (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.16). | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 2d3f589 | There is no Christian theology without the Bible. There is no Bible without an inspirited community to write, remember, and translate it, to guard it and pass it on, study it, live by it, and invite others to live by it. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 1eb876c | The confessor can nullify the exquisitely seasonable moment of confession by talking instead of listening. When he sees pedagogy and advice as more important than simple listening, he diverts the stream of confession. | ministry pastoral-care sin | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 97fa36a | The great variety of moral qualities attributed to God by Scripture revolves particularly around two--holiness and love. These may be said in summary form to constitute the moral character of God | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 165ef44 | God the Son, by being truly human without ceasing to be truly God, is both equal to the Father and less than the Father--equal by nature and less by volition to service. By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 7a52fa8 | Gregory of Nazianzus was amused by any who would insistently hold "God to be a male" which he regarded as a misplaced analogy." | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 26c01ef | You cannot conclude that God, because Father, is therefore male. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 50fe073 | By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 5659275 | Nor can you conclude that "Deity is feminine from the gender of the word, and the Spirit neuter," since the designation "has nothing to do with generation." | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| aa35507 | In the Godhead all historical inequalities are finally transcended. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 9573f84 | God permits sin to come into human life, but only on behalf of a greater good--namely, freedom--and God overrules sin wherever it appears to threaten God's greater purpose | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| cdd381d | There reigns in the broken human heart a feeling of discord, a lack of congruence between what is and what ought to be (Augustine, Conf. 5). | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 014c90c | God foreknows the use of free will, yet this foreknowledge does not determine events. Rather, what God foreknows is determined by what happens, part of which is affected by free will. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| f5a7603 | God's way of being alive is distinguishable from other forms of life. Plants, animals, and humans enjoy life at different scales of consciousness, movement, and self-determination. But in all plants, animals, and humans, bodily life ends in death. From the moment of conception, the processes of decay and death are at work in our bodies. Not so in God's life. God's life is eternally alive. God's life is not only without end but without begin.. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| fb74cc1 | I was able to confess the Apostles' Creed, but only with deep ambiguity. But I stumbled over "he arose from the dead." I had to demythologize it and could say it only symbolically. I could not inwardly confess the resurrection as a factual historical event. I was assigned the task of teaching theology, but when I came to the resurrection, I honestly had to say at that stage that is was not about an actual event of a bodily resurrection but .. | theological-liberalism | Thomas C. Oden | |
| c004106 | Every experienced pastor knows that what the penitent heart says about itself is much more consequential than well-made truthful sentences that shout from the outside of the inner voice of conscience. No element of confession is more crucial than the discipline of listening. The attentive listener is a chosen agent of divine reconciliation. When the moment for keen listening is offered, take it as an inestimable gift. | listening ministry pastoral-care | Thomas C. Oden | |
| b849f67 | One trains the eye of confession most closely on what is hurting. If sin is present it will be aching. Confession begins where the raw anguish of conscience is rubbing against the primordial awareness of God's holiness. | ministry pastoral-care repentance sin | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 9cfc12b | A delicate balance is required: keep the penitent tautly close to the point of recognizing sin, and then allow the relief of that pressure to flow through forgiveness. Confession increases this tautness, only to clear the path for release. | forgiveness repentance sin | Thomas C. Oden | |
| d033983 | I was a Marxist Utopian dreamer for a decade before I learned the vulnerabilities of Marxist theories. As I looked back it was full of deeply flawed arguments, but they were central to my thoughts in the fifties. I let their words saturate my mind before I went to seminary, and they remained in my mind like a ghost well beyond my years at Yale.The ideas I most loved were expressed by three in particular: the will to power (Nietzsche), the d.. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 3841a26 | As it turned out, my church sent their youth to summer camps more to gain a vision of social justice than of personal religious experience. I was elected to represent Oklahoma at a regional church youth camp in Fayetteville, Arkansas. There the national youth leadership outlined their plan for the future and taught us about the labor movement, grasping capitalists and the need for total disarmament. From then on my intellectual trajectory w.. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| b14ae80 | Between 1946-1956, every turn was a left turn. I had to fend off temptations toward anarchism. I was more deeply drawn into the vision of an egalitarian society shaped by radical social engineering, Marxist historical and sociological interpretation, and resource redistribution. Everything imaginable seemed possible for my young mind, and I was well rewarded for my utopian thoughts by those older leaders of my church. Resistance to all thos.. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 5b6c0e1 | I went into the ministry to use the church to elicit political change according to a soft Marxist vision of wealth distribution and proletarian empowerment. Edrita [his wife] could sense that I was on a long and uncertain path. She was always more conservative than I, but she did share my basic social values and was willing at least to let me test my political follies...Whenever I read the New Testament after 1950, I was trying to read it e.. | marxism-and-theology modernity new-testament-interpretation resurrection | Thomas C. Oden | |
| e4c35a3 | My views on wealth redistribution were shaped largely by knowledge elites who earned their living by words and ideas--professors, writers, and movement leaders. Like most of the broadminded clergy I knew, I reasoned out of modern naturalistic premises, employing biblical narratives narrowly and selectively as I found them useful politically. The saving Grace of God on the cross was not in my mix of life changing ideas. | modernism political-theology | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 4e3b317 | In college I lost the capacity for heartfelt, extemporized prayer. I would have considered it gauche to pray spontaneously aloud with other college sophomores. I had also left behind my love the church's Scriptures, prayers, and especially its hymns, but I always knew they would be there if I went back to find them. | spiritual-experience | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 25c2cde | I now understand that I would never have been able to become a plausible critic of the absurdities of modern consciousness until I myself had experienced them. I did not become an orthodox believer or theologian until after I tried out most of the errors long rejected by Christianity. If my first forty years were spent hungering for meaning in life, the last forty have been spent in being fed. If the first forty were prodigal, the last fort.. | modernity orthodox-belief theologians | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 509496b | Until the end of the 1960's I do not recall ever seriously exchanging ideas with an articulate conservative. They were there, but not on my scope. I systematically avoided any contact with those who would have challenged my ideology. | Thomas C. Oden | ||
| 4462d1c | Niebuhr [Oden's Doctoral adviser at Yale and leading 20th century Christian theological ethicist] wanted all of his graduate students to have some serious interdisciplinary competence beyond theology, so I chose to be responsible for the area of psychology of religion. I hoped to correlate aspects of contemporary psychotherapies with a philosophy of universal history. The psychology that prevailed in my college years was predominately Freud.. | empirical-social-psychology freudian niebuhr psychology-of-religion | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 9f28c8f | His [brother in law Jim Hampson] appointment to the Episcopal parish in Wenham, near Gordon College brought them in close touch with leading evangelical faculty members in their pews and church leadership, including Elizabeth Elliot and Addison Leitch. They were instrumental in drawing Jim and and Sarah into the cutting edge of evangelical intellectual leadership, with friendships with Tom Howard and J.I. Packer. My ongoing relationship wit.. | bible-interpretation conversion demythologizing elizabeth-elliott evangelicalism | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 8bd22c6 | After some pondering, I made a decision that would affect all of my future work and writing in more ways than I could ever have anticipated. It was a decision between seminary and college teaching. More so it was a decision between two very different cultures of New England and the Southwest. I chose seminary teaching in Texas, which was a decision some of my colleague on the East Coast thought was foolish. From then on, as long as I was in.. | teaching-the-faith vocation | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 62d62f2 | I sent the first half of the dissertation to Rudolf Bultmann [major figures of early 20th century biblical studies and a prominent voice in liberal Christianity] as a courtesy with an invitation to respond to any points in my analysis and critique if he wished. I was speechless when I received a long letter from Bultmann, who had diligently examined the details of my arguments. His letter became a featured part of the publication in 1964 by.. | situation-ethics | Thomas C. Oden | |
| c98d82b | Questions about God's existence, self disclosure, saving action and almighty power reminded me of my inadequacies. For me the theo in theology had become little more than a question mark. I could confidently discuss philosophy, psychology and social change, but God made me uneasy. | theological-liberalism | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 9f26b01 | Back at my teaching and editing jobs I imagined the new world we were trying to create would be enduring and absolutely better than any world we had inherited. For me, if an idea was purported to be new, it looked a lot better than any idea that seemed to be old. Most theologians I knew were trying to discover some new way of looking at the old ideas of God, humanity, sin and salvation. I was there to teach theology, but theology itself was.. | theological-liberalism | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 9964335 | I functioned as a movement theologian, continuously shifting from movement to movement toward whatever new idea i thought might seem to be an acceptable modernization of Christianity. This required me to be constantly on the move, networking, editing, writing, strategizing and serving as an information adviser for student movement leaders. This was admittedly a massive departure from classic Christianity, which I recognize but ignored. If t.. | theological-liberalism | Thomas C. Oden | |
| 388ce9a | You know who they wanted to play Rick?" Aaron asked. I shook my head. Why was I so tense? Didn't Aaron's question prove that we were just a couple of old-movie fans swapping Hollywood trivia gossip? "Ronald Reagan," said Aaron. "The worst president ever," I said. "You weren't born yet," he said. "What difference does that make?" I said." | Francine Prose | ||
| b5ec914 | Every song may be someone's personal implement of torture. | noise song | Francine Prose | |
| 93a6622 | Margot used to like describing men as 'my unhappy love affair.' But hadn't that presumed the existence of a happy love affair that made the others unimportant? What is unhappy is the only kind Margo ever has? | Francine Prose | ||
| e19d051 | Stories aren't about things. Stories are things. Stories aren't about actions. Stories are, unto themselves, actions. | Francine Prose |