To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.

Faith without reason produces a mindless Christianity which is less than useless; the focus on justice in this world produces a theology that chases its own tail."~R. Alan Woods [2013]

No one book of scripture can be understood by itself, any more than any one part of a tree or member of the body can be understood without reference to the whole of which it is a part.

In my view, the gospels are true, not historically, but theologically, or, as I would argue, prophetically! What we have is, the Messiah’s history written in advance in story form.

To say on the authority of the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the very spirit of God.

He (Lincoln) recognized the delicate balance between immanence and transcendence, refusing to settle for either of these alone. His was a God who was both in the world and above the world.

He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite.

The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn’t really there. And the definition of a theologian is he’s somebody who finds it.

The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves.

No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.

The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it.

We must learn to accept ourselves in the painful experiment of living. We must embrace the spiritual adventure of becoming human, moving through the many stages that lie between birth and death.

Cosmopolitanism is a radical affirmation of the idea of neighbor/enemy-love-as-self love...Cosmopolitanism is about a cosmic scope of justice and hospitality––another name for _love_.

Here (in Thomas Aquinas) is the mind that prepared the way for the scientific and industrial revolutions. Here is the mind that was Catholic enough to embrace any good idea, from wherever it came.

I want you to see persecution and opposition and slander and misunderstanding and disappointment and self-recrimination and weakness and danger as the normal portion of faithful pastoral ministry.