This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?
—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
And thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father— doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness, to the end that, firstly, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone (inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lord’s body, and had no longer holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, secondly, whereas men had turned toward corruption, He might turn them again toward incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire.
—Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God
He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery— lest the creature should perish, and His Father’s handiwork in men be spent for naught— He takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours.
—Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God
The negative regard with which too many in the Free Church have approached the pre-Reformation church has prevented them from seeing that Christ’s promise to build his church and cause it to prevail against the “gates of Hell” (Matt. 16:18) pertains no less to this period [between the apostles and the Reformation] of church history. This promise was meant not merely for evangelical churches! Christ is himself the head of his body which is the church (Eph. 4:16). This is the church which Christ loves and for which he gave himself up in order “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:27). To understand these words in solely spiritualist or eschatalogical terms would do an injustice to the present sense of the passage, by refusing to see that Christ’s establishing the church in holiness is a part of the process of every age since his ascension.
—Daniel H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants
This emphasis on the glory of God is far more than a decorative flower on the Great Commission. More than ever we must work together with a shared passion that Christ be named and that Christ is praised in every people. A “doxological” (having to do with glory) vision of world evangelization offers practical wisdom essential for the finishing of the remaining task.
—Steven C. Hawthorne, “The Story of His Glory”, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement
Why is meaning a theological question, and why should a theologian bother with it? My response is twofold: because theology has an interpretive dimension and because interpretation has a theological dimension.
—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?
It will often look as though Christ is defeated. That’s the way it looked on Good Friday. He let himself be libeled and harassed and scored and shoved around and killed. But in it all he was in control. “No one takes [my life] from me” (John 10:18). So it will always be. If China was closed for forty years to the Western missionaries, it was not as though Jesus accidentally slipped and fell into the tomb. He stepped in. And when it was sealed over, he saved fifty million Chinese from inside—without Western missionaries. And when it was time, he pushed the stone away so we could se what he had done.
When it looks as though he is buried for good, Jesus is doing something awesome in the dark.
—John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad