Craig S. Keener > Quotes

“If we must “feel” God’s presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“So pervasively has Enlightenment culture’s anti-supernaturalism affected the Western church, especially educated European and North American Christians, that most of us are suspicious of anything supernatural.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Spiritual giftedness does not guarantee that we hear from God rightly on every point.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“No one who beats his wife or children, spreads slander in a congregation, or harbors perpetual unforgiveness in his or her heart is full of the Spirit, no matter how many supernatural gifts he or she claims to have.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today

“He does miracles when we need them—not for our entertainment or to make us feel “spiritual.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Granted, God is sovereign and can speak as he pleases—through a proof text, a poem, or Balaam’s donkey. But we do not regularly seek out donkeys to tell us how to live.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Western theology invariably asks the question: Are miracles possible? This of course addresses the Enlightenment problem of a closed universe. In much of Asia that is a non-question because the miraculous is assumed and fairly regularly experienced.—Hwa Yung”
― Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

“What the radical Enlightenment excluded as implausible based on the principle of analogy, much of today’s world can accept on the same principle of analogy. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide claim to have experienced or witnessed what they believe are miracles. Eyewitness claims to dramatic recoveries appear in a wide variety of cultures, among Christians often successfully emulating models of healings found in the Gospels and Acts. Granted, such healings do not occur on every occasion and are fairly unpredictable in their occurrence; yet they seem to appear with special frequency in cultures and circles that welcome them.”
― Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

“As Elijah’s mantle fell on Elisha and as other prophetic disciples sought to emulate their mentors, so the ascending Jesus empowered his church with the Spirit to carry on his mission to the ends of the earth (1:9–11).”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“The book of Revelation is a book of worship that summons us to recognize the awesome majesty of our Lord.”
― Craig S. Keener, Revelation

“One of the first steps we should take in knowing God’s voice is knowing God’s heart.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Until those charismatic churches who have poor teaching can supply both spiritual empowerment and sounder teaching, many of them will continue to be only a way station for Christians who need a fresh spiritual experience but who end up taking it elsewhere once they have it.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Only by depending on God’s power can we offer worship truly worthy of his honor.”
― Craig S. Keener, Revelation

“As a young Christian, I was praying fervently one day for guidance on a particular issue when I felt the Spirit gently interrupt. I was shocked to think I heard him suggest that I was too busy seeking his will. How could that be? Then I heard the rest of his suggestion. “Don’t seek my will in this matter. Seek me—and then you will know my will.” Seeking God’s will is important, but in this case my focus was wrong.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Some persons whom I had interviewed had instantaneous “spontaneous recoveries during prayer, including one case in which other cases of such spontaneous recoveries were not known, but their doctors classified the recoveries as anomalies and refused to admit that a miracle had occurred. One doctor also told me of a dramatic, medically inexplicable healing that occurred after prayer, in which case he was an eyewitness, but the surgeon was content to label it a “spontaneous healing.”[151] This approach to classifying data to fit existing naturalistic paradigms inevitably obscures all potential evidence in conflict with the paradigm.”
― Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

“If the early Christian accounts of dramatic signs make these works seem foreign and foreboding to segments of modern Western academia,[85] they are nevertheless welcome in many of the dynamic churches of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, which believe that they share their experiences.”
― Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

“Millions of Bible-reading Christians who today call themselves charismatics do not believe in health and wealth teachings.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Many of us who affirm and practice spiritual gifts would feel more comfortable among anticharismatics who are at least grounded in Scripture than among such flaky charismatics.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Revelation addresses many issues that have not changed because human nature and God’s character have remained constant. It”
― Craig S. Keener, Revelation

“That Jesus is popular in Mark 2:2, however, is not a general model for Christian ministry; the rest of Mark itself shows that eventually crowds denounced Jesus (15:13–14). From these narratives we might learn to use any popularity for good at the moment but not to count on it enduring.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“God alone is God, and he alone merits first place—beyond every other love, every other anxiety, every other fear that consumes us.”
― Craig S. Keener, Revelation

“The fact that our traditional method of extracting doctrine from Scripture does not work well on narrative does not mean that Bible stories do not send clear messages. Instead, it suggests that the way we apply our traditional method of interpretation is inadequate because we are ignoring too much of God’s Word.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“The Gospels often do connect faith with healings (Matt 8:10, 13; 9:2, 6–7, 22, 28–29; 15:28; Mark 2:5, 11–12; 5:34, 36; 9:23–24; 10:52; Luke 5:20, 24–25; 7:9; 8:48, 50; 17:19; 18:42; John 4:50; 11:40; cf. Mark 16:17–18; Acts 3:16; 14:9) or other answers to prayer (Mark 11:23–24; Matt 14:28–31; 21:21–22; Luke 17:6; cf. Mark 16:17–18), and sometimes shortage of healings due to a culture of disbelief (Mark 6:5–6; Matt 13:58; Luke 9:41) or Jesus’s agents’ disbelief (Matt 17:20; cf. Mark 9:29; Luke 9:41). (John more typically emphasizes basic faith following signs; John 1:50; 2:11, 23; 4:39, 48, 53; 7:31; 11:15, 42, 45, 48; 12:11; 14:29; 16:30; 20:30–31; cf. John 9:35–38; 10:25; Acts 13:12.)”
― Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

“Using only nonnarrative portions of the Bible to interpret narrative is not only disrespectful to the narrative portions but also suggests a misguided approach to nonnarrative parts of the Bible.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“An important step in getting to know God is to realize how available he is to us. In learning to hear God, it helps us to take on faith the fact that we are already in his presence. If we must make ourselves worthy of his presence first, we will never get there.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“... a bland Jesus who simply told people to look at the lilies of the field - such a Jesus would threaten no one, just as the university professors who created him threaten no one.”
― Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary

“Oral Roberts’s informal estimate of 10 percent healed (Stewart, Only Believe, 58); in the modern faith movement, see Barron, Gospel, 125–36. Van Brenk, “Wagner,” 257, cites 29 percent completely healed for Wagner (which would be quite high).”
― Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

“Those who look down on other Christians because they lack a particular gift or experience, or those who despise a particular gift and look down on Christians who have it, are not demonstrating spiritual maturity.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver

“Revelation announces that God is still in control and that he will conclude this stage of history the way he has promised. He”
― Craig S. Keener, Revelation

“God is consistent with his nature and declared purposes in Scripture, but he is not limited to our finite understanding of him or the ways we think he should work.”
― Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver