Daniel L. Migliore > Quotes

“The light of revelation does not descend on us perpendicularly from above; it comes through worldly media by the power of God’s Spirit, who enlists our participation in the process of responsible interpretation and critical appropriation.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“This is God’s holiness and justice revealed in Jesus Christ: that God justifies, accepts, and loves sinners despite their unworthiness.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“The image of God is not like an image permanently stamped on a coin; it is more like an image reflected in a mirror. That is, human beings are created for life in relationships that mirror or correspond to God’s own life in relationship.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“The love of God, and the unity of the church that is grounded in it, is a lavish celebration of the communion of the different. As creator of heaven and earth, God gives existence to a vast diversity of beings. As reconciler, God unites in new fellowship those who were once estranged from God and from each other. As sanctifier, God the Holy Spirit brings together a community made up of people of many nations, cultures, and ethnic groups and empowers them with many gifts for mutual service in the church and in the world.... The unity generated by the triune God is thus no stifling, suffocating unity, and impoverished numeric oneness. It is a differentiated and rich unity that is confessed by faith, shared in love, and awaited in hope. The unity of the church is experienced now only in part. The one church is in via, on the way toward the fulfillment of the promises of God in Christ. It is the pilgrim church, celebrating now the coming of a new unity of humanity around the Lord's table, but at the same time looking forward to the great eschatological banquet in which all the people of the earth, from east, west, north, and south, will sit together in peace and joy in the presence of their Lord (Luke 13:29).”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“[T]o confess that God is creator is to say... that the free, transcendent God is generous and welcoming. God was not compelled to create the world; creation is an act of free grace. Creation is a gift, a benefit. When we confess God as the creator, we are saying something about the character of God. We are confessing that God is good, that God gives life to others, that God lets others exist alongside and in fellowship with God.... No outside necessity compelled God to create. Nor did God create because of some inner deficiency in the divine life that had to be satisfied. If creation is a necessity in either of these meanings, it is not grace. While it is improper to speak of creation as 'necessary', God nevertheless creates in total consistency with God's nature. The act of creation is a 'fitting' act of God. It fittingly expresses the true character of God, who is love. Creation is not an arbitrary act, something God just decided to do on a whim, as it were. On the contrary, God is true and faithful to God's own nature in the act of creation. To speak of God as the creator is to speak of a beneficent, generous God, whose outpouring love and purpose to share life-in-communion are freely, consistently, and fittingly displayed in the act of creation. The grace of God did not first become active in the calling of Abraham or in the sending of Jesus. In the act of creation, God already manifests the self-communicating, other-affirming, communion-forming love that defines God's eternal triune reality and that is decisively disclosed in the ministry and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“While the church is indeed to stand under the authority of the biblical witness, it must avoid bibliolatry and read Scripture with sensitivity to its particular historical contexts and its diverse literary forms.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“To be human is to ask all sorts of questions: Who are we? What is of highest value? Is there a God? What can we hope for? Can we rid ourselves of our flaws and improve our world? What should we do? When persons enter on the pilgrimage of faith, they do not suddenly stop being human; they do not stop asking questions. Becoming a Christian does not put an end to the human impulse to question and to seek for deeper understanding. On the contrary, being a pilgrim of faith intensifies and transforms many old questions and generates new and urgent questions: What is God like? How does Jesus Christ redefine true humanity? Is God present in the world today? What does it mean to be responsible disciples of the crucified and risen Lord? Those who have experienced something of the grace of God in Jesus Christ find themselves wanting to enter more fully into that mystery and to understand the world and every aspect of their lives in its life.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“God’s call to faithfulness can sometimes be a summons to be still and wait. There is a creative waiting as well as a creative acting.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“When theology becomes mere theory divorced from Christian life and practice, it is indeed questionable. But the criticism is one-sided. If theory without practice is empty, practice without theory is blind.... Mindless leaps into action are no more Christian than thinking for thinking's sake. God's call to faithfulness can sometimes be a summons to be still and wait. There is a creative waiting as well as a creative acting. Christian faith causes us to think, to raise questions, to be suspicious of the bandwagons, the movements that are intolerant of questions, the generals on the right or the left who demand unquestioning allegiance and simply bark, 'Forward, march!”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Not 'I think, therefore I am,' but 'I consume, therefore I am" is the logic of late modernity. For this consumer mentality, the goal is to maximize one's possession and use of the world's goods. Not only things but persons and relationships are turned into commodities.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“[T]he world as a whole and all beings individually are radically dependent on God. Such radical dependence is far more than a sense of partial dependence on God in some regions of our experience or at some especially difficult moments in our life. In confessing that Godi s creator and that we are creatures, we acknowledge that we are finite, contingent, radically dependent beings. We express our awareness that we might not have been, that our very existence and every moment of our experience is a gift received from a source beyond ourselves. The realization of this radical contingency, of our awareness of being primarily recipients of life, is what some philosophers and theologians have called the 'shock of nonbeing'. You and I are not necessary. We are creatures who exist at the pleasure of our creator. As contingent beings, our existence is precarious. We are frequently reminded of our frailty by sickness and failure, by the loss of loved ones and our awareness that we too must die, and even by the positive experiences of joy, happiness, and contentment - all of which come and go so quickly. Experiencing a moment of intense beauty that we would like to possess forever, feeling impotent in the face of injustice, witnessing the birth of a child, or being present of the funeral of a child - all this and so much more is taken up into our confession of our creatureliness. Our hold on life is fragile. We are finite. The resources of our community and nation are finite. The resources of the world are finite. Like the grass that withers and dies (Isa. 40:6), all creatures and the earth itself live on the edge of nonbeing. We did not bring ourselves into existence, and we cannot guarantee our continued existence....

This sense of being radically dependent on God for our very existence is closely related to the Christian awareness of salvation in Christ by grace alone. We are created and justified by grace alone. As creatures and as forgiven sinners, we are recipients of grace.... Radical dependence on God as a theme of the doctrine of creation must be properly interpreted, especially today when it is charged that Christian theology has often inculcated a spirit of passivity and service dependence. The God on whom we are radically dependent is the God who wills us to be free and calls us to responsibility. Reliance on the God of the gospel is radical liberation from all servile dependencies. Thus, far from being a theological putdown, the doctrine of creation is the basis of human dignity and freedom. But the freedom God wills is a freedom for life in communion with and loving service of others. God, our creator, the triune God, is the graciously liberating God who wills freedom in community.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“In Jesus Christ the living, free, inexhaustibly rich God has been revealed as sovereign, holy love. To know God in this revelation is to acknowledge the infinite and incomprehensible depth of the mystery called God. Christians are confronted by this mystery in all the central affirmations of their faith: the wonder of creation; the humility of God in Jesus Christ; the transforming power of the Holy Spirit; the miracle of forgiveness of sins; the gift of new life in communion with God and others; the call to the ministry of reconciliation; the promise of the consummation of God's reign. To the eyes of faith, the world is encompassed by the mystery of the free grace of God.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Not 'I think, therefore I am', but 'I consume, therefore, I am' is the logic of late modernity. For this consumer mentality, the goal is to maximize one's possession and use of the world's goods. Not only things but persons and relationships are turned into commodities.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Christians today, no less than people of other faiths, are caught between pervasive apathy and acts of violence, apathy born of hopelessness about the enormity of the evils that confront us and recourse to violence and coercion that seriously compromises or even destroys the goals of a better future. Either way, we can close off the future to which we are directed by God our creator and redeemer.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“The cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ inscribes deeply into human history the truth that God's compassion is greater than the murderous passions of our world, that God's glory can and does shine even in the deepest night of human savagery, that God's forgiving love is greater than our often paralyzing awareness of our sin and guilt, that God's way of life is greater than our way of death.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Tyranny, injustice, social breakdown, war, and other evil events are not caused by God but have their origin in the creatures' misuse of their freedom. Nevertheless, God permits these events to occur and uses them to accomplish his divine purpose. God exercises sovereignty over evil by bringing good out of what by itself is only negative and destructive.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Being truly human and living in community are inseparable. This wisdom is beautifully captured in an African proverb: “I am human only because you are human.”13”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“Questions arise at the edges of what we know and what we can do as human beings. They thrust themselves on us with special force in times and situations of crisis such as sickness, suffering, guilt, injustice, personal or social upheaval, and death. Believers are not immune to the questions that arise in these situations. Indeed, they may be more perplexed than others, because they have to relate their faith to what is happening in their lives and in the world. Precisely as believers they experience the frequent and disturbing incongruity between faith and lived reality. They believe in a sovereign and good God, but they live in a world where evil often seems triumphant. They believe in a living Lord, but more often than not they experience the absence rather than the presence of God. They believe in the transforming power of the spirit of God, but they know all too well the weakness of the church and the frailty of their own faith. The know that they should obey God's will, but they find that it is often difficult to grasp what God's will is in regard to particular issues. And even when they know God's will, they frequently resist doing it. Christian faith asks questions, seeks understanding, both because God is always greater than our ideas of God, and because the public world that faith inhabits confronts it with challenges and contradictions that cannot be ignored.... By emphasizing that faith, far from producing a closed or complacent attitude, awakens wonder, inquiry, and exploration, we underscore the humanity of the life of faith and of the discipline of theology.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“The vocation of a Christian is not to be confused with having a job by which one earns livelihood. Whatever one's job or profession, Christians have a calling. They are called to be partners in God's mission in the world; Christian life involves inward growth and renewal, but it does not turn in on itself as does so much contemporary literature on the importance of self. Christian life is in movement outward to others and forward to the future of the completion of God's redemptive activity. The Christian calling or vocation is the ministry of liberative reconciliation, the call to invite all into a new community where justice is cherished and where freedom and love flourish, a community that is grounded in Christ, empowered by the Spirit, and destined for participation in the eternal communion of the triune God. Universal participation in the love of the triune God made known in Christ and effectively at work in the activity of the Holy Spirit is the goal of Christian mission. Christians live by the promise of God and thus in creative hope. There is work to be done, a message to be proclaimed, forgiveness to be offered and practiced, service to be rendered, hostility to be overcome, injustice to be rectified. Guided by the Word and Spirit of God, Christians take up these tasks in confidence and hope in the final fulfillment of God's promise of a new humanity in a new heaven and a new earth. Christian life is more than acceptance of the forgiveness of sins and more than personal transformation, even if it can never be without these. Christian life is also the vocation to participate in the preparation of all creation for the coming reign of God marked by God's justice, freedom, and peace. It is the highest of all callings[.]”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Christian hope differs from all utopianisms that eventually capitulate to the ideas that the end justifies the means and that the present must be sacrificed for the future. Authentic Christian hope will certainly stand in opposition to present injustice and to every effort to absolutize the status quo. however, in the struggle for justice, equality, and human rights, Christians will always insist on 'more' - on a different, greater future than what is ever achievable by human effort and ingenuity, a hope beyond hope. Utopian hope finds in humanity itself the resources and capacities to remove all suffering, establish universal justice, and complete history. A Christian theology of hope, by contrast, knows that the fulfillment we seek is an incalculable gift of God. Consequently, Christian hope will generate criticism both of the status quo and of all absolutized programs of progress and strategies of revolution.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Many African Americans, Hispanics, and women read Scripture through Third World eyes, and this presents a deep challenge to First World readers, who all too often expect Scripture to endorse their comfortable, middle-class way of life.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

“Christian life is a pilgrimage. It is life on the way to the fulfillment of God's purposes for us and for the world.... Mature hope does not give up on this world, for it is God's world. Nor does mature hope rest on our ability to build the reign of God on earth, for only God can do that. Mature Christians hope, pray, and work for the coming of God's reign and the doing of God's will, but they also know how to wait on God.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.

“Human beings have been endowed with the capacity to communicate and to understand through language. For good or ill, language shapes human life. Individuals and communities may be condemned to bondage or introduced to a new freedom by the particular stories that they tell and retell and by the metaphors and parables that they employ to understand the world, themselves, and the ultimate reality called God.”
― Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, third ed.