Joshua

“Acknowledging the interpreted status of the gospel should translate into a certain humility in our public theology. It should not, however, translate into skepticism about the truth of the Christian confession. If the interpretive status of the gospel rattles our confidence in its truth, this indicates that we remain haunted by the modern desire for objective certainty. But our confidence rests not on objectivity but rather on the convictional power of the Holy Spirit (which isn't exactly objective).”
― James K.A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church

“The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.”
― Edwin H. Friedman

“The hypothesis which I wish to advance is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described. What we possess, if this view is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, or morality”
― Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

“God loves the world and wants it to experience that love in Christ in such a way that it can respond to it and share it. This means, then, that no particular culture is privileged in the missionary enterprise, and no culture is rejected. All human cultures, marked as they are by the tension of being simul creatus etpeccator (simultaneously created and sinful), are honored by God as potential receivers of Christ and his calling.”
― Darrell L. Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church