

“The mystic must, of course, respect the canons of reason and the conventions of logic if he is to communicate anything whatever about ineffable reality. And yet, ultimate reality either is capable of intelligible representation, and in that case ineffability is a misnomer, or it is not, in which case the mystic has no ground whatever for speech about the Ineffable. It is one thing for a person to claim that he has seen a flying saucer, and on that basis to argue—contrary to those who have not— that such weird mechanisms exist, but it is more preposterous for someone to describe a reality which is said to be inherently inexpressible. It simply makes no sense for anyone publicly to claim that he has intuited the inexpressible. The mystic cannot formulate the experience which other men should have, if they would share his belief, since in the case of an “inexpressible intuition” nobody could know what anybody else’s experience was.”
― God, Revelation and Authority
― God, Revelation and Authority

“Moralistic therapeutic deists believe that God visits their world, not that they live in God’s world. They believe that God serves their agenda, helping them feel good about themselves along the way. God, in their view, demands nothing of them. Rather, He exists to help them in whatever way they wish. Moralistic therapeutic deism is not Christianity at all.”
― A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today's World
― A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today's World

“We do not proclaim grace so that anyone will make light of sin or of our duty to resist it. We herald God’s amazing mercy in order to join with the Spirit in stirring up in his people such a love for God that, when the day of evil comes, they will gladly put on the full armor he provides. Then, despite the hardships and the pain God’s people may face in the battle, they will stand strong in the power of his might.”
― Holiness by Grace: Delighting in the Joy That Is Our Strength
― Holiness by Grace: Delighting in the Joy That Is Our Strength

“Rationalism has swerved between two radical extremes in its attitude toward revelation. There is the widespread present admission that reason is barren as a source of final truth, but that it would be a sell-out to madness to invoke revelational theology. But a very different tradition in the history of philosophy, not without recent representatives, holds that philosophy finds its ideal intellectual expression and summit in theology. For Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and even Spinoza, philosophy is at its apex an intellectual love of the Divine. It is this regard for theology as “the inner side of a philosophy,” to use Miss Emmet’s phrase (The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking, p. 150), that turns some systems of metaphysics into a religious faith, albeit a false one. Such outlooks on the surface eliminate a direct clash between philosophy and theology. But, insofar as theology is viewed as the capstone of speculative philosophy, they do so only by denying the comprehensive intellectual implications of revealed theology, and in principle even deny to theology its own right of survival on the basis of special divine disclosure. Sooner or later—and usually sooner than its advocates think—this view works itself around to the other, in which rationalists suspect and disown all theology, only to discover at last that in doing so they have both idolatrized reason and emptied it into a vain thing.”
― God, Revelation and Authority
― God, Revelation and Authority

“Common sense requires modern man’s recognition of the scientific method as a spectacularly useful instrumentality for transforming our environment. Respect and gratitude are indeed due the scientist for many comforts and conveniences furnished to modern living, often as the fruit of painstakingly sacrificial research and experimentation, although in recent times not often without financial reward. This practical success of science inclines many persons to a tacit acceptance of the scientific world-picture of external reality as a realm merely of impersonal processes and mathematically connectible sequences. Charles H. Malik observes rightly that all too often the highly merited prestige of scientists in their own fields of competence is transferred to areas of publicly expressed opinion in which they are novices.”
― God, Revelation and Authority
― God, Revelation and Authority
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