Tim K

“Freedom is not the freedom of indeterminacy. That would make every moral decision an accident, unrelated to the person who acts. But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision. None of these drives compels the decision in isolation. (Only in states of disintegration is the personality determined by compulsions.) But they are effective in union and through the deciding center. In this way the universe participates in every act of human freedom. It represents the side of destiny in the act of freedom.”
― Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 2

“Reformed covenant theology seems to build its case on three main premises. Firstly, that the old covenant was revoked because Israel so thoroughly violated it (a punitive supersessionism). Secondly, the old covenant was in any event only ever temporary. Thirdly, the efficacy of the old covenant was not actually as Israel took it to be, at face value; rather than dealing with Israel’s transgression (as its practitioners would quite reasonably have supposed at the time) it was instead to remind her of her transgressions and point her to Christ to come.”
― Stephen Burnhope, Atonement and the New Perspective: The God of Israel, Covenant, and the Cross

“Complete demythologization is not possible when speaking about the divine.”
― Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 2

“As part of NASA’s Child Star program, a student asked NASA scientists a question so seemingly rudimentary that the assistance of a “literal” rocket scientist in answering it felt more than a little unnecessary. “What is gravity?” the student asked. Shockingly, the NASA scientists shrugged: NASA scientist 1: “We don’t really know: We can define what it is as a field of influence because we know how it operates in the universe.” NASA scientist 2: “Actually, some scientists think that it is made up of particles called gravitons which travel at the speed of light.” NASA scientist 1: “However, if we are to be honest, we do not know what gravity ‘is’ in any fundamental way—we only know how it behaves.”19”
― Sam D. Kim, A Holy Haunting: Why Faith Isn't a Leap but a Series of Staggers from One Safe Place to Another