Christian Paradox - Faith and Works

---

Speaker Notes

G. K. Chesterton quote from Orthodoxy (1907, Chapter “The Paradoxes of Christianity”):

“Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites,
by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.”

Charles Simeon of Cambridge quote:

“The truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme, but in both extremes.”

(H. C. G. Moule, Life of Charles Simeon, p. 97)

Quaker philosopher Elton Trueblood quote from The Yoke of Christ (1958):

“Occasionally we talk of our Christianity as something that solves problems, and there is a sense in which it does. Long before it does so, however, it increases both the number and the intensity of the problems. Even our intellectual questions are increased by the acceptance of a strong religious faith. … If a man wishes to avoid the disturbing effect of paradoxes, the best advice is for him to leave the Christian faith alone.”

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/september4/4.70.html

the Chesterton and Trueblood quotes appear in Reaching for the Invisible God
by Philip Yancy (2000, Zondervan, pages 92 and 94)

Many Bible passages not linked here.

Kenneth L. Woodward quote from Ushering in the age of the laity (Sept 9, 1994, Commonweal cover story):

Back in the first Nixon presidency I did a cover story on Billy Graham. I asked him,

“Billy Graham, what’s it feel like knowing you are saved?”

“Ken,” he said, “it’s a wonderful feeling.” But suppose, I went on, you were to crawl into the hay with the organist. What then? “Well,” Graham replied, “I just wouldn’t get as high a place in heaven.”

I told this story to Senator Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg.), who is a devout Baptist. “Ken,” he said,

“if I didn’t know I was saved I couldn’t get up in the morning.”

“Mark,” I replied, “if I KNEW I was saved, I WOULDN’T get up in the morning.”

Martin Luther writing an Introduction to Paul’s Letter to the Romans pdf link

Jürgen’s Blog