60 quotes
It seems strange indeed that so practical and pressing a truth as that of purgatory should be dismissed, while so remote and impractical a doctrine as the absolute everlastingness of hell should be insisted on.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
True, there are some great passages in Revelation, but the book on the whole is like boarding-school plum pudding, where the plums are scarce and far apart.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
. . . I believe that the annihilation of even one soul spells a defeat of God’s purposes, a denial of Christ’s teaching and a closure of heaven against those who love the lost soul.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
The word virgin, both in Hebrew (almah) and Greek (parthenos), simply means a mature young woman, not a “virgo intacta,” and more may have been deduced from the word than is warranted by its use.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
For myself, I refuse mentally to close the canon as if inspiration had run out! Why should we follow traditional thought more than modern thought?
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
We must resolutely refuse to judge Jesus by the Bible. We must judge the Bible by Jesus; by the total effect of a consistent personality made upon us from all sources, including our own experience.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
I am saying that truth may certainly be true whatever my opinion may be, but it has no authority with me until I perceive it to be true.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
When people said to me, ‘I should like to be a member of the City Temple, what must I believe?’ I used to say, ‘Only those things which appear to you to be true.’
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
My plea is not for an impossible subjectivism. But the so-called infallible church or book has no power unless I feel that what it says is true. And who can decide that but myself?
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Traditionalists may be shocked by the opinions expressed here; others will come to welcome them. Regardless of your own views, The Christian Agnostic demands to be read and pondered.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
How can a doctrine be essential in a religion if the founder of the religion never mentions it, or teaches his apostles to pass it on?”
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Virgin Birth, then, neither proves sinlessness, incarnation or divinity. We just do not know what divinity connotes, save that it implies a plus to his humanity, a plus which was both achieved and endowed.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
He revealed what God must be like and what man may be like, and he pledged himself to stand by his little brothers until they too achieved God’s age-long purpose on this minor planet; until all the sons of men realized their possibilities and became the sons of God.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Death itself seems not to make a great difference. Certainly man’s eternal destiny is not determined by the act—often the accident—of dying. Spiritually, and apparently mentally, he goes on where he left off. . .
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Thought must be free to range as it likes over all phenomena and philosophy, unhampered by compulsions. A man cannot be bludgeoned by vulgar threats of damnation, into accepting that what other people say is true.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Each thinker has the right to do what Paul did, to set forth truth as he sees it, in the thought-forms of his own day and generation, as long as he does not willfully distort truth merely to fit his own ideas.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Though not as important as loving, believing certainly matters. It matters so much that, if it has any relevance to the business of living, it must be born in the individual mind, not thrust by church authorities on others.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
When we chant or say the General Confession we pray that hereafter we may live "a godly, righteous and sober life.” But I wonder sometimes if we are too sober. The impression made by the apostles was that they were drunk; intoxicated with God.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
It may take some eons, as we think of time, or even many reincarnations, but we have the highest authority for believing that the Great Shepherd himself will not be content if one of his sheep is missing from the final fold.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Death, we are told, should be left to God. We do not leave birth to God. We space births. We prevent births. We arrange births. Man should learn to become the lord of death as well as the master of birth.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)