Philosopher Quotes on God

“Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.”

Tria sunt homini necessaria ad salutem: scilicit scientia credendorum, scientia desiderandorum, et scientia operandorum.

“Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o'er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail.”

Pange, Lingua , stanza 5 ( Tantum Ergo )

“Thus Angels' Bread is made The Bread of man today: The Living Bread from Heaven With figures doth away : O wondrous gift indeed! The poor and lowly may Upon their Lord and Master feed.”

Sacris Solemniis Juncta Sint Gaudia (Matins hymn for Corpus Christi), stanza 6 ( Panis Angelicus )

“O saving Victim, opening wide The gate of heaven to man below, Our foes press on from every side, Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.”

Verbum Supernum Prodiens (hymn for Lauds on Corpus Christi), stanza 5 ( O Salutaris Hostia )

“Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful.”

Commentary on Romans , cap 14, I 3

“To ignore the true God is in fact only half an evil; atheism is worth more than the piety bestowed on mythical gods.”

A Religion for Adults (1957)

“A Religion for Adults (1957)”

To ignore the true God is in fact only half an evil; atheism is worth more than the piety bestowed on mythical gods.

“The comprehension of God taken as a participation in his sacred life, an allegedly direct comprehension, is impossible, because participation is a denial of the divine , and because nothing is more direct than the face to face , which is straightforwardness itself.”

Totality and Infinity (1961)

Attributed to Emmanuel Levinas:

“Religion is the bond between the same and the other without constituting a totality.”

Attributed to Emmanuel Levinas:

“The face of the other is the trace of the infinite.”

“The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”

Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16

“My Religion (1884), Ch. 8 В чем моя вера?”

...никогда Христос ... ни одним словом не утверждал личное воскресение и бессмертие личности за гробом...

“My Religion (1884), Ch. 12”

Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth. Only deeds of truth, by introducing light into the conscience of each individual, can dissolve the cohesion of error, and detach men one by one from the mass united together by the cohesion of error.

“My Religion (1884), as translated in The Human Experience : Contemporary American and Soviet Fiction and Poetry (1989) by the Quaker US/USSR Committee”

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

“Martin's soul grew very very glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me (Matt. xxv). And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.”

Where Love Is, God Is " (1885), also translated as "Where Love is, There God is Also" - (full text online)

“Faith seeks understanding.”

Fides quaerens intellectum

“God often works more by the life of the illiterate seeking the things that are God's, than by the ability of the learned seeking the things that are their own.”

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 123.

“God was conceived of a most pure Virgin … it was fitting that the virgin should be radiant with a purity so great that a greater purity cannot be conceived.”

In Mary for Earth and Heaven: Essays on Mary and Ecumenism , 2002, William McLaughlin, Jill Pinnock, eds., Gracewing, ISBN 0852445563 ISBN 9780852445563 pp . 115-116.

“In Mary for Earth and Heaven: Essays on Mary and Ecumenism , 2002, William McLaughlin, Jill Pinnock, eds., Gracewing, ISBN 0852445563 ISBN 9780852445563 pp . 115-116.”

God was conceived of a most pure Virgin … it was fitting that the virgin should be radiant with a purity so great that a greater purity cannot be conceived.

Attributed to Anselm of Canterbury:

“I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order that I may understand.”

“The necessary connexion of movement and time is real and time is something the soul (dhihn) constructs in movement.”

As cited in "Being and Language in Averroes' “Tahafut At-Tahafut” (2003) by Massimo Campanini

“Philosophers do not claim that God does not know particulars ; they rather claim that He does not know them the way humans do. God knows particulars as their Creator whereas humans know them as a privileged creations of God might know them.”

Attributed to Averroes in Voices of Islam: Voices of change (2007) by Vincent J. Cornell, p. 35

“The Law teaches that the universe was invented and created by God , and that it did not come into being by chance or by itself.”

Part 1: The Creation of the Universe; Opening sentence

Attributed to Averroes:

“If reason and revelation appear to disagree, it is the surface meaning of the revealed text that must be reinterpreted.”

Attributed to Averroes:

“Philosophy is the friend and milk-sister of religion.”

“Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.”

Wikiquote

“But the soul cannot have any virtue if God is not loved with all the heart; for from that love flows the fulness of all grace, and without it no grace can flow into the soul, nor can it abide in it.”

Wikiquote

“The virtue of gratitude is extremely commendable and pleasing in the sight of God, as its opposite is a detestable vice before him. Of which subject, thus speaks St. Bernard: Learn to be thankful for every grace received. Consider diligently the favors heaped upon you, that no gift of God be defrauded of the due return of gratitude and thanksgiving you ought to make, whether the gift be great, middling, or little.”

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“For the nearer any one approaches to God, the more he is illuminated, and therefore the more clearly does he see the majesty and mercy of God.”

Life of Christ, Chapter XXXIV, Of the Multiplication of the Loaves, and how God provides for those who love Him

“Life of Christ, Chapter XXXIV, Of the Multiplication of the Loaves, and how God provides for those who love Him”

For the nearer any one approaches to God, the more he is illuminated, and therefore the more clearly does he see the majesty and mercy of God.

“Him pervaded the Cosmic Spirit, the Infinity was his beginning and his end, the Universe his only and everlasting love. In holy innocence and deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how himself was its most amiable mirror. Full of religion was he and full of Holy Spirit. Wherefore he stands there, alone and unequalled a master of his art, but sublime above the profane rabble, a peerless beacon forever.”

Friedrich Schleiermacher, on Spinoza, as quoted by Cornelius Lanczos in Albert Einstein and the Cosmic World Order (1962),

“Friedrich Schleiermacher, On The Social Element in Religion (1799), The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , Volume 5”

But the imparting of religion is not to be sought in books, like that of intellectual conceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure impression of the original product is too far destroyed in this medium, which, in the same way that dark-colored objects absorb the greatest proportion of the rays of light, swallows up everything belonging to the pious emotions of the heart, which cannot be embraced

“Second Speech: The Nature of Religion". On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers . London: Paul, Trench, Trubner. 1893. p. 23.”

Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle.

Attributed to Friedrich Schleiermacher:

“Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence.”

Attributed to Friedrich Schleiermacher:

“The contemplation of the pious is the immediate consciousness of the universal existence of all finite things, in and through the Infinite.”

“Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ.”

Part V: Conscience, p. 57

“Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”

Ch. V, p. 239

“Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom; lead Thou me on.”

The Pillar of the Cloud , st. 1 (1833)

“There is in stillness oft a magic power To calm the breast, when struggling passions lower; Touch'd by its influence, in the soul arise Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.”

Solitude (1818)

“Christian! hence learn to do thy part, And leave the rest to Heaven.”

St. Paul at Melita , st. 3 (1833)

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 27

“Love was His meaning.”

Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 86

“He said not, 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted'; but He said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome.'”

Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 68

“This is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ , our endless bliss, made in Sixteen Shewings, or Revelations particular. Of the which the First is of His precious crowning with thorns; and therewith was comprehended and specified the Trinity, with the Incarnation, and unity betwixt God and man's soul ; with many fair shewings of endless wisdom and teachings of love: in which all the Shewings that follow be grounded and oned.”

First lines

“Our Lord God, Allmighty Wisdom, All-Love, right as verily as He hath made everything that is, all-so verily He doeth and worketh all-thing that is done.”

Wikiquote

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.”

Sermon IV : True Hearing

“Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.”

Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (1941) by Raymond Bernard Blakney, p. 240

“The most powerful prayer , one wellnigh omnipotent, and the worthiest work of all is the outcome of a quiet mind . The quieter it is the more powerful , the worthier , the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is. To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self -seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead to its own.”

As translated in A Dazzling Darkness: An Anthology of Western Mysticism (1985) by Patrick Grant

“God wants nothing of you but the gift of a peaceful heart .”

As translated in The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose (1991) edited by Stephen Mitchell , p. 115

“As translated in The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Prose (1991) edited by Stephen Mitchell , p. 115”

God wants nothing of you but the gift of a peaceful heart .

“In the history of the world, Hinduism is the only religion that exhibits a complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full confidence in its own powers. Hinduism is freedom, especially the freedom in thinking about God.”

Wikiquote

“Hinduism is therefore not a definite dogmatic creed, but a vast, complex, but subtly unified mass of spirItual thought and realization. Its tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit has been continuously enlarging through the ages.”

Wikiquote

“In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit . Whatever religion they may profess, they are spiritual kinsmen. While the different religions in their historic forms bind us to limited groups and militate against the development of loyalty to the world community, the mystics have already stood for the fellowship of humanity in harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by.”

Remarks on Mysticism ( c . 1940), as quoted by Haile Selassie in "An address during Radhakrishnan's visit to Ethiopia " (13 October 1965), as recorded in Foreign Affairs Record Vol. 11-12 (1965-1966) by India Ministry of External Affairs, p. 266; he is also quoted as having made these remarks in The Visva-Bharati Quarterly Vol. 5 (1939-1940)

“[Radhakrishnan describes the state of dejection he experienced as a student at Madras Christian College:] 'I was strongly persuaded of the inferiority of the Hindu religion to which I attributed the political downfall of India.... I remember the cold sense of reality, the depressing feeling that crept over me, as a causal relation between the anaemic Hindu religon and our political failure forced itself on my mind.”

Radhakrishnan, 'The Spirit of Man', quoted in Rajiv Malhotra , Indra's Net , p. 316., 1st ed.

“Radhakrishnan, 'The Spirit of Man', quoted in Rajiv Malhotra , Indra's Net , p. 316., 1st ed.”

[Radhakrishnan describes the state of dejection he experienced as a student at Madras Christian College:] 'I was strongly persuaded of the inferiority of the Hindu religion to which I attributed the political downfall of India.... I remember the cold sense of reality, the depressing feeling that crept over me, as a causal relation between the anaemic Hindu religon and our political failure forced

“Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee: All things pass; God never changes. Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”

Poem IX", in Complete Works St. Teresa of Avila (1963) edited by E. Allison Peers, Vol. 3, p. 288

Attributed to Teresa of Avila:

“Christ has no body now but yours; no hands, no feet on earth, but yours.”

Attributed to Teresa of Avila:

“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes.”

Attributed to Teresa of Avila:

“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”

Attributed to Teresa of Avila:

“Mental prayer is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends.”

“Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith.”

Ch. 5

“Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy.”

No Religion is an Island", p. 264

“The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd , a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .”

The Meaning of Jewish Existence" in The Torch (1950)

“Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 24 : The Great Yearning; The Yearning for Spiritual Living”

He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor, his life for love , knowing that contentment is the shadow not the light . The great yearning that sweeps eternity is a yearning to praise, a yearning to serve. And when the waves of that yearning swell in our souls all the barriers are pushed aside: the crust of callousness, the hysteri

“Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 26 : The Pious Man; Our Destiny is to Aid”

The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now .

Attributed to Al-Ashari:

“All actions are created by God and acquired by human beings.”

Attributed to Al-Ashari:

“The truths of religion are rooted in tradition but defended by reason.”

Attributed to Al-Ashari:

“Faith and works together constitute true religion.”

Attributed to Al-Ashari:

“What God wills is good because he wills it.”

Attributed to Al-Ashari:

“We affirm of God only what he has revealed of himself.”

“I am the Truth.”

Ana al-Haqq

“Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978) by Steven T. Katz, p. 92; four centuries later the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart would make a very similar assertion: "The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight , and one knowledge , and one love .”

I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart . He said, "Who are you?" I said, " I am You. " You are He Who fills all place But place does not know where You are. In my subsistence is my annihilation; In my annihilation, I remain You.

“On Allah (God), as quoted in Doctrine of Sufis (1977) by Abû Bakr al- Kalâbâdî, as translated by A. J. Arberry , Ch. 5 p. 15”

Concealment does not veil Him His pre-existence preceded time, His being preceded not-being, His eternity preceded limit.

“On Allah (God), as quoted in Doctrine of Sufis (1977) by Abû Bakr al- Kalâbâdî, as translated by A. J. Arberry , Ch. 5 p. 16”

Other than He cannot be qualified by two (opposite) qualities at one time; yet With Him they do not create opposition. He is hidden in His manifestation, manifest in His concealing.

Attributed to Al-Hallaj:

“I have seen my Lord with the eye of my heart.”

“To show that there are natural processes that produce religious belief does nothing, so far, to discredit it; perhaps God designed us in such a way that it is by virtue of those processes that we come to have knowledge of him.”

Warranted Christian Belief . 2000. p. 145. ISBN 9780195131925 .

“The Analytic Theist: An Alving Plantinga Reader , Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998. ISBN 9780802842299 . Ch. "Reason and Belief in God: Reformed Epistemology , pp. 125-126”

Aquinas believes that human beings (even in our earthly condition here below) can have knowledge, scientific knowledge of God's existence , as well as knowledge that he has such attributes as simplicity , eternità , immateriality , immutability , and the line. In Summa Theologiae Aquinas sets out his famous Five Ways or five proofs of God's existence: in Summa Contra Gentiles he sets out the proof

“Well, I don't think there are any methodological conflicts either. As for those social conflicts, those aren't conflicts—in my opinion—between science and religion. They're conflicts between Christians and atheists or Christians and secularists: Christians want to do things one way, secularists want to do things another way. But that's not a science/religion conflict at all. You might as well say it's a science/ secularism conflict. In each case, each group wants to do science and then use it in a certain way.”

Pardi, Paul ( 2011-12-13 ). Interview with Alvin Plantinga on Where the Conflict Really Lies . Philosophy News . | Posed question: Are you mainly trying to show that there's no logical conflict even though there might be a methodological conflict?

Attributed to Alvin Plantinga:

“Belief in God is properly basic.”

Attributed to Alvin Plantinga:

“There is a deep concord between Christian belief and the methods of science, and a deep conflict between naturalism and science.”

“What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or the existence of, God?”

Theology and Falsification , 1950

“[Still an atheist at the time] For Heaven's sake...sorry, perhaps I should have said something else.”

Craig Vs Flew, University of Wisconsin, 1st January 1998

“The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).”

Flew's review of The God Delusion

“Flew's review of The God Delusion”

The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibil

“A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index of The God Delusion notes six references to Deism it provides no definition of the word ‘deism’. This enables Dawkins in his references to Deism to suggest that Deists are a miscellany of believers in this and that. The truth, which Dawkins ought to have learned before this book went to the printers, is that Deists believe in the existence of a God but not the God of any revelation. In fact the first notable public appearance of the notion of Deism was in the American Revolution .”

Flew's review of The God Delusion

“Jesus that I know as my Redeemer cannot be less than God.”

As quoted in Mona Siddiqui, Christians, Muslims, and Jesus , Yale University Press, 2013, p. 674

“For never at any time did Christian people take their title from the Bishops among them, but from the Lord, on whom we rest our faith. Thus, though the blessed Apostles have become our teachers, and have ministered the Saviour's Gospel, yet not from them have we our title, but from Christ we are and are named Christians. But for those who derive the faith which they profess from others, good reason is it they should bear their name, whose property they have become.”

Discourse 1 Against the Arians , Chapter 1. Introduction. Reason for writing; certain persons indifferent about Arianism ; Arians not Christians, because sectaries always take the name of their founder.

Attributed to Athanasius:

“God became man so that man might become God.”

Attributed to Athanasius:

“The Word became flesh that we might be made spirit.”

Attributed to Athanasius:

“He who knows himself knows his Creator.”

“The fire of divine love consumes all that is not love.”

Ch. IX

“In God is my being, my I, my strength, my bliss, my desire. But this I that I often call so...in truth I no longer know what the I is, or the Mine, or desire, or the good, or bliss.”

P.108.

“I find in myself by the grace of God a satisfaction without nourishment, love without fear”

Wikiquote

“Faith seems to me wholly lost, and hope dead; for it seems to me that I have and hold in the certainty that which I believed and hoped at other times. I no longer see union, for I know nothing more and can see nothing more than him alone without me. I do not know where the I is, nor do I seek it, nor do I wish to know or be cognizant of it.”

Wikiquote

“I am so submerged in the sweet fire of love that I cannot grasp anything except the whole of love, which melts all the marrow of my soul and body.”

Wikiquote

“In the Veery journal interview in 1996, in reply to the question of "What is the most rewarding aspect of philosophy?" presented by Veery editor Steven Vita, later reprinted in 1997 in the Austin American-Statesman and then quoted from in The New York Times obituary entitled “Charles Hartshorne, Theologian, Is Dead; Proponent of an Activist God Was 103.”

the search for necessary truths, truths that are not only true, but they couldn’t have been false.

“My ultimate intuitive clue in philosophy is that " God is love " and that the idea of God is definable as that of the being worthy to be loved with all one’s heart , mind , soul , and entire being .”

The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne (1991), edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn, p. 700

Attributed to Charles Hartshorne:

“God is the supremely related being, related to all that is.”

Attributed to Charles Hartshorne:

“Love is the inclusive virtue, embracing all the others.”

Attributed to Charles Hartshorne:

“Each moment of experience adds new richness to the divine life.”

“Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.”

Paedagogus ( The Instructor , c. 198 AD), 2.

“We shall not err in alleging that all things necessary and profitable for life came to us from God, and that philosophy more especially was given to the Greeks, as a covenant peculiar to them, being, as it were, a stepping stone to the philosophy which is according to Christ.”

Stromata ( Miscellanies , c. 198–203 AD), VI, 8.

Attributed to Clement of Alexandria:

“Philosophy is a clear image of truth, a divine gift to the Greeks.”

Attributed to Clement of Alexandria:

“If I know God, I know myself.”

Attributed to Clement of Alexandria:

“Faith is the beginning of love, but love is the fulfillment of faith.”

“God is truth. All who seek truth seek God, whether this is clear to them or not.”

Letter to Sr. Adelgundis Jaegerschmid, 23 March 1938

“Collected Works Vol. IV. Part 1 : Before the Face of God , Ch.1 : "On the History and Spirit of Carmel”

What is meant by "the Law of the Lord"? Psalm 118 which we pray every Sunday and on solemnities at Prime, is entirely filled with the command to know the Law and to be led by it through life. The Psalmist was certainly thinking of the Law of the Old Covenant. Knowing it actually did require life-long study and fulfilling it, life-long exertion of the will. But the Lord has freed us from the yoke o

“Only the person blinded by the passion of controversy could deny that woman in soul and body is formed for a particular purpose. The clear and irrevocable world of Scripture declares what daily experience teaches from the beginning of the world: woman is destined to be wife and mother.”

Wikiquote

“The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one's own life in order to make room for God's life.”

Wikiquote

“Every profession in which woman's soul comes into its own and which can be formed by woman's soul is an authentic woman's profession.”

Wikiquote

“I offer this gift to my God, I dedicate this gift to Him. Only this remains to me as my treasure. I gave up everything else at the command of the Spirit. I gave all that I had to obtain the pearl of great price. Only in words do I master it, as a servant of the Word. I would never intentionally wish to disdain this wealth. I esteem it, I set value by it, I am comforted by it more than others are comforted by all the treasures of the world. It is the companion of all my life, a good counselor and converser; a guide on the way to Heaven and a fervent co-ascetic.”

Concerning his literary gift, "St. Gregory the Theologian the Archbishop of Constantinople

“It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe.”

On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press: 2002), Oration 27

“On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press: 2002), Oration 27”

It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe.

“Philosophize about the world or worlds; about matter ; about soul ; about natures endowed with reason , good or bad; about resurrection , about judgment , about reward, or the Sufferings of Christ. For in these subjects to hit the mark is not useless, and to miss it is not dangerous.”

First Theological Oration (Oration 27) , IX.

Attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus:

“Better to think rightly of God in silence than wrongly in speech.”

“Evil will come to nought and will be completely destroyed. The divine, pure goodness will contain in itself every nature endowed with reason; nothing made by God is excluded from his kingdom once everything mixed with some elements of base material has been consumed by refinement in fire.”

A Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15.28

“Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection , Patrologia Graeca 46.101-105”

As virtue is a thing that has no master, that is, is free, everything that is free will be united with virtue.

“Indeed, it was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The All-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive His blessings and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream.”

Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection

“Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection”

Indeed, it was for this that intelligent beings came into existence; namely, that the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle. The All-creating Wisdom fashioned these souls, these receptacles with free wills, as vessels as it were, for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive His blessings and become continually larger with the inpouring of the stream.

“Every concept that comes from some comprehensible image, by an approximate understanding and by guessing at the Divine nature, constitutes an idol of God and does not proclaim God.”

The Life of Moses ; translation, introd. and notes by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson ; pref. by John Meyendorff Page 96 (1978 ed).

“Only by presupposing God's prior and inconceivable forgiveness can the limitations of human good will be transcended, and only thus can the danger of human pride be avoided.”

Wikiquote

“Christ's Passion , viewed from within, is of a diversity that the biblical texts and images leave hidden; but numerous mystics through the centuries have been allowed to experience a great deal of it in ever-varying aspects—if only by drops, as it were, compared with the Son of God.”

Wikiquote

“What deserves to be called mysticism—not in the vague sense of the history and philosophy of religion, but rather in the Catholic-ecclesial sense—occurs when God's Word is heard, not only with exegetical and theological understanding, but with the whole heart, the whole being, when one is steadfast before the self-disclosure of the heart of God despite fire and night.”

Wikiquote

“Charisms are not distributed at random but are dispensed by God to supply what is needful and lacking in his Church at each historical moment. If they are from God, they usually do not flow with the latest fashionable trend but much more likely contain an antidote and remedy for the perils of the time.”

Wikiquote

“There were many mystical phenomena in Adrienne 's life—stigmata, transferences, the radiating of light, levitation, speaking with tongues, and other things of that kind, but they all occurred in a totally unemphatic way. They were mere accompaniments to show forth the heart of the matter: what was to be passed on to the Church, invisibly through prayer and strenuous penance, visibly through the dictated works. The criterion of her mysticism's authenticity lies primarily, if not exclusively, in the quality of what she did and what she had and has to say.”

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