John Piper Quotes

What I love about believing in a living God is that I believe God is constantly revealing God's self to us over time, and with each succeeding generation, we come a little closer to understanding the mind of God.

The minister and the priest teach that the organization is greater. No great philosophy has ever come from an organization, but from an individual whose research has been a personal study of God and ITS ways.

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.

All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God.

Throughout my life, the scriptures have been a way for God to reveal things to me that are personal and helpful. When I was a little boy, I was given a small Bible. If I remember correctly, it was only the New Testament.

The uninitiated have real questions and valid concerns over how the things of God appear to them.

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Theology is anthropology.

The forms of thought, into which we throw our timid views of God, are but symbols of truths greater than our thoughts. Yet we may not set them aside as worthless, for they are the rungs on which we dwellers in the cave climb to the full view of the Truth, as he is.

An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.

A little knowledge OF God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge ABOUT him.

God gave us the mind so that we can know him.

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.

We learn this by the precepts that Jesus left. He observed that the people were looking outward, and assured them that the kingdom of God cometh not with outward observation; and for this reason, that it was only to be known in man.

The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires - and gives rise to - deep feelings of faith.

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious - that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.

Leading Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas were not what today might be called 'strict constructionists.' Rather, they celebrated reason as the means to gain greater insight into divine intentions.

Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?

Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that before one can have any comprehension of the loyalty and trust of faith, one must first force one's mind to accept a host of incomprehensible doctrines. But this is to put the cart before the horse.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.

I think it's a wonderful fact about Judaism - at least about the approach to Judaism I most relate to: There are no universal answers. We don't have it all figured out. God is unknowable.

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.