Lionel Trilling Quotes

It seems to me that it was well said by Madama Serenissima, and insisted on by your reverence, that the Holy Scripture cannot err, and that the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. But I should have in your place added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways; and one error in particular would be most grave and most frequent, if we always stopped short at the literal signification of the words.

[T]he scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture.

Therefore we examine with considerable diligence the consensus of the true, learned, and purer antiquity, and we love and praise the testimonies of the fathers which agree with the Scripture.

So long as the New Testament served to decipher the Old, it was taken as an absolute norm.

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

If it squares with the Scripture, then let's go. If it's in conflict with the Scripture, then it's heresy.

If the Bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe it.

Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality.

We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order.

No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

Yes, I think that when the Bible refers to a horse or a horseman, that's exactly what it means.

As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its universality.

Philosophers are best able to understand properly the allegorical passages of the Koran on the basis of their logical training. There is no religious stipulation that all such passages have to be interpreted literally.

The Roman Church has never erred, nor can it err until the end of time.

Women can perform many duties which are useful in the church, but they were not called for priesthood. We are not to be blamed for this because this is not our teaching, it is the, Biblical teaching. If you can find one single example in the Bible, whether in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, we are ready to accept it. We are not against the words of God. We accept the words of God. But we cannot add new teachings.

If the word of God and scholarship disagree, then to Hell with scholarship!

There must be no inventing or recounting to the people of new things … uncanonical and according to their own taste rather than the Holy Scriptures.

The Bible is authoritative, without error, and inspired by God..

Generally speaking, the Smritikars never care to explain the why and the how of their dogmas.

I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naïveté?

To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ.

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture.

But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men!

We need to attack the false foundation of autonomous human reasoning that leads to evolution and millions of years, and proclaim that God's revealed Word is authoritative and its history of the world is foundational to Christian morality and the gospel of Jesus Christ.