Jon Meacham Quotes

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.

It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.

I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective.

I collect books and I have some really, really old schoolbooks, and God is mentioned on every single page.

I spend my life studying that book, and every book I've written has in some sense been a book about the Bible, and that's what I mean by reclaiming its value and its essence for a world that no longer treats it literally and no longer reads it traditionally.

Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live.

The faith of the church must be tried by God's word, and not God's word by the church; neither yet my faith.

There are two views of interpreting the Bible in America: that every word is literally the truth without qualification, and then the other view is, it's called plenary inspiration, which holds that all religious truth taught in the Bible is true from God, but each word is not necessarily interpreted literally.

Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

Religion cannot and should not be understood by their texts alone. The lived history of a community of believers defines a religion; a great deal depends on how the custodians of the faith chose to interpret, defend and exploit or abuse its sacred texts.

The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes...The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it…

Charles Sumner didn’t believe in the Bible because he didn’t write it.

Systematic theology - be careful how you tie down the Word to fit your set and final creeds, systems, dogmas, and organized theistic philosophies! The Word of God is not bound! It's free to say what it will to the individual, and no one can outline it into dispensations which cannot be broken.

It (the Bible) has never bowed its head before the discoveries of science.

I actually do propose open-mindedness, but open-mindedness to the Word of God.

I do not have deep theological understanding or opinion, but I do not read the Bible as the literal word of God.

Theological writing is usually done in essays or books, but I hope to show that if we concentrate on sentences, we may well learn something we might otherwise miss.

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

The accepted versions of the Bible are all substantially correct.

Many of us view the bible and other religious teachings as mythology.

There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity because Christianity proceeds from a proclamation.

For we can affirm with a good conscience that we have, after reading the Holy Scripture, applied ourselves and yet daily apply ourselves to the extent that the grace of the Lord permits to inquiry into and investigation of the consensus of the true and purer antiquity.

After a long, impartial enquiry of the truth, and after much and earnest calling upon God, to give unto me the spirit and revelation in the knowledge of Him, I find myself obliged, both by the principles of reason and Scripture, to embrace the opinion I now hold forth.

Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture.

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.