Rickie Lee Jones Quotes

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

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

We don't see the Bible as it is itself. We see it in relation to a lot of people who surround it. And because we don't care for some of them, we think we shouldn't care for it.

The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking.

Those who read the Scriptures and judge for themselves, not resting satisfied with the perverted application of the text, do not find the distinction that theology and ecclesiastical authorities have made in the condition of the sexes.

Learning to read the Bible in the light of the times in which it was written is critical.

Religions work for their own aggrandizement - strengthen the church and so on - and they use reinforcers of one kind or another to get obedience and so on from their communicants.

The earliest stories in Genesis were not written to tell primeval history. They were written to tell readers about themselves and about God.

There have been no sects in the Christian world, however absurd, which have not endeavoured to support their opinions by arguments drawn from Scripture.

If a church offers no truth that is not available in the general culture - in, for instance, the editorials of the New York Times or, for that matter, of National Review - there is not much reason to pay it attention.

I am not saying we are categorizing Ellen White in the biblical context of a false prophet.

The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. It's not an argument that it's reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.

Theology in general seems to me a substitution of human ingenuity for divine wisdom.

Obviously, you're trying to peel through 20 centuries of theology, speculations, church doctrine and storytelling. I'm trying to get back to the absolute basic story of who was Jesus, what did he say, what was he teaching, and what did he do.

No man is to be credited for his mere authority's sake, unless he can show Scripture for the maintenance of his opinion.

The Scriptures are the truth from God.

The Bible is not a history book.

WHEREAS, We live in an age in which the most insidious attacks are made on revealed religion through the natural sciences, and as it behooves the Church at all times to have men capable of defending the faith once delivered to the saints; RESOLVED, That this presbytery recommend the endowment of a professorship of Natural Science as connected with revealed religion in one or more of our theological seminaries

The Lord gave all Christians the authority to judge all doctrines, to judge freely what is right and what is wrong.

The habit of regarding the Bible as historically accurate dates only to the Protestant Reformation: That outlook has since passed to the Muslim world.

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It's almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren't that interested in whether Jesus was real.

The Bible was written by fallible human beings.

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