The "Schedule of Doctrines" of the most liberal Christian Church insists upon human depravity, and the "absolute need of the Holy Spirit's agency in man's regeneration and sanctification."
But what have we here? The "original calamity " was either caused by God or arose without leave of God, in either case degrading God to man. It is the old dilemma whose horns are the irreconcilable attributes of goodness and omniscience in the supposed Creator of sin and suffering. If the one quality be predicable, the other cannot be predicable of the same subject. Far better and wiser is the essayist's poetical explanation now apparently despised because it was the fashionable doctrine of the sage bard's day:—Sir Richard Francis Burton
» Sir Richard Francis Burton - all quotes »
You get somebody to explain the Trinity to you, they'll say "Well God, he's God, and Jesus is God as well, and the Holy Spirit is...[mumbles indistinctly]". "What?" "He's the fecund spirit of the Lord who impregnates Mary, then gets a bit up himself and is reduced to light clerical duties?" Let's examine that in joke form: three male divine natures go into a cosmic essence, giving and receiving love, but not in a gay bishop way, to which the whole of Islam goes "Wha?"; Hinduism: "Nah!"; or Buddhism: "Ssh!".
Bill Bailey
She said,"What are you supposed to do?"
I said, "I'm supposed to stop Hitler's army landing."
She said, "What! – you?"
I said, "No – there's Charlie Evans, Dick Roberts...I said, "There's seven or eight of us, altogether." I said, "We're in a group." I said, "We're on guard in a little hut behind the Dog and Pullet."
She said, "What's the good of being in a little hut behind the Dog and Pullet?" She said, "I suppose that was your idea!"
I said, "Aye, and that Charlie Evans wants to claim it as his!"Robb Wilton
I began my previous Beliefnet column with the line, "Throughout history, religion has been the single greatest source of human-caused wars, suffering, and misery. In the name of God, more suffering has been inflicted than by any other manmade cause." I was, of course, using the word "religion" in its sociological meaning, as any belief invested with "ultimate concern," in which case not only Islam, Christianity, and Shintoism are religions, but Marxism, Nazism, and Eco-terrorism are all versions of religions or religiously held beliefs. Seen as such, the opening sentence is obviously true.
Ken Wilber
"Now," said Giacomo Paradisi, "here you are, take the knife, it is yours."
"I don't want it," said Will. "I don't want anything to do with it."
"You haven't got the choice," said the old man. "You are the bearer now."
"I thought you said you was," said Lyra.
"My time is over," he said. "The knife knows when to leave one hand and settle in another, and I know how to tell..."Philip Pullman
"When an alluring woman comes in at the door," warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, "discretion may be found up the chimney". It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: "The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly."
Ernest Bramah
Burton, Sir Richard Francis
Buruma, Ian
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