ABORTION
There is no denying that what will emerge from the womb of the mother is a human being, not an elephant or a plant for that matter. Thus, only arrogance can deny someone, even an unborn child, his or her humanity.
– Klaus Detlev Schulz, Theological Anthropology and Sin
ANTHROPOLOGY
Modern philosophy has lost its sane anthropology because it has lost its cosmology. Man does not know himself because he does not know his place in the cosmos; he confuses himself with angel or with animal.
– Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans
ATHEISM
The vast majority of humanity are practical atheists, going about their tasks as though there were “no death, and for that matter, no God” [Luther].
– Dennis Ngien, Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms
CHRISTOLOGY
We confess no other God than the God we know as Mary’s Son.
– David P. Scaer, “No Other God than Mary’s Son,” 1982 sermon for the Annunciation in In Christ: The Collected Works of David P. Scaer, Volume I: Sermons
CHURCH
The existence of the church is the most profound riddle of history. No one can explain it. No one can say how the church finally continues to exist. Statesmen have been convinced, as the elector of Saxony once expressed it over against Luther with the most friendly intentions, that the protection of the state is what finally makes the existence of the church possible. But the church first experienced its great flowering in the centuries in which it was not acknowledged. And the great canon law of the first centuries, on which entire churches still depend today, came to exist in a church which as far as public law was concerned did not even exist. To this day how the church outlived the demise of the ancient world in the centuries of the great migrations is an inexplicable mystery of history. No one could have known that the sixteenth century would not result in the complete dissolution of the church. Nor could anyone have known that the apparent self-destruction of the church in that struggle, in which Luther expected and longed for the Last Day, was not the end of the church, but its Reformation.
– Hermann Sasse, The Lonely Way (St. Louis: Concordia, 2001), 1:462
DEVIL
The disciples should not think that they could simply flee from the world and stay safely in the small group on the narrow path. False prophets will come among them, and the confusion will make their isolation even greater. Someone stands beside me, externally a member of the community. A prophet or preacher stands there, a Christian by appearances, words, and deeds. But internally dark motives are driving him to us. Internally he is a rampaging wolf; his words are lies and his deeds deceit. He knows how to guard his secret well, but under cover he works his evil deeds. He is among us, not because faith in Jesus Christ brought him to us, but because the devil drives him into the faith-community. Perhaps he is seeking power and influence, money, fame by his own thoughts and prophecies. He seeks the world, but not the Lord Christ. He hides his dark intent in the cloak of Christian piety and knows that Christians are easy to fool. Because of his cloak of innocence, he is counting on not being unmasked. He knows well that Christians are prohibited from judging, and he will remind them of that at just the right moment! No one can see into another’s heart. So he can deceive many a person to stray from the right way. Perhaps he does not even know all this, perhaps the devil who is driving him has concealed from him the truth about himself.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
EUGENICS
[The aim of eugenics is] the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.
– Margaret Sanger (Founder of Planned Parenthood) quoted in the New York Times
In the sight of God there is no life that is not worth living; for life itself is valued by God.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
FAITH
[The account of the nobleman in John 4:46-54] presents us with a beautiful example of the characteristics and nature of faith, namely, that it is to increase and become perfect. It portrays faith as something which does not lie quiet and idle, but is something living, restless, which either regresses or progresses, which lives and moves. If this does not happen, then it is not faith, but a dead idea in the heart about God, for true, living faith, which the Holy Spirit pours into the heart, simply cannot be idle. I say this so that no one will be secure, thinking that once he has laid hold of faith he will persist in it. What is important is not the beginning, but continuing, more and more as time goes on, and increasing and learning to know God better.
– Luther (LW 79:233)
[On 1 Peter 2:11] Even if some one has been justified by faith, he will certainly not be free of evil desires. That is why the spirit has its work cut out in quenching and quelling the desires of the flesh. The spirit has to struggle with this area unceasingly and to take care that the spirit does not offend the faith. That is also why people are deceiving themselves when they say there is no danger if they obey the desires of the flesh. A righteous faith wages war on the body and keeps it in check so that it does not do what desire demands.
– Luther (Luther Brevier, p102)
A man therefore is made a Christian, not by working, but by hearing: wherefore he that will exercise himself to righteousness, must first exercise himself in hearing the Gospel. Now when he hath heard and received the Gospel, let him give thanks to God with a joyful and a glad heart, and afterwards let him exercise himself in those good works which are commanded in the law, so that the law and works may follow the hearing of faith.
– Luther (Commentary on Galatians, 3:2)
FASTING
Christians who imitate [Christ] soon discover that little practices of renunciation, of what I won’t do, even through it’s legitimate, are a necessary habit I have to form in order to practice freedom.... [There are] things which, in the modern world, we can give up — not because we want a more beautiful life, but because we want to become aware of how much we are attached to the world as it is and how much we can get along without it.
– Ivan Illich
INVESTING
Never think you know more than the market. Nobody does.
– John Bogle (The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, p160)
JUSTIFICATION
Wherever the article of justification is absent, then the Church is absent…. If we lose this article, we have nothing other than infernal darkness.
– Luther (Luther Brevier, p209)
LEADERSHIP
The art of church leadership is disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.
– Lucas Woodford
LIBERALISM
What the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category.
– J. Gresham Machen (Liberalism and Christianity)
LITURGY
Perversion of the cultus results in the perversion of the moral behavior.
– Peter Brunner (Worship in the Name of Jesus)
LUTHERANISM
I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. … But if you are convinced that Luther’s teaching is in accord with the gospel … then you should not discard Luther so completely, lest with him you discard also his teaching, which you nevertheless recognize as Christ’s teaching. You should rather say: Whether Luther is a rascal or a saint I do not care; his teaching is not his, but Christ’s.
– Martin Luther
MINISTRY
All good bishops are shepherds.
– St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 47.3
It can be demonstrated with astonishing ease that the one thing the church cannot abide is a genuinely religious man, and that it takes a generous endowment of other qualities to offset this handicap if a man is to become a successful clergyman.
– Charles Merrill Smith, (How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious, p11)
SACRAMENTS
A sacrament … is not a “miracle” by which God breaks, so to speak, the “laws of nature,” but the manifestation of the ultimate Truth about the world and life, man and nature, the Truth which is Christ.
– Alexander Schmemann, O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?
TRUTH
The lie is the death of man, his temporal and his eternal death. The lie kills nations. The most powerful nations of the world have been laid waste because of their lies. History knows of no more unsettling sight than the judgment rendered upon the people of an advanced culture who have rejected the truth and are swallowed up in a sea of lies. Where this happens, as in the case of declining pagan antiquity, religion and law, poetry and philosophy, life in marriage and family, in the state and society – in short, one sphere of life after another falls sacrifice to the power and curse of the lie. Where man can no longer bear the truth, he cannot live without the lie. Where man denies that he and others are dying, the terrible dissolution [of his culture] is held up as a glorious ascent, and decline is viewed as an advance, the likes of which has never been experienced.
– Hermann Sasse, Union and Confession
The purpose of Christianity is not to help people by reconciling them with death, but to reveal the Truth about life and death in order that people may be saved by this Truth
– Alexander Schmemann, O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?
VANITY
The entrance of faith into the heart has the effect of making the believer humble in the presence of God and men. Lest we despair when listening in occasionally on our own heart, we must not forget that a poison-root of vanity remains in our heart; but as soon as it begins to stir up vain thoughts in us, we must fight it. A person who does not fight his vanity has no faith and is not a Christian.
– C.F.W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel
WISDOM
True wisdom is tried by fire and strife.
– Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in His Saints