Justo L. Gonzalez Quotes

What good is it for you to be able to discuss the Trinity with great profundity, if you lack humility, and thereby offend the Trinity? Verily, high sounding words do not make one holy and just. But a life of virtue does make one acceptable to God. Were you to memorize the entire Bible and all the sayings of the philosophers, what good would this be for you without the love of God and without grace? Vanity of vanities. All is vanity, except loving God and serving only God.49

As a result, much of what Luke has to say on the matter of gender lies hidden under layers of interpretation that we have received from earlier generations. It is therefore urgent, for the good of the church, that we continue unearthing what has been hidden. In this task, the many women who today are devoted to the careful study of the biblical text are making an important contribution.

History is not the pure past; history is a past interpreted from the present of the historian.

If this were simply a story about the past, it would be appropriate to write, at the conclusion of Acts 28 as at the conclusion of a film, "The End." But since the story is unfinished, it is more appropriate to conclude it with, "RSVP," like an invitation that awaits a response. This is what Luke demands from us: not satisfied curiosity about the past, but a response here and now. RSVP!

In his Word we can never go astray. We can never be deluded or confounded or destroyed in his Word. If you think there can be no assurance or certainty for the soul, listen to the certainty of the Word of God. The soul can be instructed and enlightened ... so that it perceives that its whole salvation and righteousness, or justification, is enclosed in Jesus Christ."8

All creation has come to existence because of God and continues existing because of God. Were God's sustaining power suddenly removed from creation, it would immediately vanish into nothingness. This includes the soul, which - precisely because it is a creature and not the Creator - cannot subsist without God's sustaining power. It is not that we live because we have a soul, but rather that we have a soul and we live thanks to God's sustaining grace.

According to Augustine, the power of sin is such that it takes hold of our will, and as long as we are under its sway we cannot move our will to be rid of it. The most we can accomplish is to struggle between willing and not willing, which does little more than show the powerlessness of our will against itself. The sinner can will nothing but sin. Within that condition, there certainly are good and bad choices; but even the best choices still fall within the category of sin.

The notion that we read the New Testament exactly as the early Christians did, without any weight of tradition coloring our interpretation, is an illusion. It is also a dangerous illusion, for it tends to absolutize our interpretation, confusing it with the Word of God.

A person wearing tinted glasses can avoid the conclusion that the entire world is tinted only by being conscious of the glasses themselves.