Jay Parini Quotes

Mysticism, poor mysticism! When it is underestimated and oversimplified, it comes down from its original sphere and stands beside religion.

When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.

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

If you replace the word God in the Bible with the word Truth, it reads exactly right.

Mark this, you that despise and oppose the Message of the Lord God that he sends by Women; What had become of the Redemption of the whole Body of Mankind, if they had not cause to believe the Message that the Lord Jesus sent by these Women

An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.

The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.

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

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.

God is best known in not knowing him.

The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

There's something uniquely interesting about Buddhism and mathematics, particularly about quantum physics, and where they meet. That has fascinated us for a long time.

Theology is unnecessary.

By virtue of believing in a Supreme Being one embraces certain mysteries.

Christianity has always embraced both reason and faith.

The proof that God has revealed himself to man by special and express communications, and that Christianity constitutes that revelation, is no part of these inquiries.

What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

The living Church of the redeemed is his book. He founded a religion of the living spirit, not of a written code, like the Mosaic law. Yet his words and deeds are recorded by as honest and reliable witnesses as ever put pen to paper.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

What's different about the Gospel of Thomas is that, instead of focusing entirely on who Jesus is and the wonderful works of Jesus, it focuses on how you and I can find the kingdom of God, or life in the presence of God.

The object of religion is the imagination, that deep and inexhaustible font of our understanding and symbolizing our deepest possibilities.

Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.