Timothy George Quotes & Sayings

History is never the simple recounting of the past as it really was. It is inevitably an interpretation of the past, a retrospective vision of the past, which is limited both by the sources themselves and by the historian who selects and interprets them. — Timothy George

justification by faith alone frees me to love my neighbor disinterestedly, for his or her own sake, as my sister or brother, not as the calculated means to my own desired ends. — Timothy George

Let God be good," cried Erasmus the moralist. "Let God be God," replied Luther the theologian. Although — Timothy George

Luther urged Christians to accept civic responsibility (so long as it did not violate the claims of Christ) for the sake of the neighbor. This mandate extended even to those manifestly violent offices of the sword: "If you see that there is a lack of hangmen, constables, judges, lords, princes, and you find that you are qualified, you should offer your services and seek the position. — Timothy George

As the process of reform unfolded, Zwingli came increasingly to see himself as a prophet to his people. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, the "shepherd" or "watchman" (Zwingli's preferred words for pastor) needed to guard zealously the flock against attacks from the evil one and be ready to die fighting for the cause of Christ. — Timothy George

Friedrich Nietzsche: "If Luther had been burned like Hus, the dawn of the Enlightenment might perhaps have come a little earlier and more brilliantly than we can now imagine. — Timothy George

Peter of Blois, a medieval theologian who died nearly three hundred years before Luther was born, expressed a sense of gratitude for the Christian writers of antiquity which should also characterize our attitude toward the reformers of the sixteenth century: "We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants; thanks to them, we see farther than they. Busying ourselves with the treatises written by the ancients, we take their choice thoughts, buried by age and human neglect, and we raise them, as it were, from death to renewed life. — Timothy George

He referred to Pope Paul III as "His Hellishness." Were not the pope and his associates at least members of the church? Yes, as much as spit, snot, pus, feces, urine, stench, scab, smallpox, ulcers, and syphilis are members of the body. Luther was never one to mince words. — Timothy George

Coram Deo means that while we are always at God's disposal, God is never at ours. "To believe in such a God," Luther said, "is to go down on your knees."23 — Timothy George