Construal Quotes & Sayings

Success in the arts is not measured in money or fame. It is about reaching that inner sanctum where the purest form of artistry takes place. — Craig A. Hart

What justifies specifically churchly exegesis of Scripture? Can church doctrine guide our reading? Why should it? Why should we interpret the story of Abraham and Isaac by the passion of Jesus? The answer is bluntly simple: What justifies churchly reading of Scripture is that there is no other way to read it, since "it" dissolves under other regimes. Thus a hermeneutical exhortation from this first perspective. Be entirely blatant and unabashed in reading Scripture for the church's purposes and within the context of Christian faith and practice. Indeed, guide your reading by church doctrine. For if, say, the doctrine of Trinity and Matthew's construal of the passion do not fit each other, then the church lost its diachronic self in the early fourth century at the latest, and the whole enterprise of Bible reading is moot. The question, after all, is not whether churchly reading of Scripture is justified; the question is, what could possibly justify any other? — Ellen F. Davis

Believe in me and die forever. — Chuck Palahniuk

How do we know, then, when a code's been cracked?when we are right?when do we know if we have even received a message? Why, naturally, when, upon one set of substitutions, sense emerges like the outline under a rubbing; when a single tentative construal leads to several; when all the sullen letters of the code cry TEAM! after YEA! has been, by several hands, uncovered. — William H Gass

Well, he replied, finally letting my hand go so that he could gesticulate with his; you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them, shiver from their fevers, drink strange brew fermented in their virgins' mouths, and all the rest; then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one that they kind of know exists, but only as an abstract concept, like adultery for children; and, waving with big, gap-toothed smiles, they send you back to your study - where, khakis swapped for cotton shirt and tie, saliva-liquor for the Twinings, tisane or iced Scotch your housekeeper purveys you on a tray, you write the book: that's what I mean, he said. Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name. — Tom McCarthy

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own? — P.L. Travers

Were we just two more rootless jungle-dwelling erotomaniacs creamining in their pre-faded jeans over Historical New England, dreaming the old agrarian dream in their rent-a-car convertible — Philip Roth

empathy is not a reflex that makes us sympathetic to everyone we lay eyes upon. It can be switched on and off, or thrown into reverse, by our construal of the relationship we have with a person. Its head is turned by cuteness, good looks, kinship, friendship, similarity, and communal solidarity. — Steven Pinker

Yet both [Wright & Piper] miss the point that covenant theology highlights. None of the Reformers taught that God's essential righteousness is imputed or transferred to believers. Rather, they taught that the meritorious active and passive obedience of Christ as the faithful Servant of the Lord has be imputed to believers. So if the covenantal context is too faith in Piper's construal, missing form Wright's account is the third party in the courtroom--namely, the Last Adam, who as covenant head and mediator fulfills the terms of the law-covenant and bears its sanction on behalf of those whom he represents. Wright's objections can be properly addressed not by bracketing covenant theology but only by offering a different covenant theology. P.26-27 — Michael S. Horton