{"author":"Thomas C. Oden","author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden","total_quotes":35,"quotes":[{"text":"A delicate balance is required: keep the penitent tautly close to the point of recognizing sin, and then allow the relief of that pressure to flow through forgiveness. Confession increases this tautness, only to clear the path for release.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["confession","forgiveness","repentance","sin"],"id":3963,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"To the extent that we are trapped by the overvaluing, idealizing tendency, we are not free fully to celebrate the limited but real goods of creation. Idolatry by definition is not an accurate assessment of creaturely goods, but an overvaluing of them so as to miss the richness of their actual, limited values. If I worship my tennis trophies, my Mondrian, my family tree, my Kawasaki, or my bank account, then I do not really receive those goods for what they actually are - limited, historical, and finite - goods which are vulnerable to being taken away by time and death. When I pretend that a value is something more than it is, ironically I value it less appropriately than it deserves. Biblical psychology invites us to relate ourselves absolutely to the absolute and relatively to the relative.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["biblical-psychology","idolatry","reality","values"],"id":5117,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"While the memory of guilt is far from pleasant (like 'wormwood and gall'), it has the curative intent of restoring us into an awareness of the constancy of God's love, new every morning. God's mercy is not spent even with our worst misdeeds.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["christianity","forgiveness","god-s-love","god-s-mercy","guilt","sin"],"id":9252,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"The faithful have no dread of using the traditional language of the church. Terms like incarnation and resurrection need to be explained, not avoided.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["christianity","church","doctrine","language","theology"],"id":25881,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"The moment of confession is not merely when one hears another pronounce the words: God forgives you, or 'in God's name I absolve you.' Rather it is that point at which the sinner unfeignedly experiences himself as truly judged and pardoned by God.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["absolution","christianity","confession","god-s-mercy","sin"],"id":45840,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"If God absolutely and pretemporally decrees that particular persons shall be saved and others damned, apart from any cooperation of human freedom, then God cannot in any sense intend that all shall be saved, as 1 Timothy 4:10 declares. The promise of glory is conditional on grace being received by faith active in love.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["arminanism","calvinism","election","god-s-love","jesus","salvation"],"id":52323,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"There are many who occasionally attend church and who are trying experimentally to be Christians, yet are unable to identify well or define accurately the central truths of Christian teaching. The knowledge they have of the Christian tradition may have come chiefly through hymns. Their strong and sincere feelings are not matched with serious biblical or historical reflection on those feelings. Religious feelings are, indeed, crucial to the deeper learning of Christian truth, but they easily become superficial and narcissistic if the mind of Christ is not a mentor to natural religious impulse. The loss of center in Christian education is arguably due to a serious default of pastoral leadership; when the teaching elder does not teach, the effect is felt throughout the entire Christian congregation.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["adult-sunday-school","christian-education","christian-pedagogy","christian-teaching","doctrine","religious-feeling","sermon","theology"],"id":52907,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"Faith itself is an act of human willing enabled and disciplined by grace.","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["arminianism","christianity","faith","free-will","grace"],"id":82225,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"God's holiness is not an unloving holiness, and God's love is not an unholy love. It is only by keeping these two primary moral qualities of the divine being closely related that we may rightly behold the character of God. (p. 98).","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["god","holiness","love"],"id":100888,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"},{"text":"Faith is not a meritorious cause of election, but it is constantly attested as the sole condition of salvation. Faith merely receives the merit of atoning grace, instead of asserting its own merit. God places the life-death option before each person, requiring each to choose. The ekletos are those who by grace freely believe. God does not compel or necessitate their choosing. Even after the initial choice of faith is made, they may grieve and quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19).Faith is the condition under which God primordially wills the reception of salvation by all. “He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe; lest we should say that we first chose Him” (Augustine). Faith receives the electing love of God not as if it had already become efficacious without faith, but aware that God’s prescience foreknows faith like all else.In accord with ancient ecumenical consent, predestination was carefully defined in centrist Protestant orthodoxy as:'The eternal, divine decree, by which God, from His immense mercy, determined to give His Son as Mediator, and through universal preaching , to offer Him for reception to all men who from eternity He foresaw would fall into sin; also through the Word and Sacraments to confer faith upon all who would not resist; to justify all believers, and besides to renew those using the means of grace; to preserve faith in them until the end of life, and in a word, to save those believing to the end' (Melanchthon).","author":"Thomas C. Oden","tags":["christianity","ecumenical-theology","election","faith","god","jesus-christ","predestination","salvation"],"id":105630,"author_id":"Thomas+C.+Oden"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":35,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}