Quotes of Note

Each Monday, we share quotes we found encouraging, convicting, thought-provoking, or all of the above.

Kim:

I'm taking Apologetics this semester, and we are expected to read John Frame's Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief. I was really excited when I saw it on the syllabus. I have read quite a bit of John Frame's writing, and I have always found his arguments compelling. Frame argues from what is known as a presuppositional view. That means the idea of a purely neutral view is rejected. Classical apologetics works to prove God's existence by rational arguments. R.C. Sproul was a classical apologist.

In the opening chapter, Frame articulates his view that neutrality is not possible. Because we hold to the truth that Jesus is Lord, it will determine how we argue:

To tell the unbeliever that we can reason with him on a neutral basis, however that claim might help to attract his attention, it is a lie. Indeed, it is a lie of the most serious kind, for it falsifies the very heart of the gospel -- that Jesus Christ is Lord. There is no neutrality. Our witness is either God's wisdom or the world's foolishness. There is nothing in between. Even if neutrality were possible, that route would be forbidden to us. . . .  When I oppose neutrality, what I oppose is appealing to something other than God's revelation as the ultimate source of truth.

Persis:

This quote is from Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia Through a Mother's Eyes by Simonetta Carr. The book will be released in February, and Lord willing, I will write a review here.

Almost mindlessly, the fatigued soldiers follow their king, step after step, their eyes still low. The fight is over, but walking back is still an arduous task. And yet it’s a task they can take on, step after step, as they remember that everything— the battle, the victory, the journey back and the prospects ahead—is not about them. Everything is for God’s glory. There is a larger story, much larger than any human plan and conjecture, as gripping and absorbing as these may be.

So I do the same. As impossible as letting go seems at this moment, I walk on, doing what I know God wants me to do right now—what he has always wanted me to do: trust him, worship him, and help others in the limited sphere of my ordinary life. And it’s there, in the ordinary steps of daily living, that I feel sustained. Doing dishes, cleaning floors, giving rides, teaching and translating, singing and worshiping with other believers on Sundays. This is all God is asking right now, and, by his grace, this I can do.

Rebecca:

Here’s an interesting tidbit from Can We Trust the Gospels by Peter J. Williams:

According to the Gospels, Jesus spent much of his time by the Sea of Galilee. Sea is, of course, a rather grand word for a body of water just twenty-one kilometers (thirteen miles) in length, but from the perspective of any local Galilean who had not traveled far, this was the sea and did not need further description.

Williams goes on to tell us that Matthew used the word sea twelve time to refer to the Sea of Galilee. Mark used sea for the Sea of Galilee seventeen times, twice calling it specifically the Sea of Galilee, but

[o]therwise, it is simply “the sea.” This is what we would expect if Mark’s Gospel were written on the basis of information supplied to Mark by the fisherman Peter, for whom this would have been the sea par excellence.

But Luke?

Luke is rather different. It uses the word sea only three times and never in reference to a particular body of water. If, as is traditionally thought, Luke came from Antioch on the Orontes, not far from the Mediterranean, he certainly would not have thought of the tiny Sea of Galilee as the sea. He just calls it “the lake.”