If one of our canonical sources itself quotes, apparently as “scripture,” a text we do not take as canon, that should make us wary of a too heavy theological dependence on the category of canon.

the author of Luke and Acts does not seem to consider Jesus’s death to be a sacrifice. There is no “atonement” to speak of in Luke–Acts.

That is the only reason the scriptures warn us so much against idolatry. We will end up just hurting ourselves.

“The Son humbles himself, Jesus humbles himself, to be with us in the lowliness of our suffering and need, in order to save us from it, not to engrave that lowliness into the world as its final good.”31

The sense of well-being that many people express in their spiritual experiences of the divine are captured in these: the feeling of gratitude for gifts and the freeness of the gift; the experience of forgiveness and being a recipient of mercy; an inexplicable sense of peacefulness. On those occasions, and would that they were more frequent for more

The difference between “knowledge” and “belief” is simply one of degree of certainty—more or less—but knowledge is never completely and indisputably certain beyond all doubt and interpretation.

the Deity is far beyond every manifestation of being and of life; no reference to light can characterize it; every reason or intelligence falls short of similarity to it.”

Icons are something like sacraments in materiality: they participate in what they represent and communicate the sacredness to the believer.

a viable postmodern Christian faith may appropriate forms of Christianity that existed before the split between “the natural” and “the supernatural.”