Sublime

Luther was an expert in the law of God, and every day he was in terror as he looked in the mirror of the law and examined his life against God’s righteousness. We are not in terror, because we have blocked out the view of God’s righteousness. We judge ourselves on a curve, measuring ourselves against others. We never judge ourselves according to th

Christian theology must be theology of the cross, if it is to be identified as Christian theology through Christ. But the theology of the cross is a critical and liberating theory of God and man. Christian life is a form of practice which consists in following the crucified Christ, and it changes both man himself and the circumstances in which he l

men to endure the plurality of different patterns of life and to use their differences for productive and fertile developments.

the cross refutes everything, and excludes the syncretistic elements in Christianity.

the cross does not make the world equal by bringing down the night in which everything looks alike, but by enabling people to criticize and stand back from the partial historical realities and movements which they have idolized and made absolute.

His creative power is not exhausted by this earthly life, nor is his majestic love locked within the limited walls of time and space. Would not this be a strangely irrational universe if God did not ultimately join virtue and fulfillment, and an absurdly meaningless universe if death were a blind alley leading the human race into a state of nothing

for Paul ‘the doctrines of worship and Christian “ethics” necessarily converge’, this does not merely mean that the worship of God becomes ethical, but also the reverse, that ethics becomes the festival of life. A wedding feast is Jesus’ symbol for the imminence of the kingdom of God, and the ‘liberty of the children of God’ is Paul’s symbol for di

we may waver in our attachment to him, frail in faith and love for him, Christ nonetheless remains our unshakeable hope.