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Praise, Explanation & Criticism and Story, Message, Doctrine
The Ragamuffin Gospel (Questar Publishers, 1993), 27.
Often hobbling through our church doors on Sunday morning comes grace
on crutches — sinners still unable to throw away their false
supports and stand upright in the freedom of the children of God. Yet,
their mere presence in the church on Sunday morning is a flickering
candle representing a desire to maintain contact with God. To douse the
flame is to plunge them into a world of spiritual darkness.
John Owen, "The Relation of Christianity to Free-Thought" in Evenings with the Skeptics (Longmans, Green, and co: 1881), pp.61-2.
Arundel. There
must always be, so long as creeds are words and men are reasoning
beings, a variety of interpretation and opinion as to the essentials or
non-essentials of any religious faith. The frequently quoted maxim
attributed to Augustine is epigrammatic and pretty: In necesaariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus charitas, but it leaves the main difficulty unsolved. What are necessaria, and why? and what is the boundary line between dubia and necessaria? Certainly the necessaria which can be gathered from the direct utterances of Jesus Christ may be packed in a very small dogmatic parcel.
