All the important things in life lie beyond reason... and that's just the way things are.

For Luther, it (faith) is an undeviating, trusting outlook appointment life, a constant stance of the trustworthiness of the promises of God.

Deep down within all of us is a longing to work out what life is all about and what we're meant to be doing.

Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.

The idea that Christianity is basically a religion of moral improvement... has its roots in the liberal Protestantism of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century... It is this stereotype which continues to have influence today... But then came the First World War... What had gone wrong was that the idea of sin had been abandoned by liberal Christianity as some kind of unnecessary hangover from an earlier and less enlightened period in Christian history.

The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation.

Surely the better way is to pursue a generous orthodoxy, seeing disagreements in the context of the greater agreements which bind us together.