Leslie Weatherhead: Trending quotes (page 4)

“True, there are some great passages in Revelation, but the book on the whole is like boarding-school plum pudding, where the plums are scarce and far apart.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.192

Books , School

“In the cases of nearly all of us, what our fathers were, we are, and we make up our reasons afterwards.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.29

“To acclaim that the Bible contains the Word of God is not to say that all its words are the words of God.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.96 (Unnamed * “scholarly writer”: London Times. December 4, 1954)

God

“The piety that sees a sign of divine favor in escape from a sudden danger which destroys other lives, is a spurious and egotistic travesty of the faith that knows that ‘God spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all.’ The true Christian will ask for no immunity from the common lot, for no freedom from the hardships of experience, for no miraculous deliverance from impending calamity, but he will ask for the power to overcome the world in a spirit that is courageous as well as meek, militant against all forms of evil while profoundly thankful for what seems good in his life.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.207, (Dr. E. Griffith Jones: Providence, Divine and Human. 1925. Hodder and Stoughton. p107

Life , God , World , Faith

“When I really believe a thing, I mean that its truth possesses me... Truth is self-authenticating, and when it possesses me, nothing can shake it from its enthronement until some greater truth displaces it or gives it less prominence.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.31 ,[ellipsis added]

Truth

“We still make of prime importance matters about which Jesus said nothing. How can a matter be fundamental in a religion when the founder of the religion never mentioned it?”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.31

Religion

“I suspect that, living on the moral and spiritual levels on which Christ lived, he must have had temptations so subtle that I should not have had enough spiritual sensitiveness to see them as temptations at all.”

Leslie Weatherhead

p100
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Christ

“I would like to be able with authority to present the case for believing in God, but I would far rather be an authoritative argument for believing in God. The saints are the best argument for Christianity. They have the highest authority in the world for they coerce us and yet our coercion is a willing one. They drive us along the way which in our best moments we want to go. When we read their lives, and even more when we touch their lives with our own in day-to-day living, we meet Christianity’s unanswerable argument. We know, with an authority nothing can resist or overcome, that Christianity changes lives and that if Jesus Christ were given a chance he would change the world.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.63

God , World , Way , Change

“There is no authority for God’s existence except the inward conviction that is born of mystical experience.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.72

God

“Faith in God includes faith in those who help God.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.269

God , Faith , Help

“Traditionalists may be shocked by the opinions expressed here; others will come to welcome them. Regardless of your own views, The Christian Agnostic demands to be read and pondered.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Description from back cover
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Reading

“We must seek another interpretation of the cross, and at the same time we must realize that the generations ahead will discard our interpretations.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.119

Time

“How can a doctrine be essential in a religion if the founder of the religion never mentions it, or teaches his apostles to pass it on?”

Leslie Weatherhead

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The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Religion

“The nature of a Divine Being is seen more clearly in deeds which are loving than in deeds which are marvelous. He does not need miracle to make us love him or to prove that he is more than man. The unanswerable argument for his religion is that wherever he is sincerely followed men’s lives are changed.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.112

Love , Men , Religion , Nature

“The idea that God’s Providence means that he looks after those who serve him by a special use of his power in terms of favoritism is an immoral idea and insulting to both man and God. No true Christian wants to opt out of the trials that beset others, and no worthy idea of God could include his establishment of a kind of insurance scheme by which, if God be worshiped, cancer, for example, could be avoided.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.208-209

God , Idea

“Since I have talked with many self-styled * atheists, I have come to believe that the true species does not exist, and that atheism, so-called, is either an emotional deviation in the same category as neurotic illness and with a similar causation, or else the denial of the existence of a mythical figure who certainly does not exist.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Preface, p. 15, sentence 4.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

“The word virgin, both in Hebrew (almah) and Greek (parthenos), simply means a mature young woman, not a “virgo intacta,” and more may have been deduced from the word than is warranted by its use.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.100-101

“We use the word divine because the word human is not big enough. He is so much more like God than any other. But the word “divine” is really only an expression of Christian agnosticism. I am quite ready to say that I believe in the divinity of Christ, but I do not know what it means, nor can I find anyone who can explain what it means, least of all some of the theologians from Paul onwards. I sincerely believe that he is the Savior of the World, and if I am immediately challenged about what he saves men from, my answer is that he saves men from the utter despair which would fall upon a thoughtful man, who, conscious of high aims and immense possibilities within himself, was condemned to try to achieve them without any aid save his own, and purely human help of his fellows.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.94

Men , God , World , Help

“Death, we are told, should be left to God. We do not leave birth to God. We space births. We prevent births. We arrange births. Man should learn to become the lord of death as well as the master of birth.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.269

Death , God , Birth , Learning

“Hell may last as long as sinful humanity lasts, but that does not mean that any individual will remain in it all that time. The time of purging can only continue until purification is reached. And a God driven to employ an endless Hell would be a God turned fiend himself, defeated in his original purpose.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.282

God , Hell , Time