“Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.”

Source: Gilead

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense." by Marilynne Robinson?
Marilynne Robinson photo
Marilynne Robinson 51
American novelist and essayist 1943

Related quotes

Edward Rutledge photo

“Be mild and firm. Apply your best exertions to put us in a proper posture of defense.”

Edward Rutledge (1749–1800) American politician

As quoted in John and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina (1997) by James Haw, p. 269

Simon Blackburn photo

“But if nothing does as well as something about which nothing can be said, it vanishes.”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 173

Friedrich Schiller photo

“In circumstances where the law of force prevails, where security depends on power alone, the weakest party is naturally the most busy to place itself in a posture of defense.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

History of the Thirty Years War - Volume II
The Thirty Years War

Pearl S.  Buck photo

“There is something to be said for losing one’s possessions, after nothing can be done about it.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 218
Context: There is something to be said for losing one’s possessions, after nothing can be done about it. I had loved my Nanking home and the little treasures it had contained, the lovely garden I had made, my life with friends and students. Well, that was over. I had nothing at all now except the old clothes I stood in. I should have felt sad, and I was quite shocked to realize that I did not feel sad at all. On the contrary, I had a lively sense of adventure merely at being alive and free, even of possessions. No one expected anything of me. I had no obligations, no duties, no tasks. I was nothing but a refugee, someone totally different from the busy young woman I had been. I did not even care that the manuscript of my novel was lost. Since everything else was gone, why not that?

Kodo Sawaki photo

“We stop the one who can't cease from seeking things outside, and practice with our bodies with a posture that seeks absolutely nothing. This is zazen.”

Kodo Sawaki (1880–1965) Japanese zen Buddhist monk

"Zenshu," Collected Works, vol. 15 (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku, 1966), p. 336

Yusuf Qaradawi photo

“(God) gives the weak a weapon for self-defense that the strong, despite his military and nuclear arsenals, can do nothing against. There are clerics who condemn this and even say that these are suicide operations that are not allowed in Islam.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi in Favor of Suicide Operations http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/45.htm April 2004.
Martyrdom operations

“"Except a man be born again of the Spirit, he cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore the new birth from above, or of the Spirit, is that alone which gives true knowledge and perception of that which is the kingdom of God. The history may relate truths enough about it; but the kingdom of God, being nothing else but the power and presence of God, dwelling and ruling in our souls, this can only manifest itself, and can manifest itself to nothing in man but to the new birth. For everything else in man is deaf and dumb and blind to the kingdom of God; but when that which died in Adam is made alive again by the quickening Spirit from above, this being the birth which came at first from God, and a partaker of the divine nature, this knows, and enjoys the kingdom of God.
"I am the way, the truth, and the life," says Christ: this record of scripture is true; but what a delusion, for a man to think that he knows and finds this to be true, and that Christ is all this benefit and blessing to him, because he assents, consents, and contends, it may be, for the truth of those words. This is impossible. The new birth is here again the only power of entrance; everything else knocks at the door in vain: I know you not says Christ to everything, but the new birth. "I am the way, the truth and the life"; this tells us neither more nor less, than if Christ had said, I am the kingdom of God, into which nothing can enter, but that which is born of the Spirit. ”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

¶ 86 - 89.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

James K. Morrow photo
Tim O'Brien photo

“To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.”

The Things They Carried (1990), How to Tell a True War Story

Related topics