“It is in this wrestling that Jacob 'prevails with God', and realises that he has seen God face to face. He has overcome not God but his own rivalry. After this mysterious struggle he was able to recognise his wrongdoing and look his brother Esau in the face. Thus he was able to learn to live in peace with his brother—and become Israel, a community of brethren.”

—  James Alison

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 76.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is in this wrestling that Jacob 'prevails with God', and realises that he has seen God face to face. He has overcome…" by James Alison?
James Alison photo
James Alison 28
Christian theologian, priest 1959

Related quotes

“He who knows what it is to enjoy God will dread His loss; he who has seen His face will fear to see His back.”

Richard Alleine (1611–1681) English clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 277.

Isaac Newton photo

“No man hath seen God at any time, if we love one another God dwelleth in us. — If a man say I love God & hateth his brother he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Of Humanity -->
A short Schem of the true Religion

Izaak Walton photo

“But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own; marked him with a blessing, a blessing of obedience to the motions of his blessed Spirit.”

Izaak Walton (1593–1683) English author and biographer

Life of Donne (1640).

Don DeLillo photo

“When a writer doesn't show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God's famous reluctance to appear.”

Don DeLillo Mao II

Part 1, Ch. 3
Mao II (1991)

Martin Buber photo

“God … desires His creature to be able to oppose Him. He has given that creature freedom. … When man turns away from evil with that whole measure of power with which he is able to rebel against God, then he has truly turned to God.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Source: For The Sake of Heaven (1945), p. 44

Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd photo

“To trust God, as seen in the face of His Son, and to believe that He loves us, that is faith, that is what we must do to be saved. And to love God, as seen in the face of His Son, and to seek to testify our love by our whole life, — that is Christian duty; that is all we have to do.”

Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd (1825–1899) British writer and minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 233.

John of St. Samson photo

“This is what the Son of God desires of you: that he might be able to embellish, perfect and gain you lustre with the fullness of his gifts. Since he is so taken by your Beauty, which flows and gushes from him to you, as I have said, what he desires of you is that he might have the supreme pleasure of an eternity enjoying you and his gifts. Thus, everyone who proceeds to live in a way that is contrary to his own self, lives in God; his whole being is God-orientated; he sees nothing but God and himself.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, A Letter to a Religious

John Steinbeck photo

“But 'Thou mayest!'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Bruno Schulz photo

“He occasionally placed two chairs back-to-back, and, supporting himself with his hands on the backrests, swung his legs back and forth, his radiant eyes searching our faces for looks of admiration and encouragement. It seemed he had become entirely reconciled with God.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“A Visitation” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/visitation1.htm
His father

Leo Tolstoy photo

“I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face; but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God.”

Leo Tolstoy book What Men Live By

What Men Live By (1881)
Context: I thought: "I am perishing of cold and hunger, and here is a man thinking only of how to clothe himself and his wife, and how to get bread for themselves. He cannot help me. When the man saw me he frowned and became still more terrible, and passed me by on the other side. I despaired, but suddenly I heard him coming back. I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face; but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God.

Related topics