Jaroslav Pelikan famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen-nothing else matters.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Matter #Christianity #Christ
Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of western culture for almost twenty centuries... It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse and in his name that millions pray.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Jesus #Believe #Thinking
Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Thought Provoking #Tradition #Provoking
An agnostic position is one that leaves open the question whether there exists a god or gods, professing to find such a question unanswered or unanswerable. For the atheist, the question has been answered, and in the negative.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Atheist #Negative #Agnostic
Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Past #Done #Firsts
Unlike most readers in Antiquity who read their books aloud, we have developed the convention of reading silently. This lets us read more widely but often less well, especially when what we are reading-such as the plays of Shakespeare and Holy Scripture-is a body of oral material that has been, almost but not quite accidentally, captured in a book like a fly in amber.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Book #Reading #Play
To invoke a Kierkegaardesque figure of speech, the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist's instruments nearly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished--until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. Then all of a sudden my reaction changes from "How shiny and beautiful they all are!" to "Get that damned thing out of my mouth!
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Beautiful #Bible #Jobs
The church is always more than a school. But the church cannot be less than a school.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#School #Church
The only alternative to tradition is bad tradition
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Alternatives #Tradition
Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan

#Peace #People #Add

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