Quotes by Josef Bordat
Josef Bordat (b. 1972) — Philosoph, Publizist und Buchautor · römisch-katholisch · Deutschland
Josef Bordat ist ein 1972 geborener deutscher Philosoph und Publizist, der in Berlin als freier Autor tätig ist. Er vertritt ein dezidiert römisch-katholisches Profil und befasst sich schwerpunktmäßig mit christlicher Apologetik, Sozialethik sowie kirchengeschichtlichen Kontroversen. Für Bibelleser liefert er prägnante Argumente zur Vereinbarkeit von Glaube und Vernunft sowie Impulse für ein christliches Menschenbild im gesellschaftlichen Diskurs.
Era: Today
Recurring topics: Wisdom & Understanding, Doubt & Hard Questions, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Ethical Questions, Church & Congregation, Faith & Trust, Humility & Pride, Witness & Mission
Quotes by Josef Bordat
God must not be proven, even if this were easy. God must be witnessed to, even if it is difficult.
Josef Bordat
Christian and worldly ethics differ in their tolerance toward action and failure. God permits little and forgives everything. The world permits much but forgives nothing.
Josef Bordat
God becomes a child as a human, so that the human becomes a child of God.
Josef Bordat
Eliminate the enemy – or the enmity? This distinction decides everything!
Josef Bordat
The deep meaning of the saints lies in this, that through the living faith of the dead, the dead faith of the living is renewed.
Josef Bordat
The Enlightenment paved the way for freedom and democracy, and thereby made modernity possible. But it has also ensured that today there are too many people who already believe they know, and too few who still know how to believe.
Josef Bordat
One can know that one should not believe everything, yet one should not believe that one can know everything.
Josef Bordat
Nothing frightens me more than people who, for God's sake, leave no room for their reason. Except for people who, for the sake of their reason, leave no room for God.
Josef Bordat
The difference between a religious philosopher and a philosopher of religion is like the difference between a gourmet chef and a food chemist. Both work with potatoes, but one needs them to make croquettes, the other to determine their nutritional value.
Josef Bordat
You cannot prove God. Not even with miracles. Had an atheist seen Jesus walking on water, he would probably have said, 'That's supposed to be the Son of God? A man who can't swim?'
Josef Bordat
If man—as Augustine claims—stands between animal and angel, then there are two ways to deal with him: either show him how close he is to the animal, or how close he could be to the angel.
Josef Bordat
It takes strength to do what you say. It takes courage to say what you think. It is grace to think what is true.
Josef Bordat
Mercy means leniency - not toward everything, but toward everyone.
Josef Bordat
Fear of God extinguishes fear of life.
Josef Bordat
The idea has a name, a face and a history in Christianity: Jesus Christ.
Josef Bordat
God is not nice, God is love.
Josef Bordat
Some critics of religion seem to me like non-swimmers who mistake the pool rules for the water itself.
Josef Bordat
'What do I get out of it?' must never be the counter-question to the Gretchen question. Faith in God is either an inner necessity or a manifest folly, but never useful or useless.
Josef Bordat
Doing my own will: the spirit of the age. Wanting my own will: compelled to freedom. Doing his will: submission. Wanting his will: holiness.
Josef Bordat
God has reconciled himself with us because he loves us. He gives something of himself that we have no claim to: his Son.
Josef Bordat
I believe God wants three things. God wants us to love him. God wants us to love ourselves. God wants us to love one another.
Josef Bordat
With egoism it's like this: one's own is interpreted as a natural drive, the other's as a moral failing.
Josef Bordat
Lack of success is not the same as having no effect — even defeats can uplift.
Josef Bordat
The common source of science and religion is the childlike wonder at being itself. For scientific reason it must end there; in religious reason it remains.
Josef Bordat
A Christian is not the one who has an 'rc' or 'prot' on their tax card, but the one who orients their life by the Gospel.
Josef Bordat
I believe that only humble piety produces great theology. I know significant theologians who, despite their brilliant intellect and broad and deep education, remained above all one thing: believing Christians – simple and modest workers in the Lord's vineyard.
Josef Bordat
When God says to us: "Vengeance is mine," that means precisely: not yours. There is no act of violence by man that is willed by God. Therefore man can fall into no greater error than believing he may count on God's blessing for an act of violence.
Josef Bordat
One cannot convince any person of God through proofs, but one can bring every person to God through witness.
Josef Bordat
"To you a Savior is born" — the Christmas message sounds like a gift without the shopping stress.
Josef Bordat
The teaching of the Church is not the private property of the current pope, but the endowed inheritance of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Josef Bordat
Whoever does not uphold the value of wisdom cannot point the way to truth.
Josef Bordat
Sometimes I wonder why the church has to answer for so much that isn't even its responsibility. And then I think of Jesus and find the answer in the cross: whoever wants to follow Him must carry not only his own cross, but above all also His cross.
Josef Bordat
That one does not tolerate intolerance is correct. But intolerance is often confused with a lack of respect or even a lack of sympathy, and so a lack of respect or sympathy is not tolerated. That is wrong.
Josef Bordat
The more specifically you ask, the more you rob God of his possibilities to answer the request.
Josef Bordat
To thank God is a person's duty.
Josef Bordat
Man can never reject God so much that He can no longer be present in him – God's will to immanence is always greater. Man can never deny God so much that He would forget him – God's faithfulness is always greater. Man can never hate God so much that He would stop loving him – God's mercy is always greater. For all human freedom – God allows no limits to be set upon Him.
Josef Bordat
The relationship between the pope and the church is often described with the image of a shepherd and his flock. The individual believer doesn't come off well in this: he is a sheep. But one should not forget that although the shepherd leads the flock uncompromisingly into the owner's stable when evening comes, during the day he lets himself be drawn by the flock to the best pastures and springs, for he knows: only a sheep has the right sense for that.
Josef Bordat
There are apparently more and more people with an internet connection for whom the amount of time available for a debate and the amount of knowledge about the topic are inversely proportional to each other. When the topic is 'church,' one quickly approaches the theoretical limits: the time is nearly infinite, the knowledge practically zero.
Josef Bordat
Sources: bbkl.de, erzbistumberlin.de, kath-info.de, eulemagazin.de
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