The difference between theism and new atheist science is the difference between mystery and certainty. Certainty is a relic, an atavism, a husk we ought to have outgrown. Mystery is openness to possibility, even at the scale now implied by physics and cosmology.

Marilynne Robinson (b. 1943), Schriftstellerin, Essayistin

Source: When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012)

Topics: Doubt & Hard Questions, Faith & Trust, Wisdom & Understanding

Occasions: For Reflection

Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson ist eine US-amerikanische Schriftstellerin und Essayistin, die viele Jahre an der University of Iowa lehrte. Bekanntheit erlangte sie durch ihren mit dem Pulitzer-Preis ausgezeichneten Roman „Gilead“ sowie theologische Essays, in denen sie aus calvinistischer Perspektive über Gnade, Vergebung und menschliche Würde reflektiert. Bibellesern eröffnet ihr Werk eine literarische Auseinandersetzung mit biblischen Texten und regt zur Reflexion über theologische Traditionen an.

All quotes by Marilynne Robinson (26)

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The strongest faith isn't a faith that never doubts. Rather, it's a faith that grows through doubts.

Craig Groeschel

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because, by it, I see everything else.

C.S. Lewis

Do you see the moon standing there? It's only half visible, and yet it's round and lovely! So it is with many things that we lightly laugh about, because our eyes cannot see them.

Matthias Claudius

The grip of our faith by which we hold on to the Lord may loosen. But the One in whom we believe holds us with his grip.

Helmut Thielicke

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

C.S. Lewis

Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.

C.S. Lewis

Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.

Flannery O'Connor

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

William Shakespeare

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