Gospels Quotes

Of the sayings of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels that can be compared to those in the fourth Gospel, there are one or two which I venture to think can only have been recorded on the authority of St. John.

I would be cautious in embracing or rejecting doctrines. Had they been essential to our salvation, they would have been more explicitly declared in the Gospels, where we are so well taught the practice of every good word and work.

There is no evidence that the author of the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos, read anything that we think of as a New Testament book. I don’t see any evidence that he knew what was in the Gospels, or the letters of Paul, which I don’t think he would have liked at all.

Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?

I was raised in a Catholic school, and I would always go to church on Sunday, and I would hear the same music over and over and over and over again, same gospels, hymns, everything.

The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity.

You know the phrase ‘Jesus laughed’ isn’t ever used in the Gospels. So, most people walk away with the idea that Jesus is a pretty serious guy, pretty sour faced most of the time, pretty upset at what’s going on around Him.

Then I studied theology in college, and when I was getting a Ph.D. in literature, I took courses in New Testament studies and studied Greek versions of the Gospels.

Jesus Christ is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all. In the Gospels he walks in human form upon the earth, and accomplishes the work of redemption.

For nearly 2,000 years, most people assumed that the only sources of tradition about Jesus and his disciples were the four gospels in the New Testament.

The Gospel of John makes explicit what all the Gospels assume – that is, the cross is not a defeat, but the victory of our God.

Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.

There is nowhere in the four Gospels where Jesus uses the word ‘homosexual.’

I believe that Jesus Christ existed and that He died for my sins. And I believe that what He said in the Gospels is a model for the way I should try to lead my life and that I will always fall short of that and, therefore, need Him to redeem me.

I argue that the resurrection was not the Great Resuscitation. It was a total transformation. I just don’t accept the black-and-white thinking that goes along with needing to regard the gospels are literally true.

Once you start to look at the gospels one by one, you realize that followers of Jesus were trying to understand what had happened after he was arrested and killed. They knew Judas had handed him over to the people who arrested him.

I always say that as a Christian I cannot find any passage in the Gospels in which Jesus condemned homosexuality.

There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn’t mean you have to throw out the whole thing.

When the Bible and the Gospels say that the victims should have been spared, they do not merely ‘take pity’ on them. They puncture the illusion of the unanimous victimization that foundational myths use as a crisis-solving and reordering device of human communities.

I’ve said to others that there were places I had forgotten about that were just so powerful. I’ve read the Gospels many times, but it’s been a while since I’ve read through a whole book.

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.

I’m planning on finishing the Gospels at some point.

Heard in full sound, the Gospels tell about the establishment of a theocracy, and portray what theocracy looks like with Jesus as king.

Instead of blaming victimization on the victims, the Gospels blame it on the victimizers. What the myths systematically hide, the Bible reveals.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

Reading the Gospels, without the personality of Jesus, is like watching television with the sound turned off.

I know we didn’t make an anti-Semitic film. This is what the Gospels are. And it’s none of my business what other people think of me.

We use the word ‘synoptic’ to talk about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it really means ‘seeing together,’ because they all have a similar perspective. Matthew and Luke – whoever wrote those Gospels – used Mark as a focus and as a basic story. So all of them have a lot in common.

I am no theologian. I am a layman. I am among those who are preached to, and who listen. It is not for me to preach. I should not willingly forego being a listener, a man who reads the Gospels and then listens to what others say that our Lord meant. But sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice.

What I did was take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Son of God, the Son of the Virgin Mary, and sought to make Him utterly believable, a vital breathing character.

The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It’s almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren’t that interested in whether Jesus was real.

If religion comes into the public square, it is as vulnerable as any other human institution to be pelted with produce. Ignorance does not become wisdom just because you gussy it up with the Gospels.

Fidel is a Marxist-Leninist. I am not. Fidel is an atheist. I am not. One day, we discussed God and Christ. I told Castro, I am a Christian. I believe in the Social Gospels of Christ. He doesn’t. Just doesn’t. More than once, Castro told me that Venezuela is not Cuba, and we are not in the 1960s.