1. About kinds of knowledge....

A. "The assertion 'I know that my redeemer liveth' signifies an entirely different quality of knowledge from that expressed by the outwardly rather similar statement 'I know where my redeemer liveth.' "

[Erwin Chargaff, in "Knowledge Without Wisdom," Harper's, May 1980, pp. 41-48; on page 46.]

2. About hostile speech (and its opposite)...

A. "Each of us from the moment of his or her birth exists in an environment in which it is easy to do evil and hard to do good.... If I know somebody very well, in ten minutes, if I set my mind to it, I could perhaps say to them things so cruel, so destructive, that they would never forget them for the rest of their life. But could I in ten minutes say things so beautiful, so creative, that they would never forget them?"

[Bishop Kallistos Ware, in "Image and Likeness: An Interview with
Bishop Kallistos Ware," ParaboaT, Spring 1985, pp. 62-71; on pp.
66-67.]

B. "How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?"

[A useful utterance of Job's; Job 19:2.]

3. About listening.....

A. "Empathic listening can itself be a mystical experience in which the boundaries between selves as objects are relaxed and selves as subject begin to flow back and forth into each other with such depth that a Third Presence soon becomes vivid and very real even if names for this Presence are never called."

[Wayne E. Oates, in The Psychology of Religion (Word Books 1973);
on page 120.]

B. From the same source, page 86:

"When...we say that a person is in touch with reality, the theologian immediately goes to work to evaluate the kind of reality with which he may be in touch."

4. About teaching by example....

A. "Two tuning forks that are alike will pick up each other's vibrations. Persons are prone to imitate people they like. Therefore, change can be created in another person by stimulating the desire to be like you."

[Wayne E. Oates, in The Psychology of Religion (Word Books 1973);
on page 157.]

5. About children's understanding of religious language...

A. "When I was a small boy in the 1920s, the nuns used the analogy of a clean sheet of white paper to describe the immortal soul to a class of fidgety children. ... I determined that the paper was roughly 3" by 5", very thin, and very white. It obviously could not sustain its snowiness inside my body; therefore I assumed that it floated fragilely above my head..."

[David Challinor, in "A Small Boy's Soul," Zoogoer, March/April 1990, pp. 28-29; on page 28. Challinor says the nuns said that every sin would blotch the soul, and that he worried about that a lot. I remember an even more worrisome Baptist version of this concept, in which we children were told that every time we sinned -- including the times when we only thought about doing something bad -- we drove another nail through Jesus' hand.]

B.. "(R)eligious symbols and language are so widely present in this society that virtually no child reaches school age without having constructed -- with or without religious instruction -- an image or images of God."

[Anthony Brandt, in "Do kids need religion?", Utne Reader, January/-
February 1991, pp. 84-88; on page 87.]

6. About prayer....

A. "Every prayer reduces itself to this: 'Great God, grant that twice two be not four.' ... God's answer to all such prayers is always No. The English theologian E.J. Bicknesll said, in a discussion of original sin, 'From the start we find ourselves out of sympathy with God.' This truth could not be better put. And we are out of sympathy because he will not reconstruct reality at our request."

[Caroll E. Simcox, in "The First Stone," The Christian Century, Feb-
ruary 3-10, 1988, pp. 100-121; on page 101.]

7. About religious metaphors...

A. "We...must reclaim the biblical narratives that can shape these memories into a language of devotion articulated in the light of Jesus, whose presidency was powered by listening, whose republic was founded in covenant bonding, and whose election was rooted in self-sacrifice."

[William Johnson Everett, in "Sunday Monarchists and Monday Citizens?", The Christian Century, May 10, 1989, pp. 503-505; on page 504. His
thesis is that it's wrong for citizens of a democratic republic to worship using the language of monarchy.]

B. "Warfare is a favorite metaphor of writers trying to describe the spiritual life. ... So, it comes as no surprise to find, buried in the sand under a bevy of spiritual works produced around the Gulf war, a small grenade entitled Principles of War: How to Use Proven Military Strategies in Spiritual Warfare (Shaw, paperback)."

[William Griffin, "Weapons in the War Against Satan," Publishers
Weekly, August 9, 1991, on page 37.]

8. About language "traps"....

10. "No one is more acutely aware of his sinfulness than the Christian saint, because he realizes that he is proud of his humility...

[Alan Watts, in Myth and Ritual in Christianity; on page 74.]

9. About being perfect...

A. "When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. ... It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder -- in fact, it is imposssible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."

[C.S. Lewis, in The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis (Inspira-
tional Press 1987); on page 296.

10. About translating religious language...

A. "Whether or not to use inclusive language in Bible translation is not a gender issue but a matter of translation theory. ... The true question is whether formal equivalence or functional equivalence, as Bible translation theories, produces the best translation for our day. Formal equivalence (sometimes called 'literal translation') believes that the original wording, grammar, and syntax should be retained so long as the resulting translation is understandable... Functional equivalence (also called 'dynamic translation') believes that the text should have the same impact on the modern reader that the original had on the ancient reader. ... The first is a 'word-for-word' translation and the second a 'thought-for-thought translation."

[Grant R. Osborne, in "Do Inclusive-Language Bibles Distort Scripture?
No.", Christianity Today, October 27, 1997, pp. 33-38; on page 33.
Just before this article, by the way, there's one titled "Do Inclusive- Language Bibles Distort Scripture? Yes."]

11. Some examples of skilled rhetoric....

A. "We are men, and human words are all we have; even the Word of God is composed totally of the words of men."

[Robert Farrar Capon, in Hunting the Divine Fox (Seabury Press 1978)
on page 8.]

B. And from the same source, on page 13, an example which presupposes that propositions are true while at the very same time issuing a disclaimer:

"Even this early in the conversation, you may have begun to suspect in me a tendency to assume the truths of Christianity without proof."

To be continued....