“The Gospel writers are not really interested primarily in the facts of the birth but in the significance, the meaning for them of that birth just as the people who love us are not really interested primarily in the facts of our births but in what it meant to them when we were born and how for them the world was never the same again, how their whole lives were changed with new significance.”

“What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolated…. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them and back again from the whole thus reached to the particular significant facts.”

“Living a life that in fact lives them, as well as death dies them every moment since the triumphal birth in order to die. ”

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

“Most churches are strong on teaching about conversion but weak on teaching about how to live after you are saved. Think of an analogy: In one sense, our physical birth is the most important event in our lives, because is it the beginning of everything else. Yet, in another sense, our birth is the least important event, because it is merely the starting point. If someone were to mention every day how great it was to be born, we would find that rather strange. Once we have come into the world, the important task is to grow and mature. By the same token, being born again is the necessary first step in our spiritual lives, yet we should not focus our message constantly on how to be saves. It is crucial for churches to lead people forward into spiritual maturity, equipping the saints to carry out the mission God has given us in the Cultural Mandate.”