“As a part of the holy trinity, Jesus was regarded as divine, and in predominant Christian belief this divinity was not compatible with human copulation. So Mary was a virgin, with the baby Jesus implanted by divine intervention.This was of course a marked departure from other religions in the classicalworld that had not ventured such a complex statement about divine presence among mortals, and that had often been quite comfortable with the idea of sexual exploits among the gods and as sources of other gods.”

“The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.”

“To read is human, to review is divine.”

“The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.”

“Jesus is both a mirror to our humanity and a window to divinity, a window revealing as much of God as is given mortal eyes to see. When Christians see Christ empowering the weak, scorning the powerful, healing the wounded, and judging their tormentors, we are seeing transparently the power of God at work.”

“From the premise that Christianity is true it follows that the far-off glimpse of joy produced by fantasy is a glimpse of truth; that a great eucatastrophic tale like The Lord of the Rings is a gift of divine grace, an opening of the curtain that veils Heaven to earthly eyes, a tiny telepathic contact with the Mind of God.”

“Even more richly than in His name and attributes, God has revealed Himself in His Word as the Triune God. In this revelation He reveals the great mystery, far beyond the comprehension of all creatures, that His simple Divine Essence consists in three Persons; and that not in such a way that each of the three persons would possess one part of the Divine Essence, so that by combining they would form the full God-head; but God is a simple Being, and thus is far from being a combination of parts. God consists not of three Persons, but in three Persons; the full Being of God is in the Father, and the same full Being is in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. The Father is God; the Son is God, no less than the Father; and the Holy Spirit is God, of the same eternity, glory, and majesty as the Father and Son. Among the Divine Persons there is not a first or last, nor is one greater or less. And still there is but one, simple, Divine Being. God is Tri-une.”