“The problem with modernism is that we actually believe, naively and arrogantly, that we can in some way hold any concept and grasp it — and if we cannot, they it is absurd and impossible and therefore nonexistent.”

“We should never, ever believe life- or history- holds no surprises for us. That way lies arrogance. And arrogance can blind us to the truth . . . Any truth. All truth.”

“If the painful history of the human and Christian striving for God proves anything, it surely proves this: that any attempt to reduce God to the scope of our own comprehension leads to the absurd. We can only speak rightly about him if we renounce the attempt to comprehend and let him be the uncomprehended. Any doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, cannot aim at being a perfect comprehension of God. It is a frontier notice, a discouraging gesture pointing over to unchartable territory. It is not a definition that confines a thing to the pigeonholes of human knowledge, nor is it a concept that would put the thing within the grasp of the human mind.”

“God exists outside of time, and since we are within time, there is no way we will ever totally grasp that concept.”

“We infrequently contemplate the harms that await any new-born child—pain, disappointment, anxiety, grief, and death. For any given child we cannot predict what form these harms will take or how severe they will be, but we can be sure that at least some of them will occur. None of this befalls the nonexistent. Only existers suffer harm.”

“I realize, of course, that it is not true logic to argue--"The world is not as we think it is--therefore everything we think impossible is possible in it." Even if it be different, it is governed by law. The truly impossible is that which is outside law, and as nothing can be outside law, the impossible cannot exist.”