Quotes about Nature
The nature of rumor is known to all.
— Tertullian
The power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded with any high, exalted, force, known or knowable.
— Karl Barth
We must be clear that whatever we say of God in such human concepts can never be more than an indication of Him; no such concept can really conceive the nature of God. God is inconceivable.
— Karl Barth
Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray!
— Karl Rahner
By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
The jubilation of God's salvation corresponds to man's very real condition of lostness ... In Scripture, there is never any mention of a relativizing of sin since any such relativizing of sin would also automatically relativize the unspeakably wonderful nature of salvation.
— GC Berkouwer
Evil in man is radical, so much so that it cannot be overcome by human power.
— GC Berkouwer
Man does not have the power to begin by himself any change in spiritual things ... There is no limit or boundary within human nature beyond which we can find some last human reserve untouched by sin.
— GC Berkouwer
The "Nature Psalms" ... This understanding, and seeing, and hearing, is possible only ... in the enlightening of the eyes by the salvation of God ... But this seeing and hearing is not a projection of the believing subject, but an actual finding and seeing, and hearing! Here nothing is 'read into', but is only an understanding of the reality of revelation.
— GC Berkouwer
Common grace ... an imperfect solution ... does centre our attention on the gracious act of God in protecting man's corrupt and apostate nature from total demonization.
— GC Berkouwer
The true nature of good works cannot be understood apart from Christ who is our 'sanctification' (1 Corinthians 1:30).
— GC Berkouwer
The restoration of the image of God ... the new nature, created after the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness ... the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator ... the renewal of the image will throw light upon the meaning and content of the original creation of man in the image of God.
— GC Berkouwer