Robert Farrar Capon Quotes

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• Grace cannot prevail...until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Running, Grace, Steam

  Robert Farrar Capon (1997). “Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace”, p.7, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  85 Copy quote

• Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. If the cross is the sign of anything, it's the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world's problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can't do a thing about the world's problems - that it never did work and it never will

  Robert Farrar Capon

  God, Religious, Religion

  84 Copy quote

• He comes to us in the brokenness of our health, in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. He saves us in our disasters, not from them. He emphatically does not promise to meet only the odd winner of the self-improvement lottery. He meets us all in our endless and inescapable losing.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Loss, Self, Promise

  Robert Farrar Capon (1996). “The Astonished Heart: Reclaiming the Good News from the Lost-and-found of Church History”, p.15, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  45 Copy quote

• Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Reform, Christ

  "30 Good Minutes", www.30goodminutes.org. October 31, 1993.

  65 Copy quote

• The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Mean, Responsibility, Passion

  68 Copy quote

• Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Brother, Doors, Grace

  Robert Farrar Capon (1997). “Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace”, p.72, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  75 Copy quote

• But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace - the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors - makes all infirmities occasions of glory.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Attitude, Mistake

  83 Copy quote

• Even to this day, grace remains hard to swallow. Religiosity and moralism go down easier than free forgiveness.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Grace, Easier, Remains

  Robert Farrar Capon (2000). “The Fingerprints of God: Tracking the Divine Suspect Through a History of Images”, p.55, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  55 Copy quote

• We are not saved by what Jesus taught, and we are certainly not saved by what we understand Jesus to have taught. We are saved by Jesus Himself.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Taught, Saved

  Robert Farrar Capon (2002). “Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus”, p.208, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  55 Copy quote

• A lost sheep is, for all practical purposes a dead sheep. It is the admission that we are dead in our sins---that we have no power of ourselves either to save ourselves or to convince anyone else that we are worth saving. It is the recognition that our whole life is out of our hands and that if we ever live again, our life will be entirely the gift of some gracious shepherd. God finds us the desert of death (not in the garden of improvement) and in the power of Jesus' resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Home, Garden

  59 Copy quote

• The life of grace is not an effort on our part to achieve a goal we set ourselves. It is a continually renewed attempt simply to believe that someone else has done all the achieving that is needed and to live in relationship with that person, whether we achieve or not. If that doesn't seem like much to you, you're right: it isn't. And, as a matter of fact, the life of grace is even less than that. It's not even our life at all, but the life of that Someone Else rising like a tide in the ruins of our death.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Believe, Goal, Effort

  29 Copy quote

• If God seems to be in no hurry to make the problem of evil go away, maybe we shouldn't be, either. Maybe our compulsion to wash God's hands for him is a service he doesn't appreciate. Maybe - all theodicies and nearly all theologians to the contrary - evil is where we meet God. Maybe he isn't bothered by showing up dirty for his dates with creation. Maybe - just maybe - if we ever solved the problem, we'd have talked ourselves out of a lover.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Pain, Dirty, Hands

  Robert Farrar Capon (1967). “The Romance of the Word: One Man's Love Affair with Theology : Three Books”, p.170, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  66 Copy quote

• The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom. She has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes, that she has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Song, Mistake, Play

  45 Copy quote

• Christianity is NOT a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however - the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over - period.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Jobs, Humanity

  Robert Farrar Capon (1996). “The Astonished Heart: Reclaiming the Good News from the Lost-and-found of Church History”, p.2, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• Salvation is not some felicitous state to which we can lift ourselves by our own bootstraps after the contemplation of sufficiently good examples. It is an utterly new creation into which we are brought by our death in Jesus' death and our resurrection in his. It comes not out of our own best efforts, however well-inspired or successfully pursued, but out of the shipwreck of all human efforts whatsoever.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Best Effort, Example

  Robert Farrar Capon (2002). “Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus”, p.213, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  43 Copy quote

• Lord, please restore to us the comfort of merit and demerit. Show us that there is at least something we can do. Tell us that at the end of the day there will at least be one redeeming card of our very own. Lord, if it is not too much to ask, send us to bed with a few shreds of self-respect upon which we can congratulate ourselves. But whatever you do, do not preach grace. Give us something to do, anything; but spare us the indignity of this indiscriminate acceptance.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Acceptance, Self, Giving

  43 Copy quote

• However much we hate the law, we are more afraid of grace

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Hate, Law, Grace

  Robert Farrar Capon (1997). “Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace”, p.5, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  42 Copy quote

• ...there is therefore now no condemnation for two reasons: you are dead now; and God, as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, has been dead all along. The blame game was over before it started. It really was. All Jesus did was announce that truth and tell you it would make you free. It was admittedly a dangerous thing to do. You are a menace. Be he did it; and therefore, menace or not, here you stand: uncondemned, forever, now. What are you going to do with your freedom?

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Games, Two

  36 Copy quote

• The reason for not going out and sinning all you like is the same as the reason for not going out and putting your nose in a slicing machine: its dumb, stupid, and no fun. Some individual sins may have pleasure still attached to them because of the residual goodness of the realities they are abusing: adultery can indeed be pleasant and tying one on can amuse. But betrayal, jealousy, love grown cold, and the gray dawn of the morning after are nobody's idea of a good time.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Morning, Fun, Betrayal

  Robert Farrar Capon (2002). “Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus”, p.253, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  40 Copy quote

• Salvation is a gift given, not a bargain struck.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Salvation, Given, Bargains

  Robert Farrar Capon (1967). “The Romance of the Word: One Man's Love Affair with Theology : Three Books”, p.328, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  20 Copy quote

• We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  World, Taste, Forget

  24 Copy quote

• Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers? Why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Lying, Simple, Cities

  10 Copy quote

• Preachers are stewards whom the Lord has ‘set over his household servants to provide them with food at the proper time.’ After all the years the church has suffered under forceful preachers and winning orators, under compelling pulpiteers and clerical bigmouths with egos to match, how nice to hear that Jesus expects preachers in their congregations to be nothing more than faithful household cooks.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Nice, Winning

  10 Copy quote

• I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Food, Worry, Cooking

  14 Copy quote

• You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe. Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead —and for him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you his cup of tea.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Tea, Safe, Cups

  Robert Farrar Capon (1997). “Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace”, p.292, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  32 Copy quote

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