John H. Walton Quotes

#1. Language itself is a cultural convention, and since the Bible and other ancient documents use language to communicate, they are bound to a culture.

John H. Walton

#2. Mesopotamian literature is concerned about the jurisdiction of the various gods in the cosmos with humankind at the bottom of the heap, the Genesis account is interested in the jurisdiction of humankind over the rest of creation as a result of the image of God in which people were created.

John H. Walton

#3. If God were intent on making his revelation correspond to science, we have to ask which science. We

John H. Walton

#4. But our God is a God of grace. If we desire to be like him, we need to go beyond being people who are saved by grace to be people who are characterized by grace.

John H. Walton

#5. We gain nothing by bringing God's revelation into accordance with today's science. In contrast, it makes perfect sense that God communicated his revelation to his immediate audience in terms they understood.

John H. Walton

#6. Since all people are in the image of God, all deserve to be treated with the dignity the image affords.

John H. Walton

#7. The Bible must retain its autonomy and speak for itself. But that is also true when we hold traditional interpretations up to the Bible. The biblical text must retain its autonomy from tradition. We must always be willing to return to the text and consider it with fresh eyes.

John H. Walton

#8. While the Bible has nothing to say about how ethnic distinctions came to be, it does have definitive statements about how we are to regard them: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).

John H. Walton

#9. In response, God appears to Job and compels him to live in mystery, not giving an answer to his suffering but asserting his own wisdom and power. Other

John H. Walton

#10. This reading of the biblical text has not been imposed on it by the demands of science, but science has prompted a more careful examination of precisely what the text is claiming.

John H. Walton

#11. In other words, the question of the historical Adam has more to do with sin's origins than with material human origins. These

John H. Walton

#12. The most central truth to the creation account is that this world is a place for God's presence.

John H. Walton

#13. With God there are no dead ends, only training grounds.

John H. Walton

#14. The Bible's message must not be subjected to cultural imperialism. Its message transcends the culture in which it originated, but the form in which the message was imbedded was fully permeated by the ancient culture.

John H. Walton

#15. THE RETRIBUTION PRINCIPLE (RP) is the conviction that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer, both in proportion to their respective righteousness and wickedness. In Israelite theology the principle was integral to the belief in God's justice.

John H. Walton

#16. Our point, however, is not to worship the Bible; we worship the God of the Bible.

John H. Walton