“But God is just, the moralists answer, and he must grant justice and punish transgression. But from what do they derive this ‘must’ to which they subordinate even God? Does there exist, then, some necessity which limits the love of God, limits his freedom? If there is, then God is not God or at least he is not the God that the Church knows.”
Christos Yanneras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox Theology
One day a soldier asked an elder whether God grants pardon to sinners. The elder answered, “Tell me, my good friend, if your cloak is torn, do you throw it away?” The soldier replied, “No, I mend it and continue to use it.” The elder concluded, “If you take good care of your cloak, will not God be merciful to his own image?”
Thomas Merton, Sayings of the Desert Fathers
As is a grain of sand weighed against a large amount of gold, so, in God, is the demand for equitable judgment weighed against his compassion. As a handful of sand in the boundless ocean, so are the sins of the flesh in comparison to God’s providence and mercy. As a copious spring could not be stopped up with a handful of dust, so the Creator’s compassion cannot be conquered by the wickedness of creatures.
Do not say that God is just….he is before all things kind and good. He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
St. Isaac the Syrian (quoted in Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism)
Scientists who assumed a deity are not unusual; Newton, Pascal, Copernicus, and Einstein are just a few of the more famous. But, today is different. Deity is neither a premise nor a possibility in traditional science. And to be fair, Richards and Gonzalez are not arguing for deity, per se, but arguing that the empirical evidence of life, chemistry, astrobiology, and especially physics accumulatively suggest purpose, not random permutation
D. Thomas Porter Omega News
"This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible:
In the beginning God created heaven and earth...
[But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak;
[and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
- Robert Jastrow (God and the Astronomers )