The following quotations are from Robert Farrar Capon…

“Judgment falls not on the unacceptable but on those who will not accept acceptance.”

“The whole purpose of the coming of the Word into the world is to produce people in whom the power of the kingdom will bear fruit. But since the kingdom is fully, albeit mysteriously, present in the Word
(since, in other words, the Word’s fruitfulness is not in question but is already an accomplished fact), it is chiefly for our sakes that the parable enjoins the necessity of response. The biggest difference made by responses to the Word is the difference they make to us, for us, and in us. They decide not whether the Word will achieve his purposes but whether we will enjoy his achievement – or find ourselves in opposition to it.”

“As your read through the stories God tells, it seems that He did not prevent sinners from sinning, but rather He went around forgiving them right and left.”

“He does not come to see if we are good: he comes to disturb the caked conventions by which we pretend to be good.”

“Admittedly, spending an hour in the society of an onion may be something you have never done before. You feel, perhaps, a certain resistance to the project. Please don’t. As I shall show later, a number of highly profitable members of the race have undertaken it before you. Onions are excellent company.”

“With Jesus, however, the device of parabolic utterance is used not to explain things to people’s satisfaction but to call attention to the unsatisfactoriness of all their previous explanations and understandings.”

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

“If the world is going down the drain; only a Savior who is willing to work at the bottom of the drain can redeem it.”

“Straight theologizing is more, not less, outrageous than parabolic theologizing.”

“The skeptic is never for real. There he stands, cocktail in hand, left arm draped languorously on one end of the mantelpiece, telling you that he can’t be sure of anything, not even of his own existence. I’ll give you my secret method of demolishing universal skepticism in four words. Whisper to him: ‘Your fly is open.’ If he thinks knowledge is so all-fired impossible, why does he always look?”

“it is precisely our sins, and not our goodnesses, that most commend us to the grace of God.”