"I am writing for the 'Christian agnostic,' by which I mean a person who is immensely attracted by Christ and who seeks to show His spirit, to meet the challenges, hardships and sorrows of life in the light of that spirit, but who, though he is sure of many Christian truths, feels that he cannot honestly and conscientiously 'sign on the dotted line' that he believes certain theological ideas about which some branches of the church dogmatise; churches from which he feels excluded because he cannot 'believe'; His intellectual integrity makes him say about many things, ‘It may be so. I do not know.'"

LESLIE WEATHERHEAD
(THE CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC)

"Perhaps in some special cases I decide what to believe - perhaps I look at the evidence for some proposition, and then decide to believe it - but even in these cases it’s not clear that this is what happens. What really does happen, so it seems to me, is that I decide to look at all the evidence; and when I do, either I find the evidence convincing to one degree or another, whereupon I believe the proposition in question or think it likely, or I don’t find the evidence convincing, and don’t believe the proposition. But I really don’t tot up the evidence and then just decide whether or not to believe... And isn’t the same thing true for religious belief? I am a theist; I believe that there is such a person as God; but I have never decided to hold this belief. It has always just seemed to me to be true. And it isn’t as if I could rid myself of this belief just by an act of will."

ALVIN PLANTINGA
(KNOWLEDGE AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF)

"You want to find faith and you do not know the road. You want to be cured of unbelief and you ask for the remedy: learn from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have. These are people who know the road you wish to follow, who have been cured of the affliction of which you wish to be cured: follow the way by which they began. They behaved as if they did believe, taking holy water, having masses said, and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally..."

BLAISE PASCAL
(PENSÉES)

"To [have faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."

C. S. LEWIS
(MERE CHRISTIANITY)