How we cite our quotes: (Letter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard that way. (1.3.3)
If a good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation, then it calls for a passionate response. Who's responding? God? The congregation? Both?
Quote #5
I believe there are vision that come to us only in memory, in retrospect. That's the pulpit speaking, but it's telling the truth. (1.7.66)
"The pulpit speaking" is a phrase Ames likes to use now and then. It means it's the kind of impressively high and mighty thing he'd say from the pulpit, but maybe not so much in intimate conversations, where it wouldn't have the same effect.
Quote #6
Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense. (1.10.2)
If you hadn't noticed, John Ames isn't the type of preacher who tries to instill a healthy fear of hell and damnation in the members of his congregation. He's not indifferent to wrongdoing—far from it—but his religion isn't about sin. It's about the drama of human life, and it's about humankind's relationship with God.