Therefore, the church is not absolutely necessary as an object of faith, not even for us today, for then Abraham and the other prophets would not have given assent to those things which were revealed to them from God without any intervening help of the church.

Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

Fear was absolutely necessary. Without it, I would have been scared to death.

Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. ... Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.

Even if we don't believe in church or God, we still believe in things that are bigger than ourselves. We need to believe in those things because if we can't be open to what we don't know, there's no hope for any of us.