c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
A God who punishes disobedience will teach us to obey and endure when it would be holy to protest and righteous to refuse to cooperate.
— Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search For What Saves Us
The Anselmian call for "faith seeking understanding" may start and gather its energy not in rational study of past theological points but in the pursuit to make sense of our concrete and lived experiences of Jesus who finds us in a hole, knocks us from our horse, or comes to our daughter in her sleep.
— Andrew Root, Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross
God has disclosed himself in descriptive terms that give us enough information to be able to know who he is, and he has hidden enough of himself for us to learn the balance between faith and reason.
— Ravi Zacharias, Has Christianity Failed You?
I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and you can’t, and you hate yourself because you can’t, and all the time love is not some marvelous thing that you feel but some hard thing that you do. And this in a way is easier because with God’s help you can command your will when you can’t command your feelings. With us, feelings seem to be important, but He doesn’t appear to agree with us.
— Elizabeth Goudge, The Scent of Water
You are not blamed for your unwilling ignorance, but because you fail to ask about what you do not know.... For no one is prevented from leaving behind the disadvantage of ignorance and seeking the advantage of knowledge.
— Augustine of Hippo
There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.
— Thomas Henry Huxley, The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study
Elohim was, in logical terminology, the genus of which ghosts, Chemosh, Dagon, Baal, and Jahveh were species. The Israelite believed Jahveh to be immeasurably superior to all other kinds of Elohim. The inscription on the Moabite stone shows that King Mesa held Chemosh to be, as unquestionably, the superior of Jahveh.
— Thomas Henry Huxley, The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study
The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?
— Thomas Henry Huxley, The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study
When we talk about the theology of 'God is Dead,' this means that the notion of God must be dead in order for God to reveal himself as a reality. The theologians, if they only use concepts, and not direct experience, are not very helpful. The same goes for nirvana, which is something to be touched and lived and not discussed and described. We have notions that distort truth, reality. A Zen master said the following to a large assembly: 'My friends, every time I use the word Buddha, I suffer. I am allergic to it. Every time I do it, I have to go to the bathroom and rinse my mouth three times in succession.' He said this in order to help his disciples not to get caught up in the notion of Buddha. The Buddha is one thing, but the notion of Buddha is another.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart
Christian theological history is filled with stories of groups who have developed theories of the election of themselves to salvation and the damnation of others; theories that demonstrate that their particular group has been exclusively endowed with divine truth, so that they possess a unique mission to the world and have a unique authority within it.
— Richard Holloway, Doubts and Loves: What is Left of Christianity
I have found that the more I reflect philosophically on the attributes of God the more overwhelmed I become at his greatness and the more excited I become about Bible doctrine. Whereas easy appeals to mystery prematurely shut off reflection about God, rigorous and earnest effort to understand him is richly rewarded with deeper appreciation of who he is, more confidence in his reality and care, and a more intelligent and profound worship of his person.
— William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge & Human Freedom
This quarrel over the messianic status of Jesus within first-century Judaism had profound effects on Christianity and prompted it towards a fateful turning point that switched the emphasis from following the way of Jesus to believing things about Jesus. Gradually a Christian came to be thought of not as one who lives and acts in a certain way, but as one who holds certain convictions or theories. The trouble with religious convictions or beliefs is that, since we can rarely prove or disprove them, we get anxious about them and start quarrelling with people whose convictions or theories differ from our own.
— Richard Holloway, Doubts and Loves: What is Left of Christianity
If we, who are finite, contingent, created beings, have got God completely figured out, it makes it seem likely that we invented him...If I am ever completely satisfied with my understanding of who God is and how he operates in the world, I am in danger of ceasing to seek Him.
— Holly Ordway
There was something that He hid from all men, when he went up a mountain to pray. There was something that he covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
— G.K. Chesterton
I want you to see persecution and opposition and slander and misunderstanding and disappointment and self-recrimination and weakness and danger as the normal portion of faithful pastoral ministry.
— John Piper, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton
Christianity tells us we have free will. God has provided man with a choice whether to believe in Him or not. If God's existence were logically inescapable, there would be no free will to choose whether or not to believe in Him.
— Stephen McAndrew, Why It Doesn't Matter What You Believe If It's Not True: Is There Absolute Truth?
Its helpful to know the reasons for our faith...it helps us not be so vulnerable to doubt, and it helps us not be so vulnerable to false doctrine.
— Holly Ordway
It's no fun to think about infinity and no cinche to write about it. Again, it helps to look for some human link.
— William Zinsser
This withdrawal of theology from the world of secular affairs is made more complete by the work of biblical scholars whose endlessly fascinating exercises have made it appear to the lay Christian that no one untrained in their methods can really understand anything the Bible says. We are in a situation analogous to one about which the great Reformers complained. The Bible has been taken out of the hands of the layperson
—  it has now become the professional property not of the priesthood but of the scholars.
Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction—studying nothing. In the Middle Ages, the great minds capable of transforming the world did not study the world; and so, for most of a millennium, as human beings screamed in agony—decaying from starvation, eaten by leprosy and plague, dying in droves in their twenties—the men of the mind, who could have provided their earthly salvation, abandoned them for otherworldly fantasies.
— Andrew Bernstein
Theologians, and religionists in general, start with a fantasy premise and then proceed to apply rigorous formal logic to tease out its implications. Stark himself points out that “theology consists of formal reasoning about God.” This is admirably exact. Theologians, beginning with a wished-for creation of their own minds, analyze that creation’s characteristics by rigorous application of the principles of formal—that is, deductive—logic.
— Andrew Bernstein
Whether you realize it or not, you are a theologian. You come to a book like this with a working theology, an existing understanding of God. Whether you are an agnostic or a fundamentalist — or something in between — you have a working theology that shapes and informs the way you think and live. However, I suspect that you are reading this book because you’re interested in examining your theology more closely. You are open to having it challenged and strengthened. You know that theology — the study of God — is more than an intellectual hobby. It’s a matter of life and death, something that affects the way you think, the decisions you make each day, the way you relate to God and other people, and the way you see yourself and the world around you.
— Michael S. Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples
I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian... The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat — which wasn't there. ‘That may be,’ said the philosopher, ‘but a theologian would have found it.
— Julian Huxley
I believe we best say yes to God's glory and sovereignty by saying no to Calvinism.
— Austin Fischer, Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed: Black Holes, Love, and a Journey in and Out of Calvinism
The bare knowledge of God's will is inefficacious, it doth not better the heart. Knowledge alone is like a winter sun, which hath no heat or influence; it doth not warm the affections, or purify the conscience. Judas was a great luminary, he knew God's will, but he was a traitor.
— Thomas Watson
Jesus never spoke of truth in abstraction, as something that stands alone. Jesus always spoke of truth in relation to God being revealed through himself.
— Tim McConnell
Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity.
— Luther Burbank, The Harvest Of The Years
Always, in Lincoln's mature theology, there is paradox. There is starting this, yet there is also tenderness; there is melancholy, yet there is also humor: there is moral law, yet there is also compassion. History is the scene of the working out God's justice, which we can never escape, but it is also the scene of the revelation of the everlasting mercy.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Isn't that funny, that deity is passe but the attributes and implications of deity linger--
— Gregory Maguire
We are all theologians, either good ones or bad ones. I'd rather be a good one. Wouldn't you?
— Randy Alcorn, Courageous
He was too perplexed to please the conventional and too reverent. to please the infidels.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
God, Lincoln believed, is seen more clearly events that in nature, though He maybe seen there also. It is a majestic thing, thought Lincoln, for a person to be RESPONSIBLE.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong, dreadfully wrong. There are no guarantees; the religious life is a venture; foolish and debilitating error is a permanent possibility. (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right.)
— Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief
most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology etc.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Theology is for homemakers who need to know who God is, who they are, and what this mundane life is all about.
— Gloria Furman, Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home
And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced—too eagerly in my view—that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Cosmopolitanism promotes a sense of new _we-ness as regarding every individual human being as a citizen of the cosmos. However, the _we-cosmic-citizens_ are not to promote the _we-ness-in-sameness_, but rather the we-ness-in-alterity_.Unlike the solidarity-in-sameness, cosmopolitan _solidarity-in-alterity_ celebrates the singularity and difference of each individual human being while not denying the historical necessity of the strategic construction of _we_ to challenge the very sociopolitically imposed category
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Theology should be a discourse that helps the sociopolitical approach to justice to maintain its human face and not to become impersonal.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitan theology is a theology for _the impossible_.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
cosmopolitan theology that longs for the Kindom of God seeks to recover its revolutionary universalizing ethos in terms of hospitality, neighbor-love, and multiple solidarities that one can see in Jesus' teaching and ministry, without any imperialist, kyriarchcal, hierarchical implications
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
What does it mean to be human, to continue to live as human, to remain _faithful_ to the Divine while living in a cultural, sociogeopoltical, and religious world where power disparity between/among humans based on religious world where power disparity between/among humans based on their nationality, citizenship, gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, religion and so forth still prevails? The act of _theologizing_ for me involves responding to these questions and stimulating the practice of liberating and enlarging human possibility in our daily reality.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
It is because baptism is a real insertion of human beings into the ascended manhood of Christ that the Church is Christ's own body, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones.
— E.L. Mascall, The Mother of God: A Symposium
I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitanism emphasizes and is grounded in a _singular relationality between and among people
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitanism is a radical affirmation of the idea of neighbor/enemy-love-as-self love...Cosmopolitanism is about a cosmic scope of justice and hospitality––another name for _love_.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitan theology affirms and radicalizes the belief that the Divine creates each and every human being as equal to every one else as a _citizen-of-the-cosmos and that no one is either superior or inferior to the other.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
The time and space in which I have been working on this cosmopolitan project have convinced me that the disparity between the ideal of cosmopolitan theology and the current sociopolitical configuration of hospitality, welcoming others, unconditional forgiveness, is itself a _prophetic call_ to which we all have to respond––as humans, as person of faith. The _real_ is always about calculation and conditionality, whereas the _ideal_ of cosmopolitan theology is about incalculability, unconditionality, and planetarity of the _world-as-it-ought-to-be_. Therefore, the disparity between the reality and the ideality is not a space for despair but a space where one's sense of prophetic call_ and passion for _the impossible_ must come in.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
I believe theology should be about one's way of life, a kind of gaze into onesself and others, and a mode of one's profound existence in the world.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitan discourse...provides one with a _public gaze_ with which one can relate oneself to others in a different way.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
I want to affirm that thinking and living, knowing and doing, theory and practice intersect.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitanism has offered me an ethical perspective and a conceptual framework with which to read the _signs of our times_ as a theologian and intellectual who has a public responsibility for constantly offering a way to engage in this rapidly changing public world.
— Namsoon Kang
Theological discourse can be, in and of itself, a form of identity and solidarity.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
How can one maintain a theological confidence in what one claims to be _true_ while acknowledging the existence of multiple religions that also claim to be _true_?
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitanism starts from the _singular_ individual rather than the _faceless_ collective
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
I believe _cosmopolitanism_ can be an effective discourse with which to advocate a politics of _transidentity_ of overlapping interests and heterogeneous or hybrid subjects in order to challenge conventional notions of exclusive belonging, identity and citizenship.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Religion is about hospitality and responsibility, and about neighbor/enemy-love-as-self-love in a Christian term that requires one to turn a new _gaze_ onto others––what I call a _cosmopolitan gaze_.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
The politics of trans-identity seeks to move from the _politics of singular identity_ to the _politics of multiple solidarities_ across various identities without abandoning one's personal attachments and commitments to the group that one finds significant.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
_For what ends_ does one claim cosmopolitanism? _Whose interest_ does it serve?
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Religion is about hospitality, solidarity, and responsibility or it is nothing at all.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
the overall theme of theology can be twofold: the search for meaning and the responsibility one has to the others.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Cosmopolitan discourse emphasizes the _cosmic belonging_ of all individual human beings as the ground of our hospitality, solidarity, justice and neighbor-love. Cosmopolitan discourse is about turning a _compassionate gaze_ onto others regardless of one's nationality and citizenship, origin of birth, religion, gender; race and ethnicity, sexuality, or ability
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
the cosmopolitan gaze of planetary love and hospitality _is_ what constitutes being _religious_.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
One should regard one's religious or denominational affiliation as a point of departure, a point of entry, not the point of arrival because on cannot confine God to a particular religion or faith tradition, and therefore should not claim one's exclusive ownership of God. Regarding one's religious or denominational affiliation as _accidentality_; not as _inevitability_, is important in religious discourse and practice because such a sense of _accidentality_ of one's affiliation allows a space of _alterity_ of reciprocal contestation and challenge, and a space of planetary gaze that sees others as fellow human beings, _regardless_.
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Theological discourses function in various ways as sites of contestation and resistance, of forming new religious and personal identities, and of building solidarities. Theological discourses that theologians produce, disseminate, and teach in academia are not simply objective interpretations and neutral reflections on the world and the church in it. Instead theological discourses are productions of and for the world and the church that we live in
— Namsoon Kang, Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
Didn't Chains tell you about the Golden Theological Principle?""The what?""The single congruent aspect of every known religion. The one shared, universal assumption about the human condition.""What is it?""He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that line is actually circular.
— Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves
The study of truth requires a considerable effort - which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge - despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for such knowledge in the minds of men.
— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles
knowledge depends on the mode of the knower
—  for what is known is in the knower according to the measure of his mode
An educated theologian: someone who's better at rationalizing what they're pretending to know.
— Peter Boghossian
Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.
— Gore Vidal
Modern science gives lectures on botany, to show there is no such thing as a flower; on humanity, to show there is no such thing as a man; and on theology, to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a man, but only a mechanism, No such thing as a God, but only a series of forces.
— John Ruskin
Just as God's love entered the world, thereby submitting to the misunderstanding and ambiguity that characterize everything worldly, so also Christian love does not exist anywhere but in the worldly, in an infinite variety of concrete worldly action, and subject to misunderstanding and condemnation. Every attempt to portray a Christianity of 'pure' love purged of worldly 'impurities' is a false purism and perfectionism that scorns God's becoming human and falls prey to the fate of all ideologies. God was not too pure to enter the world.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
Everybody has theology whether they admit it or not.
— Jim Walker
Theology is speaking about God while in the very presence of God. We are intimately engaged with the subject of our study.
— Michael F. Bird
I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.
— Igor Stravinsky
Without the hard we stay too soft, and heaven is reduced to myths like life. Theology aside, it’s plain to see that God forbids we get too comfortable.
— Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations
Theology without proclamation is empty, proclamation without theology is blind.
— Gerhard Ebeling
A covenant differs from a contract almost as much as marriage differs from prostitution.
— Scott Hahn, Hail, Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God
We would do our theology better if more was at stake in what we said.
— John Piper, John Calvin: And His Passion for the Majesty of God
To understand our faith -- to theologize in the Catholic tradition -- we need philosophy. We must use the philosophical language of God, person, creation, relationship, identity, natural law, virtues, conscience, moral norms if we are to think about religion and defend it. Theology has some terms and methods of its own, but its fundamental tools are borrowed from philosophy.The growth of religious fundamentalism and the collapse of religious education mean theology is more urgently needed in universities -- especially Catholic ones -- than ever before.
— George Cardinal Pell, God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society
As well as being essential to theological study, philosophy is an indispensable tool for communicating theology, for evangelization and catechesis. A faith based on how warm and comfortable you feel and how "affirmed" you are by your community is pleasant, but there is no guarantee that it is true. Fides et ratio make clear that philosophy's central tasks are to justify our grasp of reality, of truth, and to make cogent suggestions as to life's true meaning. Being able to say something compelling on these topics -- reality, truth, and life's meaning -- is critical in winning young and old alike to the faith. A theology that incorporates philosophy's work in these areas will be faithful to the teaching of the Church and able to stand up to the most rigorous secular arguments and the ideologies of the age.
— George Cardinal Pell, God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society
Metagapism is the belief that love is the ultimate reality, literally god and the one shared soul, and the source, nature and destiny of all.
— John K.  Brown
Love isn’t self-centered, even at the supreme scale.
— John K.  Brown
That which isn’t love, isn’t god.
— John K.  Brown
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it.
— Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
I fear that much of the Christianity that surrounds us assumes our task is to save appearances by protecting God from Job-like anguish. But if God is the God of Jesus Christ, then God does not need our protection. What God demands is not protection, but truth.
— Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir
Peace is a deeper reality than violence."p. 231
— Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir
I won't pretend that I've arrived at humble orthodoxy. When I gain a bit of theological knowledge, I all too frequently get puffed up with pride. But I'll tell you what deflates my arrogance and self-righteousness faster than anything else: trying to live whatever truth I have.
— Joshua Harris, Humble Orthodoxy: Holding the truth high without putting people down
There is a quality of lightness, easiness, and in some sense blatant unseriousness that pervades Classical Christianity's dialogue with modernity. The Christian intellect has no reason to be intimidated in the presence of later-stage modernity. Christianity has seen too many 'modern eras' to be cowed by this one.
— Thomas C. Oden, After Modernity What?: Agenda for Theology
The lives of the saints are the hermeneutical key to Scripture.
— Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics
In short, an astonishingly broad spectrum of theologies of justification existed in the later medieval period, encompassing practically every option that had not been specifically condemned as heretical by the Council of Carthage. In the absence of any definitive magisterial pronouncement concerning which of these options (or even what range of options) could be considered authentically catholic, it was left to each theologian to reach his own decision in this matter. A self-perpetuating doctrinal pluralism was thus an inevitability.
— The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
The rising influence of lay piety is particularly marked upon the Mariological controversies of the late medieval period. Two rival positions developed: the maculist position, which held that Mary was subject to original sin, in common with every other human being; and the immaculist position, which held that contrary view that Mary was in some way preserved from original sin, and was thus to be considered sinless. The maculist position was regarded as firmly established within the High Scholasticism of the thirteenth century. The veneration of the Virgin within popular piety, however, proved to have an enormously creative power that initially challenged, and subsequently triumphed over, the academic objections raised against it by university theologians.
— The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other. With the greater consciousness of the issues involved comes a lesser assurance that an alternative is possible.
— Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason & Revelation
How do you...? What is it you're doing?" he said to Vardy as the man took a breath, mid-insight. What do you call that? Billy thought. That reconstitutitive intelligence, berserker meme-splicing, seeing in nothings first patterns, then correspondence, then causality and dissident sense.Vardy even smiled. "Paranoid," he said. "Theology.
— China Miéville, Kraken
The unbiblical idea of "spirituality" is that the truly "spiritual" man is the person who is sort of "non-physical," who doesn't get involved in "earthly" things, who doesn't work very much or think very hard, and who spends most of his time meditating about how he'd rather be in heaven. As long as he's on earth, though, he has one main duty in life: Get stepped on for Jesus. The "spiritual" man, in this view, is a wimp. A Loser. But at least he's a Good Loser.
— David H. Chilton, Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion
No cross, no Christian
— Daniel Deutschlander
If the Gospel of Judas found in Codex Tchacos can be convincingly identified as being a Coptic translation of the original Greek Gospel of Judas that Bishop Ireneaus mentioned around A.D. 180 in his book, "Against Heresies," it will be an important step in the study of ancient gnosticism. We would have for the first time the chance to trace back the history of Sethian gnosticism to before the time of Irenaeus. This would be a significant gain in our knowledge of early Christianity.
— Gregor Wurst, The Gospel of Judas
I think we should stop treating ["God works in mysterious ways"] as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda that it is. A positive response might be, "Oh good! I love a mystery. Let's see if we can solve this one, too. Do you have any ideas?
— Daniel C. Dennett, Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking
The reality is that all God has to do is reveal himself to you,and you'll gladly join the mission in service to his kingdom. He doesn't force the issue; he just has to reveal himself as is: mighty,wondrous, gracious, loving, and radically saving. No man goes back to saltine crackers when he's had fillet mignon.
— Matt      Chandler, The Explicit Gospel
His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God's knowledge has no change or variation.
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God
We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins -- they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day -- of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars -- neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience -- and for them all, man is indebted to man.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
... the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord.
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God
All discourses and disciplines proceed from commitments and beliefs that are ultimately religious in nature. No scientific discourse (whether natural science or social science) simply discloses to us the facts of reality to which theology must submit; rather, every discourse is, in some sense, religious. The playing field has been leveled. Theology is most persistently postmodern when it rejects a lingering correlational false humility and instead speaks unapologetically from the the primacy of Christian revelation and the church's confessional language.
— James K.A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian. I am still in too much of a hurry. But if the work I have done in theology is of any use, it is because of what I learned on the job, that is, you can lay only one brick at a time.
— Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir
If I have so far argued that Foucault is a kind of closet liberal and thus deeply modern, I need to be equally critical of evangelical (and especially American) Christianity's modernity and its appropriation of Enlightenment notions of the autonomous self. Indeed, many otherwise orthodox Christians, who recoil at the notion of theological liberalism, have unwittingly adopted notions of freedom and autonomy that are liberal to the core. Averse to hierarchies and control, contemporary evangelicalism thrives on autonomy: the autonomy of the nondenominational church, at a macrocosmic level, and the autonomy of the individual Christian, at the microcosmic level. And it does not seem to me that the emerging church has changed much on this score; indeed, some elements of emergent spirituality are intensifications of this affirmation of autonomy and a laissez-faire attitude with respect to institutions.
— James K.A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
For truly barren is profane education, which is always in labor but never gives birth. For what fruit worthy of such pangs does philosophy show for being so long in labor? Do not all who are full of wind and never come to term miscarry before they come to the light of the knowledge of God, although they could as well become men if they were not altogether hidden in the womb of barren wisdom?
— Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses
Like the Church the individual Christian will not be able to escape the deep ambiguities of this-wordly existence whether in its cultural, social, political or other aspects, and he too will inevitably be a mixture of good and evil, with a compromised life, so that he can only live eschatologically in the judgment and mercy of God, putting off the old man and putting on Christ anew each day, always aware that even when he has done all that it is his duty to do he remains an unprofitable servant, but summoned to look away from himself to Christ, remembering that he is dead through the cross of Christ but alive and risen in Him. His true being is hid with Christ in God.The whole focus of his vision and the whole perspective of his life in Christ’s name will be directed to the unveiling of that reality of his new being at the parousia, but meantime he lives day by day out of the Word and Sacraments. As one baptized into Christ he is told by God’s Word that his sins are already forgiven and forgotten by God, that he has been justified once for all, and that he does not belong to himself but to Christ who loved him and gave Himself for him. As one summoned to the Holy Table he is commanded by the Word of God to live only in such a way that he feeds upon Christ, not in such a way that he feeds upon his own activities or lives out of his own capital of alleged spirituality. He lives from week to week, by drawing his life and strength from the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, nourished by the body and blood of Christ, and in the strength of that communion he must live and work until Christ comes again. As often as he partakes of the Eucharist he partakes of the self-consecration of Jesus Christ who sanctified Himself for our sakes that we might be sanctified in reality and be presented to the Father as those whom He has redeemed and perfected (or consecrated) together with Himself in one. Here He is called to lift up his heart to the ascended Lord, and to look forward to the day when the full reality of his new being in Christ will be unveiled, making Scripture and Sacrament no longer necessary.
— Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time, And Resurrection
Could your god and this infernal be called enemies, then?""It is more complicated than that. God knew what was going to happen, of course. The divine has a plan for the infernal. Because all is of God and nothing of God can truly be destroyed, the infernal must instead be transmuted. It must realise its error, comprehend the illogicality of its existence, and choose to become part of the divine. When all is converted, the erroneous potential will no longer exist. Perfection will be achieved. We are all subjects, substances, in this greatest alchemy, the Great Work of God.
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
Think of a potter taking a misshapen bowl from his wheel and pounding it back into the tub of clay. A soul suffers while it is being pounded in this way, and suffers until it ceases to be. You are pounded down, and that which was you gets into something else. God tries again, and tries until the Work is complete. Meanwhile you, my son, are long gone
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
Peruse all the sermons of Jesus and you will be sure to find parables, and sometimes allegory. What you will always find, however, is something of keeping our hearts in order.
— Jerome Strong, Spiritual Musings I: A Theological Interpretation of Life
It occurs to me that my thinking has been faulty: we do not feel God's absence. We feel the absence of all that is lost to God, that which has set itself apart and refuses to return, believing itself to be in exile.
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
Theology isn't what drove them to their...theology." author writes on dealing with the embittering experience of those who protect a wounded place with abstract arguments.
— Andy Stanley, Enemies of the Heart: Breaking Free from the Four Emotions That Control You
It would behoove you to have your thesis finely tuned and the logical arguments utilized in support of it tightly woven into a credible, and creatively persuasive tapestry.
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
We should consider that the brightness of the Divine countenance, which even an apostle declares to be inaccessible, (1Ti 6: 16) is a kind of labyrinth — a labyrinth to us inextricable, if the Word do not serve us as a thread to guide our path; and that it is better to limp in the way, than run with the greatest swiftness out of it.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
We are fools, not by our religious beliefs,however by what we are lead to believe by those who control what information we receive
— Kloby
In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt... In religious terms, this is simply a matter of accepting life, and everything in life as a gift, and clinging to none of it, as far as you are able. You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to share things with others without bothering too much about how they like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept it, if they need it. And if they don’t need it, why should they accept it? That is their business. Let me accept what is mine and give them all their share, and go my way.
— Thomas Merton, A Thomas Merton Reader
Of Course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did, He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is)... Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.
— C.S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis
If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.
— Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — ie., none to speak of
— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
The search for God begins at the point of need.
— Catherine Marshall, Something More : In Search of a Deeper Faith
When they realized they were in the desert, they built a religion to worship thirstiness.
— Zach Weinersmith
[E]very heresy is due to an overemphasis upon some truth, without allowing other truths to qualify and balance it.
— John R.W. Stott
When Millennials face turmoil, they don’t just need answers from God, they need God.
— David Kinnaman
Our true wisdom is to embrace with meek docility, and without reservation, whatever the holy scriptures have delivered.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
Humor is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
If what they say is right we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.
— Nevil Shute, On the Beach
A theology that endangers life rather than "giving life" is one that cannot accept the title of being adequately Christian.
— Michael Joseph Brown
It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain.
— Hezekiah Butterworth, The Story of the Hymns and Tunes
I am not aligned in my thinking with Calvinism, neither am I aligned in my thinking with Arminianism. I have proposed a more 'Wholeistic' theology encompassing the 'both/and' in the context Objective Truth & Reality". ~R. Alan Woods [2012]
— R. Alan Woods
God structures his authority based on how he operates internally—that is, how each member of the trinity sees and interacts with each other. God never asks us to function in our obedience outside his personal examples.
— Reid A. Ashbaucher, Made in the Image of God: Understanding the Nature of God and Mankind in a Changing World
Behold divinity divine enough to abandon divinity. Behold majesty secure enough to proceed un-majestically. Behold strength strong enough to become weakness, goodness good enough to be unmindful of its reputation. Behold love plenteous enough to give and take not again.
— Paul Ramsey
The more important point is that Reality is much more 'nuanced' that we may imagine. Operationally co-existent economies make for a much better fit into what we now know about our material universe per quantum physics, et al. This is after all His creation and He is the Rational One. Reason and Faith are not antithetical, but rather synergistic.
— R. Alan Woods
One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He hasabsorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; (2) He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
— C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
But in reading all of the passages in which Jesus uses the word "hell," what is so striking is that people believing the right or wrong things isn't his point. He's often not talking about "beliefs" as we think of them--he's talking about anger and lust and indifference. He's talking about the state of his listeners' hearts, about how they conduct themselves, how they interact with their neighbors, about the kind of effect they have on the world.
— Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us.
— George MacDonald
Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.
— Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God
Theology starts with a crisis, the very crisis of reality itself. The crisis is the fact that you live, that you have a life to live. … The crisis is the very mystery of our existence and the yearning for there to be some kind of meaning to it.
— Andrew Root
Immortal beings have been compared to stars, these are existences that linger on long after the death of the thing itself.
— Zeena Schreck