c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I am the true God; I am the living God, the eternal King. I am the Most High over all the earth; I am exalted far above all gods. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of my throne; love and faithfulness go before me. My plans stand firm forever, the purposes of my heart through all generations. The heavens proclaim my righteousness, and all the peoples see my glory.
— Zhang  Yun, Understand God's Word - Walk in the Truth
The Church expected the Second Coming of Christ immediately. The converts had known a first coming. And then? And then! That was the trouble — the then. He had come, and they adored and believed, they communicated and practiced, and waited. The then lasted, and there seemed to be no farther equivalent Now. Time became the individual and catholic problem. The Church had to become as universal and as durable — as time.
— Charles Williams
I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols. Keep yourselves from idols. Do not follow other gods to serve and worship them; do not provoke me to anger with what your hands have made. For I am a consuming fire, a jealous God.
— Zhang  Yun, Understand God's Word - Walk in the Truth
Herein lies the great difference between divine weakness and human weakness, the wounds of Christ and the wounds of man. Two human weaknesses only intensify each other. But human weakness plus Christ's weakness equals a supernatural strength.
— Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
But was you not afraid, good sir, when you see him come with his club?""It is my duty," said he, "to distrust mine own ability, that I may have reliance on him that is stronger than all".
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress
God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness - and LOVE; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties - if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to Heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
— A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
The key to understnading masculinity is Jesus Christ. Jesus was tough with religious blockheads, false teachers, the proud, and bullies. Jesus was tender with women, children, and those who were suffering or humble. Additionally, Jesus took responsability for Himself. He worked a jon for the first thirty years of His life, swinging a hammer as a carpenter. He also took responsability for us on the cross, where He substituted Himself and died in our place for our sins. My sins are my fault, not Jesus'fault, but Jesus has made them His responsability. This is the essence of the gospel, the "good news". If you understand this, it will change how you view masculinity.
— Mark Driscoll, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together
He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev. 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always has the best information on everything and certainly also on the things that matter most in human life. Let us now hear his teachings on who has the good life, on who is among the truly blessed.
— Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
Today someone asked me if that old stereotype about hot-headed Italians is true. I answered this way: About 2,000 years ago, there was a guy running around hollering about peace & love ... and we nailed his ass to a cross! (Hope that answers your fuckin' question!)
— Quentin R. Bufogle
Will Jehovah go down and be perfect? Not even one tiny sin? Think about that, Ammon. Is it possible? He will be spit upon and reviled, mocked, and hated by far lesser men, and yet he will never, not once, have an uncharitable thought, not a single pang of regret or ounce of self-pity. He will be hated and beaten, like some mongrel dog, while lesser men pass their judgment - and you believe he will never, not once, feel any anger or wish for revenge? Remember, it won't be good enough that he do the right thing. He can't even feel the wrong way, for that too is a sin. He must have perfect control over his body, his will, and his mind. He can't experience a moment of selfish anger or miss a single opportunity to serve. He can't entertain one self-serving notion, unkind thought, or harsh word! Not even one sin! What can do that, I ask?
— Chris Stewart
To take Christ into our well-ordered, well-kept lives is in many ways to ask for trouble, for he will not leave well enough alone.
— Ronnie McBrayer, Leaving Religion, Following Jesus
I have tried to understand what crucifixion must feel like. I just know that the pain must be beyond what I have ever experienced. I respect, love, and trust the One who endured all this when He didn't have to. I understand Jesus with my heart, and the rest of the world can think of Him as it will.
— Marina Nemat, After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed
Like some translucen latterday Cassandra, the prophetess of doom, (Heila the Comptesse von Westarp, the former secretary of the Thule Gesellschaff) rose up from the bosom of the limp and slumbering medium (Dr. Nemirovitch-Dantchanko) to give a warning that the man who was even now preparing to assume the leadership of Thule would prove himself to be a false prophet. Assuming total power over the nation, he would be responsible one day for reducing the whole of Germany to rubble and its people to a defeat and moreal degradation hitherto unknown to history.
— Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny
It makes a world of difference to know that God loved you enough to send His only begotten Son to suffer and die for you. Suddenly our lives and sufferings aren't meanigless accident, but part of God's loving plan for us. And our acceptance of that plan becomes our own loving response. It is the difference between being in love and living a dreary existence!
— Amadeus, The Truth Is Out There Brendan & Erc in Exile Volume 1
Being that the *historical* Jesus was of pure Hebraic descent- lineage of Eber- He was not an Arab or of Arabic descent, therefore He was not dark skinned as most Israeli's are not."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries
In other words, Hitler's soul life was not mature enough at that moment to maintain an awareness of himself and his surroundings when this alien entity entered him. During the following six months during a series of irregular meetings and discussions with Hitler, Walter Stein was to witness a maturing soul development in this enigmatic character through which he became more and more a conscious and responsive tool of the world-shattering purposes of the demonic Spirit which overshadowed him. 'I move like a sleep-walker where Providence dictates,' said Adolf Hitler at a press interview.
— Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny
It was all in His hands now - as it had always been.
— Louis Zamperini, Devil at My Heels
The only cross in all of history that was turned into an altar was the cross on which Jesus Christ died. It was a Roman cross. They nailed Him on it, and God, in His majesty and mystery, turned it into an altar. The Lamb who was dying in the mystery and wonder of God was turned into the Priest who offered Himself. No one else was a worthy offering.
— A.W. Tozer, Preparing for Jesus' Return: Daily Live the Blessed Hope
The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is Christ. Each has awaited new partners who will pick them up in a kind of second and adulterous union. Communism comes along and picks up the meaningless Cross; Western post-Christian civilization chooses the unscarred Christ.Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings.The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, feminized, colourless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:16-17)
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version
Part of what we pick up in looking at Jesus in the gospel is a way of viewing the whole world. That worldview informs all our values and deeply shapes our thinking and decision-making. Another part of what we absorb is greater confidence in Jesus' counsel and his promises. This has its own powerful effect on what we fear and desire and choose. Another part of what we take up from beholding the glory of Christ is greater delight in his fellowship and deeper longing to see him in heaven. This has its own liberating effect from the temptations of this world. All these have their own peculiar way of changing us into the likeness of Christ. Therefore, we should not think that pursuing likeness to Christ has no other components than just looking at Jesus. Looking at Jesus produces holiness along many different paths.
— John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself
Those in the West who have adopted Christ as their own should remember that he was an Oriental. Love and sympathy for Jesus should be expanded into love and sympathy for all Orientals, and for all the world.
— Paramahansa Yogananda
The mysterious, invisible authority of the divine child over human hearts is more solidly grounded then the visible and resplendent power of earthly rulers. Ultimately all authority on earth must serve only the authority of Jesus Christ over humankind.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
Good works" are those works that have their origin in Jesus Christ--whose activity is released through your body, presented to Him as a living sacrifice by a faith that expresses total dependence, as opposed to the Adamic independence (Rom. 12:1, 2).
— W. Ian Thomas
Altogether forty-five Emperors had claimed the Spear of Destiny as their possession between the coronation in Rome of Charlemagne and the fall of the old German Empire exactly a thousand years later. And what a pagentry it was! THe Spear had passed like the very finger of destiny through the millenium forever creating new patterns of fate which had again and again changed the entire history of Europe. ... According to the legend associated with the Spear of Longinus, the claimant to this talisman of power has a choice between the service of two opposing Spirits in the fulfilment of his world historic aims -- a Good and an Evil Spirit.
— Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny
At heart men are antagonistic to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is not antagonism to creeds or points of view, but antagonism encountered for My sake. Many of us awaken antagonism by our way of stating things; we have to distinguish between being persecuted for some notion of our own and being persecuted “for My sake.
— Oswald Chambers, The Highest Good/The Shadow of an Agony
The picture of love and truth together is in Jesus. The challenge is to resist the temptation to think in terms of a mixture or recipe: 50% love and 50% truth. The historic creeds affirm Jesus as fully God AND fully human, and likewise with love and truth – Jesus is fully truth and fully love; any less and He ceases to be fully God, and for this reason love and truth must not be separated...
— Michael M. Rose, Becoming Love. Avoiding Common Forms of Christian Insanity
Father, I serve the Messiah, the Christ. Not any Caesar. His kingdom is not of this world, and no man need fight for it. All empires will pass away, but Christ lives. He is love and peace, and his kingdom will last forever.
— David Holdsworth
This figure upon the Cross is not a MVD agent or a Gestapo inquisitor, but a Divine Physician, Who only asks that we bring our wounds to Him in order that He may heal them. If our sins be as scarlet, they shall be washed white as snow, and if they be as red as crimson, they shall be made white as wool. Was it not He Who told us, “I say to you, that even so there shall be more joy in Heaven upon one sinner that doth penance than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Luke 15:7)? In the story of the prodigal, did He not describe the Father as saying, “Let us eat and make merry: because this my son was dead and is come to life again; was lost and is found” (Luke 15:23, 24)? Why is there more joy in Heaven for the repentant sinner than for the righteous? Because God’s attitude is not judgment but love. In judgment, one is not as joyful after doing wrong as before; but in love, there is joy because the danger and worry of losing that soul is past. He who is sick is loved more than he who is well, because he needs it more. Some will feign sickness to solicit love and pretend wounds that the beloved may bind them.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop
In his temptation of Jesus, Satan quoted Scripture, and he didn't remember, misquote anything. God wants his children to eat bread, not to starve before stones. God will protect his anointed one with the angels of heaven. God will give his Messiah all the kingdoms of the earth. All this is true. What is satanic about all of this, though, is that Satan wanted our Lord to grasp these things apart from the cross and the empty tomb.
— Russell D. Moore
To those who receive [Jesus], that is not only to believe in His existence but to believe that He brings life through salvation by His death and resurrection, God promises the right to become His own children.
— Matthew J. Cochran
Theologically, the demand for “circumcision” can take many forms, even today. It appears whenever one thinks along these lines: “Faith in Christ is fine as far as it goes, but your relation to God is not really right and your salvation not adequate unless…” It does not matter how the sentence is completed. Whenever such fine print is introduced to qualify trust/faith, there is “circumcision,” and Paul’s defense of the adequacy of trust/faith can come into its own again. The Galatian situation is never far; in fact, it is all too familiar.
— Leander E. Keck, Paul and His Letters
Not only were the Jews expecting the birth of a Great King, a Wise Man and a Saviour, but Plato and Socrates also spoke of the Logos and of the Universal Wise Man 'yet to come'. Confucius spoke of 'the Saint'; the Sibyls, of a 'Universal King'; the Greek dramatist, of a saviour and redeemer to unloose man from the 'primal eldest curse'. All these were on the Gentile side of the expectation. What separates Christ from all men is that first He was expected; even the Gentiles had a longing for a deliverer, or redeemer. This fact alone distinguishes Him from all other religious leaders.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
And Castle nodded sagely. 'So this is a picture of the meaninglessness of it all! I couldn't agree 
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat's Cradle
He recounted how, after the last of Charlemagne's forty-seven victorious campaigns, when he was returning from Saxony, a comet flashed across the sky and the Emperor's horse shied and threw him to the ground. The great Frankish Emperor had fallen so violently that his sword belt had been torn off him and the Spear, which he was clasping in his left hand, had been hurled some twenty feet away from him. At the same time there were earth tremors in the Royal Palace at Aachen, and the word "Princeps" had mysteriously faded from the red ochre inscription high up on a central beam in the Cathedral, which had formerly read 'Karolus Princeps.' Charlemagne himself had taken little notice of these portents, which his courtiers had taken to be a prophecy of his imminent death. In Einhard's own words: 'He refused to admit that any of these events could have any connection ith his own personal affairs.' Yet the 70-year-old Emperor drew up his last will and testament just in case these portents were correct. And they were!
— Trevor Ravenscroft, The Spear of Destiny
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him
— John Piper
Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.
— John Piper, God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself
It is better to lose your life than to waste it.
— John Piper
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
— John Piper
Fight for us, O God, that we not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity.
— John Piper
In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out." - Mere Christianity
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Do you feel loved by God because you believe he makes much of you, or because you believe he frees you and empowers you to enjoy making much of him?
— John Piper
Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved… Of all powers he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
One man's pornography is another man's theology.
— Clive Barker
Swamp Thing, in Hell: "Demon...How...could God...allow such a place?Etrigan: Think you God built this place, wishing man ill and not lusts uncontrolled or swords unsheathed?Not God, my friend. The truth's more hideous still: These halls were carved by men while yet they breathed.God is no parent or policeman grim dispensing treats or punishments to all.Each soul climbs or descends by its own whim. He mourns, but He cannot prevent their fall.We suffer as we choose. Nothing's amiss. All torments are deserved...
— Alan Moore
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.
— Stanley Hauerwas
Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.
— Reinhold Niebuhr, Children of Light and the Children of Darkness
It was not the Fall of Adam, therefore, that set God’s agenda; it was the decision to share the great dance with us through Jesus. Adam’s plunge certainly threatened God’s dreams for us, but that threat had been anticipated and already strategically overcome in the predestination of the incarnation. Jesus Christ did not become human to fix the fall; he became human to accomplish the eternal purpose of our adoption, and in order to bring our adoption to pass, the Fall had to be called to a halt and undone….Jesus is not a footnote to Adam and his Fall; the Fall, and indeed creation itself, is a footnote to the purpose of God in Jesus Christ.
— C. Baxter Kruger, Jesus and the Undoing of Adam
Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? or to whom should I cry, save Thee? Lord, cleanse me from my secret faults, and spare Thy servant from the power of the enemy. I believe, and therefore do I speak.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees the world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-half our great theological and metaphysical problems-are like that.
— C.S. Lewis
I know the theological answers, but do my blood and my pulse?
— Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Take the first A out of Abraham and put it at the end. You get Brahama. There’s the ancient connection right there.
— Ashwin Sanghi
Theology is never any help
—  it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose.
— John Piper
Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church? 
— John Calvin
Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement! God wills to be displayed and known and loved and cherished and worshiped.
— John Piper
How easy it is to read the Scriptures and give a kind of nominal assent to the truth and yet never to appropriate what it tells us!
— D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures
Death was far more certain than God.
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.
— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.
— C.S. Lewis, On the Incarnation
In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.
— Karl Barth
Trying to figure out God is like trying to catch a fish in the Pacific Ocean with an inch of dental floss.
— Matt      Chandler, The Explicit Gospel
Learning to think rigorously, so as to act rightly and to serve humanity better.
— John Paul II
Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Conformity is deformity
— Sharon Desruisseaux
Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Whether we admit it or not, as people of faith, we sift our theology through Scripture, Church history and tradition, our reason, and our own experience. Most Christians, even the most committed of the sola scriptura crowd, use these four pillars—at varying degrees of importance and strength—to figure out the ways of God in our world and what it means here and now for our walking-around lives. And taking this a bit further into postmodern territory, we can also admit that we are relying on our own imperfect and subjective interpretations of those pillars, too.
— Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women
This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.
— Karl Barth, The Humanity of God
As sinners we are like addicts - addicted to ourselves and our own projects. The theology of glory simply seeks to give those projects eternal legitimacy. The remedy for the theology of glory, therefore, cannot be encouragement and positive thinking, but rather the end of the addictive desire. Luther says it directly: "The remedy for curing desire does not lie in satisfying it, but in extinguishing it." So we are back to the cross, the radical intervention, end of the life of the old and the beginning of the new. Since the theology of glory is like addiction and not abstract doctrine, it is a temptation over which we have no control in and of ourselves, and from which we must be saved. As with the addict, mere exhortation and optimistic encouragement will do no good. It may be intended to build up character and self-esteem, but when the addict realizes the impossibility of quitting, self-esteem degenerates all the more. The alcoholic will only take to drinking in secret, trying to put on the facade of sobriety. As theologians of glory we do much the same. We put on a facade of religious propriety and piety and try to hide or explain away or coddle our sins.... As with the addict there has to be an intervention, an act from without. In treatment of alcoholics some would speak of the necessity of 'bottoming out,' reaching the absolute bottom where one can no longer escape the need for help. Then it is finally evident that the desire can never be satisfied, but must be extinguished. In matters of faith, the preaching of the cross is analogous to that intervention. It is an act of God, entirely from without. It does not come to feed the religious desires of the Old Adam and Eve but to extinguish them. They are crucified with Christ to be made new.
— Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518
In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue.
— Francis A. Schaeffer
Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.
— Maria Mitchell
If I speak in the tongues of Reformers and of professional theologians, and I have not personal faith in Christ, my theology is nothing but the noisy beating of a snare drum. And if I have analytic powers and the gift of creating coherent conceptual systems of theology, so as to remove liberal objections, and have not personal hope in God, I am nothing. And if I give myself to resolving the debate between supra and infralapsarianism, and to defending inerrancy, and to learning the Westminster Catechism, yea, even the larger one, so as to recite it by heart backwards and forwards, and have not love, I have gained nothing.
— Kevin J. Vanhoozer
Forget everything you ordinarily associate with religious study. Strip away all the reverence and the awe and the art and the philosophy of it. Treat the subject coldly. Imagine yourself to be a theologist, but a special kind of theologist, one who studies gods the way an entomologist studies insects. Take as your dataset the entirety of world mythology and treat it as a collection of field observations and statistics pertaining to a hypothetical species: the god. Proceed from there.
— Lev Grossman, The Magician King
For you, my darlings, freedom to do what you like is the discovery of how unlikable what you like to do makes you. Not that that stops you doing what you like, since you like doing what you like more than you like liking what you do...[Lucifer]
— Glen Duncan
Christianity is realistic because it says that if there is no truth, there is also no hope; and there can be no truth if there is no adequate base. It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It leaves absolutely no room for a romantic answer.
— Francis A. Schaeffer
I whispered to Dad during Rosh Hashanah services, "Do you believe in God?" "Not really," he said. "No.""Then why do we come here?"He sucked thoughfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. "I've been wrong before," he said.And that pretty much summed up what theology there was to find in the Foxman home.
— Jonathan Tropper
If God made everything, did He make the Devil?' This is the kind of embarrassing question which any child can ask before breakfast, and for which no neat and handy formula is provided in the Parents' Manual…Later in life, however, the problem of time and the problem of evil become desperately urgent, and it is useless to tell us to run away and play and that we shall understand when we are older. The world has grown hoary, and the questions are still unanswered.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
Well, first I would ask them if they had read the Bible; then I would ask them if they had understood it.
— Jürgen Moltmann
To so many people, the Lord is in danger of being no more than a patron saint of our systematic theology instead of the Christ Who is our life.
— W. Ian Thomas
Theology, like fiction, is largely autobiographical.
— Frederick Buechner
Without the infinite personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make systems. In today's speech we would call them gameplans. A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it.
— Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
At the cross, Jesus subjects himself to disability, and his resurrected body continues to bear his scars as a sign of God's solidarity with humanity.
— Thomas E. Reynolds
If you do not love, you will not be alive; if you love effectively, you will be killed.
— Herbert McCabe, Faith Within Reason
A free theologian works in communication with other theologians...He waits for them and asks them to wait for him. Our sadly lacking yet indispensable theological co-operation depends directly or indirectly on whether or not we are wiling to wait for one another, perhaps lamenting, yet smiling with tears in our eyes.
— Karl Barth, The Humanity of God
Joy isn't grounded in our circumstances
—  it is grounded in the unchanging character of God.
If we are to be biblical, then, the issue is not whether we should have a doctrine of predestination or not, but what kind we should embrace.
— R.C. Sproul
She knew that it was better to have a dream and pay a price for it than to be lukewarm. - regarding St. Teresa of Avila
— Mark Salzman
The theology of the cross is not a cerebral thing; it profoundly affects our Christian experience and existence, making demands upon our whole lives and turning theology into something which controls not just our thoughts, but the very way in which we experience the world around and taste the blessing and fellowship of God himself. pp.48-49
— Carl R. Trueman, Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Setting the stage for the Tower of Babel, the author says that, while humanity had a mission to reflect God, it had been distracted by its own reflection and was both fascinated and fearful of what it saw.
— N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man?
— Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality
...we can never attain a maximum love of God with only a minimum knowledge of God
— Frank Sheed
In contrast, the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God (a distinction that fundamentalism is unable to maintain).
— Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church
I might be tempted to make to Christendom a proposal different from that of the Bible society. Let us collect all the New Testaments we have, let us bring them out to an open square or up to the summit of a mountain, and while we all kneel let one man speak to God thus: 'Take this book back again; we men, such as we now are, are not fit to go in for this sort of thing, it only makes us unhappy,' This is my proposal, that like those inhabitants in Gerasa we beseech Christ to depart from our borders. This would be an honest and human way of talking -- rather different from the disgusting hypocritical priestly fudge...
— Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon Christendom
I sometimes find, especially among my peers, that authenticity is not a…means of growing in holiness, but a convenient cover for endless introspection, doubt, uncertainty, anger, and worldliness. So that if other Christians seem pure, assured, and happy we despise them for being inauthentic.Granted, the church shouldn’t be happy-clappy naive about life’s struggles. Plenty of psalms show us godly ways to be real with our negative emotions. But the church should not apologize for preaching a confident Christ and exhorting us to trust Him in all things. Church is not meant to foster an existential crisis of faith every week
— Kevin DeYoung, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion
How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God? The rule for doing this is simple but demanding. It is that we turn each Truth that we learn about God into matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.
— J.I. Packer, Knowing God
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.
— A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term.
— Carl R. Trueman
The world's theologyThe world's theology is easy to define. It is the view . . . that human beings are basically good, that no one is really lost, that belief in Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation."Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." Romans 1:22
— James Montgomery Boice
I believe that theology is facing the abyss.I must face the abyss, the abyss of existence, the abyss of mystery. (Rubem Alves, p. 189)
— Mev Puleo, The Struggle Is One: Voices and Visions of Liberation
Truly, I've learned more theology living in poor neighborhoods than in classrooms. At times I wonder if the questions of traditional theology have any meaning for the poor. And "the poor" here mean eighty percent of the population! (Ivone Gebara, p. 209)
— Mev Puleo, The Struggle Is One: Voices and Visions of Liberation
The Church expected the Second Coming of Christ immediately, and no doubt this was so in the ordinary literal sense. But it was certainly expected also in another sense. The converts in all the cities of Asia and (soon) of Europe where the small groups were founded had known, in their conversion, one way or another, a first coming of their Redeemer. And then? And then! That was the consequent task and trouble — the then. He had come, and they adored and believed, they communicated and practiced, and waited for his further exhibition of himself. The then lasted, and there seemed to be no farther equivalent Now. Time became the individual and catholic problem. The Church had to become as catholic — as universal and as durable — as time.
— Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove
early modern Christianity is often portrayed as an essentially European religion. This is regrettable because classic Christianity has its pre-European roots in cultures that are far distant from Europe and that preceded the development of early modern European identity, and some of its some of its greatest minds have been African.
— Thomas C. Oden, Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology
What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies.
— Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer's Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love
Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone-it is no such inexpensive or effortless pursuit. Nor, I would add, is it for every occasion, or every audience; neither are all its aspects open to inquiry. It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun's brightness. What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually "to be still" in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, "to judge uprightly" in theology. Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements. What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the experience and capacity of our audience. Just as excess of sound or food injures the hearing or general health, or, if you prefer, as loads that are too heavy injure those who carry them, or as excessive rain harms the soil, we too must guard against the danger that the toughness, so to speak, of our discourses may so oppress and overtax our hearers as actually to impair the powers they had before.
— Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ, The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius: St. Gregory of Nazianzus
Since the Word became flesh (John 1.14), heaven and earth remain indissolubly joined.
— Stephen S. Smalley, The Revelation to John: A Commentary on the Greek Text of the Apocalypse
The Holy Spirit is our great Teacher.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
When the Lord's request comes, will remove all other demands.
— Kamaran Ihsan Salih
…Theology, as revealed in Scripture, supplies the categories for people to understand their own experience. Theology is the standard by which people should measure their experience, not human experience the standard by which people measure theology.
— Jeremy Pierre, The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life: Connecting Christ to Human Experience
The more I learn, the less I know.
— Jeffrey Rasley, Godless-- Living a Valuable Life Beyond Beliefs
Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it’s ill talking of such questions.’ ‘Because they are too terrible, Sir?’ ‘No. Because all answers deceive.
— C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
God's nothing more than a twelve-year-old kid with an ant farm. He's always watching, but He's never gonna do anything.
— John Constantine
Hence it's funny to read in the New York Times that liberal Catholic activists are pushing for a change in Church teaching on issues relating to -- well, let's admit it, sex. Nobody is out there demanding the popes revisit the condemnation of Jansenism (don't ask), or settle the question of whether divine grace is or isn't resistable. No, journalists want to know what the Church thinks about whether one person should poke another and, if so, where, when, and how. What liberal Catholics and the journalists who love them are really asking for isfor the Church to admit that it was teaching a set of harsh, repressive errors for nineteen centuries and that now it is very, very sorry.
— John Zmirak, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism
A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Bad theology kills
— Kevin Garcia
The Incarnation of Christ raised the energy of everything. And when Hopkins placed his conviction of this into poetry, he tended to mention electricity, lightening, fire, flash, flame. He wrote in his late, great poem, "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the comfort of the Resurrection": 'In a flash, at a trumpet crash, / I am all at once what Christ is, / since he was what I am and / This jack, joke, poor potsherd, / patch matchwood, immortal diamond, / Is immortal diamond.
— Margaret R. Ellsberg, The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selections from His Poems, Letters, Journals, and Spiritual Writings
Theology: (15) Somebody made everything for some reason.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., The Sirens of Titan
Paul himself spent years of his life on the road, carrying (presumably on pack animals) his tent, clothing and tools - not many scrolls, if any. He carried the Bible safely tucked away in his head, where it belongs. As an apostle, he often supported himself by plying his trade. He was busy, traveling, working with his hands, winning people for Christ, shepherding or coping with his converts, responding to questions and problems. And he was very human; he knew not only fighting without but also fears within (2 Cor 7:5). Paul the completely confident academic and systematic theologian - sitting at his desk, studying the Bible, working out a system, perfect and consistent in all its parts, unchanging over a period of thirty years, no matter how many new experiences he and his churches had - is an almost inhuman character, either a thinking machine or a fourth person of the Trinity. The real Paul knew anger, joy, depression, triumph, and anguish; he reacted, overreacted, he repented, he apologized, he flattered and cajoled, he rebuked and threatened, he argued this way and that way: he did everything he could think of in order to win some.
— E.P. Sanders
True Christianity have no business in seminary schools or theological enclave, it it the modern hood of satan where real Jesus type of Christianity is toyed with and consequently relegated to the background.
— Oluseyi Akinbami
In a few years all our restless and angry hearts will be quiet in death, but those who come after us will live in the world which our sins have blighted or which our love of right has redeemed.
— Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis
But if we decide contextually specific questions of synonymy on the basis of the total semantic range of each word, any synonymy in any context is virtually impossible.
— D A Carson
The devil does not care about the theology that a man. Knows as long as he can keep the man away from Christ
— Unknown
Church growth experts tell us that most people seeking a new church care little about its doctrines. They're mostly interested in the facilities of the church, its nursery, and opportunities for friendship. . . .The experts tell us that today's church members will switch churches at a moment's notice if they think that their personal and relational needs will be better met elsewhere--even if the doctrine taught is at best, suspect. Thus some will opt for better facilities and architecture even at the expense of jeopardizing their own soul.
— Erwin W. Lutzer, Rescuing the Gospel: The Story and Significance of the Reformation
There are many who occasionally attend church and who are trying experimentally to be Christians, yet are unable to identify well or define accurately the central truths of Christian teaching. The knowledge they have of the Christian tradition may have come chiefly through hymns. Their strong and sincere feelings are not matched with serious biblical or historical reflection on those feelings. Religious feelings are, indeed, crucial to the deeper learning of Christian truth, but they easily become superficial and narcissistic if the mind of Christ is not a mentor to natural religious impulse. The loss of center in Christian education is arguably due to a serious default of pastoral leadership; when the teaching elder does not teach, the effect is felt throughout the entire Christian congregation.
— Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry
Why shouldn't a mystical theology be possible? 'I want to touch God or become God,' I declared in my journal. All through that year I abandoned myself intermittently to these deliriums.
— Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
To merely blank the page and vaguely assume that 'religion' is the cause of all the world's problems is, on the contrary, an allegation brought about by nothing more than cognitive lethargy; it is when unburied, unpacked, and exposed but a stale conclusion and a misdirection for the one overwhelmed by centuries of sound theology, scholarly thought, and spiritual development.
— Criss Jami
But let no humble devoted follower of Jesus Christ, who truly desires to serve and glorify him, and who is willing, from the heart, to do all that God shall enable him, for the promotion of the Redeemer's kingdom;--let not him be deterred, by the representation which has been given from accepting the office, if called to it by his Christian brethren. The deeper his sense of his own unfitness, the more likely will he be to apply unceasingly and importunately for heavenly aid; and the nearer he lives to the throne of grace, the more largely will he partake of that wisdom and strength which he needs. There are, no doubt, some, as was said, who are really unqualified for this office; but in general, it may be maintained, that those who have the deepest impression of the importance and arduousness of its duties, and of their own want of adequate qualifications, are far better prepared for those duties, than such as advance to the discharge of them with unwavering, confidence and self-complacency.
— Samuel Miller, The Ruling Elder
​Man created God due to his selfish desires.
— Abhijit Naskar, The God Parasite: Revelation of Neuroscience
You will see by this that no man should be judged by another here in this life, for the good or evil he has done. Deeds may be properly judged, whether they are good or bad, but not men.
— Clifton Wolters, The Cloud of Unknowing