c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The mercy of heaven is greater than you or your sins. Let your sadness be dispersed by its glorious beams. Do not let apathy prevent you from seizing the moment for repentance. It matters not how wickedness has flourished. Divine grace can flourish still more abundantly.
— Christopher St John, The Plays of Roswitha
The Sabbath day of rest establishes the reality that God's people live by God's grace and not by their own labors.
— Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
Since, as is well know, God helps those who help themselves, presumably the Devil helps all those, and only those, who don't help themselves. Does the Devil help himself?
— Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Who better to confess to than a dying woman?
— Sara Douglass, The Crippled Angel
Tom . . . is Christ among us?' 'Yes.' Where? Why do I not see him? Why does he not come to me?' 'Because you did not love,' Neville said, hating the fact that he had to say it.
— Sara Douglass, The Crippled Angel
WE COMMENTED TO Corrie about the practicalness of the things she recalled, how her memories seemed to throw a spotlight on problems and decisions we faced here and now. "But," she said, "this is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see.
— Elizabeth Sherrill, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
You cannot end a theology class without hearing these recurrent words "maybe", "it seems to me", "perhaps", "the unique reason may be that", "my belief on this subject is that", "there are many interpretations to how", etc. All of which indicate a lack of certainty. It's not surprising in a class with the task to study the invisible god
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
The best of a human being is still a human being.
— Dr Carla Cornelius
An attempt to wrest from God the prerogatives of absolute freedom and infinity leads to the inversion of Pentecost and what is in effect a new Babel. 'Postmodernism' represents that Babel perfectly, because when each speaks a language unrelated to that of the other - when language is not the basis of the communication that shapes our being - the only outcome can be fragmentation. In that sense, postmodernism is modernity come home to roost.
— Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation, and the Culture of Modernity
For theologians groaning under the oppression of demands to justify their discipline before the bar of what is supposed to be universally valid scientific method the appeal of non-foundationalism is immense. It liberates a celebration of the rights of particularity. It enables the theologian to say that theological method must be different from other methods because it shapes its approach from the distinctive content with which it has to do - just as, indeed, other disciplines shape their approaches in the light of their distinctive content. Non-foundationalism, that is to say, is a way of advocating the autonomy of distinct intellectual disciplines.
— Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation, and the Culture of Modernity
The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.
— Dorothy L. Sayers
Faith in the Trinity rests on God's revelation of himself in the economy of salvation. We do not have access to the Trinity outside what God revealed to us by sending his own Son and giving us his Holy Spirit. This point is crucial.
— Gilles Emery, The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God
The incarnation, passion, and resurrection of the Son do not modify the Trinity. In becoming man, the Son 'enhanced human nature without diminishing the divine.' 'Even when the Word takes a body from Mary, the Trinity remains a Trinity, with neither increase nor decrease. It is forever perfect.
— Gilles Emery, The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God
Regardless of the perpetual battle between believers and atheists, for me, religion is a tool of making friends, rather than making enemies.
— Abhijit Naskar, The God Parasite: Revelation of Neuroscience
God is created by the brain and can also be destroyed by the brain. But this way ‘Love’ doesn’t exist either, because it also is the result of molecular interaction within the brain. Love is a result of complex and mind-blowing interactions between neurotransmitters like Oxytocin, Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins and the reward center of the brain. Does this mean we should downright stop loving our family or friends? Since there is no existence of actual ‘Love’, should we just deny what our heart feels for our beloved ones? Whatever the answer is, the same goes for the faith upon divine existence. Only one thing to remember – Love gives life, so should faith.
— Abhijit Naskar, The God Parasite: Revelation of Neuroscience
Whatever may be the position of science, whatever may be the position of philosophy, as long as there is such a thing as death in the world, as long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, as long as the human heart sheds a drop of tear in weakness, there shall be a faith in God and divinity.
— Abhijit Naskar, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis Towards Universal Tolerance
Leave some room in your theology for God to be bigger than you can explain
— Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Religion is not a book, it is a neurological sentiment.
— Abhijit Naskar, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis Towards Universal Tolerance
But the Lord often leaves his servants, not only to be annoyed by the violence of the wicked, but to be lacerated and destroyed; allows the good to languish in obscurity and squalid poverty, while the ungodly shine forth, as it were, among the stars; and even by withdrawing the light of his countenance does not leave them lasting joy. Wherefore, David by no means disguises the fact, that if believers fix their eyes on the present condition of the world, they will be grievously tempted to believe that with God integrity has neither favour nor reward; so much does impiety prosper and flourish, while the godly are oppressed with ignominy, poverty, contempt, and every kind of cross. The Psalmist says, "But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious of the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." At length, after a statement of the case, he concludes, "When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me: until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end," (Ps. 73:2, 3, 16, 17).
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols
...the clearer the light is, the more it blinds and darkens the pupil of the owl; and the more we look at the sun, the greater is the darkness it causes in our vision ... in the same way, when the divine light of contemplation assails the soul that is not wholly enlightened, it causes spiritual darkness within it.
— San Juan de la Cruz
If I have a theological virtue, it is curiosity or inquisitiveness.
— Jurgen Moltmann
Even if one gives up the concept of God, there are quite a few recognized immaterial things that one has to struggle with. Things such as thought, truth, logic, morality, purpose, and justice become a real problem if the universe is simply material. One could say that these things are imaginary, but then they would have to explain the immaterial construct of imagination.
— Joel Furches, Christ-Centered Apologetics: Sharing the Gospel with Evidence
What, then, are we to say about the suggestion that a hearty faith in the absolute sovereignty of God is inimical to evangelism? We are bound to say that anyone who makes this suggestion thereby shows that he has simply failed to understand what the doctrine of divine sovereignty means. Not only does it undergird evangelism, and uphold the evangelist, by creating a hope of success that could not otherwise be entertained; it also teaches us to bind together preaching and prayer; and as it makes us bold and confident before men, so it makes us humble and importunate before God.
— J.I. Packer, Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God
anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
— Anonymous
Theology is not superior to the Gospel. It exists to aid the preaching of salvation. Its business is to make the essential facts and principles of Christianity so simple and clear, so adequate and mighty, that all who preach or teach the Gospel, both ministers and laymen, can draw on its stores and deliver a complete and unclouded Christian message.
— Walter Rauschenbusch
When someone uses Philosophy as an indispensable tool for tackling Theology and knows no other way for approaching that scripture-related Science, then you must have already figured out by now that he is a gentile who is standing right before you.
— Ibrahim Ibrahim, Quotable: My Worldview
Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.
— Bertrand Russell
The individualism of the Romantic theory of interpretation attempts to abstract the individual from his historical context by presenting him with the ideal of presuppositionless understanding; a truer theory of interpretation, which does not seek to elide the historical reality of the one seeking understanding, sets the interpreter himself within tradition. What we understand when we seek to understand the writings of the past is borne to us by tradition. Understanding is an engagement with tradition, not an attempt to escape from it.
— Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology
Thus there is need of deeper reflection. Before entering into an examination of individual texts, we must direct our attention to the whole picture, the question of structure. Only in this way can a meaningful arrangement of individual elements be obtained. Is there any place at all for something like Mariology in Holy Scripture, in the overall pattern of its faith and prayer? Methodologically, one can approach this question in one of two ways, backwards or forwards, so to speak: either one can read back from the New Testament into the Old or, conversely, feel one’s way slowly from the Old Testament into the New. Ideally both ways should coincide, permeating one another, in order to produce the most exact image possible. If one begins by reading backwards or, more precisely, from the end to the beginning, it becomes obvious that the image of Mary in the New Testament is woven entirely of Old Testament threads. In this reading, two or even three major strands of tradition can be clearly distinguished which were used to express the mystery of Mary. First, the portrait of Mary includes the likeness of the great mothers of the Old Testament: Sarah and especially Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Second, into that portrait is woven the whole theology of daughter Zion, in which, above all, the prophets announced the mystery of election and covenant, the mystery of God’s love for Israel. A third strand can perhaps be identified in the Gospel of John: the figure of Eve, the “woman” par excellence, is borrowed to interpret Mary.
— Pope Benedict XVI
Theology is the study of God. The study of God is simply to be enjoyed for its own incomparable subject, the One most beautiful, most worthy to be praised. Life with God delights in its very acts of thinking, reading, praying and communing with that One most worthy to behold, pondered and studied, not for its written artifacts or social consequences but for the joy in its object.
— Thomas C. Oden, A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir
We are living a shallow, hollow Christianity and hardly realize it. Our Christianity looks nothing like the Book of Acts, and we somehow have no problem with that. It is anemic and weak compared to the apostolic glory days. We have started to rewrite ourtheology based on our lack of experience, rather than based upon the scriptures.
— John Willis Zumwalt, Passion for the Heart of God
The Marxist thus finds himself in real agreement with the Christian in those two beliefs which Christianity paradoxically demands - that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
...if you give such a creature two blows with a whip, there are, indeed, two pains: but there is no co-ordinating self which can recognise that 'I have had two pains'.
— C.S. Lewis
But Jesus’s message was designed to be a direct challenge to the wealthy and the powerful, be they the occupiers in Rome, the collaborators in the Temple, or the new moneyed class in the Greek cities of Galilee. The message was simple: the Lord God had seen the suffering of the poor and dispossessed; he had heard their cries of anguish. And he was finally going to do something about it
— Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
God is not just intensely personal. He is infinitely powerful.
— Matt      Chandler
Heed not thy feeling. Do thy work.
— George MacDonald
When the early Church recited the Apostles Creed, it was simultaneously their greatest act of rebellion, and their greatest act of submission.
— Matt      Chandler
The “romance” of a missionary is often made up of monotony and drudgery; there often is no glamour in it; it doesn’t stir a man’s spirit or blood. So don’t come out to be a missionary as an experiment; it is useless and dangerous. Only come if you feel you would rather die than not come. Don’t come if you want to make a great name or want to live long. Come if you feel there is no greater honor, after living for Christ, than to die for Him.
— C.T. Studd
My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God. I never thought it to be any very great crime to seem to be inconsistent with myself; for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it a great crime to be so inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture. God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Creation exists to be a place for the covenant that God wants to make with man. The goal of creation is the covenant, the love story of God and man.
— Pope Benedict XVI
God transcends even the undertakings of evangelical theologians.
— Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction
The importance of Man, which is the one indispensable dogma of the theologians, receives no support from a scientific view of the future of the solar system.
— Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity
Hope trusts in the promises of God. Hope seeks the action of God that brings forth a new reality. Optimism stands in the current reality, wishing to make the best of each individual experience. But hope stands knee deep in the history of this reality by yearning for the action of God to bring forth a new reality in which everything in this reality is reconciled and redeemed.
— Andrew Root, Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry
The resurrection is the promise that death will not prevail, that nothingness does not have the last word. God promises to overcome it with life... We can trust that God will overcome death because Jesus is the resurrection, because on the third day Jesus rose again, as the first of many.
— Andrew Root, Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry
The church is biblical, therefore, when it seeks to embody the words in the power of the Spirit and so become a living commentary. The church is thus not only the "people of the book" but also "the (lived) interpretation of the book.
— Kevin J. Vanhoozer
It was evangelicals' sense of rudderlessness - their desire for an authority to guide them in questions of dogma, life, and worship - that led them to rediscover liturgy and history in the first place. The irony was that in their smorgasbord approach to non-Protestant tradition, in their individualistic rejection of the rules of any one church in favor of a free run of the so-called church universal, in their repudiation of American nationalism in favor of cosmopolitanism, young evangelicals were being quintessentially evangelical and stereotypically American, doing as they pleased according to no authority but their own. The principle of sola scriptura was far clearer in theory than in practice. No matter evangelicals' faith that, with the 'illumination of the Holy Spirit,' 'Scripture could and should interpret itself,' too many illuminated believers came to different conclusions about what the Bible meant. Inerrantists who asserted their 'literal' interpretation with absolute certainty could do so only by covertly relying on modern, manmade assumptions. Other evangelicals were now searching for similar assurance in the authority of church history and the mystery of worship.
— Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism
I believe the discussion itself is divine.
— Rob Bell
To limit the ways our daughters can legitimately function as stewards/rulers further devalues the image of God in them and continues the imbalance and distortion of God's plan.
— Lisa Graham McMinn
Scripture was given to the church, and theology is a necessary work of the church, by the church, in the church, and for the church.
— Kenneth S. Kantzer
God's dialogue with us becomes truly human, since God conducts his part as man.
— Pope Benedict XVI, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life
...the whole configuration of human development needs to be reconceptualized. A lifetime ought not to be thought of in linear manner, an ascending upward gradient, or a kind of bell-shaped curve in which persons develop from one stage of helplessness as an infant through a lifetime to a final stage of helplessness in old age... In...God resides the ultimate coherence from whom each passion for understanding, each new insight, new stage, new vision of the universe, derives its ultimate intelligibility and toward which all such phenomena point.
— James E. Loder, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective
Plato utterly condemns the poets for publishing trivial, false and indeed wicked stories about the gods, such as that they fight with each other, or are overcome by emotions like grief, anger, mirth. Reluctantly, he will not allow Homer in his Republic, and he is very angry with the tragic poets for spreading unworthy ideas of the Deity.It may well be that there were inferior tragic poets who deserved Plato's strictures, but so far as concerns the tragic poets whom we know, Plato's attack is absurd. It is the attack of a severely intellectual philosopher who was also more of a poet than most poets have contrived to be; one who invented some of the profoundest and most beautiful of Greek myths. 'There is a long-standing quarrel', says Plato, 'between philosophy and poetry.' So there was, on the part of the philosophers, and most of all in Plato's own soul.
— H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks
True knowledge of God is born out of obedience.
— John Calvin
TO BE asked to minister without an informing vision of God (which is what theology is really all about), however, is like being told to make bricks without straw. What keeps people going in ministry, and what, in my experience, congregations are longing for, is an exciting and empowering vision of God, articulated in a theology that is integrated with worship, prayer, and social action.
— Alister E. McGrath
To its critics, the study of theology distracts from real life. But, at its best, theology inspires and informs precisely the committed and caring ministry.
— Alister E. McGrath
The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable.
— Karl Rahner
Go back to Socrates: "Know thyself." For Socrates, there are only two kinds of people: the wise, who know they are fools; and fools, who think they are wise. Similarly, for Christ and all the prophets, there are only two kinds of people: saints, who know they are sinners; and sinners, who think they are saints. Which are you?
— Peter Kreeft
Very small errors in our understanding of the Gospel can result in very big problems.
— C.J. Mahaney, Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing
The crux of my argument is this—we cannot truly understand what we should put on, say, or do, without looking at our behavior in relationship to Christ. In Christ, decency in behavior and dress is far larger than the particulars of modesty. By the world’s standards, modesty is a rule passed down from generation to generation which involves choosing a garment that submits to a certain standard set by a mother or community, one that constantly changes.” – Stacie Parlee-Johnson (Ch. 9, A Theology of Modesty)
— Rosalie De Rosset, Unseduced and Unshaken: The Place of Dignity in a Woman's Choices
To find the Father of all is hard. And when found, it is impossible to utter Him.
— Socrates
The West, for many centuries, has been dominated by a highly rationalistic mindset that presumes to express and explain the nature of God through words. The East has only recently begun to express its understanding of God in those ways. For the most part, Eastern Christianity has always recognized that it can only say so much about God in finite, human ways before it must go silent before the mystery of the Infinite and Unspeakable. Instead of defining ultimate reality in theological concepts, the East has relied upon its artists, musicians, and poets to proclaim what can only be understood in the heart.
— Peter Pearson, A Brush with God: An Icon Workbook
Actually, it meant a great deal: a very great deal. You don't have to believe that God exists to see that a story in which God takes on human form is a very different story from one in which God creates a messenger and tells that messenger to take on human form. The Passion of the Christ is a different movie depending on whether you think the person being eviscerated is God or just some guy. Athanasius thought that it was God who hung on a cross for the world; Arius thought that it was a created being who was not God. This is not very little; this is very big. Granted, the Creeds put it in terms of Aristotelian theories about "substance" and "essence": but there isn't much sense in complaining that technical documents are written in technical language if you are not prepared to pick up a standard work and look up what the words mean.
— Andrew Rilstone, Where Dawkins Went Wrong
English is so past,’ she said. ‘Sure, we need people who can write about what we do, but they don’t have to be English graduates. Theology graduates who don’t believe any of it – that would be useful.
— Ken MacLeod, Descent
Those who love God with their minds, even if it gives them a headache, are those whose hearts stay on fire.
— Darrell W. Johnson, Experiencing the Trinity
The formula "the Church is the Body of Christ" thus states that the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives us his body, forever remains the place where the Church is generated, where the Lord himself never ceases to found her anew; in the Eucharist the Church is most compactly herself - in all places, yet one only, just as he is one
— Pope Benedict XVI
Besides Zeus on his throne, Justice has her seat.
— Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
Stripped of its arrogance, its desire to make off with half of the patrimony and never be seen again, history belongs at the family table. If theology, the older brother, pretends not to need or notice him it will be a sign that he has forgotten, after all, who his father is.
— N.T. Wright
On one occasion, he said "The Son of man [referring to himself] must be killed, and on the 3rd day be raised to life." Peter, in particular, would have no part in such talk, and (can you believe?) he actually took Jesus aside and rebuked him, Jesus, the only begotten Son of God! How would God ever use an obstinate man like this to proclaim the gospel?
— Marty Engel
It is also possible to say precisely why. Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other man who does not know this and that. I have greater possibilities and also greater temptations. Anyone who deals with truth - as we theologians certainly do - succumbs all too easily to the psychology of the possessor. But love is the opposite of the will to possess. It is self-giving. It boasteth not itself, but humbleth itself.
— Helmut Thielicke, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians
As Plato: We become more worthy the more we bend our minds to the impersonal. We become better as we take in the universe, thinking more about the largeness that it is and laugh about the smallness that is us.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite.
— Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions
She had experimented with Wicca eight years ago, found that her spells did not produce the desired results of making her every bully bald and fat, and threw it in the corner of her soul as effete and impractical, as she had with a series of other theological outfits.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
No man that ever lived, not John Calvin himself, ever asserted either original sin, or justification by faith, in more strong, more clear and express terms, than Arminius has done.
— John Wesley
We can no more assist the Holy Spirit in the quickening of our souls to spiritual life than Lazarus could help Jesus raise him from the dead.
— R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
The repentance we are called to is about choosing one audience over another.
— Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
THESE ARE THE REASONS, THEN, FOR WHICH A MAN CAN BE CONFIDENT ABOUT THE FATE OF HIS SOUL – AS LONG AS IN LIFE HE HAS…DEVOTED HIMSELF TO THE PLEASURES OF AQUIRING KNOWLEDGE …WITH SELF CONTROL, AND GOODNESS, AND COURAGE, AND LIBERALITY, AND TRUTH…”SOCRATES’ LAST WORDS IN PLATO’S PHAEDO
— Dean Chavooshian
Christ is God (Rom. 9:5). Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9, 12-13; 14:5-9; 2 Cor. 4:5; 12:8-10; Phil. 2:9-11 [expressly after the Resurrection]; Col. 2:6; 1 Tim. 6:3; Titus 2:13 [where he is called God and Savior]; Heb. 1:3-14). Christ is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15), in the form of God (Phil. 2:5). The fullness of God dwells in him (Col. 1:19; 2:9). He is in God (Col. 3:3). God and Christ are often coupled together (2 Cor. 10:4-6; Col. 2:2; 1 Tim. 5:21; 2 Tim. 4:1; Heb. 13:20), as is the Lord Jesus Christ with our God and Father (Rom. 15:5-7, 8; 1 Cor. 8:6;2 2 Cor. 1:3; 11:31; Eph. 1:3; Col. 1:3; 1 Thess. 3:11, 13; 5:23; 2 Thess. 1:5-10; 2:16; 3:5).
— Robert Letham
Christ is God (Rom. 9:5). Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9, 12-13; 14:5-9; 2 Cor. 4:5; 12:8-10; Phil. 2:9-11 [expressly after the Resurrection]; Col. 2:6; 1 Tim. 6:3; Titus 2:13 [where he is called God and Savior]; Heb. 1:3-14). Christ is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15), in the form of God (Phil. 2:5). The fullness of God dwells in him (Col. 1:19; 2:9). He is in God (Col. 3:3). God and Christ are often coupled together (2 Cor. 10:4-6; Col. 2:2; 1 Tim. 5:21; 2 Tim. 4:1; Heb. 13:20), as is the Lord Jesus Christ with our God and Father (Rom. 15:5-7, 8; 1 Cor. 8:6;2 2 Cor. 1:3; 11:31; Eph. 1:3; Col. 1:3; 1 Thess.3:11, 13; 5:23; 2 Thess. 1:5-10; 2:16; 3:5).
— Robert Letham
All theology is a kind of birthdayEach one who is born Comes into the world as a questionFor which old answersAre not sufficient…
— Thomas Merton
And so they easily suppose that this truce, owing to helplessness, is victory and that they have convinced the other man. But in fact, instead of winning him over, they have merely applied a kind of shock therapy — only it was never 'therapy.' They have smothered the first little flame of a man’s own spiritual life and a first shy question with the fire extinguisher of their erudition. By such performances a person can really be smothered and strangled!
— Helmut Thielicke, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians
It is a mistake for anyone who is just in this stage to appear before a church as a teacher. He has outgrown the naivete with which in young people’s work he might by all means have taken this part. He has not yet come to that maturity which would permit him to absorb into his own life and reproduce out of the freshness of his own personal faith the things which he imagines intellectually and which are accessible to him through reflection. We must have patience here and be able to wait. For the reasons I have mentioned I do not tolerate sermons by first-semester young theological students swaddled in their gowns. One ought to be able to keep still. During the period when the voice is changing we do not sing, and during this formative period in the life of the theological student he does not preach.
— Helmut Thielicke, A Little Exercise for Young Theologians
In principle, to be sure, the Reformation idea of the universal priesthood of all believers meant that not only the clergy but also the laity, not only the theologian but also the magistrate, had the capacity to read, understand, and apply the teachings of the Bible. Yet one of the contributions of the sacred philology of the biblical humanists to the Reformation was an insistence that, in practice, often contradicted the notion of the universal priesthood: the Bible had to be understood on the basis of the authentic original text, written in Hebrew and Greek which, most of the time, only clergy and theologians could comprehend properly. Thus the scholarly authority of the Reformation clergy replaced the priestly authority of the medieval clergy.
— Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture
Yet opponents should not herald the demise of evangelicalism. Although much of popular evangelicalism cannot intellectually meet the analyses that call it into question as a viable explanation for human origins and destiny, for most evangelicals it does not need to. Because of the transition from comprehending their religion as a set of doctrines to conceptualizing their religion as an emotional relationship with God, evangelicals have actually made their religion more resilient to intellectual challenges. Calling into question evangelicalism's intellectual foundation ultimately does not undermine the religion because for many evangelicals their adherence was never about those foundations anyway. Evangelicalism becomes true because it FEELS true. Modern evangelicalism has largely transitioned to a new form of truth, one based not on intellectual assent to propositions but on emotional connections.
— Todd M. Brenneman, Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism
Except they kept asking me questions like 'What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?' Or 'Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?' Completely out of left field!"They didn't want to hear me tell them how much Pope Benedict supported the Vatican Observatory and its scientific work. So, finally, frustrated that they weren't getting the story they wanted out of me, one of them asked, 'Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?'"What did you answer?""Only if she asks!""I love it! How did they react?""They all got a good laugh, which is what I intended. And then, the next day, they all ran my joke as if it were a straight story, as if I had made some sort of official Vatican pronouncement about aliens.
— Guy Consolmagno
The Divine decree is the necessary condition of the Divine foreknowledge. If God does not first decide what shall come to pass, he cannot know what will come to pass. An event must be made certain, before it can be known as a certain event. In order that a man may foreknow an act of his own will, he must first have decided to perform it.So long as he is undecided about a particular volition, he cannot foreknow this volition. Unless God had determined to create a world, he could not know that there would be one. For the world cannot create itself, and there is but one being who can create it. If therefore this being has not decided to create a world, there is no certainty that a world will come into existence ; and if there is no certainty of a world, there can be no certain foreknowledge of a world. So long as anything remains undecreed, it is contingent and fortuitous. It may or may not happen. In this state of things, there cannot be knowledge of any kind. If a man had the power to cause an eclipse of the sun, and had decided to do this, he could then foreknow that the event would occur. But if he lacks the power, or if having the power, he has not formed the purpose, he can have no knowledge of any kind respecting the imagined event. He has neither knowledge nor foreknowledge, because there is nothing to be known. Blank ignorance is the mental condition.
— Shedd
No sooner was the wound given than the remedy was provided and revealed.
— Matthew Henry
And though he had almost flunked in Greek, his thesis on 'Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt' had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical Theology.
— Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry
That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God:
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man
— Idries Shah
Though I cannot entirely agree with you in supposing that extreme study has been the cause of my late indisposition, I must yet confess that the hill of science, like that of virtue, is in some instances climbed with labour. But when we get a little way up, the lovely prospects which open the eye make infinite amends for the steepness of the ascent. In short, I am wedded to these pursuits, as a man stipulates to take his wife; viz., for better, for worse, until death us do part. My thirst for knowledge is literally inextinguishable. And if I thus drink myself into a superior world, I cannot help it.
— Augustus Toplady
Gideon conquers, the church conquers, we conquer, because faith conquers. But the victory belongs not to Gideon, the church, or ourselves, but to God. And God's victory means our defeat, our humiliation; it means God's derision and wrath at all human pretensions of might, at humans puffing themselves up and thinking they are somebodies themselves. It means the world and its shouting is silenced, that all our ideas and plans are frustrated; it means the cross. The cross over the world -- that means that human beings, even the most noble, go down to dust whether it suits them or not, and with them all the gods and idols and lords of this world. The cross of Jesus Christ --that means God's bitter mockery of all human grandeur and God's bitter suffering in all human misery, God's lordship over all the world.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Wesley's theology was, then, largely a theology of reaction. Most of his theological output had polemical overtones, and some works were devoted exclusively to that end. The direction and the intensity of the challenge determined the character and strength of his reply. When this is taken into account, there is no contradiction between his teaching on Baptism and on the Lord's Supper. The Protestant and Catholic strands in Wesley's thought are held together in both cases, but the expression of their relative importance depends on the situation which is being addressed.
— John R. Parris, John Wesley's Doctrine of the Sacraments
Every human being is, by definition, a theologian.
— Russell D. Moore
The Bible is the greatest love story ever told.
— Jordan Wells
After the evil spirit of a narrow Scholastic orthodoxy has been driven out, in the end seven much more wicked spirits return in its place.
— Pope Benedict XVI, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays to Orient Theology in Today's Debates
. . . anyone who wants to elaborate relevant liberation theology must be prepared to go into the 'examination hall' of the poor. Only after sitting on the benches of he humble will he or she be entitled to enter a school of 'higher learning.
— Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff
Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds.
— David Bentley Hart
About the time I told God that He didn't exist, I was desperate for an identity.
— Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
A big part of me needed something outside myself to tell me who I was. The thing that had been designed to tell me who I was was gone.
— Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
It is easy, out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, 'I couldn't help it; the way was set.' But think of the glory of the choice!
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn’t really there. And the definition of a theologian is he’s somebody who finds it.
— Michael Ruse
God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good—and is no sillier than any other theology.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Everything hinges on the Christ of the cross. The fact of the cross is the axiom of theological thought. It is impossible to think about the gospel if we have the slightest hesitation on this point. We must determine to carry this theme throughout all the problems of theology without exception... The essence of God can be comprehended only from the 'word of the cross.
— Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God: The First Original Theology from Japan
No one book of scripture can be understood by itself, any more than any one part of a tree or member of the body can be understood without reference to the whole of which it is a part.
— Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology
The gospel is the gospel of the cross. This means that God loves the objects of his wrath and that he, in his love, embraces men alienated from him.
— Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God: The First Original Theology from Japan
We were fortunate his brief psychic vision distracted him from what his fingertips could have told him about my face.Of course we were aware that temporary clairvoyance was a lame and unlikely explanation. The ordering of this world, however is so abstruce, so deep and complex, most explanations that people to make sense of moments of strange experience are inadequate. Our very existence as thinking creatures is an astonishment that cant be solved. Every human cell, with its thousands of protein chains, is more complex than a 747 or the largest cruise ship, in fact more complex than the two combined. All life on earth, in its extravagant variety, offers itself for study, but though we probe to ever deeper layers of its structure, the meaning eludes us.There is no end of wonders and mysteries: fireflies and music boxes, the stars that outnumber all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.
— Dean Koontz, Innocence
Not the last time in Western history, the revolutionaries armed themselves with a new religion to steel themselves for greater outrageous.
— Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest
Grace is costly because it calls us through our person to the person of Jesus Christ. And when we follow the person of Jesus Christ, when we follow his call through our person, we're sent to act for the concrete person of our neighbor in the world.
— Andrew Root, Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker: A Theological Vision for Discipleship and Life Together
No language about God will ever be fully adequate to the burning mystery which it signifies.
— Elizabeth Johnston
The living water that never runs dry,The water of life, Lord, the saviour of the world.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius's treatise against the Gnostics?" he asked in a low clear voice. The young assistant looked gravely back. "Not for sale, I'm afraid," he said. "Nor, if it comes to that, the Gnostic treatises against St. Ignatius." "Quite," Anthony answered.
— Charles Williams, The Place of the Lion
One of the most important things I have found is that no oneschool of thought has all of the answers. Sometimes history plugs agap that science can't fill. Often philosophy has answers thatscience relies on for its discoveries. Theology needs the support ofall of these things for any of its claims to make sense.
— Lewis N. Roe, From A To Theta: Taking The Tricky Subject Of Religion And Explaining Why It Makes Sense In A Way We Can All Understand
...only in the late 1100s and 1200s did scholars in Sicily and Spain translate Aristotle's greatest philosophical and scientific texts. These translations had an impact reminiscent of those science fiction stories in which the world suddenly encounters a civilization far in advance of its own. Aristotle had systematically answered the widest range of questions on everything from ethics to physics to biology. Students flocked to the universities advertising that they taught Aristotle. For Christian theologians, all of this posed at least two problems. First, the whole Augustinian tradition had taught that faith provided the standpoint from which one could understand the world correctly. Since Aristotle had not been a Christian, how had he managed to understand so much? Second, most theologians had drawn on the idea, going back to Aristotle's teacher Plato, that the road to knowledge involves turning away from the senses and looking inward to the truths of the soul. Aristotle, on the other hand, taught that all knowledge begins with sense observation.
— William C. Placher, A History of Christian Theology, Second Edition: An Introduction
The irony of rule followers is they often quote a lot of people that do not follow as many rules as they do.
— Shannon L. Alder
It is most important for the practice of the Christian ministry, especially in its missionary activities toward those both within and without the Christian culture, to consider pagans, humanists, and Jews as members of the latent Spiritual Community and not as complete strangers who are invited into the Spiritual Community from outside. This insight serves as a powerful weapon against ecclesiastical and hierarchical arrogance.
— Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology 3: Life & the Spirit: History & the Kingdom of God
Mis-information is rampant in this great age of mass-information. While we have more access to learning than ever before in the history of the world, we’re actually getting dumber it seems. The amount of (mis)information at everyone's fingertips has lured us into a false sense of knowing. Whether it be information about science, politics, or theology, our society is suffering from an inability to research, process, filter, and apply. At the same time we seem entirely oblivious to the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) that is nihilistic and libertine, making everything relative and subjective. And Satan himself rushes to blur our vision, stirring up the dust of confusion. The church must respond by teaching the critical faculties of logic and spiritual discernment, embedded in a cohesive framework of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). We must obtain a reasonable faith that is consistent with historic Christianity and relevant for our post-modern age. Otherwise, those rejecting the blatant errors of religious fundamentalism will be susceptible to every wind of false doctrine and repackaged heresy imaginable. They will leave the orthodox faith and accept something that vaguely resembles Christianity, but in reality is a vile concoction of demonic lies.
— David D. Flowers
Human was simultaneously the bearer of God's wise rule into the world, and also the creature who would bring the loyalty and praise of that creation for its Creator into love, speech, and conscious obedience.
— N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters
The Anselmian call for "faith seeking understanding" may start and gather it's 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
The themes of Jesus' teaching are important, but of course he was more than a teacher. All the Gospels put the end of his life at the dramatic center of his story. Here all the hopes of Israel come together—he is the king of the Jews, the greatest of all the suffering prophets. Yet Jesus transformed those expectations. He did not lead Israel to victory over Rome. Indeed, one of the remarkable features of the narratives of his last days is that his increasing isolation makes it impossible to identify him with any one 'side' or cause. The Roman governor sentenced him as a Jewish rebel, but the leaders of Judaism also turned against him. He attacked the powerful on behalf of the poor, but in the end the mob too called for his blood. His own disciples ran away; Peter denied him. He did not go to his death agony as a representative of Jews, or of the poor, or of Christians, but alone, and thus, according to Christian faith, as a representative of all.
— William C. Placher, A History of Christian Theology, Second Edition: An Introduction
Our are speculations are not the measure of our God.
— J.I. Packer, Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God
If books can transform, those have to be conscientious.
— Sudhir Mittal, Life will Smile at You
If thinking wants to think God, then it must endeavor to tell stories.
— Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute Between Theism and Atheism
If you don’t know the difference between theology and religiousstudies, then you’re a theologian.
— Brian Bocking
If you try to talk about a truth that’s merely moral, people always think it’s merely metaphorical. A real live man with two legs once said to me: ‘I only believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense.’ Naturally, I said: ‘In what other sense could you believe it?’ And then he thought I meant he needn’t believe in anything except evolution, or ethical fellowship, or some bilge. . . .  -- The Secret of Father Brown
— G.K. Chesterton
And yet a dream of God--THIS God--is no ordinary dream, nor night terror... It is an apocalyptic vision. As such it makes manifest what good people do not want to see, perhaps cannot see. It manifests above all that there is a tomorrow that no yesterday can dictate. But it does so with the ambiguity that accompanies every call to revolution. "The Reign of God is coming," it says, "and it is coming for you!
— Craig Keen, After Crucifixion: The Promise of Theology
We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion...What is to-day a matter of academic speculation, begins to-morrow to move armies and pull down empires.
— J. Gresham Machen
...theology waits as it works. It waits for its lungs again to be filled. Without the renewing breath of the Spirit it cannot speak.
— Craig Keen, After Crucifixion: The Promise of Theology