Quotes About Theology

And there is a difference between the essence of a Sacrament and its use.

Theology must begin and end with the question of truth.

God is, or he is not. Which way should we incline? Reason cannot answer.

It's perhaps significant that God declares His completed Creation "very good" and that Adam is an afterthought, his goodness unspecified.

The incoming of God as expressed in the incarnation represents a beautiful expression of this simultaneous revealing and withdrawal, for in the Incarnation the mystery of God is not dissipated but rather deepened. The mystery is not unmasked, but rather dwells with us, in our midst. The mystery is thus not overcome in the Incarnation but rather encountered there.

As the psychologist Victor Frankl once pointed out, true knowledge is always knowledge plus – that is, knowledge that understands that it is always penetrated by unknowing. The result is that God is not defined as the greatest conceivable being or as that which is greater than conception, but rather, as Anselm argued, God is the one who is conceived as inconceivable.

If we imagine that our words are like arrows, then we can say that those arrows always fall short of the heavenly realm to which we aim them. In short, an emerging discourse acknowledges that speaking of God is never speaking of God but only ever speaking about our understanding of God.

What we think and say about God is still both important and unavoidable, for our words help us come to terms with the hallowed mystery and respond to it. However, this approach diligently maintains a conceptual distance between ourselves and God, one which approaches the divine mystery as something to be transformed by rather than solved.

For Christians it is a happening, an event, that we affirm and respond to, regardless of the ebbs and flows of our abstract theological reflections concerning the source and nature of this happening.

This vision fundamentally challenges what Peter holds to be the command of God and opens up a difficult dilemma: in order to obey the command of God he must disobey the command of God.

As we have seen, we ought to affirm our view of God while at the same time realizing that that view is inadequate.

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).

The difference between the idea that our Christian traditions describe God and the view that they are worshipful responses to God is important to grasp, for while the former seeks to define, the latter is engaged with response. By charting the latter course, those within the emerging conversation perceive a very different way of understanding theology. It is no longer thought of as a human discourse that speaks of God but rather as the place where God speaks into human discourse.

Our 'theological' musings can thus be called a/theological insomuch as they acknowledge that we must still speak of God (theology, as traditionally understood) while also recognizing that this speech fails to define God (a/theology).

Therefore, Lord, you are not merely that than which a greater cannot be thought; you are something greater than can be thought. For since it is possible to think that such a being exists, then if you are not that being, it is possible to think something greater than you. But that is impossible.

For Anselm there are three levels of existence. The first, and lowest, level is that which exists only in the mind (for instance, a unicorn). The second refers to those things that exist both in the mind and in reality (such as a horse). The third level is that which exists in reality but which cannot be contained in the mind (i.e. God). It is this third level of existence that has often been overlooked by the Church, and yet it is here that we find God.

When the truth affirmed by Christianity is thought of as constituting a series of factual claims open to being assessed by intellectual experts, Christianity opens itself up to a corrosive form of doubt that threatens to destroy it. Later I shall be exploring the deep importance of doubt in the life of faith. However, this importance can only be understood if we think of the truth affirmed by Christianity in a way that is freed from the realm of objectivity.

Theologians have long been troubled by Jesus' willingness to allow Judas to be there at this key event for the future life of his church. This is, after all, an apostle who he knows is about to betray him.

The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume summed up the dilemma succinctly when he wrote of God: 'Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then

God is one; . . . this one God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; . . . the Father is the Father of the Son; and the Son, the Son of the Father; and the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Father and the Son; and . . . in respect of this their mutual relations, they are distinct from each other. (John Owen)1

thought that was the whole idea of the German Reformation. To abolish priestly intercession.

I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.

Paul was the only scholar among the apostles. He never displays his learning, considering it of no account as compared with the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, for whom he suffered the loss of all things, but he could not conceal it, and turned it to the best use after his conversion. Peter and John had natural genius, but no scholastic education; Paul had both, and thus became the founder of Christian theology and philosophy.

The Bible gives us a theology which is more human than Calvinism, and more divine than Arminianism, and more Christian than either of them.1243