Quotes About Theology

Every single Biblical doctrine of theology, directly or indirectly, ultimately has its basis in the book of Genesis.

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.

What would happen if we who call ourselves Christians were as driven to share our lives with God as we are to debate theology? Do we, after all, propose to win the world over by flawless theology - or by presenting to them a flawless Person?

Unbelievably, Augustine claims God makes Christians desire the salvation of those whom he has damned (Corrept.15, 47). Rist adeptly identifies this as "the most pathetic passage

Virtually every church tradition, by theology, interpretive strategies, or pastoral practice, makes accommodations for divorced people who seek to remarry. These accommodations permit divorced people to enter unions that are outside the rule laid down in the Bible. But we can't have it both ways. We can't apply a strict "biblical marriage" rule to gay people and not apply it to those who are divorced and remarried.

Faith, wrote Origen (185–245), perhaps the first great Christian theologian, is 'useful for the multitude', a means of teaching 'those who cannot abandon everything and pursue a study of rational argument to believe without thinking out their reasons'.

Even the most minor inconvenience, Chrysippus suggested, had been carefully designed by God for our benefit. God had created bedbugs to 'awaken us out of our sleep' and mice to encourage humans to be tidy.

When we downshift Christian education from the paradigm of expertise to a paradigm of love, we do not dilute the importance of rigorous theological reflection. On the contrary, inverting the order of instruction makes serious inquiry all the more likely. We learn best what we love most.

The word logos itself is a prime example, beginning its history as a word charged with religious power, and referring to the word of wisdom and truth. By the time of Aristotle, logos had lost its philosophical connotations and had come to mean the "study of" something: biology, the study of life; zoology, the study of animal forms; and theology, the study of God.

Wesley developed a theological style that not only was sophisticated in its attempt to hold a diversity of truths in tension, but also has on occasion puzzled his interpreters, both past and present, precisely because of that diversity.

Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.

La cruz era el plato fuerte de la teología de Pablo. No era simplemente uno de los mensajes de Pablo; era el mensaje. También enseñó sobre otras cosas, pero cualquier cosa que enseñara procedía y se relacionaba con la realidad básica de que Jesucristo murió de manera que los pecadores se reconciliaran con Dios y recibieran el perdón de Dios.

In process theology, God is constantly, in every moment and in every place, doing everything within God's power to bring about the good. Divine power, however, is persuasive rather than coercive. God cannot (really cannot) force people or the world to obey God's will. Instead, God works by sharing with us a vision of the better way, of the good and the beautiful. God's power lies in patience and love, not in force.

theologians are different in this respect, at any rate; at least they are sure that God exists, even though they make contradictory statements about Him.

This paraphrase not only sounds rationalistic but is meant to be so, for despite every effort the modern mind no longer understands our two-thousand-year-old theological language unless it "accords with reason." As a result, the danger that lack of understanding will be replaced by lip-service, affectation, and forced belief or else by resignation and indifference has long since come to pass.

So if I say God is good, it is not true: I am good, God is not good. I go further: I am better than God! For only what is good can become better, and only what is better can become the best. God is not good, therefore he cannot become better; and since he cannot become better he cannot become the best. These three: good, better, best, are infinitely remote from God, who is above all.

Theologians have a way of resolving things that are inerrant and writing them down in books that go unread.

Those who know the least about theology and the Bible often out-preach—or at least out-fascinate—those who are well studied.

Why do men have nipples? Because God is a woman and she really wants us to enjoy ourselves, that's why.

Theologians in all ages have looked out admiringly upon the material universe and … demonstrated the power, wisdom, and goodness of God; but we know of no one who has demonstrated the same attributes from the history of the human race.

Had Luther and Calvin been confined before they had begun to dogmatize, the states would have been spared many troubles.

Wright correctly diagnoses the failure of the New Quest (and its current heirs, such as the Jesus Seminar, Crossan and Burton L. Mack)" to fit Jesus' overall life and ministry into sufficiently historical contexts and the broader theological narratives of his day. Wright helpfully observes that the uniquely North American work of the Jesus Seminar members is so idiosyncratic that it is often not even taken seriously in other parts of the world (JVG 35 n. 23).

Evangelical theology is heretical if it is only creative and unworthy if it is only repetitious

And every philosophy of history bears in itself the seed of a theology.