Quotes About Theology

I had a place at university to study theology and philosophy. I got the divinity prize at my school two years in a row. Probably because there were only 10 of us, but still.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt.

God, why didn't you make Woman first - when you were fresh?

God is seen as a male whose first creation was another man, Adam, whom we are told was made in his image and likeness.

I don't even really know what the big bang is, and so when people want to go through and say, 'Well, I believe that the universe started by God starting it,' that's fine by me.

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.

As St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) taught, whatever we say about God is more unlike God than saying nothing. If we do say something, it can only be a pointer toward the Mystery that can never be articulated in words. All that words can do is point in the direction of the Mystery.

The realization that God could be female required the consideration that the Devil could be also.

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

Thomas Paine wrote: Ã¢â'¬Å"It would be an error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all other sciences, and subjects, and philosophies on nature, as being our accomplishments only, they should be taught theologically, with reference to the being who is the author of them all: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the author of them all.

Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things on earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant from him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask, could he gain that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology?

The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or of anything else?

Ceea ce acum poarta numele de filosofie naturala, cuprinzand intregul cerc al stiintei, unde astronomia ocupa pozitia principala, reprezinta studiul lucrarii lui Dumnezeu si al puterii si intelepciunii lui Dumnezeu din lucrarea Sa, aceasta fiind adevarata teologie. [...] Cat despre teologia studiata acum in locul acesteia, este vorba despre studiul opiniilor si inchipuirilor omenesti despre Dumnezeu.

Just as the sin of Adam was imputed to all people, so also the obedience of Christ has been imputed to believers. Adam

The Reformation happened for a reason! Still, the danger for many Protestants is to assume that the church had little to no understanding of the Pauline gospel for its first 1,500 years. Such a judgment is a gross exaggeration.

if you reject universalism, then you must also reject at least one of these assumptions; that is, you must either deny that God wills (or sincerely desires) the redemption of all sinners or deny that he will in fact satisfy his own will or desire in this matter.

To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?" —John Stuart Mill

That God's grace is utterly irresistible over the long run now seems to me the best interpretation of Pauline theology, as a majority of theologians in the West have always insisted.

So for Calvin, even as for Augustine, God does not really will that all be saved,

For nothing works greater mischief in theology, I am persuaded, than a simple failure of the imagination, the inability to put things together in imaginative ways.

What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second, and third days, in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like an husbandman?

La historia del cristianismo en su totalidad, y la historia del mundo como un todo, habrían seguido un curso muy distinto de no haberse transmutado de forma continua la teología de la cruz en teología de gloria, pasando así a ser la iglesia de la cruz una iglesia de gloria'.