Quotes About Theology

If God wanted us to believe in him, he'd exist.

Men recorded their experiences and called it history; men looked about the world and called their observations science; men wondered about the existence of God and the problem of evil and called their speculations theology; men did handiwork and called it art; men made up stories, wrote them down and called them literature; men thought about such topics as truth, beauty, justice, and the nature of existence and called their opinions philosophy.

Although Christianity has a poor record on animals (as it does, it must be said, on the treatment of slaves, women, children, and gays), it is also the case that Christian theology, when creatively and critically handled, can provide a strong basis for animal rights.

I fear theology is--in the words attributed to William Temple--"still in its infancy" when it comes to animals.

Before Vatican II, in theology, as in other areas, the discipline was fixed. After the council there has been a revolution - a chaotic revolution - with free discussion on everything. There is now no common theology or philosophy as there was before.

Vatican II declares the Church... as necessary for salvation.

The extension of the empathic bond is the social glue to establishing a global network of millions of human beings. It's probably not surprising that in the most technologically advanced countries, where self-expression is high, the older theological consciousness, with its emphasis on strict external codes, the communal bond, and a hierarchically organized command and control, is losing its hold. Religious hierarchies make less and less sense in a fl at, networked world.

Theology must work itself out in the most practical relationships.

I am often criticized, or at least questions are raised, about what appears to be the absence of the Holy Spirit in my work.

It is possible to demonstrate God's existence, although not a priori, yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us.

It was my study of the two Corinthian letters that first caused me to concentrate my attention more directly on the relation of the apostle Paul to the older apostles.

God should not be called an individual substance, since the principal of individuation is matter.

Arguing about religion is much easier than practicing it.

I teased Fabrizio: "We're studying theology here." "How? Are you making fun of me?" "Not at all. Livy read historical chronicles. He interprets them by his own passionate views and freezes them for all time. . . . He wanted theoretical support for a conclusion he accepted beforehand. Isn't that theology?

If the serpent was actually Satan, a fallen angel, then why were serpents punished rather than Satan himself? (Satan doesn't crawl around on his belly in later stories.)

A church may have the bones of organization and sound theology. It may have the body of a large membership. But, if the breath of the Holy Spirit is not on it and in it, then it is only Sardis, having a name to be alive but dead.

Because the Bible is a theological book, it is a book of wrestlings, not a book of answers. In each age the people have to struggle to hear the word of the Lord for their time, and sometimes their hearing is keener than at other times.

This was a commercial situation, not some exercise in an Applied Theology course.

The splendor of a soul in grace is so seductive that it surpasses the beauty of all created things.

The best things that have been written, almost, are by Catholics during the counter Reformation: Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis de Sales, John of the Cross, St. Theresa of ?vila.....great stuff.

Dad was always that way: who's the candidate that's best for this country? We can debate theology later - that was his famous line. I kind of feel like that's in my DNA.

God, she says, 'is an unprincipled bastard, wouldn't you agree?

When a theological world view dominated, deviance was sin; when the nation-states emerged from the decay of feudalism, most deviance became designated as crime; and in our own scientifically oriented world, various forms of deviance are designated increasingly as medical problems. Thus we view the medical paradigm as the ascending paradigm for deviance designations in our postindustrial society.

This line of argument puts the lie to the common charge that Athanasius and other "classical trinitarians" depict God as a static, immobile being. Quite the contrary, classical orthodoxy insists that God is by nature generative, productive, fruitful, and fecund. The Father is eternally Father, having begotten the eternal Son in an eternal begetting. Arians, by contrast, must conclude that the Father has something less than a "generative nature.