Quotes About Theology

When a man begins to justify the ways of God to man, he has entered on a very dangerous process.

Luther argued that the Jews were a people who had been punished by God for 1,500 years, since the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, because they did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

Luther's views were not a medieval relic but a development of it. Even more disturbing, it was not incidental to his theology, a lamentable prejudice taken over from contemporary attitudes. Rather, it was integral to his thought; his insistence that the true Christians—that is, the evangelicals—had become the chosen people and had displaced the Jews would become fundamental to Protestant identity.

the ontological argument for the existence of God.

Theology must learn to see in the dark. Theology emerges from God's gracious act of mercy at our wrestling for meaning in our human condition.

The blues demand of theology a prophetic criticism that contests all arbitrary uses of power or coercion, that challenges individual acquisitive materialism, that repudiates any and every attempt to undermine humanity's very humanness, and that cherishes the lives of ordinary everyday children and women and men of all cultures and races.

By engaging in dialectical conversation with this music, theology places black vernacular culture at the heart of its mediation of the Christian message.

black Catholic theology must be at once critically political and deeply mystical.

the darkness of God, the theologian accepts the gift of vocation—to bear the mythos, desires, sorrows, struggle, and hope of God's black peoples. Yet black Catholic theology, like the blues, is problematical, fluid, inventive, and the darkness illuminates new intersections, new switches, new tracks.

Zo is god, de god van de Heidelbergse Catechismus, de god die mensen zo intens haat dat hij keelkanker voor ze heeft uitgevonden. Zelfs mensen zijn niet in staat elkaar op zo'n laaghartige wijze te vermoorden als god kan met behulp van deze ziekte. Ook al huil ik [..] toch ben ik blij dat ik twee van zijn dienstknechten heb kunnen aftuigen.

The best interests of theology lie not in God in the highest but in the depths of God, something deep within God, even older than God, or deeper than God, and for that very same reason, deep within us, we and God always being intertwined.

A student of Christology needs to be constantly reminded that while there is progress in doctrine, there is no increase in scriptural revelation.

In the last ten years of the second century and in the third century, the heretical school of theology at Alexandria, Egypt, advanced the erroneous principle that the Bible should be interpreted in a nonliteral or allegorical sense.

Strangely, Augustine held to a literal second coming, a literal heaven and a literal hell, but not to a literal millennium. This arbitrary distinction has never been explained.

prayer does not have to be theologically correct. It is a conversation.

The most central truth to the creation account is that this world is a place for God's presence.

Doctrine without its correspondent principle remains barren, if not lifeless, of which the Greek Church seems an instance; or

Catholicism is a deep matter. You cannot take it up in a teacup" [..] "You must consent to think.

Again, Arius asserted that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was not able to comprehend the First, whereas Eunomius's characteristic tenet was that all men could comprehend God as fully as the Son comprehended Him Himself; yet no one can doubt that Eunomianism was a true development, not a corruption of Arianism.

As often as I feel certain that God exists, I feel as often at a loss to say what difference it makes—that He exists—or even: that to believe in God, which I do, raises more questions than it presents answers. Thus, when I am feeling my most faithful, I also feel full of a few hard questions that I would like to put to God—I mean, critical questions of the How-Can-He, How-Could-He, How-Dare-You variety.

Therefore, there must be a first mover existing above all—and this we call God.

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.

Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.

Several of the [crowd's] outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.