Quotes About Theology

Developing leaders is not just downloading theological knowledge and ministry skill, but calling people to lead with hearts captured by the awe of God.

But it must be said that maturity is not merely something you do with your mind. No, maturity is about how you live your life. It is possible to be theologically astute in yet very immature. It is possible be biblically literate and in need of significant spiritual growth.

We must always, always, remember that the theology of the Word of God is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is a radically grace-transformed

The call is to do theology in loving community with other people. Truth not spoken in love ceases to be true because it's bent and twisted by other human agendas.

Theological instruction that does not arouse awe is broken.

the theology of the Word of God is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is a radically grace-transformed life.

Theology without love is simply very bad theology.

The gospel of Jesus Christ must not be just an aspect of your theology. It must not be relegated to the "religious" dimension of your life. Your relationship with God through Jesus Christ is your life. It touches and alters every aspect of your existence; it redefines your identity. It infuses your life with new meaning and purpose, and it completely reshapes your destiny.

I personally experienced what can happen when the gospel of Jesus Christ gets reduced to a series of theological ideas coupled with all the skills necessary to access those ideas. Bad things happen when maturity is more defined by knowing than it is by being. Danger is afloat when you come to love the ideas more than the God whom they represent and the people they are meant to free. One

You and I don't always live what we say we believe. There is often a disconnect between our confessional theology and our street-level functional theology. There is often a separation between, on the one hand, the doctrines we say we have embraced and, on the other hand, the choices we make and the anxieties that we feel.

Finally, we must understand that theology is never an end in itself, but a means to an end, the end that we would progressively become like the One who is the ultimate definition of what love is and what love does.

from birth we are all philosophers, we are all theologians, and we all function like archeologists, digging through the mound of our existence to make sense of it all.

Theology that isn't zealous to promote forgiving and transforming grace, the kind of grace that changes your life, is simply bad theology.

necesitamos entender que la teología nunca es un fin en sí misma, sino que es un medio para alcanzar un fin: ser cada vez más como Aquel que es la definición por excelencia del amor.

The minute your functional theology tells you that God is not good, it's very hard to hold on to the confessional theology that declares he is.

We are all theologians. We are all philosophers. We are all archaeologists who dig into the mounds of our lives to try to make sense of the civilization that is our story. This God-designed mental motivation is accompanied by wonderful and mysterious analytical gifts. This drive and those gifts set us apart from the rest of creation. They are holy, created by God to draw us to him, so that we can know him and understand ourselves in light of his existence and will.

the theology of the Word of God was never intended to be an end in itself, but a means to an end, and that end is a radically transformed life. The purpose of theology is not knowledge but holiness.

to close the gap between your confessional theology and your functional theology, and by closing the gap, give the enemy less opportunity to do his evil work.

The Bible is the grand biography of the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the Bible is the annotated story of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, his story with God's essential explanatory and applicatory notes. You do violence to the Word of God when you reduce it to a book of theology, principles, and rules. You simply cannot make sense of Scripture without the person and work—the grace—of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed.

any Christian theologian who proposes a theology of religions but who doesn't know much about any other religion than her/his own should be regarded as highly suspicious, if not dangerous.

And therein lies my problem – how to hold together all the words about God that I have learned as a good Christian and then as a professional theologian with my growing awareness, especially over the last three decades of my life, of God as Mystery. Come to think of it, this problem of "words" may not only be bubbling under the other problems I've dealt with in the preceding two chapters: it may be one of the major causes of those problems.

any theology of religions that wants to call itself a Christian theology will have to be guided by the Bible, especially the New Testament.

any Christian theology of religions worth its name has to be biblical. If it's not, it may make for a good philosophy of religions, but it can't be called Christian.