Quotes About Theology

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

The theologian," says Gibbon, "may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity; a more melancholy duty is imposed upon the historian:— he must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah...and died to give his work its final consecration never existed. ["Modern Christian Thought: The twentieth century, Volume 2" by James C. Livingston, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, p.13]

There was need, in addition to those earlier, purely historical Gospels, of a Gospel at once theological and historical, like that of John," in which Jesus should be presented, not as the Jewish Messiah, "but as the Saviour of the World.

The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths,have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people.

If the gods exist, then it does not matter whether or not this is something that one knows.

The Gospel is not a mere message of deliverance, but a canon of conduct; it is not a theology to be accepted, but it is ethics to be lived. It is not to be believed only, but it is to be taken into life as a guide.

In quibbles angel and archangel join,And God the Father turns a school-divine.

Theology is] the attempt to express Truth itself, to find words adequate to the mind and experience of the Church, then it must of necessity have its source where the faith ,the mind, and the experience of the Church have their living focus and expression, where faith in both essential meanings of that word, as Truth revealed and given, and as Truth accepted and "lived," has its epiphany, and that is precisely the function of "leitourgia.

A religious commitment coupled with theological awareness gives Jews a much better way to answer the claims made upon us by missionaries representing other religions than do the rather weak political and cultural arguments of the secularists.

To my thinking, this: - that the Priestly Code rests upon the result which is only the aim of Deuteronomy.

Where did God come from? It's certainly more complicated than trying to figure out where, say, Barry Manilow was born.

A better future for the church requires that we realign our theology and practice with the primary storyline of the Kingdom.

St. Thomas sums up all this briefly: "Now the aspect under which our neighbor is to be loved, is God, since what we ought to love in our neighbor is that he may be in God. Hence it is clear that it is specifically the same act whereby we love God, and whereby we love our neighbor. Consequently the habit of charity extends not only to the love of God, but also to the love of our neighbor.

No one can know the true meaning of the language of spiritual writers if he is unable to explain it theologically; and, on the other hand, no one can know the sublimity of theology if he is ignorant of its relations to mysticism.

I revered our theology, and aspired as much as any one to reach heaven: but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead to heaven are above our comprehension, I did not presume to subject them to the impotency of my reason; and I thought that in order competently to undertake their examination, there was need of some special help from heaven, and of being more than man.

And it is evident that it is not less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in so far as it is imperfection, should proceed from God, than that truth or perfection should proceed from nothing.

This is so much the case that the will is the chief basis for my understanding that I bear a certain image and likeness of God.

On dit même que le diable, quand il veut, est fort bon théologien ; il est vrai, pourtaint qu'il ne peut s'empêcher de laisse échapper toujours quelque sottise, qui est comme sa signature

God has a name. This points to a key difference between persons and things. God is not a nameless energy or abstract idea. — Thomas Oden

Theology is for Paul never merely a speculative exercise; it is always a tool for constructing community.

There is no meaningful distinction between theology and ethics in Paul's thought, because Paul's theology is fundamentally an account of God's work of transforming his people into the image of Christ.