Quotes About Theology

As Zabelka remarked, the just war theory is "something that Christ never taught or even hinted at."6

We can answer the question "Who is God?" only by attending to who God has revealed himself to be.

The method and conceptuality of the theology of Revelation are relatively different from the rest of the New Testament, but once they are appreciated in their own right, Revelation can be seen to be not only one of the finest literary works in the New Testament, but also one of the greatest theological achievements of early Christianity. Moreover, the literary and theological greatness are not separable.

Do you think none shall be saved but puritans(89)?

Esteem the church fathers and other writers, but value none of them as equivalent to the word of God.

God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.

If we think of the atonement as a bridge spanning a great river, Arminians see it as infinitely wide, but not reaching all the way to the far bank; Calvinists hold that the atonement is a narrow bridge, wide enough only for the elect, but reaching all the way to the other side. We believe that Christ's death actually saves those for whom He died.

Arthur W. Pink rightly warns: "The fact that a preacher has graduated with honors from some theological center is no proof that he is a man taught of the Holy Spirit. No dependence can be placed on human learning."' The

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918)

Much of the church rapidly lost the Reformers' consciousness of the noetic effects of sin, the impact of fallen human nature in darkening the unregenerate mind. Later theologians readily forgot that sin generates an unconscious drive to construct systems of understanding the world which suppress the knowledge of the real God, systems which deform and distort the facts and theories they incorporate.

Catholic theology of the time, which made much of what the Jesuit Karl Rahner called the 'anonymous Christian', one who might live a graced life without believing church doctrine.

Christian theological history is filled with stories of groups who have developed theories of the election of themselves to salvation and the damnation of others; theories that demonstrate that their particular group has been exclusively endowed with divine truth, so that they possess a unique mission to the world and have a unique authority within it.

Their books weren't ink marks on paper but God himself compressed between covers. No wonder they often ended up fighting with each other over who had the best words and the best symbols for God.

Bonaventure's theology is never about trying to placate a distant or angry God, earn forgiveness, or find some abstract theory of justification. He is all cosmic optimism and hope! Once it lost this kind of mysticism, Christianity became preoccupied with fear, unworthiness, and guilt much more than being included in—and delighting in—an all-pervasive plan that is already in place.

St. Irenaeus (125–203), The Scandal of the Incarnation, and St. Athanasius (297–373), On the Incarnation, are two early classics that set a bar of good theology that we have since seldom matched or even understood. The mystery of incarnation is the unique trump card that Christianity adds to the deck of world religions.

Don't start with the One and try to make it into Three, but start with the Three and see that this is the deepest nature of the One. This starting point, along with the contemplative mind to understand it, was much more emphasized and developed in the Eastern church, which is frankly why it still sounds foreign to most of the Western churches.

All theologies are blasphemous in so far as they attempt to reduce God to something that can be known through the understanding by which we know other things.

Yet historically, the teaching of original sin started us off on the wrong foot—with a no instead of a yes, with a mistrust instead of a trust.

Human sympathy is the best and easiest way to open the heart space and to make us live inside our own bodies. God never intended most human beings to become philosophers or theologians, but God does want all humans to represent the very Sympathy and Empathy of God. And it's okay if it takes a while to get there. Our central message again bears repeating: God loves things by becoming them. We love God by continuing the same pattern.

Christ forever keeps Jesus firmly inside the Trinity, not a mere later add-on or a somewhat arbitrary incarnation. Trinitarianism keeps God as Relationship Itself from the very beginning, and not a mere monarch.

We Christians did not take this world seriously, I am afraid, because our notion of God or salvation didn't include or honor the physical universe.

but we are the Body of Christ. "Christ" is not Jesus

Walter Wink, a professor of biblical interpretation, calls it the mere "theological" worldview as opposed to the incarnational worldview, which is authentic Christianity.1 When all of you is there, you will know. When all of you is present, the banquet will begin.