Quotes About Theology

Moses' question - the tough one about God's allowing human moral evil - is reasonable only if we believe that a good God causes, or at any rate allows, everything that happens, and that it's all for the best.

In fact, even Aquinas dissolved the fatal problem of natural, physical evil by tinkering with God's omnipotence. As Baron von Hugel noted, Aquinas said that the Divine Omnipotence must not be taken as the power to effect any imaginable thing, but only to effect what is within the nature of things.

Once I could no longer find a way to theologically maintain God and hold onto the significance of my historical moment, letting go of God was natural.

But if you eat this chap who's God,' said Llewelyn stoutly, 'how can it be horrible? If it's alright to eat God why is it horrible to eat Jim Whittle?' 'Because,' said Dymphna reasonably, ' if you eat God there's always plenty left. You can't eat God up because God just goes on and on and on and God can't ever be finished...

Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

Theists believe there's not more than one God; Deists that there is not less than one God.

It's odd. Sol Invictus—he's such a contrast to the cool thinking of the theists.

God didn't make Eve from Adam's rib. He took out half of Adam's brain by accident.

But even so, one can just as well hold God responsible for the existence of the devil as for the evil he personifies.

Even theological works can be read spiritually, once one has achieved enough proficiency. Theology and spirituality make up two sides of the same coin. They are different ways of attending to the same reality.

When Paul moved the heart of Christian theology from Christ's life to his death, it made the implication of the Jews in his killing not just unavoidable but central to the new religion's teaching. And since Christ was inseparably of the same substance as God the Father, that made their crime deicide.

Pascal was even convinced that he could use his theories to justify a belief in God. He stated that 'the excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win multiplied by the probability of winning it'.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world.

One afternoon Clairaut came over to me with a book in his hand: "Mademoiselle de Beauvoir," he began, in an inquisitorial tone, "what do you make of Brochard who is of the opinion that Aristotle's God would be able to experience sexual pleasure?" Herbaud cast him a disdainful look: "I should hope so, for his sake," he haughtily replied.

Why shouldn't a mystical theology be possible? 'I want to touch God or become God,' I declared in my journal. All through that year I abandoned myself intermittently to these deliriums.

Saint Thomas declared that woman was an "inessential" being, which, from a masculine point of view, is a way of positing the accidental character of sexuality.

There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.

We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything except that he does not exist, since we have not reached the point where God exists.

Suffering: superiority of man over God. The Incarnation was necessary so that this superiority should not be scandalous.

We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything except that he does not exist, for we have not reached the point where God exists.

When Christ said, 'Teach all nations and bring them the News (Gospel),' he ordained them to bring news, not a theology. Christ himself, having come, tells them to add this news to the religion of Israel.

There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present—while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as its power.

Antinomianism may be couched in doctrinal and theological terms, but it both betrays and masks the heart's distaste for absolute divine obligation, or duty. That