Quotes About Theology

Most Christians would not recognize Mormonism as part of the Christian faith.

We can know that the Christian God cannot exist. If he is all-powerful and all-good, as Christians maintain, there would not have been, for instance, the Holocaust. This is an inherent self-contradiction. So if Christians insist on having a God, they can do so, but if they have any respect for logic they'll have to redefine who he is.

The subject of angels and demons really grabbed me. There is a huge mass of information, and the Bible is one of the most amazing reference points.

Theologians have done more to hide the Gospel of Christ than any of its adversaries.

I will attempt no historical or theological classification of MacDonald's thought, partly because I have not the learning to do so, still more because I am no great friend to such pigeonholing. One very effective way of silencing the voice of conscience is to impound in an Ism the teacher through whom it speaks: the trumpet no longer seriously disturbs our rest when we have murmured "Thomist," "Barthian," or "Existentialist.

God is just!' said a carping theologian to me the other day. 'Yes,' I answered, 'and he cannot be pleased that you should call that justice which is injustice, and attribute it to him!

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion –- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. Mark Twain

as the religious conflicts that animated the seventeenth century began to recede—Christian vs. Muslim; Catholic vs. Protestant—as the filthy wealth generated by slavery and dispossession accelerated, capitalism and profit became the new god, with its curia in the basilicas of Wall Street. This new religion had its own doctrine and theologies, with the logic of the market and its "efficient market theory" supplanting papal infallibility as the new North Star.

They thought that I did conceive there was a difference between them and Mr. Cotton... I might say they might preach a covenant of works as did the apostles, but to preach a covenant of works and to be under a covenant of works is another business.

Our own theological Church, as we know, has scorned and vilified the body till it has seemed almost a reproach and a shame to have one, yet at the same time has credited it with power to drag the soul to perdition.

Aquinas wondered what would happen if God wanted to achieve universal resurrection. In other words, bringing everybody who had ever lived back to life at the same time. What would happen to cannibals, and the people they ate? You couldn't bring them all back at the same time, because the cannibals are made of the people they have eaten. You could have one but not the other. Ha.' I looked at Rowan. 'That's a good example of a paradox.

the movement that has long called itself "evangelical" is in fact better labeled "soterian." That is, we have thought we were talking about "the gospel" when in fact we were concentrating on "salvation.

Torah is not theoretical morality but lived theology, a life enflamed by knowing God.

There is something about the Sermon on the Mount that makes Christians nervous, and in particular it makes Protestants nervous, especially those whose theology's first foot is a special understanding of grace.

Romans 12–16 is lived theology, and Romans 1–11 is written to prop up that lived theology. Romans 12–16 is not the application of Paul's theology, nor is Romans a classic example of the indicative leading to the imperative. What Paul had in focus was the lack of praxis, the lack of lived theology, the lack of peace in Rome, and he wrote Romans both to urge a new kind of lived theology (12–16) and to offer a rationale (1–11) for that praxis.

One reason why so many Christians today don't know the Old Testament is because their "gospel" doesn't even need it!

If you compare the written prayers from the psalms, the Lord's Prayer, or those we find in the prayer books of the church, one thing will immediately strike any reader: The prayers from those sources are theologically rich and aesthetically appropriate. I cannot always say this of the spontaneous prayers of many Christians—and I am not impugning their motives or questioning their hearts.

They say that God is watching everyone all the time, so he'd always get to see his jokes play out. If so, he's laughing his butt off, assuming God has a butt, which is unlikely, since butts are also an obvious practical joke.

Theology is a distinctly rare, a puzzling study, given that its practitioners are happiest when the terms of their discovery fall well short of their projected point; this is where they likely glimpse their proof.

People will certainly continue to say old things in a fresh new way to keep the study contemporary, but that doesn't change the fact that, barring an archaeological discovery to blow us all out of the water, Christian theology is probably not going to change very much.

Biblical theology attempts to embrace the message of the Bible and to arrive at an intelligible coherence of the whole despite the great diversity of the parts. Or, put another way: Biblical theology investigates the themes presented in Scripture and defines their inter-relationships. Biblical theology is an attempt to get to the theological heart of the Bible.

By helping a congregation grow in their understanding of the ways in which the arguments and theology of the New Testament are dependent upon an understanding of the Old Testament, a pastor or preacher may both demonstrate a personal love and passion for the Old Testament as the Bible of the authors of the New Testament and develop such a love and passion in the church that it becomes more "Berean" and less likely to fall into Marcionite ways of thinking.

According to Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg.

It's a dangerous thing to no longer deeply crave fellowship with you, Jesus. It's a deceptive thing to enjoy but no longer actually need you. It's a deceitful thing to be satisfied with correct theology about you, without experiencing rich communion with you. It's a demonic thing to find our ultimate satisfaction in anyone or anything else but you.