Quotes About Theology

No Satan, no God.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer.

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent

C]reation is not simply viewed as a matter of origination or a divine activity chronologically set only in the beginning.

All I can claim in this respect, alas, is that I think I may know just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens—a couplet I shall henceforth reduce for convenience to the solitary signifier Ditchkins—is talking out of the back of his neck.

God] is a kind of perpetual critique of instrumental reason.

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

Theology, however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialized world

The proposed sixth sola is this: sola ecclesia, the church alone, meaning salvation may be found in the church alone. 3

D. G. Hart, in his book Recovering Mother Kirk, rightly urges Presbyterians 'to abandon the notion of the church as personal trainer' and to recover 'Calvin's idea of the church as mother.' 9

Can I ask a question, sir? said Maurice, as Death turned to go. You May Not Get An Answer. I suppose there isn't a Big Cat in the Sky, is there? I'm Surprised At You, Maurice. Of Course There Are No Cat Gods. That Would Be Too Much Like...Work. Maurice nodded. One good thing about being a cat, apart from the extra lives, was that the theology was a lot simpler.

As for me, some days I believe in God, and some days I do not. Then Dodger said, "Is that allowed?" Solomon pushed the door open and then fussily began locking it up again behind him. Dodger, you fail to understand the unique arrangements between Jewish people and God.

When we talk about the theology of "God is dead," this means that the notion of God must be dead in order for God to reveal himself as a reality. The theologians, if they only use concepts, words, and not direct experience, are not very helpful. The same goes for nirvana, which is something to be touched and lived and not discussed and described. We have notions that distort truth, reality.

the proscription against married Roman Catholic priests is not doctrinal and could be changed if a pope were so inclined. "I have no problems with celibacy withering away," said Archbishop Keith O'Brien, president of the Scottish Bishops' Conference. "There is no theological problem with it ending. The loss of celibacy would give liberty to priests to exercise their God-given gift of love and sex rather than feeling they must be celibate all their lives.

The universe and the person who creates the universe are not two different entities. Some Christian theologians say that God is the ground of being. This is quite close to Buddhism. But then Buddhism asks the question, If God is the ground of being, then what is the ground of nonbeing?

In other words, Judaism is not Calvinism.

My problem with the Emergent Church is not the questions they are bringing up, but the answers they are giving. They are making Christianity milky. They are making it so you can no longer define anything. There is no sound judgment allowed.

As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like.

People like Thomas Aquinas would say we can't talk about God as a creator because we can only have in our heads the idea of a human creator and that can't apply to God. We can't even say that God exists because our notion of existence is too limited to apply to God. People were instructed to think about this in those terms.

A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.

If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.

Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.

The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.

There is no way from us to God -- not even via negativa not even a via dialectica nor paradoxa. The god who stood at the end of some human way -- even of this way -- would not be God.