Systematic Theology Quotes

No one book of scripture can be understood by itself, any more than any one part of a tree or member of the body can be understood without reference to the whole of which it is a part. ~ Charles Hodge

Where is there a systematic theology class that helps students realize that when you unpack the inclination or the nature of the Trinity or the two natures of Christ or the substitutionary atonement, you commune with the Lord as you defend and contend for the doctrine, or else you are not doing it right? No wonder people often don't want to be around doctrinally driven individuals! They are not doing doctrine right. They are not emotionally in touch with the truths they are teaching. ~ James MacDonald

The question of "canon and creed," which underlies quite a bit of this book, has become quite urgent and controversial and needs to be addressed from the point of view of those of us who are actually working with the biblical canon itself rather than using the word "canon" as shorthand for the systematic theology they already possess. ~ N. T. Wright

I wrote a story for my kids. It's fiction. It's not systematic theology. It's not a new book of the Bible. It's flawed, I wrote it. All of that goes into the mix, but I love the controversy. It elevates the conversation. ~ William P. Young

Satan could make an "A" in my Systematic Theology course. He knows the information and knows that the information is true. ~ R.C. Sproul

I am convinced that there is an urgent need in the church today for much greater understanding of Christian doctrine, or systematic theology. Not only pastors and teachers need to understand theology in greater depth -- the WHOLE CHURCH does as well. One day by God's grace we may have churches full of Christians who can discuss, apply and LIVE the doctrinal teachings of the Bible as readily as they can discuss the details of their own jobs or hobbies - or the fortunes of their favorite sports team or television program. ~ Wayne A. Grudem

A theologian's epistemology controls his interpretation of the Bible. If his epistemology is not Christian, his exegesis will be systematically distorted. If he has no epistemology at all, his exegesis will be unsystematically distorted. ~ Gordon H. Clark

Some fundamentalists go so far as to reject psychology as a disciplined study, which is unfortunate and polarizing. By definition, psychology is the study of the soul, theology is the study of God. Generally speaking, systematic theology is a study of all the essential doctrines of faith, and that would include the study of our souls (psychology). ~ Neil T. Anderson

Theologians are to look to the _beyond_-community–– _beyond_ nationality; skin-color, gender; sexual orientation, citizenship, religious affiliation––because God, the Divine, who is the primary frame of reference for theologians, is for, with, in, among those individual human beings. It is to reaffirm the sheer truth: No one is better or worse, superior or inferior than any other; and, 'Ich bin du, wenn Ich Ich bin' [I am you, when Iam I.] ~ Namsoon Kang

To so many people, the Lord is in danger of being no more than a patron saint of our systematic theology instead of the Christ Who is our life. ~ W. Ian Thomas

The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the scientist, a body of unorganized, or only partly organized facts. God has not seen fit to write the Bible in the form of a systematic theology; it remains for us, therefore, to gather together the scattered facts and to build them up into a logical system. ~ Henry Clarence Thiessen

Church growth experts tell us that most people seeking a new church care little about its doctrines. They're mostly interested in the facilities of the church, its nursery, and opportunities for friendship. . . .The experts tell us that today's church members will switch churches at a moment's notice if they think that their personal and relational needs will be better met elsewhere--even if the doctrine taught is at best, suspect. Thus some will opt for better facilities and architecture even at the expense of jeopardizing their own soul. ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action. ~ Albert Einstein

Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse. ~ Nikola Tesla

Religion is not a book, it is a neurological sentiment. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Since we have emphasized that analysis will lead to a positive conclusion only in the exceptional case, it follows that many securities must be examined before one is found that has real possibilities for the analyst. By what practical means does he proceed to make his discoveries? Mainly by hard and systematic work. ~ Benjamin Graham

Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Liberty's chief foe is theology. ~ Charles Bradlaugh

I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim. ~ Bertrand Russell

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. ~ Herman Melville

You have a poem called "Bad Theology." What would you call a bad theology?
I guess any theology that presumes to have God in its pocket. Can I explain this without sinning further? We'll find out. The community in which I was raised did what they would call theology, but it was always a kind of cranky, brutal reduction of lush and beautiful complexities into the lowest common denominator, the dullest version. But when I went away to school and started reading more, I became increasingly dissatisfied with any theology that replaces the enormous, immeasurable real with very measurable and very calculated replacements. I'm not saying this very eloquently, but I guess bad theology articulates as definitive and conclusive that which is unknowable and without end. ~ Tony Leuzzi

Proclaim a theology of divine righteousness which demands justice, respect, tolerance, compassion, inclusiveness, trust in the ultimate efficacy of divine zeal, and the rigorous pursuit of peace in the midst of competing interests and faith claims. ~ James A. Forbes

The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19) ~ Augustine Of Hippo

The First World War; the Russian revolution of 1917; Hitler's revolution of 1933; the second World War; the further development of revolutionary wars since 1944 in China, Indochina, and Algeria, as well as the Cold War - each was a step in the development of modern propaganda. With each of these events propaganda developed further, increased in depth, discovered new methods. At the same time it conquered new nations and new territories: To reach the enemy, one must use his weapons; this undeniable argument is the key to the systematic development of propaganda. And in this way propaganda has become a permanent feature in nations that actually despise it, such as the United States and France. ~ Jacques Ellul

Theology is a subject without an object. Theologians don't study God - they study what other theologians have said. The claims ~ Jerry A. Coyne

From the very beginning of the movement in the sixteenth century, Anabaptists shared a deep suspicion of the so-called Schriftgelehrten - the university-trained scholars who, they claimed artfully dodged the clear and simple teachings of Jesus by appealing to complex arguments and carefully crafted statements of doctrine. In other words, they confused theological discussions with lived faith. ~ John D. Roth

I don't have a system." "Theology is a system." "Not my theology." "Then what is it?" "What is it? It's the overwhelming combination of all that I've seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me and refused to depart, that drives me again and again to a faith of which I am not sure, that is alluring because it will not stoop to be defined by so inadequate a creature as man. Unlike Marxism, it is ineffable, and it cannot be explained in words. ~ Mark Helprin

But Jesus's message was designed to be a direct challenge to the wealthy and the powerful, be they the occupiers in Rome, the collaborators in the Temple, or the new moneyed class in the Greek cities of Galilee. The message was simple: the Lord God had seen the suffering of the poor and dispossessed; he had heard their cries of anguish. And he was finally going to do something about it ~ Reza Aslan

Although it is a bit of a caricature, I think that there is some truth in the generalizations I'm about to make. The tendency in Roman Catholic theology is to view the kingdom of Christ as a cosmic ladder or tower, leading from the lowest strata to the hierarchy led by the pope. Anabaptists have tended to see the kingdom more as a monastery, a community of true saints called out of the world and a worldly church. Lutheran and Reformed churches tend sometimes to see the kingdom as a school, while evangelicals (at least in the United States) lean more toward seeing it as a market. ~ Michael S. Horton

My research suggests that men and women may speak different languages that they assume are the same, using similar words to encode disparate experiences of self and social relationships. Because these languages share an overlapping moral vocabulary, they contain a propensity for systematic mistranslation ... ~ Carol Gilligan

We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it. ~ R.C. Sproul

Reformed theology does NOT teach that God brings the ELECT kicking and screaming, against their will, into His kingdom. It teaches that God so-works in the hearts of the Elect as to make them willing and pleased to come to Christ. They come to Christ because they want to. They want to because God has created in their hearts a desire for Christ. ~ R.C. Sproul

Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God
experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map. ~ C.S. Lewis

No mainstream philosopher has developed the kind of systematic, comprehensive, original, and influential exposition of atheism that is to be found in Antony Flew's fifty years of antitheological writings. ~ Antony Flew

It is ironic that none of those who took issue with Schweitzer's theology and cursed his writings gave up fame and fortune or membership in the highest stratum of German society to live among the poorest of the poor. They prepared their critiques in the comfort of the pastor's study or the university library, while Schweitzer nailed patches of tin on the roof of his free medical clinic at Lambarene by the banks of the Ogoove River. Theologians who sat in endowed chairs took his Christology to task, while he scraped infectious lesions off blue-black natives in the steaming misery of equatorial Africa.

Albert Schweitzer deserves to be remembered as the greatest Christian of the twentieth century, yet he did not believe in literal miracles - the blood atonement, the bodily resurrection, or the second coming, just to name a few. All he did was walk away from everything the world calls good to follow Jesus. ~ Robin Meyers

THE RETRIBUTION PRINCIPLE (RP) is the conviction that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer, both in proportion to their respective righteousness and wickedness. In Israelite theology the principle was integral to the belief in God's justice. ~ John H. Walton

Don't you ever change your theology to line up with your doubt. ~ Karen Wheaton

The phenomenon of money presupposes an economic order in which production is based on division of labour and in which private property consists not only in goods of the first order (consumption goods), but also in goods of higher orders (production goods). In such a society, there is no systematic centralized control of production, for this is inconceivable without centralized disposal over the means of production. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

This anthology is a testament to American Indian consciousness continuing to circulate, regardless of past or present genocidal attempts, whether cerebral, endemic, systematic, or otherwise. ~ MariJo Moore

The cross stands at the heart of John's kingdom theology, which in this stunning passage is revealed as the heart of John's redemption theology, the vision of the love of God revealed in saving action in the death of his Son, the Lamb, the Messiah. ~ N. T. Wright

Osiris, to go directly to the important part of this, was not a "dying god," not "life caught in the spell of death," or "a dead god," as modern interpreters have said. He was the hallucinated voice of a dead king whose admonitions could still carry weight. And since he could still be heard, there is no paradox in the fact that the body from which the voice once came should be mummified, with all the equipment of the tomb providing life's necessities: food, drink, slaves, women, the lot. There was no mysterious power that emanated from him; simply his remembered voice which appeared in hallucination to those who had known him and which could admonish or suggest even as it has before he stopped moving and breathing. And that various natural phenomena such as the whispering of waves could act as the cue for such hallucinations accounts for the belief that Osiris, or the king whose body has ceased to move and is in his mummy cloths, continues to control the flooding of the Nile. Further, the relationship between Horus and Osiris, 'embodied' in each new king and his dead father forever, can only be understood as the assimilation of an hallucinated advising voice into the king's own voice, which then would be repeated with the next generation. ~ Julian Jaynes

I think my degrees in Theology and Psychology qualified me for nothing, but probably prepared me for everything. ~ Brooke Bida

['Intelligent Design'] is a theology for control freaks. ~ Simon Conway Morris

To become aware of what is constant in the flux of nature and life is the first step in abstract thinking. The recognition of regularity in the courses of the heavenly bodies and in the succession of seasons first provides a basis for a systematic ordering of events, and this knowledge makes possible a calendar ... Simultaneously with this concept, a system of relationships comes into the idea of the world. Change is not something absolute, chaotic, and kaleidoscopic; its manifestation is a relative one, something connected with fixed points and a given order. ~ Hellmut Wilhelm

To summarize all of this, we have the following: (1) Archaeologists discovered 7 pits for boats around the Great Pyramid. (2) The longest of which is 44 meters; it is called the solar barque. (3) That boat (hypothetically speaking) needs [230/44]*4 steps to complete one single rotation (which looks like a square around the pyramid). (4) It therefore covers a distance which equals to the pyramid's height if it completes seven full rotations around the pyramid's base. (5) This mimics the application of Kaaba; even though the Kaaba has no dimensional merit for its structure (according to pure orthodox Islamic tradition) but the number seven is dominant and serves as an evidence that Egypt tried to plagiarize Adam's heritage and remodeled its theology accordingly. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim

Authentic Christianity has a horror of the pessimism of inertia. It is pessimist, profoundly pessimist in the sense that it knows that the creature comes from nothingness, and that all that issues from nothing essentially tends of itself to return to nothing: but it's optimism is incomparably deeper than it's pessimism; for it knows that the creature comes from God, and all that comes from God tends to return to Him. ~ Jacques Maritain