Theologian Quotes

Cosmopolitanism has offered me an ethical perspective and a conceptual framework with which to read the _signs of our times_ as a theologian and intellectual who has a public responsibility for constantly offering a way to engage in this rapidly changing public world. ~ Namsoon Kang

Illumination by the Spirit is the endless end of every virtue. ~ Symeon The New Theologian

Humor is proof that everything is going to be all right with God nevertheless. ~ Charles M. Schulz

Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he chooses to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away. Between ~ H.G.Wells

The best way to overcome the world is not with morality or self-discipline. Christians overcome the world by seeing the beauty and excellence of Christ. They overcome the world by seeing something more attractive than the world: Christ ~ Thomas Chalmers

If you don't know the difference between theology and religious
studies, then you're a theologian. ~ Brian Bocking

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Lewis was an apologist from temper, from conviction, and from modesty. From temper, for he loved argument. From conviction, being traditionally orthodox. From modesty, because he laid no claim either to the learning which would have made him a theologian or to the grace which would have made him a spiritual guide. ~ Jocelyn Gibb

In the nineteenth century, many Anglican theologians, both evangelical and catholic, embraced positively the proposal of evolution. ~ Arthur Peacocke

Humor, together with irony,forms a safeguard against idolatry. ~ Krister Stendahl

We should feel dissonance; we are, after all, immortals trapped in mortal surroundings. We lack unity because long ago a gap fissured open between our mortal and immortal parts; theologians trace the fault line back to the Fall. ~ Philip Yancey

God is not just saving individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather, He is creating a people among whom He can live and who in their life together will reproduce God's life and character. ~ Gordon Fee

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" asked the Christian theologian Tertullian ... Having received the revealed thruth via Christ, "we want no curious disputation." Well that was then. Today science is so powerful that theologians can't casually dismiss secular knowledge. For most ... Athens and Jerusalem must be reconciled or Jerusalem will fall off the map. Philo's thoughtful answer is 'Logos') ~ Robert Wright

There is only one theology, but there are many theologians. ~ Athenagoras I Of Constantinople

Do you see how he who has acquired a good heart through his efforts and by doing the commandments has acquired the whole Godhead, which is that good treasure, to dwell within him? ~ Symeon The New Theologian

I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science. ~ Wernher Von Braun

He [Omar Khayyam] is an atheist, but knows how to interpret in orthodox style the most difficult passages of the Koran; for every educated man is a theologian and faith is not a requisite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I cannot, of course, prove that there is no supervising deity who invigilates my every moment
and who will pursue me even after I am dead. (I can only be happy that there is no evidence for
such a ghastly idea, which would resemble a celestial North Korea in which liberty was not just
impossible but inconceivable.) But nor has any theologian ever demonstrated the contrary. This
would perhaps make the believer and the doubter equal - except that the believer claims to know,
not just that God exists, but that his most detailed wishes are not merely knowable but actually
known. Since religion drew its first breath when the species lived in utter ignorance and
considerable fear, I hope I may be forgiven for declining to believe that another human being can
tell me what to do, in the most intimate details of my life and mind, and to further dictate these
terms as if acting as proxy for a supernatural entity. This tyrannical idea is very much older than
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Christianity, of course, but I do sometimes think that Christians have less excuse for believing, let
alone wishing, that such a horrible thing could be true. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Biologists can be just as sensitive to heresy as theologians. ~ H.G.Wells

Is no love which does not become help, taught the theologian Paul Tillich.) ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I do not think of God theistically, that is, as a being, supernatural in power, who dwells beyond the limits of my world. I rather experience God as the source of life willing me to live fully, the source of love calling me to love wastefully and to borrow a phrase from the theologian, Paul Tillich, as the Ground of being, calling me to be all that I can be. ~ John Shelby Spong

He [Osama bin Laden] is clearly an odd combination of a 12th-century theologian and a 21st-century CEO. He runs an absolutely unique organization in the Islamic world. It's multiethnic, multilinguistic, multinational. He is a combat veteran, three times wounded. He has a huge reputation in the Islamic world for generosity and leadership. He's a man who speaks eloquent, almost poetic Arabic, according to Bernard Lewis. ~ Michael Scheuer

There is a very well-defined procedure that allows the Vatican to raise issues with a particular theologian about something that does not appear in conformity with the Catholic faith. It is not always easy to make this determination. ~ Godfried Danneels

I am neither a theologian, nor a scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthropologist. Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. ~ William James

King thought he understood the white Southerner, having been born and reared in Georgia and trained a theologian. ~ Constance Baker Motley

Not everyone can be a theologian, but everyone should know some theology. ~ Carl E. Olson

When I say it's hard to believe in Jesus, I mean it's hard to believe in Jesus's ideas - in his way of saving the world. For Christians it's not hard to believe in Jesus as the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity - all the Christological stuff the church hammered out in the first five centuries. That's not hard for us. What's hard is to believe in Jesus as a political theologian. It's hard because his ideas for running the world are so radically different from anything we are accustomed to. ~ Brian Zahnd

A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent. ~ Thomas Merton

But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez

It doesn't do to say that heresy produces the development of doctrine, because that annoys the theologians. But it is true to say that as a matter of history the development of doctrine has been largely a reaction on the Church's part to the attacks of heresy. ~ Ronald Knox

We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or be satisfied with food ... or to be delighted with music or to drink wine. ~ John Calvin

If there is ever an amelioration of the condition of mankind, philosophers, theologians, legislators, politicians and moralists will find that the regulation of the press is the most difficult, dangerous and important problem they have to resolve. Mankind cannot now be governed without it, nor at present with it. ~ John Adams

Whoever is so stupid as to imagine God to be either masculine or feminine openly shows that he is as bad a philosopher as a theologian. ~ Marie De Gournay

Humor is the opposite of all self-admiration and self-praise. ~ Karl Barth

To be a Christian is to be a theologian - a student of God and his will. The church is where believers should be nurtured in the practice of correct theology. The contemporary disdain for theological content and emphasis on self-image and emotions were not shared by the apostolic church. ~ R.C. Sproul

One day, John asked her to define sin. I doubt any theologian could have done better than she did: "Son, whatever weakens your reasoning, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes away your relish for spiritual things; in short, if anything increases the authority and power of the flesh over the Spirit, then that to you becomes sin, however good it is in itself."1That definition became the guiding beacon for John. He carved it into his consciousness. His mother inbred in him his sensitivity to sin. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Stop your complaining, stop your doctoring; this tumult has arisen and is direct from above, and it will not cease till it makes all the adversaries of the Word like the mud on the streets. But it is sad to have to remind a theologian like you of these things, as if you were a pupil instead of one who ought to be teaching others. ~ Martin Luther

Church history has repeatedly and clearly proven one thing: Once the highest view of Scripture is abandoned by any theologian, group, denomination, or church, the downhill slide in both its theology and practice is inevitable. ~ James R. White

Robby Brees was such a gifted theologian. ~ Andrew Smith

When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers. ~ John Calvin

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. ~ Karen Armstrong

Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions. ~ Brennan Manning

PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation ... Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Do transports of rage make a religion any truer? A man shot in a battle does not lose his temper, but argue with a theologian and he becomes implacable. ~ Voltaire

The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey. ~ Joseph Campbell

Lord, give me a sense of humor so that I may take some happiness from this life and share it with others. ~ Thomas More

Rome should sometimes intervene and say this or that is not in conformity with the Catholic faith. Theologians should understand that. Some theologians go too far, for example, reducing the Catholic faith to a universal philosophy. ~ Godfried Danneels

Christianity is a strangely cheery religion. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Never trust a theologian who doesn't have a sense of humor. ~ D. Elton Trueblood

Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the Godly; there is no mirth like the mirth of believers. ~ Richard Baxter

And when we take ourselves too seriously, we are grim about the brothers and sisters, especially the dissenting ones, and there will be no health in us and no healing humor. ~ Walter Brueggemann

Everyone is a theologian, either conscious or unconscious, in the sense that everyone has some conception of the nature of reality, of the demands of reality, and of those elements in reality that support or threaten meaningful existence. ~ James Luther Adams

I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian... The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat - which wasn't there. 'That may be,' said the philosopher, 'but a theologian would have found it. ~ Julian Huxley

Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to what is known in nature. - St. AUGUSTINE, LATIN PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN ~ Pam Grout

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it. ~ Laurence J. Peter

I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him [St. Paul] so many gifts, withheld from him (what would seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian) that of lucidity and orderly exposition. ~ C.S. Lewis

The church doesn't have a social strategy, the church is a social strategy. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian. ~ H.L. Mencken

If we are ashamed to imitate our Lord's sufferings, which He endured for us, and to suffer as He suffered, it is obvious that we shall not become partakers with Him in His glory. If that is true of us we shall be believers in word only, not in deed. When deeds are absent, our faith is dead. ~ Symeon The New Theologian

The philosopher is not an apologist; apologetic concern, as Karl Barth (the one living theologian of unquestionable genius) has rightly insisted, is the death of serious theologizing, and I would add, equally of serious work in the philosophy of religion. ~ Donald M. MacKinnon

Although Clark remains relatively unknown to most Christians today, he has received praise from a range of powerful voices in American theological circles. When asked which twentieth-century theologians will still be read 500 years hence, the well-known American pastor and theologian R.C. Sproul answered, "Gordon Clark." Indeed, ~ Douglas J. Douma

The theologian is interested specifically in the modern novel because there he sees reflected the man of our time, the unbeliever, who is nevertheless grappling in a desperate and usually honest way with intense problems of the spirit. ~ Flannery O'Connor

We never really know what we want until after we get it. If after we get it, it makes life more miserable, we know that isn't what we wanted. If it makes our life wonderful, we know this is a strategy which will meet out need. That's why Paul Tillich, the theologian says we need to sin courageously. You ask for what you want, hoping to meet your needs. If you get it and it makes life worse, you learn that this isn't what I want. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

Convictions are not merely beliefs we hold; they are those beliefs that hold us in their grip. ~ Albert Mohler

God's love does not protect us from suffering. God's love protects us in the midst of suffering. ~ Hans Kung

Why do you want a letter from me? Why don't you take the trouble to find out for yourselves what Christianity is? You take time to learn technical terms about electricity. Why don't you do as much for theology? Why do you never read the great writings on the subject, but take your information from the secular 'experts' who have picked it up as inaccurately as you? Why don't you learn the facts in this field as honestly as your own field? Why do you accept mildewed old heresies as the language of the church, when any handbook on church history will tell you where they came from?
Why do you balk at the doctrine of the Trinity - God the three in One - yet meekly acquiesce when Einstein tells you E=mc2? What makes you suppose that the expression "God ordains" is narrow and bigoted, while your own expression, "Science demands" is taken as an objective statement of fact?
You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs.
I admit, you can practice Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar.
Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check on it or find out whether I'm giving you personal opini ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, 'holiness' is, metaphorically, frozen stiff in his veins: and at that a corrupted formula - i.e. legalism. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the sharpest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness. ~ Criss Jami

Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies - and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through "innocence" or "ignorance." The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any "God, ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Let God be good," cried Erasmus the moralist. "Let God be God," replied Luther the theologian. Although ~ Timothy George

To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell. ~ Marquis De Sade

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Stanley Hauerwas, named "America's best theologian" by Time magazine, summed up the problem: "I have come to think that the challenge confronting Christians is not that we do not believe what we say, though that can be a problem, but that what we say we believe does not seem to make any difference for either the church or the world. ~ Philip Yancey

I am no theologian. I am a layman. I am among those who are preached to, and who listen. It is not for me to preach. I should not willingly forego being a listener, a man who reads the Gospels and then listens to what others say that our Lord meant. But sometimes a listener speaks out, and listens to his own voice. ~ Haniel Long

Tremble with awe, O men! The insults God suffered for the sake of our salvation you too must endure! God is slapped on the face by the basest of slaves (Jn. 18:22). He gives you an example of victory, yet do you refuse to undergo this at the hands of a man of like passions as yourself? You are ashamed of becoming an imitator of God (Eph. 5:1), how then will you reign with Him and share in His glory in the kingdom of heaven if you do not endure that man? ~ Symeon The New Theologian

The goal of pursuit of justice must not simply be that justice happens but that reconciliation also happens. ~ Miroslav Volf

Spirituality is not a function of occupation or calling. A scientist may be more spiritual than a theologian; a teacher may be more spiritual than an officer. Spirituality is determined by personal outlook and priorities. It is evident in our words and actions. ~ Dallin H. Oaks

Accusations are made directly to Rome about theologians from persons who are not theologians. Some of these accusations are anonymous. The local bishop should be the one to relate to theologians to determine orthodoxy. ~ Godfried Danneels

God is the ruler of history. His times are well chosen The Roman Empire was an instrument in his hand. And so are the nations of the modern world. ~ John Gresham Machen

As the African American theologian James Cone notes, "Far from being songs of passive resignation, the spirituals are black freedom songs which emphasize black liberation as consistent with divine revelation. ~ James Martin

The logic behind this drive to deception and self-deception is simple. If sin is the claim to "the right to myself," it includes the claim to "the right to my view of things." And since we are each finite, "my view of things" is necessarily restricted and simply cannot see the full picture. We therefore turn a blind eye to all other ways of seeing things that do not fit ours, and especially to God's view of things. As theologian N. T. Wright points out, trees behave as trees, rocks as rocks and the seas as the seas, but "Only humans, it seems, have the capacity to live as something other than what they are."27 ~ Os Guinness

It is clear now why Christianity played a significant role in launching the scientific revolution in the first place. Only a biblical worldview provides an adequate epistemology for science. First, a rational God created the world with an intelligible structure, and second, he created humans in his image. In the words of historian Richard Cohen, science required the concept of a "rational creator of all things," along with the corollary that "we lesser rational beings might, by virtue of that Godlike rationality, be able to decipher the laws of nature." Theologian Christopher Kaiser states the same idea succinctly: the early scientists assumed that "the same Logos that is responsible for its ordering is also reflected in human reason. ~ Nancy Pearcey

The Pashtun tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian Every large house is a real feudal fortress ... Eve ry family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud ... Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid. ~ Winston Churchill

Let us flee from the deceit of life and its supposed happiness and run to Christ alone, who is the Savior of souls. Him let us endeavor to find Who is present everywhere, and when we have found Him let us hold Him fast and fall at His feet (cf. Mt. 28:9) and embrace them in the fervor of our souls. ~ Symeon The New Theologian

To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life. ~ Miroslav Volf

The theologian who labors without joy is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this field. ~ Karl Barth

A priest? I said.
A monk or some such. One of those worker guys. Liberation theowhateveritis.
Theologian, said the other.
One of those guys who thinks that Jesus was on welfare. ~ Colum McCann

A free theologian works in communication with other theologians ... He waits for them and asks them to wait for him. Our sadly lacking yet indispensable theological co-operation depends directly or indirectly on whether or not we are wiling to wait for one another, perhaps lamenting, yet smiling with tears in our eyes. ~ Karl Barth

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise. ~ George Santayana

Once He created the Big Bang ... He could have envisioned it going in billions of directions as it evolved, including billions of life-forms and billions of kinds of intelligent beings. As a theologian, I would say that the proposed search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is also a search of knowing and understanding God through his works - especially those works that most reflect Him. Finding others than ourselves would mean knowing Him better. ~ Theodore Hesburgh

The white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them. ~ Bertrand Russell

The problem for Rome, then, is how and when the intervention should be done with a sense of the possibility of going too far in limiting the freedom of theologians. This is not an easy time - neither for Rome nor for the theologians. ~ Godfried Danneels

All of us must do our best to live gracefully in the present moment. I now see depression as akin to being tied to a chair with restraints on my wrists. It took me a long time to realize that I only magnify my distress by struggling for freedom. My pain diminished when I gave up trying to escape completely from it. However, don't interpret my current approach to depression as utterly fatalistic. I do whatever I can to dull depression's pain, while premising my life on its continuing presence. The theologian and philosopher Thomas Moore puts it well with his distinction between cure and care. While cure implies the eradication of trouble, care "appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life. ~ David A. Karp

A theologian is a person who makes bold to speak about God because he speaks out of God and through God. To profess theology is to do holy work. It is a priestly ministration in the house of the Lord. It is itself a service of worship, a consecration of mind and heart to the honour of His name. ~ Herman Bavinck

Over the years, I've realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I'm in an odd world where I make things and share them with people. ~ Rob Bell

No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least. ~ Robert Graves

Keep in mind God's precept that states, 'Judge not, and you will not be judged' (Lk. 6:37), and in no way meddle in the lives of others. ~ Symeon The New Theologian

The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable. ~ Karl Rahner

The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people. ~ Richard J. Foster

When a man walks in the fear of God he knows no fear, even if he were to be surrounded by wicked men. He has the fear of God within him and wears the invincible armor of faith. This makes him strong and able to take on anything, even things which seem difficult or impossible to most people. Such a man is like a giant surrounded by monkeys, or a roaring lion among dogs and foxes. He goes forward trusting in the Lord and the constancy of his will to strike and paralyze his foes. He wields the blazing club of the Word in wisdom. ~ Symeon The New Theologian

Jesus did not identify the person with his sin, but rather saw in this sin something alien, something that really did not belong to him, something that merely chained and mastered him and from which he could free him and bring him back to his real self. Jesus was able to love men because he loved them right through the layer of mud. ~ Helmut Thielicke