Theological Liberalism Quotes

Until the end of the 1960's I do not recall ever seriously exchanging ideas with an articulate conservative. They were there, but not on my scope. I systematically avoided any contact with those who would have challenged my ideology. ~ Thomas C. Oden

At Vatican II my mind was growing through the embryonic beginning of a reversal of moral conscience unlike any I had known. I found myself increasingly critical of the Freudian psychoanalysis that had long shaped my interest in personal behavior change. I better recognized the long captivity of Protestant pastoral care to contemporary psychology and became a critic of the very accommodation to modern consciousness that I myself had advocated throughout the preceding decade. ~ Thomas C. Oden

Questions about God's existence, self disclosure, saving action and almighty power reminded me of my inadequacies. For me the theo in theology had become little more than a question mark. I could confidently discuss philosophy, psychology and social change, but God made me uneasy. ~ Thomas C. Oden

The more I learn, the less I know. ~ Jeffrey Rasley

Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today!
We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all. ~ J. Gresham Machen

If I have so far argued that Foucault is a kind of closet liberal and thus deeply modern, I need to be equally critical of evangelical (and especially American) Christianity's modernity and its appropriation of Enlightenment notions of the autonomous self. Indeed, many otherwise orthodox Christians, who recoil at the notion of theological liberalism, have unwittingly adopted notions of freedom and autonomy that are liberal to the core. Averse to hierarchies and control, contemporary evangelicalism thrives on autonomy: the autonomy of the nondenominational church, at a macrocosmic level, and the autonomy of the individual Christian, at the microcosmic level. And it does not seem to me that the emerging church has changed much on this score; indeed, some elements of emergent spirituality are intensifications of this affirmation of autonomy and a laissez-faire attitude with respect to institutions. ~ James K.A. Smith

Instead of worrying about hypothetical slippages awaiting egalitarian believers, like sliding into secular feminism, theological liberalism, or homosexuality, they would do better to deal with brutal violations of their "family values" that are actually happening today within their hierarchy-driven allegedly Christian homes. ~ Alan F. Johnson

Back at my teaching and editing jobs I imagined the new world we were trying to create would be enduring and absolutely better than any world we had inherited. For me, if an idea was purported to be new, it looked a lot better than any idea that seemed to be old. Most theologians I knew were trying to discover some new way of looking at the old ideas of God, humanity, sin and salvation. I was there to teach theology, but theology itself was in search of legitimation. What I was really doing might more accurately be described as promoting Rogerian psychology, wealth-distribution, demytholgy and existentialist ethics than studying God. Theology was desperately in search of a method, whether it was borrowed form cutting-edge philosophy, social theory or political life, as long as it didn't begin with revelation. ~ Thomas C. Oden

There is a contradiction between market liberalism and political liberalism. The market liberals (e.g., social conservatives) of today want family values, less government, and maintain the traditions of society (at least in America's case). However, we must face the cultural contradiction of capitalism: the progress of capitalism, which necessitates a consumer culture, undermines the values which render capitalism possible ~ Slavoj Zizek

We must not think of this merely as a theological or metaphysical question. For ~ Roger Scruton

Liberalism is a scourge. It destroys the human spirit. It destroys prosperity. It assigns sameness to everybody. And wherever I find it, I oppose it. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Liberalism, the dominant ideology of our time, has been dangerously distorted by the impact of economism. It is that impact which has knocked the citizen off his pedestal and replaced him with the consumer. ~ Larry Siedentop

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves. ~ M.H. Abrams

If capital produces most of the economy's wealth and income is distributed on the basis of productive input, the individual can hardly reach his goal - an affluent level of income - solely by means of his labor. ~ Louis O. Kelso

When capital owners are few, the private-property conduits of necessity create vast savings reservoirs for those few. If there were many owners, the same conduits would broadly irrigate the economy with purchasing power. ~ Louis O. Kelso

Feminism is liberalism, and look at what it's doing, look at what it's promoting, look at what it's condoning. All the while, we have to live in this lie that there's some sort of Republican War on Women. We don't do this to women! We don't objectify women like this. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century. ~ Hilaire Belloc

[F]rom the perspective of outsiders to the Christian tradition, Paul has sometimes been ridiculed for having abandoned monotheism. Such ridicule is part of a more general theological critique, advanced for centuries by Muslims and Jews, against the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, namely that God became human, and the notion of a triune God, namely that God is three-in-one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. To reduce a long tradition of theological dialogue and debate to one sentence, Muslims and Jews believe that devotion to Christ renders the Christian claim to monotheism misguided at best and idolatry at worst, while Christians see no contradiction between their affirmation of the oneness of God and the doctrine of the Trinity.

But, to once again reiterate a point made several times already in this book, Christianity does not yet exist as an independent religious system in Paul's time. Paul is not operating with the doctrine of the incarnation as it was defined in the Council of Nicea (CE 325) or the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as it was hammered out in the Council of Chalcedon (CE 451). At the same time, Paul's letters already reflect a surprisingly high Christology that appears to anticipate later orthodox views. That is to say, Paul's letters manifest a belief in Jesus' divinity that came to characterize the full-out identification between Jesus and God of later official Christian doctrine. Jesus is clearly a divine figure of unique status in Paul's le ~ Pamela Eisenbaum

Paul's strong, clear teaching at exactly this point both on the new status of the believer as having died and risen with Jesus Christ and on the new gift of God to the believer, the gift which Paul calls the holy spirit. It is astonishing to see how much of the debate has been conducted without the help of these two categories, as though the 'doctrine of justification' had to proceed with minimalist theological tools in order to be pure. You might as well try to play Wagner on a tin whistle. ~ N. T. Wright

The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible ... The theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real overcoming of evil on the Cross; it ask for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation of the fallen world ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind. ~ A.W. Tozer

Of learned men, the clergy show the lowest development of professional ethics. Any pastor is free to cadge customers from the divines of rival sects, and to denounce the divines themselves as theological quacks. ~ H.L. Mencken

Liberalism is a disease cured only by a lobotomy or 90 days in a third world country. ~ Josh Bernstein

The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third - most important - a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. ~ Milan Kundera

The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all
acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice.
This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings - happiness, peace of mind, exaltation - must be sought by each man within himself alone.
Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society.
It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to giv ~ Ludwig Von Mises

But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet's old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free-will. ~ G.K. Chesterton

We have the most liberal, the most leftist candidate who has ever run for president in my lifetime; he's a sitting duck. This guy's policies are aimed at destroying the age of American greatness. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Liberalism does not preclude an organisation of the flow of money in which some channels are used in decision making while others are only good for the payment of debts. ~ Jean Francois Lyotard

The boy, called Urbain, is now fourteen years old and wonderfully clever. He deserves to be given the best of educations, and in the neighborhood of Saintes the best education available is to be had at the Jesuit College of Bordeaux. This celebrated seat of learning comprised a high school for boys, a liberal arts college, a seminary, and a School of Advanced Studies for ordained postgraduates. Here the precociously brilliant Urbain Grandier spent more than ten years, first as schoolboy, and later as undergraduate, theological student and, after his ordination in 1615, as Jesuit novice. Not that he intended to enter the Company; for he felt no vocation to subject himself to so rigid a discipline. No, his career was to be made, not in a religious order, but as a secular priest. ~ Aldous Huxley

If somebody comes and scoops up all of my neighbor's information because they're on Verizon and just gathers all of that information, it is a violation of my civil rights as well. I'm telling you, America, we are the civil rights leaders of this day. Accept your position. Accept your role. Square your shoulders. Stand up. Link arms. Some of us will not make it to the end, as they used to say because this is a long, long journey to the end of the road. But man will be free as long as people understand the Bill of Rights. It was given to us, yes, by man, and flawed men, but it was inspired by God. Those rights don't belong to you. You are merely a guardian of those rights for our children and our grandchildren, of all color, of all races, of all theological backgrounds. You are a guardian and a steward. Recognize what time it is. Recognize why you have been born, where you have been born. You have been given much, and believe me, much is required, not just expected. ~ Glenn Beck

Believers should be wary of overzealous attempts to prescribe "biblical sex," when sex - like beauty and like God - remains shaded with mystery. Paul likened it to the mystery of Christ's love for the Church, the writer of Proverbs to the inscrutable way of an eagle in the sky. If Christians have learned anything from our rocky two-thousand-year theological history, it's that we make the most beautiful things ugly when we try to systematize mystery. Even the writers of Scripture knew that some things were simply beyond their grasp. ~ Rachel Held Evans

No Keynesian has ever proposed a measure designed to make the individual more productive; for that would require institutional means for enabling him to acquire ownership of the nonhuman factor of production: capital. ~ Louis O. Kelso

Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don't matter. ~ Jonah Goldberg

We can be only too grateful that an Archbishop of Braga should have immersed himself so deeply in theological speculation, armed and equipped as he was for war, with his coat of mail, his broadsword dangling from the ~ Jose Saramago

Perhaps the main stumbling block to a better, and more fruitful, theological relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people has been the tendency of many Christian theologians to see the Christ event as the end of history. ~ David Novak

You'll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist [ ... ] I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Liberalism denies that there is any fixed or universal human nature. ~ Nancy Pearcey

Our present predicament comes from the fact that running the economy on blood is no longer fashionable. We can't end this depression with another war. ~ Louis O. Kelso