Quotes About Theology

In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share.

Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements.

I think everyone who has an interest in Reformed theology, or just in Christian theology more generally, should read John Calvin Institutes.

The Resurrection of Jesus is...a symbol of hope...I don't see how you can show love...without being in solidarity with the victims of this world. And if you are in solidarity with the victims, I don't see how you can avoid the cross. The theology of the cross is the theology of love in our real world.

More than once I've had discussions with persons who say things based on a misunderstanding. 'Oh you Catholics worship images.' No we don't, 'yes you do,' no we don't, 'yes you do,' no we don't! The final retort to that is: I have a doctorate in Catholic theology that I have earned the hard way - by sitting in university classrooms for twelve years. I know what we believe! You get a doctorate in Catholic theology? What do you know about it? Nothing! You don't know anything about it. You're saying things that are born of misunderstanding or ignorance.

The worst criminals are not half so immoral as the creators and perpetrators of the unquestionable hell of Christian theology

Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.

Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.

The atonement chapter [from the book Saving Calvinism] shows how there are real riches in Reformed theology that most Christians today have no idea about.

The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.

We ought not speak too long about God with our minds before we turn and speak to God from our heart. We must stir a lot of prayer into the stew of our theology.

Religion is about God's truth, but none of us can grasp that truth absolutely, because of our own imperfections and limitations. We are only children of God, not God. Therefore, we must not attempt to fit God into little boxes, claiming that He supports this or that political position. This is not only bad theology; it marginalizes God.

In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person. Yes, it is women who keep the church going.

The problem with a Separation Theology is that it produces a Separation Cosmology, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else.

Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.

Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it.

It is often reported that the Five Points of Calvinism are the conceptual hard-core of Reformed thought. That is very misleading. The Five Points supposedly originate with the Synod of Dort in the early seventeenth century. Yet we find important Reformed leaders who were signatories to that documentation who don't think that limited atonement is the right way to think about the scope of Christ's saving work. How can this be? The answer that recent historical theology has thrown up is that the canons of the Synod don't require adherence to the doctrine of limited atonement.

Theology is an attempt to explain a subject by men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner.

Just as it is the province of science to find out what the facts of life are, to classify them and use them to verify or discredit whatever theory may have been advanced concerning them, so it is the province of a living theology to be constantly seeking from God the wit and wisdom that will interpret anew and more truly the parable of life.

Calvinism is an all-embracing system of principles... It is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and form that specific religious consciousness there was developed first a particular theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life.

The world does not understand theology or dogma, but it understands love and sympathy.

I wouldn't say philosophy and theology are dead. Brain science doesn't invent new philosophies but it helps remind us which of our existing philosophies are more true.

For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology.

Bad theology will eventually hurt people and dishonor God in proportion to its badness.

I still love the theology of the Mormon religion and think it is a wonderful way to grow up.

All history is an attempt to find pattern and meaning in a section of human experience, and every historian worthy of the name raises questions about man's ultimate destiny and the meaning of all history to which, as history, he can provide no answers. The answers belong to the realm of theology.

What it does remind us is that 'God' is not to be separated from the quest for the Kingdom of God and is not and cannot be the object of any detached 'scientific' contemplation. Heidegger's critique of onto-theology is also driving a wedge between speaking of God and the aims of science - not so as to get rid of God but rather to free God from a false objectification.

I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by.

I began to read for myself and realised that here was somebody who could teach me profound biblical theology, get inside my heart with his spiritual analysis, and help me to become a minister of the gospel, which is what I wanted to be.

When you say Yes to God unconditionally, you have no idea how far this Yes is going to take you. Certainly farther than you can guess and calculate beforehand... but just how far and in what form? At the same time, this Yes is the sole, non-negotiable prerequisite of all Christian understanding, of all theology and ecclesial wisdom.

What is the difference between a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Theology? One prescribes drugs, while the other might as well be on drugs.

The ultimate goal of theology isn't knowledge, but worship.

Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.

In theology we must consider the predominance of authority; in philosophy the predominance of reason.

Those who don't feel this Love pulling them like a river, those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take in the sunset like supper, those who don't want to change, let them sleep on. This Love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. If you want to improve your mind that way, sleep on. I've given up on my brain. I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away. If you're not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you, and sleep on

When a denomination begins to consider doctrine divisive, theology troublesome, and convictions inconvenient, consider that denomination on its way to a well-deserved death.

Brace yourself! If we take in what the Holy Father is saying in his Theology of the Body, we will never view ourselves, view others, view the Church, the Sacraments, grace, God, heaven, marriage, the celibate vocation...we will never view the world the same way again.

God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology.

One of the things we in the Reformed tradition are very good at is writing doctrinal theology!

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

In Bright Shadow: C.S. Lewis on the Imagination for Theology and Discipleship

Mormonism is not simply a commitment to a theology or a church practice, but a social-cultural order.

Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.

Any old woman can love God better than a doctor of theology can.

Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.

I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people joyful; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.

True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology.

I have, alas! Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence too, And to my cost Theology, With ardent labor, studied through. And here I stand, with all my lore, Poor fool, no wiser than before.