Quotes About Theology

Theology is a non-subject. I'm not saying that professors of theology are non-professors. They do interesting things, like study biblical history, biblical literature. But theology, the study of gods, the study of what gods do, presupposes that gods exist. The only kind of theology that I take account of are those theological arguments that actually argue for the existence of God.

Patrick Cheng's Radical Love is not only an excellent introduction to LGBT theology but an important contribution to the discipline of theology and the life of the church. It is a must read for anyone who cares about the health of the church and theology today.

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

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.

The object is evident in the name of the discipline. Similarly, theology (theologia) is the study of God. The object of theology is not the church's teaching or the experience of pious souls. It is not a subset of ethics, religious studies, cultural anthropology, or psychology. God is the object of this discipline.

A really religious person has no theology. Yes, he has the experience, he has the truth, he has that luminosity, but he has no theology.

I've come to learn that theology matters. It matters not because we want to impress people, but because what we know about God shapes the way we think and live. Theology matters because if we get it wrong then our whole life will be wrong.

I think the connection between poetry and theology, which is profound in Western tradition - there is a great deal of wonderful religious poetry - both poetry and theology push conventional definitions and explore perceptions that might be ignored or passed off as conventional, but when they are pressed yield much larger meanings, seem to be part of a much larger system of reality.

What is the right time [to discuss theology]? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually 'to be still' (Ps. 46:10) in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, 'to judge uprightly' (Ps. 75:2) in theology.

Broadly speaking, Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good. Hence, the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism.

A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology.

Catholic theology accounts for the fact that there's evil in the world. People say, well, how could God let this happen. Well, what God did was set the mechanism in motion and then allow people to do the best they can under the circumstances that they're dealt in order to gain grace and get into heaven.

We are called by God to do theology, that is, to live our lives with a moment-by-moment consciousness of God.

We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of women within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions.

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

The Epistle to the Romans is an extremely important synthesis of the whole theology of St. Paul.

Many of those whose task it is to broker the truth of God to the people of God in the churches have now redefined the pastoral task such that theology has become an embarrassing encumbrance or a matter of which they have little knowledge; and many in the Church have now turned in upon themselves and substituted for the knowledge of God a search for the knowledge of self.

When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great.

Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.

One of the primary services the arts can render to theology is their integrative power, their ability to interrelate the intellect with the other facets of our human makeup.

If you expound the teaching of the Logos from the standpoint of the moral life, using materialistic words and examples which correspond to the capacity of your hearers, you make the Logos flesh. Conversely, if you elucidate mystical theology by means of the higher forms of contemplation you make the Logos spirit.

All great literature has an uncreeded and luminous theology behind it... Art [is] a form of active prayer.

This, then, is the foundation of sanctification in Reformed theology. It is rooted, not in humanity and their achievement of holiness or sanctification, but in what God has done in Christ, and for us in union with him. Rather than view Christians first and foremost in the microcosmic context of their own progress, the Reformed doctrine first of all sets them in the macrocosm of God's activity in redemptive history. It is seeing oneself in this context that enables the individual Christian to grow in true holiness.

Realizing our society as it is, without theology dogmatically telling us how we should react to it, and being humane toward that society, that is all that we're sure of.

Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song.

If we believe in a theology that doesn't contain doing the works of Jesus, we will not have a practice of Signs & Wonders.

The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people.

Many of the religious apologists out there are not stupid people, they are often brilliant. People working in the field of theology and philosophy smart people everywhere. What they are those religious apologists are smart poeple who can build these amazingly intricate rationalizations for whatever weird practice they favor. Whether it's ritual cannibalism, or praying to spirits, or treating women as chattel. And they always building this on terrible shaky foundation of false premises.

Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless - until they aren't.

Theosophy blesses the world; Theology is its curse.

I've written a book entitled 'Islam: the Challenges of Democracy,' because it is a challenge. It requires careful interpretation of the Islamic tradition and Islamic theology, and there's a lot in there that would support democratic ideals.

I guess I will say, going back to the Judaism questions, there are mental reflexes or patterns that I think of as Jewish in my own feelings about mysticism and theology.Franz Kafka is someone I very much revere. If I believed in holy texts I'd go to him as a touchstone. Not that I read Kafka all the time at this point. In a way, this is what I most want to talk about and it's the hardest to talk about.

Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.

Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundations and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.

I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the Cross, the Cross--God's hammer, God's fire.

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

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

After theology I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.

In theology, the state of a luckless mortal prenatally damned. The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin, whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are predestined to salvation.

Theology must work itself out in the most practical relationships.

The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.

Theology, like fiction, is largely autobiographical.

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.

Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers.

The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages.

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

Natural Theology says not only look up and look out-it also says look down and look in, and you will find the proofs of the reality of God in the depth of your own nature.