Quotes About Theology

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian has a theology. The issue, then, is not, dowe want to have a theology? That's a given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology.? Do we embrace true or false doctrine?

Systematic theology will ask questions like "What are the attributes of God? What is sin? What does the cross achieve?" Biblical theology tends to ask questions such as "What is the theology of the prophecy of Isaiah? What do we learn from John's Gospel? How does the theme of the temple work itself out across the entire Bible?" Both approaches are legitimate; both are important. They are mutually complementary.

There is however difference between the theology of liberation and traditional theology, the latter being based primarily On the Word of God made incarnate in the Holy Scripture Liberation theology is of course also inspired by the Word, but its representatives are convinced that God also speaks to us in everyday events and that, for example, information obtained through the mass media can be a special way in which God speaks to us.

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.

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the Thirteenth Century, but this yielding is always done grudgingly, and thus lingers a good while behind the event.

Religion in the West has a very wrong connotation. It has almost reached to a point where the very word 'religion' creates a repulsion, where the very word 'religion' reminds one of dead churches and dead priests. It reminds one of serious looking people, long faces. It has lost the capacity to dance, to sing, to celebrate. And when a religion has lost the capacity to dance, to celebrate, to sing, to love, just to be, then it is no more religion - it is a corpse, it is theology. Theology is dead religion.

Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology.

It sounds superficially fair. But it presupposes that that there is something in Christian theology to be ignorant about. The entire thrust of my position is that Christian theology is a non-subject. It is empty. Vacuous. Devoid of coherence or content. I imagine that McGrath would join me in expressing disbelief in fairies, astrology and Thor's hammer. How would he respond if a fairyologist, astrologer or Viking accused him of ignorance of their respective subjects?

There is a theology to gardening that few of us consider, but to understand this theology means relinquishing much control - our arsenal of books, techniques, tools, chemicals, fertilizers, fancy hybrids, and expectations. Yet, that is exactly what we must do if we are to fully embrace a more spiritual form of gardening. As a part of Nature we must learn to enter our garden as if it were truly sacred, we must learn to enter with humility.

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

The classic theology of my tradition comes from the French Renaissance. [William] Shakespeare was born in 1564, the year [John] Calvin died, and that theology was very influential in England in his lifetime. I think Shakespeare was attentive to questions raised by it, about human nature, history, reality itself. I find the two literatures to be mutually illuminating.

Modern man has not only thrown away Christian theology, he has thrown away the possibility of what our forefathers had as a basis for morality and law.

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

In my eyes, concepts of theology have only as much value as they are able to interpret experience. It seems to me that we have long reached the point where we theologians only talk to ourselves and debate with our own history of concepts.

Men are better than this theology.

Because religious training means credulity training, churches should not be surprised to find that so many of their congregations accept astrology as readily as theology, or a channeled Atlantean priest as readily as a biblical prophet.

True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.

There's probably no concept in theology more repugnant to modern America than the idea of divine wrath.

I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.

When you put biblical truth to the songs used in churches, you'll have the congregation leave singing the sermon. You'll have God's thoughts, things that are God-breathed, stuck in their heads. It's sad to think about a really catchy tune paired up with bad theology because that could, honestly, do a lot of damage in church.

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.

Philadelphia caught my attention in 1995 when a group of homeless families were living in an abandoned cathedral. Even from the beginning they connected theology with what they were doing. They put a banner on the front of the cathedral that said, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday."

Jesus clearly believed in the reality of Satan and other principalities and powers. Now, I have very compelling historical, philosophical, and existential reasons for concluding that Jesus is Lord, and if I confess him to be Lord, I don't see how I can consider myself in a position to ever correct his theology, especially about such a foundational theological matter!

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

James 2:19- 'You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that- and shudder.' God doesn't just want us to have good theology; He wants us to know and love Him.

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

My theology is such that the God who loves Israel and will not forsake Israel - which is why I want to see Israel have a secure nation with secure borders - also loves the Palestinians.

Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology.

We want Paul's theology and his results but not his methods.

I knew a witty physician who found theology in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was a disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian.

In God's eyes, all creatures have value whether we find them cuddly, affectionate, beautiful or otherwise. Our own perspective-in a way-is neither here nor there. Theology, at its best, can help to liberate us from our own anthropocentric limitations.

Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.

I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soulI hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the true Faith of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.

Theosophy blesses the world; Theology is its curse.

Susannah Heschel's The Aryan Jesus is a brilliant and erudite investigation of the convergence between major trends in German Protestantism and Nazi racial anti-Semitism. By concentrating on the history of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, Heschel describes in forceful detail the Nazification of all aspects of Protestant theology, including the Aryanization of Jesus himself. This is a highly original and important contribution to our understanding of the Third Reich.

What a way to learn great theology! That's what comes to mind whenever I sing one of those old hymns. "And Can It Be" is like putting the doctrine of salvation to music. "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is a melodic lesson in grace. No wonder good hymns make for strong faith!

Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic.

Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.

Infinite possibility in all things is a certainty. That pretty much covers theology and philosophy for me.

There's a stronger and more kind of controversial element of Plotinus' view of matter, which is that he actually identifies it with evil, or at least the principle of evil, and the reason for this is that he thinks that the the One, the highest principle, can also be thought of as the Good, and that's kind of surprising like, because he has this negative theology which doesn't allow us to say anything about the One. But he believes that it can be seen as the principle of goodness as well as unity, and that if you think about it, goodness and unity sort of go along with each other.

Lincoln is theology, not historiology. He is a faith, he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom have a vested interest in [him] and who are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him.

Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works.

The Christ of Theology is not alive for us today. He is wrapped in the grave cloths of dogma.

Academic theology is false.

I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations...I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian.

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