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?

Biblical Theology...is that part of Exegetical Theology which deals with the revelation of God in its historic continuity...Biblical Theology, rightly defined, is nothing else than the exhibition of the organic progress of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity.

Prayer and Theology are inseparable. True Theology is the adoration offered by the intellect. The intellect clarifies the moment of prayer, but only prayer can give it the fervor of the Spirit. Theology is light, prayer is fire.

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.

We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.

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?

Classical theology has erred in its insistence that theology be 'God-centered,' not 'man-centered'.

The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon Hell and Damnation-upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer.

[John] Calvin's Institutes is often called a summary of Christian piety. You can't say that about many modern works of theology. You can say it of Calvin.

All my theology is reduced to this narrow compass - "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."

When I say God it is poetry and not theology. Nothing that any theologian has written about God has helped me much, but everything the poets have written about flowers and birds and skies and seas and saviors of the race, and God - whoever He may be - has at one time or another reached my soul!...The theologians gather dust upon the shelves of my library but the poets are stained with my fingers and blotted by my tears.

When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.

It may be observed in general that the future is purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure distant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some immediate gratification. This is so evidently true with regard to the whole of our existence that all precepts of theology have no other tendency than to enforce a life of faith; a life regulated not by our senses but by our belief; a life in which pleasures are to be refused for fear of invisible punishments, and calamities sometimes to be sought, and always endured, in hope of rewards that shall be obtained in another state.

The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more child-like will be our faith

All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth.

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

The problem with Prosperity Theology is not that it promises too much, but that it aims for so little. What God promises us in Christ is far above anything that can be measured in earthly wealth - and believers are not promised earthly wealth nor the gift of health.

A theology which is not based on revelation as a given reality but treats God as an idea would be as mad as a zoology which is no longer sure of the physical, tangible existence of animals.

Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.

Religious conservatives still lack a theology of direct political action.

A theology whose god is a metaphor is wasting its time.

There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.

...popular fundamentalist theology has emphasized the utility of the cross rather than the beauty of the One who died on it... The "work" of Christ has been stressed until it has eclipsed the person of Christ.

A general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the god portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy much less of a universe.

For the soul of a person to be inflamed with passion for the living God, that person's mind must first be informed about the character and will of God. There can be nothing in the heart that is not first in the mind. Though it is possible to have theology on the head without its piercing the soul, it cannot pierce the soul without first being grasped by the mind.

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.

God is the Truth. The Bible is the truth about the Truth. Theology is the truth about the truth about the Truth.

If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both.

Theology is taught by God, teaches God, and leads to God.

This book will expose the sins of the fathers and the vicious abuse of the Jewish people. 'In Defense of Israel' will shake Christian theology. It scripturally proves that the Jewish people as a whole did not reject Jesus as Messiah. It will also prove that Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah. It will prove that there was a 'Calvary conspiracy' between Rome, the high priest, and Herod to execute Jesus as an insurrectionist too dangerous to live. Since Jesus refused by word and deed to claim to be the Messiah, how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered?

Music is a fair and glorious gift of God. I am strongly persuaded that after theology, there is no art which can be placed on the level with music.

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.

Don't create theology about God so that you can feel better about Him.

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.

Solid scriptural theology should be valued in the church. Books in which Scripture is reverently regarded as the only rule of faith and practice-- books in which Christ and the Holy Ghost have their rightful office-- books in which justification, and sanctification, and regeneration, and faith, and grace, and holiness are clearly, distinctly, and accurately delineated and exhibited, these are the only books which do real good. Few things need reviving more than a taste for such books as these among readers.

The function of law and theology are the same: to keep the poor from taking back by violence what the rich have stolen by cunning.

Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind.

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

In The Lost Message of Jesus I claim that penal substitution is tantamount to 'child abuse - a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.' Though the sheer bluntness of this imagery (not original to me of course) might shock some, in truth, it is only a stark 'unmasking' of the violent, pre-Christian thinking behind such a theology.

The third major characteristic of God - "infinitude" - is the catchall, the universal modifier of Christian theology. God is not merely a being; he is infinite being. God is not merely good; he is infinite goodness. God is not merely wise; he is infinite wisdom. And so on down the list. God is exaggeration run amuck.

Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before.

Language changes. If it does not change, like Latin it dies. But we need to be aware that as our language changes, so does our theology change, particularly if we are trying to manipulate language for a specific purpose. That is what is happening with our attempts at inclusive language, which thus far have been inconclusive and unsuccessful.

Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, ‘What is God like?’ and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind

The more I read, the less I admire modern theology. the more I study the productions of the new schools of theological teachers, the more I marvel that men and women can be satisfied with such writings. There is a vagueness, a mistiness, a shallowness, an indistinctness, a superficiality, an aimlessness, a hollowness about the literature of the 'broader and kinder systems', as they are called, which to my mind stamps their origin on their face. They are of the earth, earthy.

How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?

The notion that we are children of God, his own sons and daughters, lies at the heart of all Christian theology, and is the mainspring of all Christian living.

Theology is only thought applied to religion.