Theologian Quotes - Page 17

• Artists are the best theologians. They feel things that are true before theologians can jargonize them into obscurity.

  Tony Campolo

  Artist, Obscurity, Feels

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• Theologians have felt no hesitation in founding a system of speculative thought on the teachings of Jesus; and yet Jesus was never an inhabitant of the realm of speculative thought.

  Walter Rauschenbusch

  Jesus, Teaching, Hesitation

  Walter Rauschenbusch (2003). “Christianity and the Social Crisis”, p.91, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• In the end theologians are jealous of science, for they are aware that it has greater authority than do their own ways of finding "truth": dogma, authority, and revelation. Science does find truth, faith does not.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Jealous, Doe, Way

  "William Lane Craig Defends His Ridiculous Claim That Animals Don’t Suffer". "Why Evolution is True" blog by Jerry Coyne, whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com. February 09, 2013.

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• I had NO interest in being a theologian, especially not a Christian, as I had been raised by progressive atheists. We bowed down every morning to the golden calf of the New York Times, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt. I tried to get my parents to respect and nourish me, let alone delight in me, so even though I secretly loved and believed in the Divine Something - Goodness, Good Orderly Direction, Gift of Desperation, the Cosmic Muffin - I wasn't ready yet to commit myself to the study of a higher power.

  Anne Lamott

  Christian, Morning, Atheist

  Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

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• I don't like realism. We already know the real facts about li[fe], most of the basic facts. I'm not interested in repeating what we already know. We know about sex, about violence, about murder, about war. All these things, by the time we're 18, we're up to here. From there on we need interpreters. We need poets. We need philosophers. We need theologians, who take the same basic facts and work with them and help us make do with those facts. Facts alone are not enough. It's interpretation.

  Ray Bradbury

  Sex, Real, War

  "Ray Bradbury's Lost Interview On Madmen, Writing, and Cars" by Chris Higgins, mentalfloss.com. April 28, 2015.

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• Christians believe that God created man, and humanists believe that man invented God. But whichever way you look at it, we're brothers and sisters. Either we're brothers and sisters because we're children of God, or because we've banded together to invent God. So the ethics of the humanist and the ethics of some Christians are very similar. And we don't want to create divisions between humanists and Liberation Theologians, any more than we want between the New Worker and the Trots. It's not helpful.

  Tony Benn

  Christian, Brother, Children

  Source: think-left.org

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• God cannot suffer - at least not as we do. It has some roots in Greek philosophy: if God is a perfect being, suffering would reduce that perfection, so God cannot suffer. More thoughtful theologians take the phrase in the sense of one of the confessions of faith that talks of God as being "without parts or passions" - he is not physical as we are, and not subject to "passions" in the sense of uncontrollable emotions that can take charge of us at times. God is not "emotional," if that word is used as some kind of weakness.

  Christopher J. H. Wright

  Philosophy, Passion, Thoughtful

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• My goal as a theologian is to move beyond the acquisition of knowledge to its application in real life: in a word, I want to get wisdom.

  Kevin Vanhoozer

  Real, Moving, Goal

  Source: exiledpreacher.blogspot.com

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• Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Atheist, Cat, Dark

  Robert A. Heinlein (1985). “Job, a Comedy of Justice”, Del Rey

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• I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Children, Cutting, Opportunity

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• I think gardening is nearer to godliness than theology. True gardeners are both iconographers and theologians insofar as these activities are the fruit of prayer 'without ceasing.' Likewise, true gardeners never cease to garden, not even in their sleep, because gardening is not just something they do. It is how they live.

  Vigen Guroian

  Prayer, Sleep, Garden

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• Laughter has been implanted in our soul, that the soul may sometime be refreshed.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Laughter, Soul, May

  Saint John Chrysostom, Aeterna Press “Homilies of Saint John Chrysostom: On The Epistle to the Hebrews”, Aeterna Press

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• For the Lord hath in no place forbidden mirth.

  Heinrich Bullinger

  Mirth, Lord, Forbidden

  Heinrich Bullinger, Harding (1850). “The Decades of H. Bullinger ..”, p.55

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• We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or be satisfied with food...or to be delighted with music or to drink wine.

  John Calvin

  Wine, Laughing, Drink

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• Humor is the foundation of reconciliation.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Foundation, Reconciliation

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• It is possible to live for the next life and still be merry in this.

  Thomas More

  Next, Stills, Merry

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• A good joke is the closest thing we have to divine revelation.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Divine Revelation, Revelations, Jokes

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• It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Writing, Good Times, Easier

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

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• What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men; and even to some which are not innocent.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Laughter, Men, Healthy

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• A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub and the toastmasters.

  Helmut Thielicke

  Laughter, Church, Sanctuary

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• The only time laughter is wicked is when it is turned against Him Who gave it.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Laughter, Wicked, Only Time

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• Humor is proof that everything is going to be all right with God nevertheless.

  Charles M. Schulz

  Still Life With Woodpecker, Proof, Nevertheless

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• Wherever she was, holy laughter was present to heal and redeem.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Laughter, Holy, Heal

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art”, p.57, Convergent Books

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• Humor, together with irony,forms a safeguard against idolatry.

  Krister Stendahl

  Together, Irony, Form

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• The experienced pastor will recognize to which situation humor belongs and to which belongs sobriety.

  Thomas Oden

  Sobriety, Pastor, Situation

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