Theological Quotes

• Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.

  John Polkinghorne

  Inquiry, Problem, Speak

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• All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

  Wilfred Owen

  Becoming, Distasteful

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• Our own theological Church, as we know, has scorned and vilified the body till it has seemed almost a reproach and a shame to have one, yet at the same time has credited it with power to drag the soul to perdition.

  Eliza Farnham

  Soul, Church, Body

  "Woman and Her Era". Book by Eliza Farnham, pt. 1, ch. 1, 1864.

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• Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day.

  Wilhelm Dilthey

  Religious, Hands, Movement

  Wilhelm Dilthey, Rudolf A. Makkreel, Frithjof Rodi (1991). “Introduction to the Human Sciences”, p.59, Princeton University Press

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• At present, too much theological thinking is very human-centered.

  John Polkinghorne

  Thinking, Too Much, Humans

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• A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

  Karl Marx

  Business, Sight, Analysis

  Karl Marx (1988). “Marx Selections”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• Solve all your problems through meditation. Exchange unprofitable religious speculations for actual God-contact. Clear your mind of dogmatic theological debris; let in the fresh, healing waters of direct perception. Attune yourself to the active inner Guidance; the Divine Voice has the answer to every dilemma of life. Through man's ingenuity for getting himself into trouble appears to be endless, the Infinite Succor is no less resourceful.

  Lahiri Mahasaya

  Religious, Healing, Men

  "Autobiography of a Yogi". Ch. 35: The Christlike Life of Lahiri Mahasaya. Book by Paramahansa Yogananda, 1946.

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• 

  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Inspirational, Broken Heart

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• Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Animal, Broken

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The most malicious kind of hatred is that which is built upon a theological foundation.

  George Sarton

  Hatred, Atheism, Foundation

  George Sarton “History of Science and New”, Transaction Publishers

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• I love cloisters, which are the architectural equivalent of a theological concept: perfect freedom within set boundaries.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Perfect, Architecture, Boundaries

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• To be a Christian is to be a theologian-a student of God and his will. The contemporary disdain for theological content and emphasis on self-image and emotions were not shared by the apostolic church.

  R. C. Sproul

  Christian, Apostolic Church, Self

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• Oh, how rare are the Christians who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel.

  John Piper

  Christian, Heart, Steel

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• The unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological wilderness.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Weed, Heart, Garden

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• 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.

  Thomas Paine

  Jobs, Book, Order

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AGE OF REASON - Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (Including “The Life of Thomas Paine”): Deistic Critique of Bible and Christian Church”, p.26, e-artnow

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• The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible...The theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real overcoming of evil on the Cross; it ask for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation of the fallen world

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Real, Evil, Guilt

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• Most of us retain enough of the theological attitude to think that we are little gods.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Religious, Attitude, Humility

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• All our problems are theological ones, William Temple said. All of them have to do with our relationship to God and his to us, and this is precisely why it makes sense to come to God with them.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Christian, Prayer, Temples

  Elisabeth Elliot (2006). “God's Guidance: Finding His Will for Your Life”, p.50, Revell

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• Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

  Denis Diderot

  Science, Eggs, Church

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

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• Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love.

  Roland Allen

  Missionary Zeal, Christian Inspirational, Intellectual

  Roland Allen, David M. Paton (2012). “The Ministry of the Spirit: Selected Writings of Roland Allen”, p.35, The Lutterworth Press

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• America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  America, Independence, Pieces

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• Contrary to the popular notion that only creationism relies on the supernatural, evolutionism must as well, since the probabilities of random formation of life are so tiny as to require a 'miracle' for spontaneous generation tantamount to a theological argument.

  Chandra Wickramasinghe

  Miracle, Tiny, Generations

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• Science, with its experiments and logic, tries to understand the order or structure of the universe. Religion, with its theological inspiration and reflection, tries to understand the purpose or meaning of the universe. These two are cross-related. Purpose implies structure, and structure ought somehow to be interpretable in terms of purpose.

  Charles Hard Townes

  Inspiration, Reflection, Order

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• The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions-each branch of our knowledge-passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious: the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.

  Auguste Comte

  Knowledge, Science, Law

  Auguste Comte (1975). “Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings”, p.68, Transaction Publishers

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• Neither theological knowledge nor social action alone is enough to keep us in love with Christ unless both are proceeded by a personal encounter with Him. Theological insights are gained not only from between two covers of a book, but from two bent knees before an altar. The Holy Hour becomes like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul and fetid atmosphere of the world

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Religious, Jesus, Prayer

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