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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• 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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• All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

  Wilfred Owen

  Becoming, Distasteful

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems to me. Why? Because they will be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can be safely shelved.

  Ken Follett

  Worry, Problem, Hereafter

  Ken Follett (2010). “The Pillars of the Earth”, p.866, Penguin

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• We Unitarian Universalists have inherited a magnificent theological legacy. In a sweeping answer to creeds that divide the human family, Unitarianism proclaims that we spring from a common source; Universalism, that we share a common destiny.

  Forrest Church

  Spring, Destiny, Answers

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• Abortion is not a theological problem, it is a human problem, it is a medical problem. You kill one person to save another, in the best case scenario. Or to live comfortably, no? It's against the Hippocratic oaths doctors must take.

  Pope Francis

  Doctors, Medical Problems, Abortion

  Source: www.catholicnewsagency.com

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• In this case [the Charlemagne Prize], I don't say (I was) forced, but convinced by the holy and theological headstrongness of Cardinal [Walter] Kasper, because he was chosen, elected by Aachen to convince me. And I said yes, but in the Vatican. And I said I offer it for Europe, as a co-decoration for Europe, a prize so that Europe may do what I desired at Strasburg; that it may no longer be "grandmother Europe" but "mother Europe."

  Pope Francis

  Mother, Europe, May

  Source: www.catholicnewsagency.com

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• Americans are an "almost chosen people," which is meant to suggest that there are clear parallels, literal, theological and everything else, between the American story and the Old Testament story of Israel and then the broader story of the Christian church. It's OK to recognize the parallels. It's OK to invoke them. But, you have to keep that "almost" in front of the "chosen." You can't go all the way and say, "America is Israel, America is the Church." That's where I think patriotism shades into, what I call, the heresy of nationalism.

  Ross Douthat

  Christian, Thinking, Israel

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• A favorite pro-abortion tactic is to insist that the definition of when life begins is impossible; that the question is a theological or moral or philosophical one, anything but a scientific one. Fetology makes it undeniably evident that life begins at conception and requires all the protection and safeguards that any of us enjoy....As a scientist I know, not believe, know that human life begins at conception.

  Bernard Nathanson

  Believe, Philosophical, Abortion

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• I believe the causes that create them [serial killers] are theological in nature, rather than societal. I believe they make a conscious choice to erase God's thumbprint from their souls.

  James Lee Burke

  Believe, Choices, Soul

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• Protestantism, of course, is much more explicitly divided into different traditions - the Pentecostals, the Anglicans. But there is the main tradition of Protestantism that comes out of the Reformation and that produced people like Kant and Hegel and so on, who are not normally thought of as being people writing in a theological tradition, although Hegel, of course, wrote theology his whole life.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Writing, People, Different

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.

  William James

  Ideas, Relation, Being True

  William James (2012). “Pragmatism”, p.29, Courier Corporation

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• There is another important point: encountering the poor. If we step outside ourselves we find poverty. Today-it sickens the heart to say so-the discovery of a tramp who has died of the cold is not news. Today what counts as news is, maybe, a scandal. A scandal: ah, that is news! Today, the thought that a great many children do not have food to eat is not news. This is serious, this is serious! We cannot put up with this! Yet that is how things are. We cannot become starched Christians, those over-educated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea.

  Pope Francis

  Christian, Children, Heart

  Pope Francis (2016). “The Joy of Discipleship: Reflections from Pope Francis on Walking with Christ”, p.21, Loyola Press

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