Theological Quotes - Page 6

• Give yourself to reading.’... You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Reading, Light, Giving

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• Are they really gods?" "I never worry about theological questions," said Nightingale. "They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen's peace - that makes them a police matter.

  Ben Aaronovitch

  Queens, Worry, Police

  Ben Aaronovitch (2011). “Midnight Riot”, p.100, Del Rey

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• I wouldn't burden any decent system of faith by participating in it... I'm not agnostic. Just nonpartisan. Theological Switzerland, that's me.

  Jim Butcher

  Switzerland, Agnostic, Burden

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• See that's where it falls apart for me!" Anne cried. "What sticks in my throat is that God gets the credit but never the blame. I just can't swallow that kind of theological candy. Either God's in charge or he's not.

  Mary Doria Russell

  Fall, Credit, Sticks

  Mary Doria Russell (1996). “The Sparrow”, Random House

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• I know the theological answers, but do my blood and my pulse?

  Ann Voskamp

  Blood, Pulse, Answers

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• You might tell me that you have been engaging in some deep questioning and theological rethinking.1 You can no longer live with the faith you inherited from your parents or constructed earlier in your life. As you sort through your dogma and doctrine, you’ve found yourself praying less, less thrilled about worship, scripture, or church attendance. You’ve been so focused on sorting and purging your theological theories that you’ve lost track of the spiritual practices that sustain an actual relationship with God. You may even wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like you.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Spiritual, Practice, Track

  Brian D. McLaren (2011). “Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words”, p.2, Harper Collins

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• We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Wise, Heart, Mind

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• This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.

  Karl Barth

  Jesus, Kindness, Limits

  Karl Barth (1960). “The Humanity of God”, p.62, Westminster John Knox Press

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• Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy. Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition (or not in the manner we are now considering); she will help to show what it means.

  C. S. Lewis

  Philosophy, Mean, Doe

  C. S. Lewis (1971). “The Four Loves”, p.32, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Essay on Adam" There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell. Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four: he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him. Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam. The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth, fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth, nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between: he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between these is only an issue of whether the demons work from the inside out or from the outside in: the one theological question.

  Robert Bringhurst

  Simple, Two, Differences

  Robert Bringhurst (2010). “Selected Poems”, p.33, Random House

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• You don’t have a soul, so you can’t be baptized. All animals are like that. I think it’s unfair and sometimes I don’t believe it. After all, what would heaven be without birds or dogs or horses? And what about trees and flowers? They don’t have souls either. Does that mean heaven looks like a cement parking lot? I suppose this is what the nuns call a theological problem.

  Nancy Farmer

  Dog, Horse, Believe

  Nancy Farmer (2010). “The House of the Scorpion”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

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• In too many churches today, people don't see manifestations of God's power in answer to fervent praying. Instead, they hear arguments about theological issues that few people care about.

  Jim Cymbala

  Prayer, Church Today, Issues

  Jim Cymbala (2010). “Fresh Wind Fresh Fire: What Happens When God's Spirit Invades the Hearts of His People”, p.236, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.

  Horace Mann

  Education, Mean, Science

  Horace Mann (1957). “The Republic and the School: The Education of Free Men”

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• Thus, a vision of the whole gradually grew for me that was nourished by the various experiences and realizations I had encountered along my theological path. I rejoiced to be able to say something of my own, something new and yet completely within the faith of the Church. The feeling of aquiring a theological vision that was ever more clearly my own was the most wonderful experience of those years.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Years, Feelings, Vision

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• There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Doe, Honest

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• Worship without wonder is lifeless and boring. Many have lost their sense of awe and amazement when it comes to God. Having begun with the arrogant presumption of knowing about God all that one can, they reduce Him to manageable terms and confine Him to a tidy theological box, the dimensions of which conform to their predilections of what a god ought to be and do.

  Sam Storms

  Knowing, Arrogant, Dimensions

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• The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional ("I feel full of worship" or "The atmosphere is so worshipful"). Actually, it is theological. Worship is not something we "work up," it is something that "comes down" to us, from the character of God.

  Sinclair B. Ferguson

  Heart, Character, Emotional

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• I can truly say, after an experience of seventy years, that all the cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life, are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed. . . . The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Christian, Memories, Disappointment

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• All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Educational, School

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.222, Courier Corporation

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• Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.

  Karl Barth

  Church, Matter, Barbarians

  Karl Barth (2005). “God In Action: Theological Addresses”, p.26, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• You can be very religious and invoke the name of God and be able to quote lots of verses and be well versed in complicated theological systems and yet not be a person who sees. It’s one thing to sing about God and recite quotes about God and invoke God’s name; it’s another be aware of the presence in every taste, touch, sound, and embrace. With Jesus, what we see again and again is that it’s never just a person, or just a meal, or just an event, because there’s always more going on just below the surface.

  Rob Bell

  Religious, Jesus, Names

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• and while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of rationalism, it does seem that the naked fundamental experience itself, that primal seizure of mystic insight, stripped of religious concepts, perhaps no longer to be regarded as a religious experience at all, has undergone an immense expansion and now forms the soul of that complex irrationalism that haunts our era like a night bird lost in the dawn.

  Robert Musil

  Religious, Struggle, Night

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• In terms of the historical record, I should also point out that there is no account in any ancient source whatsoever about King Herod slaughtering children in or around Bethlehem, or anyplace else. No other author, biblical or otherwise, mentions this event. Is it, like John's account of Jesus' death, a detail made up by Matthew in order to make some kind of theological point?

  Bart D. Ehrman

  Jesus, Kings, Children

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• Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.

  Henri Nouwen

  Discovery, Painful, Competent

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• The essential difference between that knowledge which is, and that which is not conclusive evidence of Christian character, lies in this: the object of the one is the agreement of the several parts of a theological proposition; the object of the other is moral beauty, the intrinsic loveliness of God and Divine things. The sinner sees and hates; the saint sees and loves.

  Gardiner Spring

  Christian, Hate, Lying

  Gardiner Spring (1819). “Essays on the distinguishing traits of Christian character”, p.25

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