Quotes

Quotes about Theology


Men are better than their theology.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

Christopher Morley

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

I always admired Mrs. Grote's saying that politics and theology were the only two really great subjects.

Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone

Continuing a short series on topics of Christian apologetics: A certain group of scholars, mostly German or influenced by German protestant theology, has rushed to abandon positions before they were attacked, and to demythologize the Gospel message when there was no clear evidence that intelligent minds outside the Church were any more frightened by her mystery than by her morals.

G. I. Bonner

Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers' Union, 1921 When evangelicals call the Bible "inerrant", part at least of their meaning is this: that, in exegesis and exposition of Scripture and in building up our biblical theology from the fruits of our Bible study, we may not (1) deny, disregard, or arbitrarily relativize, anything that the biblical writers teach, nor (2) discount any of the practical implications for worship and service that their teaching carries, nor (3) cut the knot of any problem of Bible harmony, factual or theological, by allowing ourselves to assume that the inspired writers were not necessarily consistent either with themselves or with each other. It is because the word "inerrant" makes these methodological points about handling the Bible, ruling out in advance the use of mental procedures that can only lead to reduced and distorted versions of Christianity, that it is so valuable and, I think, so much valued by those who embrace it.

James I. Packer

Feast of Andrew the Apostle "Why was I born?" "Why am I here?" Theology answers, "You are here to grow, to grow up in every way unto the full stature of a man newborn in Christ.".

Frederick Ward Kates

You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray yourself you will never understand prayer. It's like riding a bicycle or swimming: You learn by doing. .. Luis Palau March 14, 2001 Most evangelicals believe that if a passage of the Bible seems unclear in its meaning, it should be interpreted in the light of Scripture "as a whole". But what does "Scripture as a whole" mean? In practice, if not theory, it means the working systematic theology of the interpreter, or of his own theological tradition. An evangelical... would not hold to that tradition unless he believed that it did represent the wholeness of the biblical witness. Nevertheless, if this state of affairs has been correctly described, he is now in a serious difficulty. For if the Bible must always accord with a theology that has already been accepted, how can the truth of a biblical passage ever confront him afresh with an unfavorable judgment?

Tony Thiselton

Feast of David, Bishop of Menevia, Patron of Wales, c.601 The scandal of the Bible does not lie so much in its claim to record the Word of God, as in its insistence that the Word of God is to be heard in a particular historical happening, in a particular locality—and only there. To put it in a provocative manner: the Bible is theology. It is historical theology. It can reveal its meaning only to those who regard it as the Word of God, and are able to preserve a strict confidence in the universal significance of particular historical occasions.

E. S. Hoskyns

Insofar as theology is an attempt to define and clarify intellectual positions, it is apt to lead to discussion, to differences of opinion, even to controversy, and hence to be divisive. And this has had a strong tendency to dampen serious discussion of theological issues in most groups, and hence to strengthen the general anti-intellectual bias...

Sidney E. Mead

Theology is Anthropology. [Ger., Die Theologie ist die Anthropologie.]

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach

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

I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.

Jeremy Taylor

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

Henry Ward Beecher

As the grace grows nearer my theology is growing strangely simple, and it begins and ends with Christ as the only Savior of the lost.

Henry Benjamin Whipple

Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.

Henry Ward Beecher

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

H. L. Mencken

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

Brian Pickrell

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