Theologian Quotes - Page 20

• Through scientific experiment they'd demonstrated that there may be such a thing as a life force flowing through the universe - what has variously been called collective consciousness or, as theologians have termed it, the Holy Spirit.

  Lynne McTaggart

  Science, May, Spirituality

  Lynne McTaggart (2012). “The Field Updated Ed: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe”, p.28, Harper Collins

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• No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least.

  Robert Graves

  Christian, Jesus, Acceptance

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• People, and especially theologians, should try to familiarize themselves with scientific ideas. Of course, science is technical in many respects, but there are some very good books that try to set out some of the conceptual structure of science.

  John Polkinghorne

  Book, Ideas, People

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• You cannot be a conscious Christian without St. Paul. He translated the teachings of Christ into a doctrinal structure that, even with the additions of a vast number of thinkers, theologians and pastors, has resisted and still exists after two thousand years.

  Pope Francis

  Christian, Teaching, Numbers

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• Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.

  Karen Armstrong

  Self, Creative, Way

  Karen Armstrong (2010). “The Spiral Staircase”, p.313, Vintage Canada

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• I have decided, it is fruitless. For I am no longer sure of anything concerning my existance. A philosopher is a dead poet and a dying theologian.

  Roger Zelazny

  Crazy, Mad, Dying

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• Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Christian, Add

  Desiderius Erasmus, Beatus Rhenanus, John C. Olin (1987). “Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus, with His Life by Beatus Rhenanus and a Biographical Sketch by the Editor”, p.104, Fordham Univ Press

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• until the theologians and the ordained clergy begin to communicate with ordinary people in the vernacular, in a way that they can understand, I’m going to have to do this sort of thing.

  C. S. Lewis

  People, Ordinary, Way

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• Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions, their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God's transcendence.

  Karen Armstrong

  Christian, Reality, Doe

  Karen Armstrong (2009). “The Case for God”, p.11, Knopf Canada

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• With a truly tragic delusion,” Carl Jung noted, “these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.

  Carl Jung

  Art, Eye, Light

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• When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Two, Issues

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

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

  H. L. Mencken

  Knowing, Effort, Literature

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• Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

  Voltaire

  Nature, Animal, Men

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• The gospel is so simple that small children can understand it, and it is so profound that studies by the wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches.

  Charles Hodge

  Children, Simple, Profound

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• Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian.

  Denis Diderot

  Blow, Night, Light

  "Addition aux Pensées philosophiques". Book by Denis Diderot, 1770.

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• The Pashtun tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian Every large house is a real feudal fortress....Eve ry family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud....Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid.

  Winston Churchill

  Real, War, Men

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• The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Science, Effort

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.248, Knopf

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• The theologian who labours without joy is not a theologian at all.

  Karl Barth

  Joy, Sulky, Morose

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• I am not a theologian or a scholar, but I am very aware of the fact that pain is necessary to all of us. In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Pain, Women, Thinking

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• The beautiful simplicity of our faith is that it distills down to the exact same bottom line for both the brilliant theologian and the five-year-old child: love God and love each other - period.

  Richard Stearns

  Love, Beautiful, Christian

  Richard Stearns (2014). “Unfinished: Filling the Hole in Our Gospel”, p.78, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.

  Meister Eckhart

  World, May, Language

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• Theologians frequently assert that God has no body, no gender, no race and no age. Most people state that God is neither male nor female. Yet most people become flustered, upset or even angry when it is suggested that the God they know as Lord and Father might also be God the Mother, or Goddess.

  Carol P. Christ

  Mother, Father, Race

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