Theologian Quotes - Page 9

• There are only two places where the powerful and great in this world lose their courage, tremble in the depths of their souls, and become truly afraid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ....No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle of Bethlehem. And yet, all Christian theology finds its beginnings in the miracle of miracles, that God became human.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Christian, Jesus, Powerful

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jana Riess, O. C. Dean, Jr. (2010). “God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas”

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• I once heard a theologian remark that in the Gospels people approached Jesus with a question 183 times whereas he replied with a direct answer only three times. Instead, he responded with a different question, a story, or some other indirection. Evidently Jesus wants us to work out answers on our own, using the principles that he taught and lived.

  Philip Yancey

  Jesus, People, Work Out

  Philip Yancey (2013). “Prayer Participant's Guide: Six Sessions on Our Relationship with God”, p.85, Harper Collins

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• Scientists and theologians can’t offer better than circular arguments, because there are no other kinds of arguments. Bible believers quote the Bible, and scientists quote other scientists. How do either scientists or theologians answer this question about the accuracy of their conclusions: “In reference to what?

  Frank Schaeffer

  Answers, Kind, Argument

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• The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the scientist, a body of unorganized, or only partly organized facts. God has not seen fit to write the Bible in the form of a systematic theology; it remains for us, therefore, to gather together the scattered facts and to build them up into a logical system.

  Henry Clarence Thiessen

  Writing, Together, Body

  Henry Clarence Thiessen (1979). “Lectures in Systematic Theology”, p.5, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Accusations are made directly to Rome about theologians from persons who are not theologians. Some of these accusations are anonymous. The local bishop should be the one to relate to theologians to determine orthodoxy.

  Godfried Danneels

  Rome, Bishops, Orthodoxy

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• Our starting-point must be the fact that God cannot be named... no mind has yet contained or language embraced God's substance in its fullness. No, we use facts connected with Him to outline qualities that correspond with Him, collecting a faint and feeble mental image from various quarters. Our noblest theologian is not one who has discovered the whole - our earthly shackles do not permit us the whole - but one whose mental image is by comparison fuller, who has gathered in his mind a richer picture, outline, or whatever we call it, of the truth.

  Gregory of Nazianzus

  Christian, Mind, Quality

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• I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations...I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian.

  Martin Luther

  Reading, Writing, Practice

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• There isn't a theologian in the world who can argue with me on this. God has no gender. If that's the case, then everything needs to be rewritten now, right now.

  Susan Powter

  Needs, World, Arguing

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• Cicero, in his treatise concerning the Nature of the Gods, having said that three Jupiters were enumerated by theologians, adds that the third was of Crete, the son of Saturn, and that his tomb is shown in that island.

  Lactantius

  Son, Islands, Jupiter

  Lactantius, Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus (1871). “The Works of Lactantius: Of the false worship of the gods”, p.32

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• If I have put the case of science at all correctly, the reader will have recognised that modern science does much more than demand that it shall be left in undisturbed possession of what the theologian and metaphysician please to term its 'legitimate field'. It claims that the whole range of phenomena, mental as well as physical-the entire universe-is its field. It asserts that the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge.

  Karl Pearson

  Knowledge, Science, Doe

  Karl Pearson (2007). “The Grammar of Science”, p.24, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.

  Karen Armstrong

  Religious, Practice, Ideas

  Karen Armstrong (2002). “Islam: A Short History”, Random House Digital, Inc.

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• Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions.

  Brennan Manning

  Love, Book, Heart

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• Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Eye, Men, Thinking

  Marilynne Robinson (2004). “Gilead: A Novel”, p.246, Macmillan

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• Creation is thus God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian Philip Sherrard has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden Being." This means that we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate, for to every creature, the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. (pg. 308, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)

  Wendell Berry

  Mean, Greek, Survival

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.308, Counterpoint

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• God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination, and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "0 Lord, Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Eye, Profound, Saint

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• Lovers move like lightning and wind. No contest. Theologians mumble, rumble-dumble, necessity and free will, while lover and beloved pull themselves into each other.

  Rumi

  Moving, Wind, Lightning

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• The English experience suggested that nobody really doubted the existence of God until theologians tried to prove it.

  Alister E. McGrath

  Existence, Prove It, Doubted

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• ...for a long time I wanted to become a theologian... now, however, behold how through my efforts God is being debated in astronomy.

  Johannes Kepler

  Long, Effort, Astronomy

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• We all must have the faith of children, but the doctrine of theologians.

  Josemaria Escriva

  Children, Doctrine, Catholicism

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• For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  Carl Sagan, Jerald F. TerHorst, Allan J. Mayer, Sharon S. McKern, Laurence J. Peter (1980). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”

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• As religion is now practiced and science is now practiced, there is no intersection between the two. That is for certain. And it’s not for want of trying. Over the centuries, many people—theologians as well scientists - have tried to explore points of intersection. And anytime anyone has declared that harmony has risen up, it is the consequence of religion acquiescing to scientific discovery. In every single case.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Discovery, Two, People

  "Why Revive ‘Cosmos?’ Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says Just About Everything We Know Has Changed". Interview with David Freeman, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 4, 2014.

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• If God seems to be in no hurry to make the problem of evil go away, maybe we shouldn't be, either. Maybe our compulsion to wash God's hands for him is a service he doesn't appreciate. Maybe - all theodicies and nearly all theologians to the contrary - evil is where we meet God. Maybe he isn't bothered by showing up dirty for his dates with creation. Maybe - just maybe - if we ever solved the problem, we'd have talked ourselves out of a lover.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Pain, Dirty, Hands

  Robert Farrar Capon (1967). “The Romance of the Word: One Man's Love Affair with Theology : Three Books”, p.170, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• I don't like Switzerland; it has produced nothing but theologians and waiters.

  Oscar Wilde

  Switzerland, Waiter

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.136, Wordsworth Editions

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• Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."

  John B. S. Haldane

  God, Might, Study

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• Philosophers and theologians have yet to learn that a physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle. Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance.

  Louis Agassiz

  Science, Principles, Demand

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