Theology Quotes - Page 9

• Even if nothing worse than wasted mental effort could be laid to the charge of theology, that alone ought to be sufficient to banish it from the earth ... What a vast amount of labour and learning has been expended, as uselessly as emptying shallow puddles into sieves! How much intellect has been employed mousing after texts, to sustain preconceived doctrines!

  Lydia M. Child

  Effort, Doctrine, Puddles

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• Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic.

  Jennifer Stone

  Religious, Jobs, Wings

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• Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Philosophy, Offering, Favors

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• In Bright Shadow: C.S. Lewis on the Imagination for Theology and Discipleship

  N.D. Wilson

  Imagination, Shadow, Discipleship

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• 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.

  Bill Vaughan

  Strong, Differences, Issues

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• The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people.

  Aldous Huxley

  Religious, War, Buddhism

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• You see, my Lord Archbishop, what is "dubious" about my theology is not that it contradicts particular doctrinal teachings, things are much worse or better: what I want, is no more and no less than a fundamental change in the whole way that theology is done today; but I want this out of faith, not out of faithlessness.

  Eugen Drewermann

  Teaching, Dubious, Fundamentals

  Letter to Archbishop J J Degenhardt, 1992.

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• We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand.

  Eugen Drewermann

  Struggle, Hands, Talking

  Speech at a conference of therapists in Basel, Switzerland, May 21, 1977.

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• In my eyes, concepts of theology have only as much value as they are able to interpret experience. It seems to me that we have long reached the point where we theologians only talk to ourselves and debate with our own history of concepts.

  Eugen Drewermann

  Eye, Long, Able

  "Wort des Heils, Wort der Heilung". Book by Eugen Drewermann, 1989.

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• The fact is that the truth of harmony and human brotherhood derives not from an absorbed trance but from an awakened prajñâ or wisdom; and its validity depends not on any dramatic ecstatic visions but it belongs to man's (...) natural reason unspoilt by theologies of exclusiveness.

  Ram Swarup

  Men, Brotherhood, Vision

  "Ramakrishna Mission" by Ram Swarup, (p.13), 1986.

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• Let us account for all we see by the facts we know. If there are things for which we cannot account, let us wait for light. To account for anything by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that we do not know. Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Agency, Light, Waiting

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.322, Library of Alexandria

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• As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized...The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions.

  H. L. Mencken

  College, Thinking, Ymca

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• All over Europe the organs that represent dogmatic interests are in permanent opposition to the progressive tendencies around them, and are rapidly sinking into contempt. In every country in which a strong political life is manifested, the secularisation of politics is the consequence. Each stage of that movement has been initiated and effected by those who are most indifferent to dogmatic theology, and each has been opposed by those who are most occupied with theology.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Country, Strong, Europe

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1870). “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe”, p.129

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• The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Ignorance, Origin Of Life

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• Theology is indispensable for religious communities to make sense of themselves and their changing views about the world in light of what is perceived to be revelation, but, at the same time, that theology can have a pretentiousness, or double pretentiousness, if it is acontextual as opposed to contextual, if it is foundationalist as opposed to antifoundationalist, or ahistorical as opposed to historicist.

  Cornel West

  Religious, Light, Views

  Source: blogs.ssrc.org

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• The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages.

  Hans Urs von Balthasar

  Age, Splits, Spirituality

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• Not everyone can be a theologian, but everyone should know some theology.

  Carl E. Olson

  Should, Theologian, Knows

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• John Calvin's theology emphasizes the sanctity of conscience, the sanctity of companionate marriage, and the obligation of those in power to attend to the well-being of the people in general, especially the poor. Interestingly, for the interpretation of Hamlet, for example, he forbids even the thought of revenge. This is not the Calvin of myth, but when the Elizabethans read him there was no such myth, nor would there be now, if he were read.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Revenge, People, Example

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• There is no conflict between science and theology, except where there is bad science or bad theology.

  Theodore Hesburgh

  Conflict

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• The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Atheist, Real, Believe

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• Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself.

  C. S. Lewis

  Growth, Skepticism, Has Beens

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• I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind.

  Howard Thurman

  Religious, Mind, Way

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• Aside from theology and sex there is really nothing to talk about.

  Harold Laski

  Sex

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• The classic theology of my tradition comes from the French Renaissance. [William] Shakespeare was born in 1564, the year [John] Calvin died, and that theology was very influential in England in his lifetime. I think Shakespeare was attentive to questions raised by it, about human nature, history, reality itself. I find the two literatures to be mutually illuminating.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Reality, Thinking, Years

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• One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past--they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.

  Gene Wolfe

  Children, Grandmother, Past

  Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.57, Macmillan

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