Quotes and Sayings about Theology
"The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology."
- Irving Babbitt
(Related: Science, Theology, Today)
"The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth."
- Mikhail Bakunin
(Related: God, Earth, First, Heaven, Theology, Tyranny, Will)
"The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself."
- Karl Barth
(Related: Theology)
"Theology is a science of mind applied to God."
- Henry Ward Beecher
(Related: Science, God, Mind, Theology)
"When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults."
- Daniel Bell
(Related: Experience, Religion, People, Religious, Theology)
"Theology is the logic of the Devil."
- Jose Bergamin
(Related: Devil, Logic, Theology)
"What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology."
- Harold Bloom
(Related: Negative, Awareness, School, Sense, Theology, Thinking)
"I feel that the Christian experience and the Jewish one have much to give each other. If this open society continues and there is no return to political anti-Semitism, then this encounter, deeper than any theology, may happen."
- Lionel Blue
(Related: Experience, Society, Christian, May, Open, Theology)
"If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go."
- John Burroughs
(Related: Science, Old, Theology)
"My theology is such that the God who loves Israel and will not forsake Israel - which is why I want to see Israel have a secure nation with secure borders - also loves the Palestinians."
- Tony Campolo
(Related: God, Israel, Nation, Theology, Want, Will)
"Faith is more basic than language or theology."
- Sydney Carter
(Related: Faith, Language, Theology)
"Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Life, Time, Theology)
"Our theology is still in a time of crisis, and I think this will last for some years more."
- Godfried Danneels
(Related: Time, Crisis, Theology, Will, Years)
"Before Vatican II, in theology, as in other areas, the discipline was fixed. After the council there has been a revolution - a chaotic revolution - with free discussion on everything. There is now no common theology or philosophy as there was before."
- Godfried Danneels
(Related: Discipline, Revolution, Now, Philosophy, Theology)
"What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?"
- Richard Dawkins
(Related: Obvious)
"Catholic theology believes that God gave man free will, and you can't give somebody free will and then send in a play from the sidelines."
- Roger Ebert
(Related: God, Free will, Man, Play, Theology)
"I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil."
- Albert Einstein
(Related: God, Evil, Theology)
"Theology is anthropology."
- Anselm Feuerbach
(Related: Anthropology, Theology)
"The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences."
- John Frame
(Related: Churches, Conservative, Result, Theology, Worship)
"Pastoral theology and care helps people look deeper at the intersection between their inherited religious traditions and their current life situations."
- Larry Graham
(Related: Life, People, Care, Religious, Theology, Traditions)
"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."
- Robert A. Heinlein
(Related: Man, Theology)
"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
(Related: Help, Midnight, Theology)
"Theology in general seems to me a substitution of human ingenuity for divine wisdom."
- Julia Ward Howe
(Related: Wisdom, Theology)
"John Paul II made it clear that... liberation theology based on the teaching of Jesus Christ was necessary, but liberation theology that used a Marxist analysis was unacceptable."
- Claudio Hummes
(Related: Christ, Teaching, Theology)
"Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell."
- Robert Green Ingersoll
(Related: Religion, Heaven, Hell, Theology)
"The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way."
- William James
(Related: Hell, Theology, World, Wrong)
"Me and my father went through a war period where we wasn't talking. He wanted me to go to theology school - I didn't want to go. I wanted to do music. I told him I was a minister through music."
- Wyclef Jean
(Related: Music, War, Father, School, Talking, Theology, Want)
"The Epistle to the Romans is an extremely important synthesis of the whole theology of St. Paul."
- Hans Kung
(Related: Theology)
"It seems obvious to me that the notion of God has never been anything but a kind of ideal projection, a reflection upward of the human personality, and that theology never has been and never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology."
- Alfred Loisy
(Related: God, Mythology, Obvious, Personality, Reflection, Theology)
"Conservative New Testament studies could also provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to German biblical criticism and to the liberal theology that accompanied it."
- John Gresham Machen
(Related: Conservative, Criticism, Liberal, New testament, Theology)
"In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person. Yes, it is women who keep the church going."
- Don Marquis
(Related: Women, Church, Devil, Theology)
"What makes you a Christian is whether or not you really are in accord with biblical theology and whether you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour."
- Walter Martin
(Related: Christian, Theology)
"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: Effort, Theology, Worth)
"I know the established Christian theology... I know the enemy, but the enemy doesn't know me. Thus the enemy has already lost the war."
- Sun Myung Moon
(Related: War, Christian, Enemy, Theology)
"My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed."
- Christopher Morley
(Related: Theology, Universe)
"For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington."
- Bill Moyers
(Related: Power, Time, History, First, Ideology, Theology, Washington)
"For many decades now - and certainly during my adult life in academe - the Western intellectual world has not been convinced that theology is a pursuit that can be engaged in with intellectual honesty and integrity."
- Arthur Peacocke
(Related: Life, Honesty, Integrity, Now, Pursuit, Theology, World)
"Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements."
- Kenneth L. Pike
(Related: Science, Theology)
"Well, it's because I gladly acknowledge some ideas that are part of process theology, but which I think are not tied to all the details of process thought, and are very illuminating and helpful."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Thought, Ideas, Theology)
"Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Age, History, Science, Character, Creation, Doctrine, Theology, Universe)
"I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Science, Creation, Doctrine, Scientists, Temptation, Theology)
"I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy."
- Al Sharpton
(Related: Love, People, Fiction, Philosophy, Theology)
"If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt."
- Leslie Stephen
(Related: God, People, Atheism, Doubt, Mind, State, Theology, Words)
"There is too much theology in the Church now, and too little of the Gospel."
- Lewis Tappan
(Related: Church, Now, Theology)
"The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge."
- Jeremy Taylor
(Related: Life, Knowledge, Theology)
"If the president is going to use so much language of theology and the Bible, then let's use that language for a serious discussion about the war in Iraq. And that was never done."
- Jim Wallis
(Related: War, Bible, Iraq, Language, President, Theology)
"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."
- Walt Whitman
(Related: Art, Democracy, Past, Poems, Schools, Theology)
"Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?"
- E. O. Wilson
(Related: God, Thoughts, Evolution, Theology)
"The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking."
- Robert Anton Wilson
(Related: Theology)