All Quotes By Tag: Theology

“For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”

“We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century – the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?” – lies where we have never suspected it… None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”

“The people don’t care about theology. They are passion and fear and anger and they need gods to fuel that passion, soothe that fear, stoke that anger.”

“We’re very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they’re beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can’t see them under our big noses.”

“Why have You made us the saddest animal? (…) He cannot do it, Henry, that is why. He can’t continue us. All He can do is try to make us happy that we die. Really, He’s a pretty good fellow.”

“Trust in the gods, They will supply? Hardly. He wondered suddenly if it was as hard for the gods to have faith in Ingrey as it was for him to have faith in Them, and a weird wild urge to show Them how it should be done swept him for a moment.”

“Don’t try to tame the wild God”

“When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man’s biography regarding God’s promised experiences and truth for him – his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences.”

“To know myself as woman in the image of God to know God as Mother and to know my own mother as a window into God: these three are inseparable.If one is implausible to the heart the other two are as well.”

“At best we are but clay, animated dust; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a miracle that the Lord Jesus should set His heart’s love upon people like us.”

“There is a beauty in paradox when it comes to talking about things of ultimate concern. Paradox works against our tendency to stay superficial in our faith, or to rest on easy answers or categorical thinking. It breaks apart our categories by showing the inadequacy of them and by pointing to a reality larger than us, the reality of gloria, of light, of beyond-the-beyond. I like to call it paradoxology—the glory of paradox, paradox-doxology—which takes us somewhere we wouldn’t be capable of going if we thought we had everything all wrapped up, if we thought we had attained full comprehension. The commitment to embracing the paradox and resisting the impulse to categorize people (ourselves included) is one of the ways we follow Jesus into that larger mysterious reality of light and love.”

“Radi se mnogo više – i to isključivo – o pitanju kako uopće valja govoriti o Bogu pred neizmjernom poviješću trpljenja svijeta, ‘njegovoga’ svijeta. To je pitanje, kako ga ja vidim, glavno pitanje teologije; ona ga ne smije niti eliminirati niti svojim odgovorom prepuniti.”

“Tko npr. formulira govor o Bogu Abrahamovu, Izakovu i Jakovljevu tako da se u njemu više ne čuje Jobov uzdisaj i tužaljka ‘Ta dokle još?’, taj se ne bavi teologijom nego mitologijom.”

“The love of Christ for me will get last say. He is merciful to me for his name’s sake, for the sake of his own goodness, for the sake of his steadfast love and compassion (Psalm 25). When he thinks about me, he remembers what he is like, and that is my exceeding joy. My indestructible hope is that he has turned his face towards me, and he will never turn away.”

“The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.”