Quotes about Theology

The ultimate purpose of the Word of God is not theological information but heart and life transformation. Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed.

A leadership community is spiritually safe and prepared for a long-term and productive life of ministry only when what is important to God is not just theologically important to them but also functionally important.

Theology that isn't zealous to promote forgiving and transforming grace, the kind of grace that changes your life, is simply bad theology.

The minute your functional theology tells you that God is not good, it's very hard to hold on to the confessional theology that declares he is.

We are all theologians. We are all philosophers. We are all archaeologists who dig into the mounds of our lives to try to make sense of the civilization that is our story. This God-designed mental motivation is accompanied by wonderful and mysterious analytical gifts. This drive and those gifts set us apart from the rest of creation. They are holy, created by God to draw us to him, so that we can know him and understand ourselves in light of his existence and will.

In the beginning, God . . ." These are four thunderously important words. They really do change everything,

the theology of the Word of God was never intended to be an end in itself, but a means to an end, and that end is a radically transformed life. The purpose of theology is not knowledge but holiness.

to close the gap between your confessional theology and your functional theology, and by closing the gap, give the enemy less opportunity to do his evil work.

The Bible is the grand biography of the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the Bible is the annotated story of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, his story with God's essential explanatory and applicatory notes. You do violence to the Word of God when you reduce it to a book of theology, principles, and rules. You simply cannot make sense of Scripture without the person and work—the grace—of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed.

Thus, we need the Bible as the guide to enable us to transform and purify our hermeneutical principles. The circle from the Bible to systematic theology to hermeneutics to the Bible is not a vicious circle, but a spiral of growth and progress, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit in illumination.

When the dust clears and in the quiet of your own heart, what kind of God do you believe in, really? And why?