Quotes about Theology

I shall never be a heretic I may err in dispute, but I do not wish to decide anything finally on the other hand, I am not bound by the opinions of men.

This is the reason why our Theology is certain: because it seizes us from ourselves and places us outside ourselves.

How is it then that your theologians drivel like people in their second childhood.

Stop your complaining, stop your doctoring; this tumult has arisen and is direct from above, and it will not cease till it makes all the adversaries of the Word like the mud on the streets. But it is sad to have to remind a theologian like you of these things, as if you were a pupil instead of one who ought to be teaching others.

Virtually the whole of the scriptures and the understanding of the whole of theology—the entire Christian life, even—depends upon the true understanding of the law and the gospel.

God once spoke through the mouth of an ass. I will tell you straight what I think. I am a Christian theologian and I am bound not only to assert, but to defend the truth with my blood and death. I want to believe freely and be a slave to the authority of no one, of a council, a university, or pope. I will confidently confess what appears to me to be true whether it has been asserted by a Catholic or a heretic, whether it has been approved or reproved by a council.

your thoughts concerning God are too human.

I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure. . . . When letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate. . . . It is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily.

You see then, that Diatribe truly possesses a free choice in her handling of Scriptures, so that words of one and the same type are for her obliged to prove endeavor in one place and freedom in another, exactly as she pleases.

I do not bother my head with speculations about the nature of God. I simply attach myself to the human Christ

Hence it is great wisdom to know that we are nothing but sin, so that we do not think of sin as lightly as do the pope's theologians, who define sin as "anything said, done, or thought against the Law of God." Define sin, rather, on the basis of this psalm, as all that is born of father and mother, before a man is old enough to say, do, or think anything.

Unless a sharp distinction is maintained between the purpose and function of the Law and the Gospel, the Christian doctrine cannot be kept free from error.