Quotes about Theology

Arminians pretend, very speciously, that Christ died for all men, yet, in effect, they make him die for no one man at all.

Clearly the Holy Spirit is not merely a quality to be found in the divine nature … He is a holy intelligent person.

And, therefore, seeing he doth not intercede and pray for every one, he did not die for every one.

Current religiosity and ethics, especially those that replace the story of the cross with demands for social reform, have produced many a theology of glory. It still flourishes along with its attendant despair. There is no cure through the law. It will take some dying. So we are already on the way to the cross.

Bitterest pills for modern man to swallow: the problem of divine sovereignty as it is expressed particularly in the doctrine of predestination.

In things that are "below him," man has freedom in Luther's view to act as he sees fit. In things "above," however, the matter is different; there we encounter the problem of God's predestination.

Everyone, it seems, wants to do God the favor of making him less objectionable. Some say he is not absolute or omnipotent yet but is perhaps in the process of becoming so. Some say he is not infinite, but finite. Some even say he has obliged us all by dying!

Theology is the happy science concerned with the task of pointing to him whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light. Theology is not in the business of absolutizing itself, but rather of pointing beyond itself to the one who gives

It is a common error to suppose that the Higher Life is a matter of reading, and the adoption of theological or metaphysical hypotheses, and that Spiritual Principles can be understood by this method. The Higher Life is higher living in thought, word, and deed, and the knowledge of those Spiritual Principles which are imminent in man and in the universe can only be acquired after long discipline in the pursuit and practice of Virtue.

For Christian faith, the death of God is not a question of his disappearance. On the contrary, it is one of the places where He is most fully present. Jesus is not Man standing in for God. He is a sign that God is incarnate in human frailty and futility.

Theology is not only about understanding the world; it is about mending the world.

Life cannot arise spontaneously but comes only from preexisting life.