Quotes about Theology

We should throw the Epistle of James out of this school.

The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.

Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending upon her concept of God.

A God-centered theology has to be a missionary theology

God doesn't want to overwhelm us with a lot of theology in order to receive our healing. He keeps it simple. Nonetheless, there is great power to be found in these simple and easily implemented truths. The first of them is to "draw near to God and He will draw near to you" (James 4:8).

God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.

There was need, in addition to those earlier, purely historical Gospels, of a Gospel at once theological and historical, like that of John," in which Jesus should be presented, not as the Jewish Messiah, "but as the Saviour of the World.

Where did God come from? It's certainly more complicated than trying to figure out where, say, Barry Manilow was born.

If all things were made through Him, clearly so must the splendid revelations have been which were made to the fathers and prophets, and became to them the symbols of the sacred mysteries of religion.

Esteem the church fathers and other writers, but value none of them as equivalent to the word of God.

Bonaventure's theology is never about trying to placate a distant or angry God, earn forgiveness, or find some abstract theory of justification. He is all cosmic optimism and hope! Once it lost this kind of mysticism, Christianity became preoccupied with fear, unworthiness, and guilt much more than being included in—and delighting in—an all-pervasive plan that is already in place.

St. Irenaeus (125—203), The Scandal of the Incarnation, and St. Athanasius (297—373), On the Incarnation, are two early classics that set a bar of good theology that we have since seldom matched or even understood. The mystery of incarnation is the unique trump card that Christianity adds to the deck of world religions.