#theological

Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all. ↗

— J. Gresham Machen

#church-catholic #church-unity #protestantism #roman-catholic #theological-liberalism

Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness. Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory. Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world—this is the invitation I would like to extend with the present Encyclical. ↗

— Pope Benedict XVI

#faith #hope #theological-virtues #courage

Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love. If I do not love a person I am not moved to help him by proofs that he is in need; if I do love him, I wait for no proof of a special need to urge me to help him. ↗

— Roland Allen

#beliefs #does #grow #help #him

Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience. ↗

— Felix Adler

#creed #dogma #every #experience #inception

Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day. ↗

— Wilhelm Dilthey

#brought #changes #day #dominant #hands

And then I met Jerry and he's such a creative fiction writer, and I don't know if there's ever been a team put together the way we are - where one person does the theological way out and suggestions, and the other person goes into the cave and does the fiction writing. ↗

— Tim LaHaye

#cave #creative #does #ever #fiction

I have long said there are three distinct groups under the GOP's tent: theological warriors, who want to impose their social views on the rest of society; Tea Party zealots, who say with a straight face that they want the government to get out of their Medicare; and remnants of the pro-business moderates. ↗

— Eliot Spitzer

#face #get #gop #government #groups

Divinity for the sake of the simple-minded is beautiful. Those theological assertions you write, say, or live by that you later feel foolish about, it means God still lives in you enough to tell you that they were indeed foolish. By mistakes you know you are alive. ↗

— Criss Jami

#assertions #beautiful #correction #divinity #foolish

But now it's kind of a given that a 15-year-old would have a record deal and sell a quarter of a million records. No one's expecting her to answer any deep theological questions. And I'll tell you, I was asked some deep theological questions from the git-go. ↗

— Amy Grant

#any #asked #deal #deep #expecting

I take it for granted that you do not wish to hear an echo from the pulpit nor from the theological class-room. ↗

— Asa Gray

#granted #hear #i #nor #pulpit