#theology

Simply to render oneself able to understand what other Christian thinkers have themselves come to understand and to more or less felicitously communicate requires that one's mind not be a blank slate but already properly formed, disciplined, and exercised. ↗

— Gregory B. Sadler

#christian-thought #discipline #intellect #intellectual-life #theology

In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out." - Mere Christianity ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#mere-christianity #theology #death

Immortal beings have been compared to stars, these are existences that linger on long after the death of the thing itself. ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#occult #religion #theology #zeena-schreck #death

Our true wisdom is to embrace with meek docility, and without reservation, whatever the holy scriptures have delivered. ↗

— John Calvin

#the-bible #theology #religion

Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#god #theology #education

In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse. The object was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, the ultimate and inexpressible reality beyond human understanding. The idea was to push language as far as it would go, until participants became aware of the ineffable. The challenger, drawing on his immense erudition, began the process by asking an enigmatic question and his opponents had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced the others to silence. In that moment of silence, the Brahman was present - not in the ingenious verbal declarations but in the stunning realisation of the impotence of speech. Nearly all religious traditions have devised their own versions of this exercise. It was not a frustrating experience; the finale can, perhaps, be compared to the moment at the end of the symphony, when there is a full and pregnant beat of silence in the concert hall before the applause begins. The aim of good theology is to help the audience to live for a while in that silence. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#religion #theology #equality

Reason and Faith are not antithetical, but rather synergistic". ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#faith-orthodoxy-theology-doubt #reason #reasoning #faith

Faith without reason produces a mindless Christianity which is less than useless; the focus on justice in this world produces a theology that chases its own tail." ~R. Alan Woods [2013] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#justice #r-alan-woods #reasoning #theology #faith

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell. ↗

— Robert Green Ingersoll

#best #heaven #hell #let us #out

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#doctrine #theology #wisdom #experience