#theology

Theologians and other clerks, You won't understand this book, -- However bright your wits -- If you do not meet it humbly, And in this way, Love and Faith Make you surmount Reason, for They are the protectors of Reason's house. ↗

— Marguerite Porete

#feminism #interpretation #medieval #mystic #religion

If I speak in the tongues of Reformers and of professional theologians, and I have not personal faith in Christ, my theology is nothing but the noisy beating of a snare drum. And if I have analytic powers and the gift of creating coherent conceptual systems of theology, so as to remove liberal objections, and have not personal hope in God, I am nothing. And if I give myself to resolving the debate between supra and infralapsarianism, and to defending inerrancy, and to learning the Westminster Catechism, yea, even the larger one, so as to recite it by heart backwards and forwards, and have not love, I have gained nothing. ↗

— Kevin Vanhoozer

#faith

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#catholicism #christianity #jesus-shock #philosophy #pleasure

It was not the Fall of Adam, therefore, that set God’s agenda; it was the decision to share the great dance with us through Jesus. Adam’s plunge certainly threatened God’s dreams for us, but that threat had been anticipated and already strategically overcome in the predestination of the incarnation. Jesus Christ did not become human to fix the fall; he became human to accomplish the eternal purpose of our adoption, and in order to bring our adoption to pass, the Fall had to be called to a halt and undone….Jesus is not a footnote to Adam and his Fall; the Fall, and indeed creation itself, is a footnote to the purpose of God in Jesus Christ. ↗

— C. Baxter Kruger

#fall #father #theology #trinity #dreams

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go. ↗

— John Burroughs

#alone #fast #go #guide #hold

If the president is going to use so much language of theology and the Bible, then let's use that language for a serious discussion about the war in Iraq. And that was never done. ↗

— Jim Wallis

#bible #discussion #done #going #iraq

If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals. ↗

— Gustavo Gutiérrez

#social-justice #theology #equality

Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess. ↗

— Charles Caleb Colton

#life #life is a #like #lived #logical

If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt. ↗

— Leslie Stephen

#atheism #collection #doubt #express #few

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found. ↗

— Walpola Rahula

#cogito-ergo-sum #existence #existentialism #god #humanity