#theology

But in reading all of the passages in which Jesus uses the word "hell," what is so striking is that people believing the right or wrong things isn't his point. He's often not talking about "beliefs" as we think of them--he's talking about anger and lust and indifference. He's talking about the state of his listeners' hearts, about how they conduct themselves, how they interact with their neighbors, about the kind of effect they have on the world. ↗

— Rob Bell

#faith #inspirtational #religion #theology #anger

For many decades now - and certainly during my adult life in academe - the Western intellectual world has not been convinced that theology is a pursuit that can be engaged in with intellectual honesty and integrity. ↗

— Arthur Peacocke

#adult #adult life #been #certainly #convinced

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. ↗

— John Piper

#reformed #theology #goals

My body kills me, so I kill it. ↗

— Dorotheus the Theban

#death #desert-father #dying #holy-father #monastic

A Christian is supposed to be in the world, and yet not of the world--a Both/And as perplexing and demanding as the Either/Or that precedes the life of faith. I'm at once a pure, beautiful, genderless soul, but at the same time a gendered body full of flaws, sins, and wanting. This contradiction, the Both/And, is the Cross. ↗

— Therese Doucet

#existentialism #faith #kierkegaard #philosophy #philosophy-of-religion

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#ethics #practice #religion #theology #change

The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#birth #catholicism #christianity #faith #god

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

If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christ #christianity #christlessness #christology #fundamentalism

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