Top 1200 Christian Theology Quotes & Sayings

Prayer and Theology are inseparable. True Theology is the adoration offered by the intellect. The intellect clarifies the moment of prayer, but only prayer can give it the fervor of the Spirit. Theology is light, prayer is fire.

You know, all mystics - Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion - are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.

Think about that: at a time when it was inconceivable to have a woman rabbi or a woman scholar of Christian theology or canon law, the Islamic civilization boasted hundreds of women who were authorities in Islamic law and Islamic theology and that taught some of the most famous male jurists and left behind a remarkable corpus of writings.

Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.

The Christian Theology Reader brings the best primary sources to the theological inquirer.

I think everyone who has an interest in Reformed theology, or just in Christian theology more generally, should read John Calvin Institutes.

That the religious right completely took over the word Christian is a given. At one time, phrases such as Christian charity and Christian tolerance were used to denote kindness and compassion. To perform a "Christian" act meant an act of giving, of acceptance, of toleration. Now, Christian is invariably linked to right-wing conservative political thought -- Christian nation, Christian morality, Christian values, Christian family.

Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.

The best Reformed theology isn't just about careful arguments for theologically sophisticated conclusions. It is about how to live the Christian life.

A really religious person has no theology. Yes, he has the experience, he has the truth, he has that luminosity, but he has no theology.

If we move in the direction of biblial absolutism how can we escape turning the New Testament into a Christian Torah and the gospel into a new law? Once we do that, religious fascism with all its sectarian ugliness cannot be far away. Far better a mistaken Christian (a heretic) who has somehow caught the Spirit of Christ, than an orthodox Protestant who thinks that the Spirit is mediated to him through the letter of correct theology.

Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religious. The scientific point of view cannot fit any of these things, not even science itself.

To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.

Art is so often better at theology than theology is.

Governmental defense of any theology necessarily weakens the legitimacy of both the government and the theology.

Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.

Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology.

It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years, it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which hampered it.

The ultimate goal of theology isn't knowledge, but worship. If our learning and knowledge of God do not lead to the joyful praise of God, we have failed. We learn only that we might laud, which is to say that theology without doxology is idolatry. The only theology worth studying is a theology that can be sung!

What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

Theology without practice is the theology of demons

The goal of theology is the worship of God. The posture of theology is on one's knees. The mode of theology is repentance.

The notion that we are children of God, his own sons and daughters, lies at the heart of all Christian theology, and is the mainspring of all Christian living.

In our generation there is no agreed-upon framework. All issues are up for grabs. Morality no longer has any broad-based theology upon which to rest its case. We are no longer a 'Christian nation,' not even a 'Judeo-Christian culture.'

Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology.

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian is a theologian. Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless. The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones.

I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.

when Christian theology becomes traditionalism and men fail to hold and use it as they do a living language, it becomes an obstacle, not a help to religious conviction. To the greatest of the early Fathers and the great scholastics theology was a language which, like all language, had a grammar and a vocabulary from the past, but which they used to express all the knowledge and experience of their own time as well.

Theology is but a science of applied to God. As schools change theology must necessarily change. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas of truth are not. Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.

No theology is genuinely Christian which does not arise from and focus on the cross.

The worst criminals are not half so immoral as the creators and perpetrators of the unquestionable hell of Christian theology

Biblical Theology...is that part of Exegetical Theology which deals with the revelation of God in its historic continuity...Biblical Theology, rightly defined, is nothing else than the exhibition of the organic progress of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity.

Patrick Cheng's Radical Love is not only an excellent introduction to LGBT theology but an important contribution to the discipline of theology and the life of the church. It is a must read for anyone who cares about the health of the church and theology today.

That is the great contribution of Reformed thinking to the Christian church: theology for a life well-lived.

A Christian way of thinking is not just thinking Christian thoughts, singing Christian songs, reading Christian books, going to Christian schools; it is learning to think about the whole spectrum of life from the perspective of a mind that has been trained in truth.

I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to be dry and boring. Theology is the study of God and all his works! Theology is meant to be LIVED and PRAYED and SUNG! All of the great doctrinal writings of the Bible (such as Paul's epistle to the Romans) are full of praise to God and personal application to life.

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.

I am very interested in theology. In fact, my first degree was in theology, so it's something that interests me greatly.

Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position ­ that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God's radical demand that we be holy.

Bad theology dishonors God and hurts people. Churches that sever the root of truth may flourish for a season, but they will wither eventually or turn into something besides a Christian church.

A God-centered theology has to be a missionary theology

In every system of theology, therefore, there is a chapter De libero arbitrio. This is a question which every theologian finds in his path, and which he must dispose of; and on the manner in which it is determined depends his theology, and of course his religion, so far as his theology is to him a truth and reality

The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to prove God's existence apart from divine revelation.

It sounds superficially fair. But it presupposes that that there is something in Christian theology to be ignorant about. The entire thrust of my position is that Christian theology is a non-subject. It is empty. Vacuous. Devoid of coherence or content. I imagine that McGrath would join me in expressing disbelief in fairies, astrology and Thor's hammer. How would he respond if a fairyologist, astrologer or Viking accused him of ignorance of their respective subjects?

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

Theology is a non-subject. I'm not saying that professors of theology are non-professors. They do interesting things, like study biblical history, biblical literature. But theology, the study of gods, the study of what gods do, presupposes that gods exist. The only kind of theology that I take account of are those theological arguments that actually argue for the existence of God.

Contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether, when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture from the past. If this is impossible, it has to face the question whether the New Testament proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian proclamation.

Theology is reflection, a critical attitude. The commitment of love, of service, comes first. Theology follows; it is the second step.

Christian theology is a hair's breadth away from nihilism.

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

What makes you a Christian is whether or not you really are in accord with biblical theology and whether you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour.

"Biblical theology" refers to something more precise than theology that is faithful to the Bible. It might be helpful to draw a contrast: at the risk of oversimplification, systematic theology tends to organize theology topically and with an eye cast on its contemporary relevance, while biblical theology tends to organize the same biblical material so that it is easier to see the distinctive contribution of each biblical book and human author, and to trace the trajectories of themes across the Bible so we see how the books of the Bible hold together.

A mystery, in Christian theology, is what God knows and man cannot, and must instead believe.

Either theology is pure nonsense, a subject with no content, or else theology must ultimately become a branch of physics.

No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian has a theology. The issue, then, is not, dowe want to have a theology? That's a given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology.? Do we embrace true or false doctrine?

Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we've always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism.

The best theology is probably no theology; just love one another.

Although it has been fashionable to deny it, anti-slavery doctrines began to appear in Christian theology soon after the decline of Rome and were accompanied by the eventual disappearance of slavery in all but the fringes of Christian Europe. When Europeans subsequently instituted slavery in the New World, they did so over strenuous papal opposition, a fact that was conveniently 'lost' from history until recently. Finally, the abolition of New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists.

Theology without love simply is very bad theology.