20th-century Theologian Quotes

There is no academic virtue in playing mediocre football and no academic vice in winning a game that by all odds one should lose... There has indeed been a surrender at Notre Dame, but it is a surrender to excellence on all fronts, and in this we hope to rise above ourselves with the help of God.

Theodore Hesburgh
Theodore Hesburgh
Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life's sorrow with grace.

Instead of seeing all of this as God's extraordinary grace, we come to expect the comfort and joys that God gives us as the baseline, the measure of what we believe to be our due. When our comfort level drops below our expectations, we are shocked and angered, and even foolishly express our outrage to God Himself.

R. C. Sproul Jr.
R. C. Sproul Jr.
Our fundamental sin is that we place ourselves in the position of God and divide the world between what we judge to be good and what we judge to be evil. And this judgment is the primary thing that keeps us from doing the central thing God created us to do, namely, love like He loves.

I was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.

Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger
Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger
We are always in danger of rejecting the creational in name of the fall and of accepting the fallen in name of creation.

For many people - from secular feminists to observant Jews - the notion of a feminist Judaism is an oxymoron.

Over this period many issues have been clarified. Today we know very much more about these twenty-seven short writings from a little religious sub-culture in the Roman empire than ever before. Nevertheless, they risk being forgotten - partly because the link with the Christian history which they have influenced has been broken, partly because many of our educated contemporaries come from other religious and cultural traditions, and partly because the results of historical-critical research are so complex that many people are deterred from trying to grasp them.

When it comes to abortion, euthanasia, and other sanctity of life issues, we should not suppose that our choice is between reforming the law and working to change the culture. We must do both. The work of legal reform is necessary, though not sufficient, ingredient in the larger project of cultural transformation. Yes, we must change people's hearts. But no, we must not wait for changes of heart before changing the laws. We must do both at the same time, recognizing that just laws help to form good hearts, and unjust laws impede every other effort in the cause of the Gospel of Life.

Francis George
Francis George
Only in the longing for a world of economic and sexual justice together, and not subordinated to one another, can the encounter with the divine take place. But this is an encounter to be found at the crossroads of desire, when one dares to leave the ideological order of the heterosexual pervasive normative. This is an encounter with indecency, and with the indecency of God and Christianity.

The loving care of Mother Earth is in many quarters replacing the former sense of obedience to the Heavenly Father.

Lloyd Geering
Lloyd Geering
Seminary also introduced me to the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins. I learned from my professors and the readings they assigned that Jesus almost certainly was not born of a virgin, did not think of himself as the Son of God, and did not see his purpose as dying for the sins of the world... I also found the claim that Jesus and Christianity were the only way of salvation to be troublesome.

... hunting of a beast, inventing of an instrument, laying down the foundations of a new system of economy, setting up a new form or government, kindling a war, or making peace. All these activities of man depend upon his intellectual ability. Emotions creeping in cannot but spoil them.

Our noblest duty is to strive to reduce oppression, to be more [stringent] in our implementation of Islamic law... and to weaken the control of oppressive and tyrannical regimes over the oppressed. These [actions] can [hasten] the return of the Hidden Imam...

Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi
Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi
Prayer is the most important activity a born-again Christian can perform. It should head your list of priorities, for certainly the world around us desperately needs prayer. Prayer will open the door for God to do a glorious work in these last days. Prayer will stem the tide of evil.

At the heart of death's history lie not only the emotion of grief and the breaking of bonds between each other and our place in this world but also the hope of answering the queries and resolving the injustices of a lifetime.

When most of Europe was still illiterate, the Hutterites had established a system of primary schools. Among them education was compulsory. They believed that their movement depended on an educated people who could practice discipleship in light of New Testament teachings. Of course, the state churches felt no such need. Their religion was primarily in the hands of religious professionals. The layman's chief function in such ecclesiastical systems was to obey. For this purpose ignorance served as well as, if not better than, knowledge.

Theological condemnation of others, which breaks off fellowship in either judgment or contempt, is impermissible.

God speaks to man through the Scriptures, and He does not reveal normative truth except as it is already revealed in the Scriptures themselves. The test of truth must remain not what man experiences today but what the Scriptures have stated long ago.

The more a believer wishes to live the absolute call of God, the more essential it is to do so in the heart of human distress.

Brother Roger
Brother Roger
We must listen to the black folk, the white folk, the poor folk, the rich folk. We need to know what marginal folk are saying, what corporate rulers are saying. You can't preach if you don't know what the folks are saying, not only with their mouths, but with the conditions of their lives.

How is it possible to live like a machine and bear fruit like a tree?

'Amen',... in Hebrew, is one of a cluster from a root which signifies reliability, integrity and truth.... Our utterance of it is acknowledgment of God's 'Amen', which always goes before. The recognition of God's integrity and truthfulness, unswerving faithfulness in execution of his promises, is so central to Judaism's faith that 'Amen' may almost be taken as a name for God. We might miss this when we read, in the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, that 'he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth', but the Hebrew here, if rendered literally, would be 'by the God Amen'.

A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one. The last redoubt holding out for me was the year-day principle (on which I had written a defense in 1972 for the Southern Publishing Association Daniel volume which was published in 1978). This collapsed when I handled hundreds of books of commentary on Revelation in the Library of Congress stacks and found that the respective authors had in many cases suggested dates that seemed appropriate for their own time but ridiculous later. It became clear that we, as Adventists, had done the same as our predecessors.

If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.