American Theologian Quotes

Woven into our lives is the very fire from the stars and the genes from the sea creatures, and everyone, utterly everyone, is kin in the radiant tapestry of being. This relationship is not external or extrinsic to our identity but wells up as the defining truth from our deepest being.

Elizabeth Johnson (theologian)

Somehow proper prayer must put more trust in God's will than in human wants; otherwise failure to get the things we want will force us to doubt either the power of prayer or the ability of God.

The University of Timbuktu never existed. The only thing that existed in Timbuktu was a small mud hut.

Rousas John Rushdoony

I was steeped in the understanding that if 'something is Roman [Catholic], it must be wrong.

Natural man's sin is precisely this: He wants the benefits of God without God Himself.

All Church power is, therefore, properly ministerial and administrative. Everything is to be done in the name of Christ, and in accordance with his directions.

Christendom has often achieved apparent success by ignoring the precepts of its founder.

H. Richard Niebuhr

You know a constellation of imperishable values. Live by the mighty truth and power of God. Live above the sludge of a sick society. Live among dispirited humans as the vanguard of peace and good news. Remember, our Commander in Chief has no use for tin soldiers.

Carl F. H. Henry

What has to be forgiven is not just what we do but who we are, not just our sinning but our sinfulness, not just our choices but what we have chosen in place of God.

The universe is gratis. It cannot be earned, nor need it be earned.

David Steindl-Rast

These are the two factors that lead to the destruction of our environment: money and time-or to say it another way, greed and haste. The question is, or seems to be, are we going to have an immediate profit and an immediate saving of time, or are we going to do what we really should do as God's children?

Francis Schaeffer

I delight not in spreading any thing mysterious, for I consider it all lost time; but the things that all of us can see and know if we will.

Say what men may, it is doctrine that moves the world. He who takes no position will not sway the human intellect.

William Greenough Thayer Shedd

The method of idealistic epistemology is like that of the quack physician; it first administers a drug which makes the patient's ailment chronic, thus making its own further services seem permanently indispensable.

Douglas Clyde Macintosh

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.

William Roscoe Estep

Feeling is the voice of the body; reasoning is the voice of the mind; conscience is the voice of the spirit.

Kenneth E. Hagin

I am often criticized, or at least questions are raised, about what appears to be the absence of the Holy Spirit in my work.

Stanley Hauerwas

The goal is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for... The one thing that can't be taken from us, even by death, is the love we give away before we go.

Most blacks want school vouchers, but most liberals vehemently oppose them. Why? Because what is good for teachers' unions is of more importance to the Left than what is good for blacks. Who, then, is racist? By their own admission, and by the policies they pursue, the answer is the people who call themselves progressive.

God has allowed hard things in your life so you can show the world that your God is great and that knowing Him brings peace and joy, even when life is hard.

Sabbath is the celebration of life beyond and outside productivity.

Walter Brueggemann

Sloth is the desire for ease, even at the expense of doing the known will of God. Whatever we do in life requires effort. Everything we do is to be a means of salvation. The slothful person is unwilling to do what God wants because of the effort it takes to do it. Sloth becomes a sin when it slows down and even brings to a halt the energy we must expend in using the means to salvation.

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.

James A. Forbes

The great opposition to reading is what I allow to fill my time instead of reading. To say we have no time to read is not really true; we simply have chosen to use our time for other things, or have allowed our time to be filled to the exclusion of reading. So don't add reading to your to-do list. Just stop doing the things that keep you from doing it. But read.

James Emery White

All mankind is crying out for guidance, for comfort, for peace.