Theologian Quotes

Do not hold as gold all that shines as gold.

On the first page of the Bible there is an instance of how literalism is but an invitation to transcend the image to which literalism points. That first page is not geology, biology or paleontology; it is high religion. For there we are told who we are in terms of our constititutive text. And if we could understand that, we would worrying about whether the antelopes or the cantaloupes came in a certain order.

Here halt, I pray you, make a little stay,
O wayfarer, to read what I have writ,
And know by my fate what thy fate shall be.
What thou art now, wayfarer, world renowned,
I was: what I am now, so shall thou be.
The world's delight I followed with a heart Unsatisfied: ashes am I, and dust.

No tool is more beneficial than intelligence. No enemy is more harmful than ignorance.

Al-Shaykh Al-Mufid

The appearance of chance will always bear a proportion to the ignorance of the observer.

O, my God! withhold from me the wealth to which tears and sighs and curses cleave. Better none at all than wealth like that.

Christian Scriver

But there is yet another form of this hidden heresy, and, paradoxically, it can affect those who are proudest of their long-standing and unimpeachable orthodoxy; heresy in the form of indifference.

It is not necessary that these hypotheses should be true, or even probably; but it is enough if they provide a calculus which fits the observations.

Andreas Osiander

From all those created in the image of God there is something to be received, and to them something to be given.

All things are ordered by God, but His providence takes in our free agency, as well as His own sovereignty.

The Bible gives no hint that a Christian "belief system" might be isolated from the life of the Church, subjected to scientific analysis, and have its truth compared with competing "belief systems".

If within us we find nothing over us we succumb to what is around us.

Jesus' disclosure shows that in his very nature God is self-effacing, whereas Christian orthodoxy has thought of him as the opposite; majestic, glorious and triumphal.

Hugh Montefiore

The sun discovers atoms, though they be invisible by candle-light, yet that makes them dance naked in his beams.

Nathaniel Culverwell

When grace changes the heart, submission out of fear changes to submission out of love, and true humility is born.

William Hendriksen

The art of life consists in taking each event which befalls us with a contented mind, confident of good.... With this method... rejoice always, though in the midst of sorrows, and possess all things, though destitute of everything.

James Freeman Clarke

If then we have Angels, let us be sober, as though we were in the presence of tutors; for there is a demon present also.

John Chrysostom

Since Christ is the Word of God and the Truth of God, he may be received even by those who have not heard of his manifestation in the flesh... We have, therefore. the hope that even among the heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working through the truth of nature and conscience, have found the way of life and salvation.

Augustus Hopkins Strong

But I say to you, the Lord says, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you. Why did he command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God.

Maximus the Confessor

The concupiscence of the eyes touches the soul at a higher level than that of the flesh, and is consequently even more subtle and dangerous. Everyone can distinguish sins of the flesh, and most people endeavor to keep themselves from any serious entanglement with them, but it is quite possible to become considerably involved in the concupiscence of the eyes without being in the least aware of the fact.

Frederic Harton

Yet, when all is said and done, birthdays are mere records of time, not registers of distance. They are chronometers, not speedometers. They tell us how long we have been upon the road, not how far we have travelled.

Frank W. Boreham

.. for the most part the worst instructed, and the least knowing of any of their rank, I ever went amongst.

In the midst of the disguises and artifices that reign among men, it is only attention and vigilance that can save us from surprises.

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel.

In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be roughly 50 percent above the national average.