Theologian Quotes

A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul.

Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?

John Cotton (minister)

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

John Mason Neale

Here saw I a great oneing betwixt Christ and us, to mine understanding: for when He was in pain, we were in pain.

Julian of Norwich

That Jesus' followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know.

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.

A weak understanding of what the Bible says about sin is tied to a weak understanding of what the Bible says is achieved by the cross.

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".

Logic is like sitting on the bank of a river and deducing its contents from a fish caught in its waters.

Edgar Young Mullins

The policy is obliteration, openly acknowledged. This is not a justifiable act of war.

Of the saturation bombing of Berlin

George Bell (bishop)

But as Geographers use to place Seas upon that place of the Globe which they know not: so chronologers, who are near of kin to them, use to blot out ages past, which they know not. They drown those Countries which they know not: These with cruel pen kill the times they heard not of, and deny which they know not.

Isaac La Peyrère

Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime,—
A rose-red city—half as old as Time!

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.

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 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

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

The first ministers were the twelve disciples. There is no evidence that Jesus chose them because they are brighter or nicer than other people. Their sole qualification seems to have been their initial willingness to rise to their feet when Jesus said, "Follow me."

Frederick Buechner

It's said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That's of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it's said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.

Charles Williams (British writer)

If we have not seen our sin and sought radical forgiveness from God, we will be unable to forgive and to seek the good of those who have wronged us.

Tim Keller (pastor)

The primary metaphor for the Easter season is the church as the resurrected people living a resurrected spirituality. Because of Easter we are in union with Christ and are called to live in our baptismal identity in his resurrection. This essential theme of Easter cannot be communicated in a day. It takes a season.

Robert E. Webber

The remarks attributed to John Podesta, who is Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff, are just extraordinarily patronizing and insulting to Catholics. What he would say is offensive. And if it had been said about the Jewish community, if it had been said about the Islamic community, within 10 minutes there would have been an apology.

Timothy M. Dolan

The Biblical worldview is not given to us in the discursive and analytical language of philosophy and science, but in rich and compact language of symbolism and art.

James B. Jordan

Do not hold as gold all that shines as gold.

As I pass it, I feel as if I saw a dear old mother, sweet in her weakness, trembling at the approach of her dissolution, but not appealing to me against the inevitable, rather endeavouring to reassure me by her patience, and pointing to a hopeful future.

Thomas Edward Brown

People complain that our generation has no philosophers. They are wrong. They now sit in another faculty. Their names are Max Planck and Albert Einstein.

Adolf von Harnack