I still believe that many Americans have a deep longing for that glorious moment when a sermon is more Biblical than American.

The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it...

In learning and argumentation, the quality brain is similar to a facility of maximum security. What passes the logic test, free of fallacy and pretense, then must pass the test of biblical accuracy in order...

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

Only God may be adored, because only God is unlimited goodness, truth, and beauty, and thus only God deserves unlimited love.

Joy isn’t grounded in our circumstances; it is grounded in the unchanging character of God.

The theology of the cross is not a cerebral thing; it profoundly affects our Christian experience and existence, making demands upon our whole lives and turning theology into something which controls not just our thoughts,...

Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius’s treatise against the Gnostics?” he asked in a low clear voice. The young assistant looked gravely back. “Not for sale, I’m afraid,” he said. “Nor,...

Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ”shaggy dog” stories; they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.

I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy, but also ordaining myself...

If I love a dose of (good) theology or philosophy, I probably also love discipline, improvement, wisdom, and challenges. If I hate it, I am probably too comfortable and proud to try to question myself.

Always, in Lincoln’s mature theology, there is paradox. There is starting this, yet there is also tenderness; there is melancholy, yet there is also humor: there is moral law, yet there is also compassion. History...

In principle, to be sure, the Reformation idea of the universal priesthood of all believers meant that not only the clergy but also the laity, not only the theologian but also the magistrate, had the...

…’joy’ in Phillippians is a defiant ‘Nevertheless!’ that Paul sets like a full stop against the Philippians’ anxiety…

I feel compelled to make another ‘nonapology.’ Many readers are likely to be concerned about my use of masculine pronouns in relation to God. I think I both understand and appreciate this concern. It is...

What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore.

Suffering provides the gym equipment on which my faith can be exercised.

Tema ‘Boga’ ne dispenzira teologa od njegove biografije. To ga razlikuje od stručnjaka koji se bavi znanošću o religiji.

cosmopolitan theology that longs for the Kindom of God seeks to recover its revolutionary universalizing ethos in terms of hospitality, neighbor-love, and multiple solidarities that one can see in Jesus’ teaching and ministry, without any...

It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else.

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it...

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic...

Just as the church needs members with different skills, our world must have various forms of labor, interdependent and thus valuable. A world full of ministers would be without churches, bread for the Lord’s Supper,...

The crux of my argument is this—we cannot truly understand what we should put on, say, or do, without looking at our behavior in relationship to Christ. In Christ, decency in behavior and dress is...

My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian. I am still in too much of a hurry. But if the work I have done in theology is of any use, it is...

In other words, The­ol­ogy is prac­ti­cal: espe­cially now. In the old days, when there was less edu­ca­tion and dis­cus­sion, per­haps it was pos­si­ble to get on with a very few sim­ple ideas about God. But...

Actually, it meant a great deal: a very great deal. You don’t have to believe that God exists to see that a story in which God takes on human form is a very different story...

The importance of Man, which is the one indispensable dogma of the theologians, receives no support from a scientific view of the future of the solar system.

I think that God that we have created and allowed to shape our culture through, essentially Christian theology is a pretty villainous creature. I think that one of the things that male patriarchal figure has...

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and...

Where neither go wrong, the naive only see the world as a victim of bad doctrine; the cynic only sees good doctrine as a victim of the world.

Without the infinite personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make systems. In today’s speech we would call them gameplans. A person can erect some sort of structure, some...

How do you…? What is it you’re doing?” he said to Vardy as the man took a breath, mid-insight. What do you call that? Billy thought. That reconstitutitive intelligence, berserker meme-splicing, seeing in nothings first...

There was something that He hid from all men, when he went up a mountain to pray. There was something that he covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing...

God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name...

Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?

Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.

Many in the church have turned their back on serious study, and have embraced an anti-intellectualism which refuses to learn anything from scholarship at all lest it corrupt their pure faith. It is time to...

I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an...

Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity.

my dad’s hermeneutic can beat up your dad’s hermeneutic” served as legit schoolyard banter.)

And though he had almost flunked in Greek, his thesis on ‘Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt’ had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical Theology.

Jesus is God is the unified field theory of Christianity”.

The study of truth requires a considerable effort – which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge – despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for...

I agree with yours of the 22d that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. but we cannot always do what is absolutely best. those with whom we act, entertaining different...

Everyone has gods. You just don’t think they’re gods.

I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through...

Exactly,” Lightsong said, “I’ve actually considered expanding the theory. I am now proposing to believe that God-or the universe, or time, or whatever you think controls all of this-is all really just a drunk monkey.”She...

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?

I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty.