Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don’t have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.

If we suppose that mankind never can or will be in a better condition, it seems impossible to justify by any kind of theodicy the mere fact that such a race of corrupt beings could...

I haven’t even read everything I wrote.

[E]very heresy is due to an overemphasis upon some truth, without allowing other truths to qualify and balance it.

My greatest fear is time wasted—a life spent. My greatest fear is passing away from this world without leaving a lasting impact.

Truly, I’ve learned more theology living in poor neighborhoods than in classrooms. At times I wonder if the questions of traditional theology have any meaning for the poor. And “the poor” here mean eighty percent...

Tko npr. formulira govor o Bogu Abrahamovu, Izakovu i Jakovljevu tako da se u njemu više ne čuje Jobov uzdisaj i tužaljka ‘Ta dokle još?’, taj se ne bavi teologijom nego mitologijom.

Cosmopolitanism promotes a sense of new _we-ness as regarding every individual human being as a citizen of the cosmos. However, the _we-cosmic-citizens_ are not to promote the _we-ness-in-sameness_, but rather the we-ness-in-alterity_.Unlike the solidarity-in-sameness, cosmopolitan...

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting.

Not the last time in Western history, the revolutionaries armed themselves with a new religion to steel themselves for greater outrageous.

However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.

If we are to be biblical, then, the issue is not whether we should have a doctrine of predestination or not, but what kind we should embrace.

We…sin not because we want what is evil, but because we want what isn’t good enough.

Peace is a deeper reality than violence.”p. 231

When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft: Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being much...

TO BE asked to minister without an informing vision of God (which is what theology is really all about), however, is like being told to make bricks without straw. What keeps people going in ministry,...

The Bible was penned by men. The Epistles of Paul were penned by that evangelist salesman and his students, desperate to bring mystery and excitement into a quiet philosophy, turning it into a religion promising...

I Only Believe What I See But I Question Everything I Hear

. . . the mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credulity.

For when man is faced with a curse he answers, “I’ll take care of my problems.” And he puts everything to work to become powerful, to keep the curse from having its effects. He creates...

In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not...

To say on the authority of the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the...

Theology is for homemakers who need to know who God is, who they are, and what this mundane life is all about.

Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in...

The world’s theologyThe world’s theology is easy to define. It is the view . . . that human beings are basically good, that no one is really lost, that belief in Jesus Christ is not...

No sooner was the wound given than the remedy was provided and revealed.

Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it ‘moral...

Who are theologians? What kind of self-identity could or should a theologian claim? Should a theologian be a defender or transmitter of Christian _tradition_? What if the _tradition_ itself carries a dark side, implicitly or...

Teaching and learning religious plurality often ends up privileging religious texts over practice and largely ignoring the social and historical contexts and the lived experience of people who shape, situate, and structure these religious texts.

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

In AA we don’t come to God through theology but through experience, mostly of the humbling and humiliating variety, often reluctantly, and sometimes even kicking and screaming. – p. 179

And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced—too eagerly in my view—that the question of God’s existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical...

…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing...

Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?

In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than...

Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such,...

We have often done well knowing the mind of God in our churches today. We have not done as well knowing His heart. We have largely become a church that pursues insights, principles, and theological...

His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God’s knowledge has no change or variation.

The more we listen to the voices of others, voices unlike our own, the more we remain open to the transcendent forces that save us from idolatry. The more we listen to ourselves, the more...

If you live today, you breath in nihilism … it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would...

God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they’re so empirically familiar with how atheists think.

Theology, like fiction, is largely autobiographical.

Wonder—the enthusiastic ardor for the sublimity of being, for its worthiness to be an object of knowledge—promises to become the point of departure for genuine insight only where it has reached the stage in which...

Theology, philosophy, metaphysics, and quantum physics are merely ways for God to have his smart people believe in him

The love of Christ for me will get last say. He is merciful to me for his name’s sake, for the sake of his own goodness, for the sake of his steadfast love and compassion...

Sola scriptura means at least this: that the church’s proclamation is always subject to potential correction from the canon. It is for this reason that we resist simply collapsing the text into the tradition of...

It occurs to me that my thinking has been faulty: we do not feel God’s absence. We feel the absence of all that is lost to God, that which has set itself apart and refuses...

Atheism is a lack of belief…what about the powers of darkness, and that of light, will you trace both to nothing? Then you must have created yourself.

Cosmopolitanism emphasizes and is grounded in a _singular relationality between and among people

God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.