Best Theology Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“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 sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations.”

“Cuidado, caín, hablas demasiado, el señor está oyéndote y tarde o temprano te castigará, El señor no oye, el señor es sordo, por todas partes se le alzan súplicas, son los pobres, los infelices, los desgraciados, todos implorándole el remedio que el mundo les niega, y el señor les da la espalda.”

“Algo sí he aprendido, Qué, Que nuestro dios, el creador del cielo y de la tierra, está rematadamente loco, Cómo te atreves a decir que el señor dios está loco, Porque sólo un loco sin conciencia de sus actos admitiría ser el culpable directo de la muerte de cientos de miles de personas y se comportaría luego como si nada hubiese sucedido, salvo que, y pudiera ser, no se tratara de locura, la involuntaria, la auténtica, sino de pura y simple maldad, Dios nunca podría ser malo, o no sería dios, para malo ya tenemos al demonio, No puede ser bueno un dios que da a un padre la orden de que mate y después queme en una hoguera a su propio hijo simplemente para poner a prueba su fe, eso no se le ocurriría ni al más maligno de los demonios.”

“Tema 'Boga' ne dispenzira teologa od njegove biografije. To ga razlikuje od stručnjaka koji se bavi znanošću o religiji.”

“Every person carries a secret wound, religion we run to is the bandage that fits.”

“Al día siguiente nadie murió.”

“... la muerte está vedada a los dioses,”

“Cuidado, caín, hablas demasiado, el señor está oyéndote y tarde o temprano te castigará,”

“What kind of a moron demands his devotee to slaughter his son just to prove his loyalty! What kind of an alcoholic father sends his son to be tortured and nailed on a cross just to prove how much he cares! What kind of a pervert rescues his wife from her abductor only to abandon her, just so his reputation as the ideal king wouldn't be tarnished by a violated woman! Mythologies have nothing to do with holiness, nor with the actual creator of the cosmos, even if there is such a thing, at most they reflect the mindset and morality of their time.”

“Dogma not Divine, Myth not Holy (Sonnet 2430)”

“Mythologies have nothing to do with holiness, nor with the actual creator of the cosmos, even if there is such a thing, at most they reflect the mindset and morality of their time.”

“The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.”

“The Religion Engine (Sonnet 2597)”

“Go to any church, any mosque, any temple, and one thing you're sure to find is, not God, but people. And that has always been the real point of religion, people recharging people, people resurrecting people, people consoling people, people sheltering people.”

“We may not play with the new theology even if we may think we can turn it to our advantage.”

“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 blackmail,' but it has nothing to do with morals, only with the implied juvenile threat of having a tantrum unless everyone else gives in.”

“I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.”

“Let us account for all we see by the facts we know. If there are things for which we cannot account, let us wait for light. To account for anything by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that we do not know. Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.”

“There is a thought among some brands of theology that souls are waiting up in heaven to be born. Now how in the world anybody comes up with that is beyond me, and how you can be so sure of that is also beyond me. I always like to go back to Snoopy's theological writings, which he called, "Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong." And that's the way I feel. These things fascinate me, and I like to talk about them with other people, and hear what they think. But I'm always a little bit leery of people who are sure that they're right about things that nobody's ever been able to prove, and never will be able to prove.”

“To an even moderately sophisticated and well-read person it should come as no surprise that any religion at all has its hidden as well as its obvious beauties and is capable of profound and impressive interpretations. What is deeply objectionable about most of these interpretations is that they allow the believer to say”

“I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who...prayed..with...unexpiated tears to 'dear,kind God!”

“Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life." Paul Tillich”

“Theologians and other clerks,”

“Fundamentalism's strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith.”

“Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians.”

“Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call 'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise.”

“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”

“Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.”

“He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.”

“In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse. The object was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, the ultimate and inexpressible reality beyond human understanding. The idea was to push language as far as it would go, until participants became aware of the ineffable. The challenger, drawing on his immense erudition, began the process by asking an enigmatic question and his opponents had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced the others to silence. In that moment of silence, the Brahman was present - not in the ingenious verbal declarations but in the stunning realisation of the impotence of speech. Nearly all religious traditions have devised their own versions of this exercise. It was not a frustrating experience; the finale can, perhaps, be compared to the moment at the end of the symphony, when there is a full and pregnant beat of silence in the concert hall before the applause begins. The aim of good theology is to help the audience to live for a while in that silence.”

“God is Schrodinger's cat,”

“Holiness is not a biblical affair, holiness is a human affair.”

“Nowhere but in human living holiness brews.”

“Best way apes know to make sure nobody questions their words is to call them divine intervention, rather than human creation. But if you could transcend the primitive instinct of connecting divinity with the supernatural, you would plainly see, human creation is divine creation - human intervention is the most divine it gets. That is why, my creations are divine creation, but that divinity is firmly rooted in my own consciousness - not in some imaginary heaven, but in my own organic and very much mortal human brain.”

“My goodness doesn't come from God,”

“I have a strange affinity to divinity,”

“Every Religion is Right Religion”

“Be happy with nothing because that nothing is everything.”

“Being a believer and being a bigot are two different things.”

“God faith is interfaith.”

“If I Wrote God (Sonnet)”

“It's a strange world we live in, somewhere they believe in talking snakes, somewhere they worship monkeys and vultures. Yet we forget to love our fellow human beings, because they revere different mythical creatures.”

“The object of theology is to see the traditional teachings of the church as a unified whole, unified around the gospel that God loves us. Only when we see what the church teaches about sin or grace or the eucharist or the Trinity as all part of a revelation of the love of God - only when we see this - do we begin to understand these doctrines. And the only way to see this is to question them and to question our understanding of them.”

“Divinity is uncanonable.”

“Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.”

“When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences.”

“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 such knowledge in the minds of men.”

“Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory?”

“...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 us, rewarding us as human judges might.”

“We're very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they're beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can't see them under our big noses.”

“For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await others. 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 a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”

“البحث عن الله عز وجل ومحاولة إثبات وجوده ليس أمرا ضد العقلية العلمية، فإن غاية العلم هي توحيد فهم الظواهر المختلفة وإيجاد السبب المشترك بينها (كإيجاد نظرية فيزيائية واحدة تفسر كافة الظواهر الفيزيائية) والله عز وجل هو السبب الحقيقي وراء كافة الظواهر”

“القانون الفيزيائي لا ينبثق من فراغ، ولكنه تعبير عن إرادة واعية، وكما أن القوانين الوضعية التي يُعمل بها في القضاء هي تعبير عن إرادة المشرعين فإن قوانين الطبيعة هي تعبير عن إرادة الخالق سبحانه.”

“If any authority should be able to justify itself, if any authority should be able to answer the question "by what right?" with something more than the circular assertion of its own power, it is the authority that claims to be perfectly rational, perfectly just, and the source of all goodness. And yet, it is precisely this authority that most often answers the question 'Why?' with 'Because I AM.”

“Man is and remains a transcendent being, that is, he is that existent to whom the silent and”

“If Hell is the price of sovereignty, then Hell is the only place where human dignity is fully realized.”

“The question of whether God exists is ontological and likely unanswerable. The question of whether God has the right to rule is political and practically answerable. We have been answering the wrong question.”

“To know myself as woman in the image of God to know God as Mother and to know my own mother as a window into God: these three are inseparable.If one is implausible to the heart the other two are as well.”

“At best we are but clay, animated dust; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a miracle that the Lord Jesus should set His heart's love upon people like us.”

“Radi se mnogo više - i to isključivo - o pitanju kako uopće valja govoriti o Bogu pred neizmjernom poviješću trpljenja svijeta, 'njegovoga' svijeta. To je pitanje, kako ga ja vidim,”

“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.”

“There is a beauty in paradox when it comes to talking about things of ultimate concern. Paradox works against our tendency to stay superficial in our faith, or to rest on easy answers or categorical thinking. It breaks apart our categories by showing the inadequacy of them and by pointing to a reality larger than us, the reality of gloria, of light, of beyond-the-beyond. I like to call it paradoxology—the glory of paradox, paradox-doxology—which takes us somewhere we wouldn’t be capable of going if we thought we had everything all wrapped up, if we thought we had attained full comprehension. The commitment to embracing the paradox and resisting the impulse to categorize people (ourselves included) is one of the ways we follow Jesus into that larger mysterious reality of light and love.”

“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 (Psalm 25). When he thinks about me, he remembers what he is like, and that is my exceeding joy. My indestructible hope is that he has turned his face towards me, and he will never turn away.”

“The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.”

“The notion that evil is non-rational is a more significant claim for Eagleton than at first appears, because he is (in this book [”

“We imagine that our theological/conceptual systems are the means by which we know God as God is. I truly believe that such postures and perspectives put us in danger of conceptual idolatry, worshiping our ideas of and frameworks for God.”

“No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.”

“How does "Let go and let God" measure up against Scripture? Remember, the test isn't what sounds deep, what sounds holy, or even what makes sense to us. For the Christian, the test is Scripture.”

“When you find that a theology has nothing more to offer than what the world already offers, then that theology as a theology is impractical, and therefore, useless.”

“We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.”

“In Christ, for the first time, we see that in God himself there exists--within his inseparable unity--the distinction between the Father who gives and the Gift which is given (the Son), but only in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”

“The English experience suggested that nobody really doubted the existence of God until theologians tried to prove it.”

“What the Father gives is the capacity to be a self, freedom, and thus autonomy, but an autonomy which can be understood only as a surrender of self to the other.”

“Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I’m talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what’s going on.”

“They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.”

“Prayer is an acknowledgment that our need of God's help is not partial but total.”

“The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.”

“Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him.”

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

“If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.”

“Divinity for the sake of the simple-minded is beautiful. Those theological assertions you write, say, or live by that you later feel foolish about, it means God still lives in you enough to tell you that they were indeed foolish. By mistakes you know you are alive.”

“I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.”

“The “romance” of a missionary is often made up of monotony and drudgery; there often is no glamour in it; it doesn’t stir a man’s spirit or blood. So don’t come out to be a missionary as an experiment; it is useless and dangerous. Only come if you feel you would rather die than not come. Don’t come if you want to make a great name or want to live long. Come if you feel there is no greater honor, after living for Christ, than to die for Him.”

“Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. God designed an ostrich. If He didn't do it, He permitted a drunken angel to do it. Empirical facts can add significantly to the meaning of "being godlike".”

“When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying.”

“[N]early all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire”

“In one manner or the other it still remains true that, even in the view of the mere biologist, the human epic resembles nothing so much as a way of the Cross.”

“For Christians . . . an unreflective faith is not possible if we take seriously the injunction to love God with the mind as well as the heart and soul.”

“A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.”

“Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'”

“There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.”

“It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way.”

“To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.”

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

“The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for wisdom that philosophy etymologically is is a desire for the highest or divine causes. Philosophy culminates in theology. All other knowledge contains the seeds of contemplation of the divine.”

“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.”

“Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia.”

“It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively.”

“It is just as crazy”