Inspirational Quotes on Theology

“Our sole hope, our sole confidence, our only assured promise, is your mercy.”

“The Marxist thus finds himself in real agreement with the Christian in those two beliefs which Christianity paradoxically demands - that poverty is blessed and yet ought to be removed.”

“It has every available quality except that of being useful.”

“The doctrines of Christianity, or the many different theologies, are less true than the true myth because they are only attempts to translate the story, while God has expressed it all more adequately in the real incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.”

“Reason returns and so [Nebuchadnezzar] blesses the Most High. That is what sane people do -- they offer adoration to the God of heaven. Truly rational people talk like this; they confess the supremacy of the King of heaven.”

“The most shocking part of Exodus 4:24-26 is most useful to me. It forces me to ask if God is free to be who he is, or, do I try to make him my prisoner, subject to what I think he should be? A Christian must keep asking himself: Am I worshiping the God of the Bible or only God as I wish to think of him?”

“I by no means say … God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is nothing, … . I only show that they are not that which the illusions of theology make them[.]”

“Growth in sanctification will always include a deepening appreciation of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“To express it in the bold words of Professor Murray: 'sin may be said to have ruled over him [Christ]'. But he broke its dominion, and because we are united to him he has thereby broken its dominion over us.”

“If sin's reign over us is ended, then we must not—indeed cannot—go on living as though we were still its subjects. It now becomes irrational to use the body as if it were still the body in which sin reigned. Since grace now reigns; sin shall not be our master!”

“What causes love, since it is a passion, is its object; and since it is a sort of affinity or agreement with the object, what causes love is the goodness or agreeableness of that object. Evil can only be loved because it seems good, because being partially good it is perceived as wholly so. And the beautiful is a form of the good: if something is agreeable in general we call it good, and if the perception of it is agreeable we call it beautiful. But goodness must be known before it can become the object of love, so knowledge itself can be said to cause love. Knowing is an activity of reason, which abstracts from things and then makes connections between them, needing to know each part and property and power of things if it is to know them perfectly. But loving is an appetite for things as they stand, and to love perfectly we need only love them as they are perceived to exist in themselves.”

“*There is only one God*. Whatever exists is *ipso facto* individual; to be one it needs no extra property and calling it one merely denies that it is divided. Simple things are neither divided nor divisible; composite things do not exist when their parts are divided. So existence stands or falls with individuality, and things guard their unity as they do their existence. But what is simply speaking one can yet in certain respects be many: an individual thing, essentially undivided, can have many non-essential properties; and a single whole, actually undivided, can have potentially many parts. Only when one is used to count with does it presuppose in what it counts some extra property over and above existence, namely, quantity. The one we count with contrasts with the many it counts in the way a unity of measurement contrasts with what it measures; but the individual unity common to everything that exists contrasts with plurality simply by lacking it, as undividedness does division. A plurality is however *a* plurality: though simply speaking many, inasmuch as it exists, it is, incidentally, one. A continuum is homogeneous: its parts share the form of the whole (every bit of water is water); but a plurality is heterogeneous: its parts lack the form of the whole (no part of the house is a house). The parts of a plurality are unities and non-plural, though they compose the plurality not as non-plural but as existing; just as the parts of a house compose the house as material, not as not houses. Whereas we define plurality in terms of unity (many things are divided things to each of which is ascribed unity), we define unity in terms of division. For division precedes unity in our minds even if it doesn’t really do so, since we conceive simple things by denying compositeness of them, defining a point, for example, as lacking dimension. Division arises in the mind simply by negating existence. So the first thing we conceive is the existent, then―seeing that this existent is not that existent―we conceive division, thirdly unity, and fourthly plurality. There is only one God. Firstly, God and his nature are identical: to be God is to be this individual God. In the same way, if to be a man was to be Socrates there would only be one man, just as there was only one Socrates. Moreover, God’s perfection is unlimited, so what could differentiate one God from another? Any extra perfection in one would be lacking in the other and that would make him imperfect. And finally, the world is one, and plurality can only produce unity incidentally insofar as it too is somehow one: the primary and non-incidental source of unity in the universe must himself be one. The one we count with measures only material things, not God: like all objects of mathematics, though defined without reference to matter, it can exist only in matter. But the unity of individuality common to everything that exists is a metaphysical property applying both to non-material things and to God. But what in God is a perfection has to be conceived by us, with our way of understanding things, as a lack: that is why we talk of God as lacking a body, lacking limits and lacking division.”

“No solo las Escrituras implican fuertemente la creación ex nihilo, sino que la evidencia empírica de un comienzo absoluto del universo parece tener ramificaciones teológicas trascendentales”

“But let no humble devoted follower of Jesus Christ, who truly desires to serve and glorify him, and who is willing, from the heart, to do all that God shall enable him, for the promotion of the Redeemer's kingdom;--let not him be deterred, by the representation which has been given from accepting the office, if called to it by his Christian brethren. The deeper his sense of his own unfitness, the more likely will he be to apply unceasingly and importunately for heavenly aid; and the nearer he lives to the throne of grace, the more largely will he partake of that wisdom and strength which he needs. There are, no doubt, some, as was said, who are really unqualified for this office; but in general, it may be maintained, that those who have the deepest impression of the importance and arduousness of its duties, and of their own want of adequate qualifications, are far better prepared for those duties, than such as advance to the discharge of them with unwavering, confidence and self-complacency.”

“We live in a day of abounding vagueness and indistinctness on doctrinal subjects in religion. Now, if ever, it is the duty of all advocates of clear, well-defined, sharply-cut theology, to supply proof that their views are thoroughly borne out by Scripture.”

“Christ is to the souls of men what the sun is to the world. He is the center and source of all spiritual light, warmth, life, health, growth, beauty, and fertility. Like the sun, He shines for the common benefit of all mankind--for high and for low, for rich and for poor, for Jew and for Greek. Like the sun, He is free to all. All may look at Him, and drink health out of His light. If millions of mankind were mad enough to dwell in caves underground, or to bandage their eyes, their darkness would be their own fault, and not the fault of the sun. So, likewise, if millions of men and women love spiritual "darkness rather than light," the blame must be laid on their blind hearts, and not on Christ. "Their foolish hearts are darkened." (John 3:19; Romans 1:21.) But whether men will see or not, Christ is the true sun, and the light of the world. There is no light for sinners except in the Lord Jesus.”

“Thank God you have got a Father that can be angry, but that loves you as much when He is angry as when He smiles upon you.”

“John Bunyan says that he never forgot the divinity he taught, because it was burnt into him when he was on his knees. That is the way to learn the gospel. If you learn it upon your knees you will never unlearn it. That which “men” teach you, men can unteach you – if I am merely convinced by reason, a better reasoner may deceive me. If I merely hold my doctrinal opinions because they seem “to me” to be correct, I may be led to think differently another day. But if “God” has taught them to me – he who is himself pure truth – I have not learned amiss, but I have so learned that I shall never unlearn, nor shall I forget.”

“God himself is the object of theology.... He is the best; that is, he is the first and highest good and goodness itself, and he alone is good, as good as goodness itself, ready to communicate it as far as it can be communicated; his great liberality is matched by the treasures he possesses.... He is the greatest, and he alone is great.”

“We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion...What is to-day a matter of academic speculation, begins to-morrow to move armies and pull down empires.”