Theologian Quotes

“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.”
― H.L. Mencken

“As a rule, theologians know nothing of this world, and far less of the next; but they have the power of stating the most absurd propositions with faces solemn as stupidity touched by fear.

It is a part of their business to malign and vilify the Voltaires, Humes, Paines, Humboldts, Tyndalls, Haeckels, Darwins, Spencers, and Drapers, and to bow with uncovered heads before the murderers, adulterers, and persecutors of the world. They are, for the most part, engaged in poisoning the minds of the young, prejudicing children against science, teaching the astronomy and geology of the bible, and inducing all to desert the sublime standard of reason.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“The mind becomes like that on which it feeds.”
― David Elton Trueblood

“An educated theologian: someone who's better at rationalizing what they're pretending to know.”
― Peter Boghossian

“In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of Greek mythology), that great Excalibur which they had forged with infinite pains and skill—the method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty 'two-handed engine at the door' of the theologian is warranted to make a speedy end of any and every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing that, taken allegorically or, as it is otherwise said, 'poetically' or, 'in a spiritual sense,' the plainest words mean whatever a pious interpreter desires they should mean.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley, The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study

“The horse had a fly-net over its head and ears. It looked down on the paving-stones with the empty disappointed expression of an old moral theologian. Whenever the guide spat between his shoes, the horse shook his head in disapproval.”
― Wolfgang Koeppen, Death in Rome

“If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.

In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development—nothing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man’s reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them... The human intellect is only capable of tackling mediocre subjects: it disdains petty subjects, and is startled by large ones. There is no reason to be surprised if it finds any religion hard to accept at first, for all are deficient in the mediocre and the commonplace, nor that it should require skill to induce belief. For the strong intellect laughs at religion, while the weak and superstitious mind marvels at it but is easily scandalized by it.”
― Pierre Charron, Of wisdome

“People debate over whether or not there is a literal Hell, in the literal sense often described as fire and eternal torture, which, to many, seems to be too harsh a punishment. If men really want to fear something, they should be fearing separation from God, the supposedly more comforting alternative to a literal Hell. For separation from the authorship of love, mercy, and goodness is the ultimate torture. If you think a literal Hell sounds too bad, you are very much underestimating the pain of being absolutely, wholly separated from the goodness while exposed to the reality of the holiness of God.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“If I have put the case of science at all correctly, the reader will have recognised that modern science does much more than demand that it shall be left in undisturbed possession of what the theologian and metaphysician please to term its 'legitimate field'. It claims that the whole range of phenomena, mental as well as physical-the entire universe-is its field. It asserts that the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge.”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“Christians must not be slothful. Idleness is the devil’s bath; a slothful person becomes a prey to every temptation. Grace, while it cures the heart, does not make the hand lame. He who is called of God, as he works for heaven, so he works in his trade.” - Thomas Watson”
― Thomas Watson

“To revolt on behalf of an ignorant people, is like to set yourself on fire in order to light the way for a blind man!”
― Muhammad Rasheed Rida

“Tema 'Boga' ne dispenzira teologa od njegove biografije. To ga razlikuje od stručnjaka koji se bavi znanošću o religiji.”
― Johann Baptist Metz, Memoria passionis: Ein provozierendes Gedächtnis in pluralistischer Gesellschaft

“We have Gideon because we don't want always to be speaking of our faith in abstract, otherworldly, irrreal, or general terms, to which people may be glad to listen but don't really take note of; because it is good once in a while actually to see faith in action, not just hear what it should be like, but see how it just happens in the midst of someone's life, in the story of a human being. Only here does faith become, for everyone, not just a children's game, but rather something highly dangerous, even terrifying. Here a person is being treated without considerations or conditions or allowances; he has to bow to what is being asked, or he will be broken. This is why the image of a person of faith is so often that of someone who is not beautiful in human terms, not a harmonious picture, but rather that of someone who has been torn to shreds. The picture of someone who has learned to have faith has the peculiar quality of always pointing away from the person's own self, toward the One in whose power, in whose captivity and bondage he or she is. So we have Gideon, because his story is a story of God glorified, of the human being humbled.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“It's impossible to do science without faith. Sometimes scientists build theories on the premises of faulty assumptions until they discover they were in error and begin again from square one until they discover the true theory. It's quite different with theologians, they build false theory upon false theory until they give you detailed descriptions of heaven and hell and construct dogmas to protect their errors and if you dare say they are in error they condemn you to eternal damnation they arrived at through false theories”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Theology is an attempt to hack god's mind and look at the universe as he does; god's firewalls are so strong no attempt has ever been successful.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Sin is like a poison, which corrupts the blood, infects the heart, and without a sovereign Antidote, brings death. Such is the venomous nature of sin, it is deadly and damning. Sin is worse than hell, but yet God, by His mighty overruling power, makes sin in the issue turn to the good of His people. Hence the golden saying of Augustine, ‘God would never permit evil, if He could not bring good out of evil.’” - Thomas Watson”
― Thomas Watson, All Things for Good

“Even at that age I already believed in you, and so did my mother and the whole of my household except for my father. But, in my heart, he did not gain the better of my mother's piety and prevent me from believing in Christ just because he still disbelieved himself. For she did all that she could for me to see that you, my God, should be a father to me rather than he. In this you helped her to turn the scales against her husband, whom she always obeyed because by obeying him she obeyed your law, thereby showing greater virtue than he did.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Robeck was a historical person who argued that loving life was ridiculous and sought to prove his point by drowning himself in 1739.”
― Michael Wood, Candide

“Being a theologian is not a matter of skillfully using methods but of being imbued with the theological spirit. . . liberation theology is a new way of being a theologian. . . Theology (not the theologian) comes afterwards; liberating practice comes first.”
― Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff

“Theologians should study in a seminary and before graduating they should make a visit to heaven and hell after which they should submit their thesis and graduate.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Despite this historic influence, Sanusi (Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Sanusi) has elicited very little interest from Western scholars of Islam in the twentieth century. He is a striking example of just how dramatically the canon of Islamic religious thinkers has shifted in modern times. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, Sanusi was arguably a much more influential and mainstream figure in Sunni Islam than the fourteenth-century Hanbali purist Ibn Taymiyya. Today, Ibn Taymiyya is widely considered to have been a central figure in Islamic religious history, whereas Sanusi is little known even to specialists in Arabic and Islamic studies and often confused with the nineteenth century founder of the Sanusiyya Sufi order.”
― Khaled El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb

“Christians must not be slothful. Idleness is the devil’s bath; a slothful person becomes a prey to every temptation. Grace, while it cures the heart, does not make the hand lame. He who is called of God, as he works for heaven, so he works in his trade.”
― Thomas Watson

“I am a better scientist because of theology, I am a better theologian because of science.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Divane Dynamite: Only truth in the cosmos is love

“If theologians cannot be the forerunners of religious integration, then such theology isn't worth a penny.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mukemmel Musalman: Kafir Biraz, Peygamber Biraz

“If theology is to contribute anything good to the world, then it must shift its focus from the study of scriptures to the outspoken advocacy of religious integration. And if theologians cannot be the forerunners of religious integration, then such theology isn't worth a penny.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mukemmel Musalman: Kafir Biraz, Peygamber Biraz

“If God has given all things their significance, and defined their bounds according to time, space, power, and number, and if He has appointed certain measurements to regulate things and times, biblical numbers must be symbolical, and be worthy of our study; and if a fit subject for study, the laws by which this symbolism of numbers is controlled, require to be ascertained.”
― Patrick Fairbairn

“At the end of the day I'm a behaviorist, and my mission is, not a world rooted in pure logic, nope - my mission is a world rooted in hearty logic and mindful fiction. So naturally I'm not gonna speak the lingo of any particular school of thought, intellectual or theological - rather, I speak in a manner, meant to bring out the best in people from all denominations across the spectrum. In short, there is purpose behind my every phrase, every idiom, every tone, tune, and rhythm - my goal is to engender neither science nor faith, but to establish universal assimilation. To understand me, you have to listen as a human, not as believer or nonbeliever, but as human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“God doesn't care about your seminary degrees or theological pride; He cares about your humility and heart. What's precious to Him is not your Greek or Hebrew knowledge, but your willingness to be taught by the Holy Spirit. He desires a life aligned with His Word, not a puffed-up ego. True biblical knowledge is not just about head knowledge, but about living a life surrendered to God. What God values most is a humble heart, obedient to His will.”
― Shaila Touchton

“Shallow theology fights science, deep theology becomes it.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot