TERMS STARTING WITH
Theology and the Celestial Hierarchies.
Theology ::: From Greek, “study of deity”; a general term for discussions and investigations of things pertaining to God(s), and by extension, to religious matters. One who engages formally in theological studies is called a “theologian.”
Theology: (Gr. theos, god, logos, study) Simply stated, theology is a study of the question of God and the relation of God to the world of reality. Theology, in the widest sense of the term, is a branch of philosophy, i.e., a special field of philosophical inquiry having to do with God. However, the term is widely employed to mean the theoretical expression of a particuhr religion. In the latter sense, theology becomes "Christian", "Jewish", "Presbyterian", "Reformed", etc. When thus employed, theology becomes in a narrow sense "historic", "systematic", "polemic", "ecclesiastical", "apologetic", etc., -- phases of theoretical discussions within a particular religious faith. Theology need not have any necessary reference to religion, it may be a purely theoretical discussion about God and God's relation to the world on a disinterested plane of free inquiry. -- V.F.
Theology: The study of the question of God and the relation of God to the world of reality.
theology 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, especially those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively {marginal} with respect to actual use of a design or system. Used especially around software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI. [{Jargon File}]
theology ::: 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to religious issues.2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, especially those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively marginal with respect to heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI.[Jargon File]
THEOLOGY Theology lies within the domain of subjective consciousness, and its dogmas belong to the superphysical. Religion is that feeling, attraction, which has no need for reason, or at any rate is impaired if it is locked up in untenable conceptions of reason. K 5.45.1
theology, Michael is the angel of death who “leads
theology ::: n. --> The science of God or of religion; the science which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of God, his laws and government, the doctrines we are to believe, and the duties we are to practice; divinity; (as more commonly understood) "the knowledge derivable from the Scriptures, the systematic exhibition of revealed truth, the science of Christian faith and life."
THEOLOGY—The science that treats of the being of God, the attributes of God, the doctrine of the Trinity and creation and providence.
TERMS ANYWHERE
29. In theology there are three classifications of spirit: (1) God, Who is divine spirit; (2) angels and demons,
2. According to Plato, a prophetic prediction is a form of inspired "frenzy" which produces a good result which could not be obtained in a normal state of mind (Phaedrus). The other two forms of this abnormal activity are poetic inspiration and religious exaltation. This concept has been exalted by Christian theology which gave to it a divine origin: the gift of prediction is an attribute of a saint, and also of the biblical prophets.
Abailard, Peter: (1079-1142) Was born at Pallet in France; distinguished himself as a brilliant student of the trivium and quadrivium; studied logic with Roscelin and Wm. of Champeaux. He taught philosophy, with much emphasis on dialectic, at Melun, Corbeil, and the schools of St. Genevieve and Notre Dame in Paris. He was lecturing on theology in Paris c. 1113 when he was involved in the romantic and unfortunate interlude with Heloise. First condemned for heresy in 1121, he became Abbot of St. Gildas in 1125, and after returning to teach theology in Paris, his religious views were censured by the Council of Sens (1141). He died at Cluny after making his peace with God and his Church. Tactless, but very intelligent, Abailard set the course of mediaeval philosophy for two centuries with his interest in the problem of universals. He appears to have adopted a nominalistic solution, rather than the semi-realistic position attributed to him by the older historians. Chief works: Sic et Non (c. 1122), Theologia Christiana (c. 1124), Scito Teipsum (1125-1138) and several Logical Glosses (ed. B. Geyer, Abaelard's Philos. Schrift. BGPM, XXI, 1-3).
According to Suarez, theology is not a part of philosophy, but a supreme science having a supernatural justification and deriving its principles from Divine revelation. However, in his natural theology, Suarez examined the arguments for the existence of God. The attributes of God can be but dimly known by the unaided reason of man.
A contrast has been made between the teachings of Paul and of Peter — respectively often referred to as the Pauline and Petrine theology — as representing pagan and Jewish Christianity respectively; and these two have been the occasion of controversies and attempted reconcilements.
Agathodaemon, Agathodaimon (Greek) The good genius (represented as a youth holding a horn of plenty and a bowl, or a poppy and ears of corn) to whom at Athens a cup of pure wine was drunk at dinner; in one of his many forms, the kosmic Christos, the serpent of eternity — which in the human mind becomes the serpent of Genesis — which after the fall of Mediterranean civilizations became Satan. Brahma, in order to create hierarchies, becomes fourfold and emanates successively daemons, angels, pitris, and men. Agathodaimon refers to the first of these emanations, sons of kosmic darkness, signifying incomprehensible light which is prior to manifested light. Christian theology has recognized this in making Satan’s host the first sons of God, but has unconsciously perverted their descent in order to enlighten man into a rebellion against Almighty Power. Thus in later times Agathodaimon became the enemy of divine goodness. The same has happened in the case of the asuras in India, and of the kosmic serpent. In Gnostic gems it appears under the name Chnouphis or Chnoubis.
Aggada(h) ::: (Heb. Telling, Narration, or Legend). Jewish term for non-halachik (non legal) matter, especially in Talmud and Midrash; includes folklore, legend, theology/theosophy, scriptural interpretations, biography, etc. (Not to be confused with Haggadah)
Albertus, Magnus: St., O.P. (1193-1280) Count of Bollstädt, Bishop of Ratisbon, Doctor Universalis, was born at Lauingen, Bavaria, studied at Padua and Bologna, entered the Dominican Order in 1223. He taught theology at the Univ. of Paris from 1245-48, when he was sent to Cologne to organize a new course of studies for his Order; St. Thomas Aquinas was his student and assistant at this time. Later his time was given over to administrative duties and he was made Bishop of Ratisbon in 1260. In 1262 he gave up his bishopric and returned to a life of writing, teaching and controversy. Of very broad interests in science, philosophy and theology, Albert popularized a great part of the corpus of Aristotelian and Arabic philosophic writings in the 13th century. His thought incorporates elements of Augustinism, Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, Avicennism, Boethianism into a vast synthesis which is not without internal inconsistencies. Due to the lack of critical editions of his works, a true estimate of the value of his philosophy is impossible at present. However, he must have had some influence on St. Thomas, and there was a lively Albertinian school lasting into the Renaissance. Chief works: Summa de Creaturis, Comment, in IV Lib. Sent., Philos, Commentaries on nearly all works of Aristotle, De Causis, De intellectu et intellig., Summa Theologiae (Opera Omnia, ed. Borgnet, 38 vol., Paris, 1890-99). -- V.J.B.
All Indian doctrines orient themselves by the Vedas, accepting or rejecting their authority. In ranging from materialism to acosmism and nihilism, from physiologism to spiritualism, realism to idealism, monism to pluralism, atheism and pantheism, Hindus believe they have exhausted all possible philosophic attitudes (cf. darsana), which they feel supplement rather than exclude each other. A unnersal feature is the fusion of religion, metaphysics, ethics and psychology, due to the universal acceptance of a psycho-physicalism, further exemplified in the typical doctrines of karma and samsara (q.v.). Rigorous logic is nevertheless applied in theology where metaphvsics passes into eschatology (cf., e.g., is) and the generally accepted belief in the cyclic nature of the cosmos oscillating between srsti ("throwing out") and pralaya (dissolution) of the absolute reality (cf. abhasa), and in psychology, where epistemology seeks practical outlets in Yoga (q.v.). With a genius for abstraction, thinkers were and are almost invariably hedonistically motivated by the desire to overcome the evils of existence in the hope of attaining liberation (cf. moksa) and everlasting bliss (cf. ananda, nirvana). -- K.F.L.
Also called creation theology. ::: The belief that humans, life, the Earth, and the Universe were created by the supernatural intervention of a supreme being or deity. This intervention may be seen either as an act of creation from nothing (ex nihilo) or the emergence of order from pre-existing chaos.[4]
Angelology A hierarchical system of angels, messengers, celestial powers or emanations, especially those of the Jews and Christians. The Jewish system is Qabbalistic; the Christian system, chiefly due to the Celestial Hierarchy and to the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Dionysius the pseudo-Aeropagite, was adopted from the 5th or 6th centuries and had an immense influence on later Christian theology. It was divided into a tenfold plan after the manner of Pythagoras and the Neoplatonists, the summit of this Christian hierarchy being the divine, termed God. The hierarchy includes: 1) Expanse of the Divine Presence; 2) Seraphim; 3) Cherubim; 4) Thrones; 5) Dominations or Dominions; 6) Virtues; 7) Powers; 8) Principalities; 9) Archangels; and 10) Angels.
Antichrist [from Greek anti against + christos anointed] An adversary of Christ. The Epistles of John refers to the belief in the coming of an antichrist, and also uses the word to signify any of the deniers of Christ who existed in those times. This refers to the belief among Jews and Jewish Christians that the second coming of the Messiah would be preceded by a reign of wickedness under Antichrist, as found in Paul’s Epistles and in Revelation. Moslem literature tells of the false messiah (mesihu ’d-dajjal) who will overrun the earth, ruling for 40 days and leaving only Mecca and Medina unharmed. Such beliefs are ancient and universal: the nether pole of manifestation which, though a necessary factor in cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis, has been converted by doctrinal theology into an evil demon, such as Satan, Devil, Lucifer, Angra-Mainyu, and Prometheus.
Antinomianism ::: In theology, the idea that members of a particular religious group are under no obligation to obey the laws of ethics or morality as presented by religious authorities. Antinomianism is the polar opposite of legalism, the notion that obedience to a code of religious law is necessary for salvation. The term has become a point of contention among opposed religious authorities. Few groups or sects explicitly call themselves "antinomian", but the charge is often levelled by some sects against competing sects.
Anunna —in Akkadian theology, the anunna
Apocatastasis: (Gr. apokatastasis, complete restitution) In theology this term refers to a final restitution or universal salvation. -- V.F.
Apologetics: (Gr. apologetikos, fit for a defence) The discipline which deals with a defence of a position or body of doctrines. Traditional Christian theology gave over to Christian Apologetics (or, simply Apologetics) the task of defending the faith. As such the discipline was also called "Evidences of the Christian Religion." Each particular faith, however, developed its own particular type of apologetics. -- V.F.
apologetics ::: n. --> That branch of theology which defends the Holy Scriptures, and sets forth the evidence of their divine authority.
Aquinas, Thomas: (Born at Roccasecca, near Naples, in 1225; oblate at the Benedictine monastery, Monte Cassino, 1230-1239; student at the University of Naples, 1239-1244; having decided to become a Dominican, he studied at the University of Paris under St. Albert the Great, 1245-1248; until 1252 he was in Cologne with St. Albert at the newly opened studium generale of the Dominican Order; in 1252 he returned to study at the faculty of theology in the University of Paris where in 1256 he was given the licentia docendi in theology and where he taught until 1259; from 1259 until 1268 he taught at the papal curia in Rome; returned to the University of Paris to stem the tide against Averroism, 1269-1272; from 1272 he began teaching at the University of Naples. He died March 7, 1274 on the way to the Council of Lyons.)
Arabic Philosophy: The contact of the Arabs with Greek civilization and philosophy took place partly in Syria, where Christian Arabic philosophy developed, partly in other countries, Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt and Spain. The effect of this contact was not a simple reception of Greek philosophy, but the gradual growth of an original mode of thought, determined chiefly by the religious and philosophical tendencies alive in the Arab world. Eastern influences had produced a mystical trend, not unlike Neo-Platonism; the already existing "metaphysics of light", noticeable in the religious conception of the Qoran, also helped to assimilate Plotinlan ideas. On the other hand, Aristotelian philosophy became important, although more, at least in the beginning, as logic and methodology. The interest in science and medicine contributed to the spread of Aristotelian philosophy. The history of philosophy in the Arab world is determined by the increasing opposition of Orthodoxy against a more liberal theology and philosophy. Arab thought became influential in the Western world partly through European scholars who went to Spain and elsewhere for study, mostly however through the Latin translations which became more and more numerous at the end of the 12th and during the 13th centuries. Among the Christian Arabs Costa ben Luca (864-923) has to be mentioned whose De Differentia spiritus et animae was translated by Johannes Hispanus (12th century). The first period of Islamic philosophy is occupied mainly with translation of Greek texts, some of which were translated later into Latin. The Liber de causis (mentioned first by Alanus ab Insulis) is such a translation of an Arab text; it was believed to be by Aristotle, but is in truth, as Aquinas recognized, a version of the Stoicheiosis theologike by Proclus. The so-called Theologia Aristotelis is an excerpt of Plotinus Enn. IV-VI, written 840 by a Syrian. The fundamental trends of Arab philosophy are indeed Neo-Platonic, and the Aristotelian texts were mostly interpreted in this spirit. Furthermore, there is also a tendency to reconcile the Greek philosophers with theological notions, at least so long as the orthodox theologians could find no reason for opposition. In spite of this, some of the philosophers did not escape persecution. The Peripatetic element is more pronounced in the writings of later times when the technique of paraphrasis and commentary on Aristotelian texts had developed. Beside the philosophy dependent more or less on Greek, and partially even Christian influences, there is a mystical theology and philosophy whose sources are the Qoran, Indian and, most of all, Persian systems. The knowledge of the "Hermetic" writings too was of some importance.
Archangel [from Greek arch higher, original + angelos messenger] A higher or original order of angels; cosmic powers synonymous with the highest class of dhyani-chohans. In Christian legend, they number seven; in the Koran, four. In Catholic theology, the eighth of the nine divisions in the divine hierarchy. Jewish astrology associates the archangels with the planets: Raphael with the Sun, Gabriel with the Moon, Michael with Mercury, Aniel (Anael) with Venus, Samael with Mars, Zadkiel (Sachiel) with Jupiter, and Kafziel (Cassiel) with Saturn. In medieval Europe, influenced by the Islamic system of Averroes, the planets of Michael and Raphael were reversed. The archangels parallel the Babylonian planetary spirits, the Zoroastrian amesha spentas, and the Hindu adityas.
Archon, Archontes (Greek) ’archon. Ruler; originally celestial beings, these primordial planetary spirits or dhyani-chohans transfer their mystic fluids or essences into their “shadows” or vehicles, thus enabling them to manifest on the various planes of the universe. In one sense, they are the fallen angels, counterparts alike of the highest celestial beings of the hierarchies and of the human personalities at the lowest rung of the ladder of emanations. Hence they are humanity’s teachers or guardian angels, made by theology into evil spirits, and contrasted with archangels, their own supreme and primordial essences. These beings are concerned with a kind of hypostatic action or a transference of consciousness, vitality, and force from a higher to lower planes through various vehicles or sheaths in which the descending ray clothes itself on the different planes of the universe that it traverses.
Aristobulus: A philosopher of the second century B.C. who combined Greek philosophy with Jewish theology. -- M.F.
Arminianism ::: A school of soteriological thought in Protestant Christian theology founded by the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius. Arminianism is closely related to Calvinism (or Reformed theology), and the two systems share both their histories and many doctrines in common.
Astrotheology: A system of theology founded on what is known of the heavenly bodies, and of the laws which regulate their movements.
astrotheology ::: n. --> Theology founded on observation or knowledge of the celestial bodies.
Asura (Sanskrit) Asura [from the verbal root as to breathe] A title frequently given to the hierarch or supreme spirit of our universe, as being the primal “Breather”; also a class of spiritual-intellectual beings. In Hinduism it commonly signifies elemental and evil gods or demons. “Primarily in the Rig-Veda, the ‘Asuras’ are shown as spiritual divine beings; their etymology is derived from asu (breath), the ‘Breath of God,’ and they mean the same as the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for purposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from Brahma’s thigh, and that their name began to be derived from a privative, and sura, god (solar deities), or not-a-god, and that they became the enemies of the gods” (SD 2:59).
atheological ::: a. --> Opposed to theology; atheistic.
atheology ::: n. --> Antagonism to theology.
atonement ::: n. --> Reconciliation; restoration of friendly relations; agreement; concord.
Satisfaction or reparation made by giving an equivalent for an injury, or by doing of suffering that which will be received in satisfaction for an offense or injury; expiation; amends; -- with for. Specifically, in theology: The expiation of sin made by the obedience, personal suffering, and death of Christ.
Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430. St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents. Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided. Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients. S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings"). This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism). (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment. Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect. Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good." In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love. In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909). Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint. The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value. (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey). (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience. (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria. (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers: subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists); logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality); metaphysical objectivism (values --or norms or ideals --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.
A. V. Vasihev, Space, Time, Motion, translated by H. M. Lucas and C. P. Sanger, with an introduction by Bertrand Russell, London. 1924, and New York, 1924. Religion, Philosophy of: The methodic or systematic investigation of the elements of religious consciousness, the theories it has evolved and their development and historic relationships in the cultural complex. It takes account of religious practices only as illustrations of the vitality of beliefs and the inseparableness of the psychological from thought reality in faith. It is distinct from theology in that it recognizes the priority of reason over faith and the acceptance of creed, subjecting the latter to a logical analysis. As such, the history of the Philosophy of Religion is coextensive with the free enquiry into religious reality, particularly the conceptions of God, soul, immortality, sin, salvaition, the sacred (Rudolf Otto), etc., and may be said to have its roots in any society above the pre-logical, mythological, or custom-controlled level, first observed in Egypt, China, India, and Greece. Its scientific treatment is a subsidiary philosophic discipline dates from about Kant's Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der reinen Vernunft and Hegel's Philosophie der Religion, while in the history of thought based on Indian and Greek speculation, sporadic sallies were made by all great philosophers, especially those professing an idealism, and by most theologians.
Barth, Karl: (1886-1968) Swiss theologian, widely influential among current social pessimists. God, he holds, is wholly other than man, not apprehensible by man's reason nor attainable by human endeavor. Christianity is a revealed and supernatural religion. Man must trust God's plan of salvation or be doomed to utter ruin. God is the sole judge and his judgments are beyond man's attainments. The Barthian position is called "crisis theology" (crisis, the Greek word for judgment) and "dialectical theology" (because of the emphasis upon the contradict on between God and this world). For a summary of Barth's position see The Knowledge of God and the Service of God (1939). -- V.F.
Because the lokas are more particularly the spheres of spiritual and intellectual character, and the talas the spheres of vehicular or more substantial character, it has been customary in Indian literature to speak of the lokas as heavens and the talas as hells — neither heavens nor hells bearing the shades of meaning attached to them in Christian theology. Every substantial globe is considered a hell; our own earth, for instance, bhurloka-patala, is so considered. All these talas are in the last analysis rising or descending realms forming the astral light which is not one sole restricted realm or sphere.
Behemoth (Hebrew) Bĕhēmōth, singular bĕhēmāh [from bāham to be dumb, mute] A beast, a nonspeaking living being; used in Job 40:15-23. Scholars are of the opinion that the reference here is to the hippopotamus or the Leviathan. “Behemoth is the principle of Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of him that ‘Behemoth is the chief (principle) of the ways of God’ ” (SD 2:486), and an entity spoken of, however poetically, as the chief of the ways of the divine, can hardly be a physical quadruped of earth.
beings. In Roman Catholic theology, angels were
Belphegor ::: Amal: “This name of a star brought in by Sri Aurobindo with powerful effect has practically no place in popular astronomy and figured rarely in past literary usage. In Syrian theology, Belphegor was a deity who symbolised the Sun. The Israelites also paid homage to him sometimes.” Sri Aurobindo—The Poet
(b) In theology: Mediation is an important aspect of the doctrine and practice of many religions; particularly in Judaism and Christianity because of the Transcendency of God and the imperfection of men. Mediation is an important function of Christ; as the God-Man, He is eminently fitted to form the connecting link between God and creatures; His Incarnation is considered as supplying the means (i.e. media) of salvation to man. -- V.J.B.
Bolzano, Bernard: (1781-1848) Austrian philosopher and mathematician. Professor of the philosophy of religion at Prague, 1805-1820, he was compelled to resign in the latter year because of his rationalistic tendencies in theology and afterwards held no academic position. His Wissenschaftslehre of 1837, while it is to be classed as a work on traditional logic, contains significant anticipations of many ideas which have since become important in symbolic logic and mathematics. In his posthumously published Paradoxien des Unendlitchen (1851) he appears as a forerunner in some respects of Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers. -- A.C.
Bonaventure, St.: (1221 -1274) Was born at Bagnorea, near Viterbo, and his name originally was John of Fidanza. He joined the Franciscans in 1238, studied at the Univ. of Paris under Alexander of Hales, and took his licentiate in 1248. He taught theology in Paris for seven years and received his doctorate in 1257. In this year he was made Superior-General of his Order and he taught no more. His chief works are Commentaria in IV L. Sententiarum, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, Quaestiones Disputatae (Opera Omnia, ed crit., 10 vol. Quaracchi, 1882-1902). His philosophy is Augustinian, with some Aristotelian modifications in his theory of intellection and matter and form. But his Divine Exemplarism, Illumination theory, and tendency to stress the psychological importance of the human will, derive from St Augustine. E. Gilson, La philosophie de S. Bonaventure (Paris, 1924-). -- V.J.B.
Borj or Borz (Persian), Bereznaiti (Avestan) [from the verbal root baresa to grow upright] The mystical mundane mountain holding relatively the same place in Persian theology and mythology that Mount Meru does in ancient Indian literature. In later mystic Persian literature Mount Ghaph (Kaf) takes the place of Borj or Alborz and becomes the abode of the Simorgh, the legendary bird of ancient knowledge and creative life-force. See also MOUNTAINS, MUNDANE
Theology and the Celestial Hierarchies.
Theology ::: From Greek, “study of deity”; a general term for discussions and investigations of things pertaining to God(s), and by extension, to religious matters. One who engages formally in theological studies is called a “theologian.”
Theology: (Gr. theos, god, logos, study) Simply stated, theology is a study of the question of God and the relation of God to the world of reality. Theology, in the widest sense of the term, is a branch of philosophy, i.e., a special field of philosophical inquiry having to do with God. However, the term is widely employed to mean the theoretical expression of a particuhr religion. In the latter sense, theology becomes "Christian", "Jewish", "Presbyterian", "Reformed", etc. When thus employed, theology becomes in a narrow sense "historic", "systematic", "polemic", "ecclesiastical", "apologetic", etc., -- phases of theoretical discussions within a particular religious faith. Theology need not have any necessary reference to religion, it may be a purely theoretical discussion about God and God's relation to the world on a disinterested plane of free inquiry. -- V.F.
Theology: The study of the question of God and the relation of God to the world of reality.
CakrasaMvaratantra. (T. 'Khor lo bde mchog gi rgyud). In Sanskrit, the "Binding of the Wheel Tantra" an important Buddhist tantra, often known simply as the CakrasaMvara (T. 'Khor lo bde mchog). The text is extant in Sanskrit and in a Tibetan translation in seven hundred stanzas, which is subdivided into fifty-one sections; it is also known by the name srīherukAbhidhAna (a name appearing at the end of each section), and commonly known in Tibet as the CakrasaMvara Laghutantra ("short tantra" or "light tantra") or Mulatantra ("root tantra") because, according to legend, there was once a longer text of one hundred thousand stanzas. The main deity of the tantra is HERUKA (also known as CakrasaMvara) and his consort is VAJRAVARAHĪ. Historically, the tantra originated as part of a literature that focused on a class of female divinities called YOGINĪ or dAKINĪ. It and its sister tantra, the HEVAJRATANTRA, probably appeared toward the end of the eighth century, and both show the influence of the Sarvabuddhasamayoga-dAkinījAlasaMvaratantra (referred to by Amoghavajra after his return from India to China in 746 CE). All are classed as yoginītantras. The use of skulls, the presence of the KHATVAnGA staff, and the references to sites holy to saivite KApAlikas (those who use skulls) point to a very close relationship between the saiva KApAlika literature and the early yoginītantras, such that some scholars have suggested an actual appropriation of the saiva literature by Buddhists outside mainstream Buddhist practice. Other scholars suggest this class of tantric literature originates from a SIDDHA tradition, i.e., from individual charismatic yogins and yoginīs with magical powers unaffiliated with particular religions or sects. Among the four classes of tantras-KRIYATANTRA, CARYATANTRA, YOGATANTRA, and ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA-the CakrasaMvaratantra is included in the last category; between the father tantras (PITṚTANTRA) and mother tantra (MATṚTANTRA) categories of anuttarayogatantras, it is classified in the latter category. The siddhas Luipa and SARAHA are prominent in accounts of its origin and transmission, and the siddha NAROPA is of particular importance in the text's transmission in India and from there to Tibet. Like many root tantras, the text contains very little that might be termed doctrine or theology, focusing instead on ritual matters, especially the use of MANTRA for the achievement of various powers (SIDDHI), especially the mundane (LAUKIKA) powers, such as the ability to fly, become invisible, etc. The instructions are generally not presented in a systematic way, although it is unclear whether this is the result of the development of the text over time or the intention of the authors to keep practices secret from the uninitiated. Later commentators found references in the text to elements of both the stage of generation (UTPATTIKRAMA) and stage of completion (NIsPANNAKRAMA). The DAkArnavatantra is included within the larger category of tantras related to the CakrasaMvara cycle, as is the Abhidhanottara and the SaMvarodayatantra. The tantra describes, in greater and less detail, a MAndALA with goddesses in sacred places in India (see PĪtHA) and the process of ABHIsEKA. The practice of the MAYADEHA (T. sgyu lus, "illusory body") and CAndALĪ (T. gtum mo, often translated as "psychic heat") are closely associated with this tantra. It was translated twice into Tibetan and is important in all three new-translation (GSAR MA) Tibetan sects, i.e., the SA SKYA, BKA' BRGYUD, and DGE LUGS. Iconographically, the CakrasaMvara mandala, starting from the outside, has first eight cremation grounds (sMAsANA), then a ring of fire, then VAJRAs, then lotus petals. Inside that is the palace with five concentric placement rings going in toward the center. In the center is the main deity Heruka with his consort VajravArAhī trampling on BHAIRAVA and his consort KAlarAtri (deities associated with saivism). There are a number of different representations. One has Heruka (or CakrasaMvara) dark blue in color with four faces and twelve arms, and VArAhī with a single face and two hands, red and naked except for bone ornaments. In the next circles are twenty-four vīras (heroes) with their consorts (related with the twenty-four pītha), with the remaining deities in the mandala placed in different directions in the outer circles.
Cartesianism: The philosophy of the French thinker, Rene Descartes (Cartesius) 1596-1650. After completing his formal education at the Jesuit College at La Fleche, he spent the years 1612-1621 in travel and military service. The reminder of his life was devoted to study and writing. He died in Sweden, where he had gone in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina. His principal works are: Discours de la methode, (preface to his Geometric, Meteores, Dieptrique) Meditationes de prima philosophia, Principia philosophiae, Passions de l'ame, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Le monde. Descartes is justly regarded as one of the founders of modern epistemology. Dissatisfied with the lack of agreement among philosophers, he decided that philosophy needed a new method, that of mathematics. He began by resolving to doubt everything which could not pass the test of his criterion of truth, viz. the clearness and distinctness of ideas. Anything which could pass this test was to be readmitted as self-evident. From self-evident truths, he deduced other truths which logically follow from them. Three kinds of ideas were distinguished: innate, by which he seems to mean little more than the mental power to think things or thoughts; adventitious, which come to him from without; factitious, produced within his own mind. He found most difficulty with the second type of ideas. The first reality discovered through his method is the thinking self. Though he might doubt nearly all else, Descartes could not reasonably doubt that he, who was thinking, existed as a res cogitans. This is the intuition enunciated in the famous aphorism: I think, therefore I am, Cogito ergo sum. This is not offered by Descartes as a compressed syllogism, but as an immediate intuition of his own thinking mind. Another reality, whose existence was obvious to Descartes, was God, the Supreme Being. Though he offered several proofs of the Divine Existence, he was convinced that he knew this also by an innate idea, and so, clearly and distinctly. But he did not find any clear ideas of an extra-mental, bodily world. He suspected its existence, but logical demonstration was needed to establish this truth. His adventitious ideas carry the vague suggestion that they are caused by bodies in an external world. By arguing that God would be a deceiver, in allowing him to think that bodies exist if they do not, he eventually convinced himself of the reality of bodies, his own and others. There are, then, three kinds of substance according to Descartes: Created spirits, i.e. the finite soul-substance of each man: these are immaterial agencies capable of performing spiritual operations, loosely united with bodies, but not extended since thought is their very essence. Uncreated Spirit, i.e. God, confined neither to space nor time, All-Good and All-Powerful, though his Existence can be known clearly, his Nature cannot be known adequately by men on earth, He is the God of Christianity, Creator, Providence and Final Cause of the universe. Bodies, i.e. created, physical substances existing independently of human thought and having as their chief attribute, extension. Cartesian physics regards bodies as the result of the introduction of "vortices", i.e. whorls of motion, into extension. Divisibility, figurability and mobility, are the notes of extension, which appears to be little more thin what Descartes' Scholastic teachers called geometrical space. God is the First Cause of all motion in the physical universe, which is conceived as a mechanical system operated by its Maker. Even the bodies of animals are automata. Sensation is the critical problem in Cartesian psychology; it is viewed by Descartes as a function of the soul, but he was never able to find a satisfactory explanation of the apparent fact that the soul is moved by the body when sensation occurs. The theory of animal spirits provided Descartes with a sort of bridge between mind and matter, since these spirits are supposed to be very subtle matter, halfway, as it were, between thought and extension in their nature. However, this theory of sensation is the weakest link in the Cartesian explanation of cognition. Intellectual error is accounted for by Descartes in his theory of assent, which makes judgment an act of free will. Where the will over-reaches the intellect, judgment may be false. That the will is absolutely free in man, capable even of choosing what is presented by the intellect as the less desirable of two alternatives, is probably a vestige of Scotism retained from his college course in Scholasticism. Common-sense and moderation are the keynotes of Descartes' famous rules for the regulation of his own conduct during his nine years of methodic doubt, and this ethical attitude continued throughout his life. He believed that man is responsible ultimately to God for the courses of action that he may choose. He admitted that conflicts may occur between human passions and human reason. A virtuous life is made possible by the knowledge of what is right and the consequent control of the lower tendencies of human nature. Six primary passions are described by Descartes wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sorrow. These are passive states of consciousness, partly caused by the body, acting through the animal spirits, and partly caused by the soul. Under rational control, they enable the soul to will what is good for the body. Descartes' terminology suggests that there are psychological faculties, but he insists that these powers are not really distinct from the soul itself, which is man's sole psychic agency. Descartes was a practical Catholic all his life and he tried to develop proofs of the existence of God, an explanation of the Eucharist, of the nature of religious faith, and of the operation of Divine Providence, using his philosophy as the basis for a new theology. This attempted theology has not found favor with Catholic theologians in general.
Casuistry: Study of cases of conscience and a method of solving conflicts of obligations by applying general principles of ethics, religion, and moral theology to particular and concrete cases of human conduct. This frequently demands an extensive knowledge of natural law and equity, civil law, ecclesiastical precepts, and an exceptional skill in interpreting these various norms of conduct. It becomes necessary to determine the degree of guilt and responsibility and weigh all the circumstances of the case, especially by taking into account all the conditions affecting motive and consent. -- J.J.R.
Cataclysms [from Greek kataklysmos flood] The term originated among the Stoics, who taught that the world is visited periodically and alternately by deluge (cataclysm) and conflagration (ekpyrosis, “burning up”). This last teaching was taken over into early Christian theology in the idea that the world will perish in flame. The meaning of cataclysm, however, now includes both deluges and volcanic action. Theosophy holds that the earth is visited periodically and at long intervals by comparatively sudden changes, varying in geographic importance from a continental to merely local catastrophes. The whole period of the cataclysm includes a gradual beginning, a progressive intensification, a culmination, and a gradual diminution. Local transformations are often sudden, sharp, or violent, whereas those embracing a wide geographical field are usually much slower or of longer period, frequently seeming to be nothing more than the merely secular changes which human experience recognizes as customary.
Ch'an wei: Prognostics in 300 B.C.-400 A.D., a system represented by a group of prophetic writings called ch'an and a group of apocryphal "complements" or "woofs" to the Confucian classics, called wei, in an attempt to interpret the classics in terms of medieval Chinese theology, the theory of correspondence between man and the universe, and the Yin Yang philosophy. (Tung Chung-shu, 177-104 B.C., etc.). -- W.T.C.
christology ::: n. --> A treatise on Christ; that department of theology which treats of the personality, attributes, or life of Christ.
Christology: The totality of doctrines constituting that part of theology which treats of the nature and personality of Christ. First of all Christology must concern itself with the promise of a Saviour and Redeemer of the human race. It includes the study of the prophecies foretelling the Messiah, as well as their fulfillment. Further it must inquire into the mystery of the Incarnation, of the Word made flesh, and examine all the circumstances of the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ. Since He acknowledged that He was God, the Son of God, one with the Father, it becomes necessary to examine His credentials, His own prophecies, miracles, and saintly life, which were to serve as evidence that He was sent by God and really possessed all power in heaven and on earth. Christology must deal with the human and Divine nature, their relation to each other, and the hypostatic union of both in one Divine Person, as well as the relation of that Person to the Father and the Holy Ghost. Moreover, the authentic decisions of the Councils of the Church form an exceedingly important portion of all christological theories and doctrines, and also the interpretations of those decisions by theologians. -- J.J.R.
Comtism ::: Auguste Comte's positivistic philosophy that metaphysics and theology should be replaced by a hierarchy of sciences from mathematics at the base to sociology at the top.
Deist Usually a believer in natural religion, who admits the existence of deity, but denies that the latter has revealed himself through the usual religious channels. Particularly identified with the 18th century, it is a type of rationalism and reaction against dogmatic theology in favor of the free use of the intellect.
Demiurge, Demiourgos (Greek) [from demos the people + ergon work] In Gnosticism, the deity as creator or cosmic artificer was a secondary or subordinate god, distinct from the supreme deity of the hierarchy, acting as creator or former of worlds, with which function the supreme is not directly concerned. Because of this seeming duality of rival gods, monotheistic Christian theology classed the demiurge among the powers hostile to God and mankind, as it did with Satan, the Serpent, Lucifer, and so many others. Marcion (2nd century) and his school attempted to reconcile these by equating the Demiourgos with the Jewish Jehovah.
Desideri, Ippolito. (1684-1733). Jesuit missionary to Tibet. He was born in the town of Pistoia in Tuscany in 1684 and entered the Jesuit order in 1700, studying at the Collegio Romano. Following two years of instruction in theology, he requested permission to become a missionary, departing for India in 1712 and reaching Goa the following year. Assigned to the Tibet mission, Desideri and another priest, the Portuguese Manoel Freyre, traveled by ship, horseback, and on foot to Leh, the capital of Ladakh, the westernmost Tibetan domain. Setting out for LHA SA, they were able to survive the difficult seven-month journey thanks to the protection of a Mongolian princess who allowed the two priests to join her caravan. They reached the Tibetan capital on March 18, 1716. After just a month in Lha sa, Desideri's companion decided to return to India. Desideri received permission from the ruler of Tibet, the Mongol warlord Lha bzang Khan, to remain in Tibet. He arranged for Desideri to live at RA MO CHE, and then at SE RA monastery. His notes from his studies indicate that he worked through textbooks on elementary logic through to the masterworks of the DGE LUGS sect, including the LAM RIM CHEN MO of TSONG KHA PA, which Desideri would eventually translate into Italian (the translation is lost). He would go on also to write a number of works in Tibetan, both expositions of Christianity and refutations of Buddhism. The most substantial of these was his unfinished "Inquiry into the Doctrines of Previous Lives and of Emptiness, Offered to the Scholars of Tibet by the White Lama called Ippolito" (Mgo skar [sic] gyi bla ma i po li do zhes bya ba yis phul ba'i bod kyi mkhas pa rnams la skye ba snga ma dang stong pa nyid kyi lta ba'i sgo nas zhu ba). Desideri remained in Tibet until 1721, when Tibet became a mission field of the Capuchins, requiring that the Jesuit abandon his work. After several years in India, he returned to Italy in 1727. Desideri arrived in Rome in the midst of the Rites Controversy, the question of whether non-Christian rituals (such as Chinese ancestor worship) had a place in the methods of the missionaries. As a Jesuit, Desideri was on the losing side of this debate. The last years of his life were consumed with composing long defenses of his work, as well as the remarkable account of his time in Tibet, the Relazione de' viaggi all' Indie e al Thibet. He died in Rome on April 13, 1733. Because of the suppression of the Jesuit order, Desideri's works remained largely unknown, both in Italian and Tibetan, until the twentieth century.
Devil [from Greek diabolos slanderer, adversary; cf Italian diavolo, French diable] The Devil of the New Testament and Christian theology is an evil personality, ruling over a kingdom of evil spirits, the inveterate foe of both God and man; a fallen angel, one of the celestial host who rebelled against God and was cast out from heaven. The conception of an evil individuality is a necessary counterpart to the conception of a good personal God: evil exists, God is good and could not have made evil; therefore the devil made it, but eventually he will be overthrown, and in the meantime he fulfills God’s purpose by trying and testing mankind.
Didactics: (Gr. didaktikos, taught) The branch of education concerned with methods of teaching and instruction. In theology and religion didactics in contradistinction to catechetics, is instiuction in fundamentals of religious doctrine. -- L.W.
difficulty ::: n. --> The state of being difficult, or hard to do; hardness; arduousness; -- opposed to easiness or facility; as, the difficulty of a task or enterprise; a work of difficulty.
Something difficult; a thing hard to do or to understand; that which occasions labor or perplexity, and requires skill and perseverance to overcome, solve, or achieve; a hard enterprise; an obstacle; an impediment; as, the difficulties of a science; difficulties in theology.
"Dionysius" used the word to express a type of "Theology" rather than an experience. For him and for many interpreters since his day, Mysticism stands for a religious theory or system, which conceives of God as absolutely transcendent, beyond reason, thought, intellect and all approaches of mind. The way up is a via negativa. It is Agnostia, "unknowing knowing". This type of Mysticism, which emerged from the Neo-Platonic stream of thought might be defined as Belief in the possibility of Union with the Divine by means of ecstatic contemplation.
Dodds, E. R. (ed.). The Elements of Theology of Proclus.
dogmatics ::: n. --> The science which treats of Christian doctrinal theology.
Dualism In theology, the doctrine that there are two independent and opposing deific powers conjointly ruling the universe as, for instance, in the Zoroastrian system when it teaches that Ormazd and Ahriman, the good and evil deities, divide between them the supremacy. It is opposed to monotheism, but not necessarily to polytheism. In philosophy, the doctrine that there are two fundamental principles underlying all manifestation, such as spirit and matter, force and matter, mind and matter and in a more extended sense good and evil, high and low, black and white; in fact the doctrine has its origin in the so-called pairs of opposites in nature. Here, it is opposed to monism but not necessarily to pluralism. These oppositions of ideas in both theology and philosophy are often quite unnecessary, and rise from the tendency of the mind to keep conceptions in rigidly thought-tight compartments, without that intermingling of principle to principle, based on a fundamental unity, which is demonstrated to be true by all we know of even physical nature.
Duns Scotus, John: (1266/74-1308) Doctor Subtilis, was born somewhere in the British Isles, studied at the Franciscan monastery at Dumfries and at Oxford before 1290. He studied at Pans for four years, then taught theology at Oxford from 1300-1302, at Pans from 1302-1303, when he was banished for his opposition to King Philip IV. He received his doctorate at Paris in 1305 and went to Cologne in 1307, where he died. He is the most distinguished medieval defender of the view that universals which have "haeccity" (q.v.) as well as quiddity. His realism was adopted by Charles Peirce (q.v.) works: De Primo Principio, Quaestionis in Metaphysicam, Opus Oxoniense, Reportata Parisiensia (Opera Omnia, Paris, 1891-5).
Eckhart, Meister: (1260-1327) Was born in Hochheim (Gotha), may have studied with St. Albert in Cologne, received his doctorate at Paris in 1302. He taught theology at various times, devoted much time to preaching in the vernacular, and filled various administrative posts in the Dominican Order. Mystical, difficult in terminology, his thought appears to contain elements of Aristotelianism, Augustinism, Neoplatonism and Avicennism. Accused of Pantheism and other theological errors, he was the subject of a famous trial in 1326; he abjured publicly any possible religious errors which he may have made. Chief works Opus Tripartitum, Quaestiones Parisienses, Deutsche Predigten. (Pfeiffer, F., Deutsche Mystiker des 14 Jahrh., Bd. II, Leipzig, 1857; tr. Evans, London, 1924.) B. J. Muller-Thym, University of Being in M. Eckhart (N. Y., 1939). -- V.J.B.
Edwards, Jonathan: (1703-1758) American theologian. He is looked upon by many as one of the first theologians that the New World has produced. Despite the formalistic nature of his system, there is a noteworthy aesthetic foundation in his emphasis on "divine and supernatural light" as the basis for illumination and the searchlight to an exposition of such topics as freedom and original sin. Despite the aura of tradition about his pastorates at Northampton and Stockbridge, his missionary services among the Indians and his short lived presidency of Princeton University, then the College of New Jersey, he remains significant in the fields of theology, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics and ethics. See Life and Works of Jonathan Edwards, 10 vol. (1830) ed. S. E. Dvsight. -- L.E.D.
eschatology: A branch of theology dealing with Judgement Day and the Second Coming.
Eschatology: (Gr. ta eschata, death) That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos. -- J.J.R.
Eschatology: That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos.
Fallen Angels Those cosmic entities or dhyanis of various classes who in the course of their evolution descended into matter in order to form and inform the lower worlds. In doing so they rebelled in a purely mystical sense against spirit or heaven, asserting individual free will and divine love. Their act is in part one of compassion and self-sacrifice, and they are eventually saved, while they carry the cycle of evolution along the ascending arc. Christian theology has interpreted this into the legend of the fallen angles, whose rebellion against God is a crime, who are the eternal enemies of God and mankind, and who are in consequence doomed to final destruction. The myth in its original form has many variants, as in the story of Prometheus, Bahak-Zivo, the Dragon of Revelation, the kumaras, etc.
Fall With reference to Christian theology and thought, the fall of the angels; or the fall of man. The former in theosophy refers to the descent of those dhyanis whose mission was intellectually to enlighten nascent mankind, and in a sense also the lower kingdoms of nature. The latter refers to the descent of human beings into matter, when they became clothed in coats of skin, and incidentally began to reproduce by sexual generation. Both of these events in the cycle of evolution have been perverted by ecclesiastical error into calamities. The descent of the manasaputric dhyanis has been transformed in Occidental theology into a rebellion of Satan and his host against God, through which Satan becomes a perpetual foe to God and mankind. The War in Heaven is allegorical and means the natural opposition and resistance of lower nature and its hosts to the progress of unfolding beings which is essential to evolution. The fall of mankind includes the natural human evolutionary passage into physical corporeality, and also the misuse of human intelligence; but does not refer to the natural use of procreative functions or to innate sinfulness.
Feruer or Ferouer (Persian) [from fravashi or farvarshi] A highly mystical term in ancient Persian theology, signifying generally a spiritual veil, lining, or vehicle of a still more spiritual and higher original. Consequently in mystical thought, the feruer or fravashi need not necessarily always be of the higher spiritual type or class; if the original divinity is not high, its feruer, lining or darker side, will also not be of a high spiritual character.
fideism ::: In Christian theology, the position that reason is more-or-less irrelevant to religious belief, that rational or scientific arguments for the existence of God are fallacious and irrelevant, and have nothing to do with the truth of Christian theology. Its argument in essence goes: "Christian theology teaches that people are saved by faith. But, if God's existence can be proven, either empirically or logically, faith becomes irrelevant. Therefore, if Christian theology is true, no proof of God's existence is possible." The term is occasionally used to refer to a belief that Christians are saved by faith alone: for which see sola fide. This position is sometimes called solifidianism.
First Mover: See Prime Mover. First Philosophy: (Gr. prote philosophia) The name given by Aristotle (1) to the study of the principles, first causes and essential attributes of being as such; and (2) more particularly to the study of transcendent immutable i being; theology. -- G.R.M.
Gabriel (Hebrew) Gabrī’ēl [from geber might, power + ’ēl divinity, god] Power or might of God, my power of divinity; in the New Testament represented as one of the archangels who stand in the presence of God, sent to announce to Mary the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:19, 26-31). Among the Nazarenes, Aebel Zivo was also called Gabriel Legatus (Gabriel the Messenger). With the later Jews Gabriel was regarded as one of the seven archangels; likewise in Christian theology he belongs to the hierarchy of archangels and perhaps to the first, which are equivalent to the virgin angels or kumaras (SD 2:246). The angel Gabriel watches over Iran or Persia, according to popular view; and in Ezekiel’s vision of the cherubim or the four sacred animals, the face of the eagle corresponded to Gabriel. In ancient astrology, he was the ruler of the moon and the sign Taurus.
Gassendi, Pierre: (1592-1655) Was a leading opponent of Cartesianism and of Scholastic Aristotelianism in the field of the physical sciences. Though he was a Catholic priest, with orthodox views in theology, he revived the materialistic atomism of Epicurus and Lucretius. Born in Provence, and at one time Canon of Dijon, he became a distinguished professor of mathematics at the Royal College of Paris in 1645. He seems to have been sincerely convinced that the Logic, Physics and Ethics of Epicureanism were superior to any other type of classical or modern philosophy. His objections to Descartes' Meditationes, with the Cartesian responses, are printed with the works of Descartes. His other philosophical works are Commentarius de vita moribus et placitis Epicuri (Amsterdam, 1659). Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri (Amsterdam, 1684). -- V.J.B.
Gazali: Born 1059 in Tus, in the country of Chorasan, taught at Bagdad, lived for a time in Syria, died in his home town 1111. He started as a sceptic in philosophy and became a mystic and orthodox afterwards. Philosophy is meaningful only as introduction to theology. His attitude resembles Neo-Platonic mysticism and is anti-Aristotelian. He wrote a detailed report on the doctrines of Farabi and Avicenna only to subject them to a scathing criticism in Destructio philosophorum where he points out the self-contradictions of philosophers. His main works are theological. In his writings on logic he wants to ensure to theology a reliable method of procedure. His metaphysics also is mainly based on theology: creation of the world out of nothing, resurrection, and so forth. Cf. H. Bauer, Die Dogmatik Al-Ghazalis, 1912. -- R.A.
Get a life! "abuse" Standard way of suggesting that someone has succumbed to terminal {geek}dom. Often heard on {Usenet}, especially as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of {theology} too seriously. This exhortation was popularised by William Shatner on a "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that ended "Get a *life*!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then. It was certainly in wide use among hackers for at least five years before achieving mainstream currency in early 1992. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-18)
gnostic theology. Origen (in Contra Celsum VI,
Goddard, Dwight. (1861-1939). American popularizer of Buddhism and author of the widely read A Buddhist Bible. He was born in Massachusetts and educated in both theology and mechanical engineering. Following the death of his first wife, he enrolled at Hartford Theological Seminary and was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church. He went to China as a missionary and it was there that he visited his first Buddhist monastery. After holding pastoral positions in Massachusetts and Chicago, he left the ministry to become a mechanical engineer. An invention that he sold to the government made him independently wealthy and allowed him to retire in 1913. He traveled to China several times in the 1920s, where he met a Lutheran minister who was seeking to promote understanding between Buddhists and Christians. Goddard first learned of Zen Buddhism from a Japanese friend in New York in 1928 and later traveled to Japan where he met DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI and practiced ZAZEN for eight months in Kyoto. Upon his return to America, Goddard attempted in 1934 to form an American Buddhist community, called the Followers of the Buddha. With property in Vermont and California, the organization was to include a celibate monkhood, called the Homeless Brothers, supported by lay members. Goddard also published a Buddhist magazine, Zen, A Magazine of Self-Realization, before bringing out, with his own funds, what would become his most famous work, A Buddhist Bible, in 1932. The purpose of the anthology was to "show the unreality of all conceptions of the personal ego" and inspire readers to follow the path to buddhahood. It was Goddard's conviction that Buddhism was the religion most capable of meeting the problems of European civilization. Commercially published in 1938, the contents of A Buddhist Bible were organized by the language of a text's origins and contained works that had not been translated into English before. The works came mostly from Chinese, translated by the Chinese monk Wai-tao, in collaboration with Goddard. Tibetan selections were drawn from W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ. A Buddhist Bible is not without its eccentricities. For example, Goddard rearranged the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra") into a more "sensible" order, and he included in his anthology a classic of Chinese philosophy, the Daode jing (Tao te ching). Goddard also composed his own treatise to provide practical guidance in meditation, which he felt was difficult for Europeans and Americans. As one of the first anthologies of Buddhist texts widely available in the West, and especially because it was one of the few that included MAHĀYĀNA works, A Buddhist Bible remained widely read for decades after its publication.
God: In metaphysical thinking a name for the highest, ultimate being, assumed by theology on the basis of authority, revelation, or the evidence of faith as absolutely necessary, but demonstrated as such by a number of philosophical systems, notably idealistic, monistic and dualistic ones. Proofs of the existence of God fall apart into those that are based on facts of experience (desire or need for perfection, dependence, love, salvation, etc.), facts of religious history (consensus gentium, etc.)), postulates of morality (belief in ultimate justice, instinct for an absolute good, conscience, the categorical imperative, sense of duty, need of an objective foundation of morality, etc.)), postulates of reason (cosmological, physico-theological, teleological, and ontological arguments), and the inconceivableness of the opposite. As to the nature of God, the great variety of opinions are best characterized by their several conceptions of the attributes of God which are either of a non-personal (pantheistic, etc.) or personal (theistic, etc.) kind, representing concepts known from experience raised to a superlative degree ("omniscient", "eternal", etc.). The reality, God, may be conceived as absolute or as relative to human values, as being an all-inclusive one, a duality, or a plurality. Concepts of God calling for unquestioning faith, belief in miracles, and worship or representing biographical and descriptive sketches of God and his creation, are rather theological than metaphysical, philosophers, on the whole, utilizing the idea of God or its linguistic equivalents in other languages, despite popular and church implications, in order not to lose the feeling-contact with the rather abstract world-ground. See Religion, Philosophy of. -- K.F.L.
Grabmann, Martin: (1875-) Is one of the most capable historians of medieval philosophy. Born in Wintershofen (Oberpfalz), he was ordained in 1898. He his taught philosophy and theology at Eichstätt (1906), Vienna (1913), and Munich (1918-). An acknowledged authority on the chronology and authenticity of the works of St. Thomas, he is equally capable in dealing with the thought of St. Augustine, or of many minor writers in philosophy and theology up to the Renaissance, Aus d. Geisteswelt d. Mittelalters (Festg. Grabmann) Münster i. W. 1935, lists more than 200 of his articles and books, published before 1934. Chief works Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methods (1909), Mittelalterliches Geistesleben (1926), Werke des hl. Thomas v. Aq. (1931). -- V.J.B.
Guide for the Perplexed ::: Maimonides masterpiece of Jewish philosophy and theology, written from the perspective of an Aristotelian philosopher. (Heb. Moreh N'vuchim). See also Maimonides.
Heaven and Hell In Christian theology, the abodes of Deity and the celestial hierarchy on the one hand, and of Satan and his fallen angels on the other hand; the final goal of those who are saved and of those who are damned. The origin of the doctrine is founded in the ancient Mystery teachings concerning the human afterdeath experiences and the corresponding experiences passed through by the candidate for initiation. Hell may be likened to kama-loka and also avichi, though neither is eternal. Kama-loka is better represented, however, by purgatory. Heaven is a reflection of devachan, blended also with ideas of nirvanic states. Thus heaven and hell should both be used in the plural, as is commonly the case in their non-Christian equivalents: Elysium, nirvana, Paradise, Valhalla, Olympus, and many other names for heaven; and Tartarus, Gehenna, She’ol, Niflheim, etc., for hell.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Born at Stuttgart in 1770 and died at Berlin in 1831. He studied theology, philosophy and the classics at Tübingen, 1788-93, occupied the conventional position of tutor in Switzerland and Frankfort on the Main, 1794-1800, and went to Jena as Privatdocent in philosophy in 1801. He was promoted to a professorship at Jena in 1805, but was driven from the city the next year by the incursion of the French under Napoleon. He then went to Bamberg, where he remained two years as editor of a newspaper. The next eight years he spent as director of the Gymnasium at Nürnberg. In 1816 he accepted a professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg, from which position he was called two years later to succeed Fichte at the University of Berlin. While at Jena, he co-operated with Schelling in editing the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie, to which he contributed many articles. His more important volumes were published as follows: Phänomenologie des Geistes, 1807; Wissenschaft der Logik, 1812-16; Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, 1817; Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 1820. Shortly after his death his lectures on the philosophy of religion, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, and aesthetics were published from the collated lecture-notes of his students. His collected works in nineteen volumes were published 1832-40 by a group of his students. -- G.W.C.
Hence in its widest sense Scholasticism embraces all the intellectual activities, artistic, philosophical and theological, carried on in the medieval schools. Any attempt to define its narrower meaning in the field of philosophy raises serious difficulties, for in this case, though the term's comprehension is lessened, it still has to cover many centuries of many-faced thought. However, it is still possible to list several characteristics sufficient to differentiate Scholastic from non-Scholastic philosophy. While ancient philosophy was the philosophy of a people and modern thought that of individuals, Scholasticism was the philosophy of a Christian society which transcended the characteristics of individuals, nations and peoples. It was the corporate product of social thought, and as such its reasoning respected authority in the forms of tradition and revealed religion. Tradition consisted primarily in the systems of Plato and Aristotle as sifted, adapted and absorbed through many centuries. It was natural that religion, which played a paramount role in the culture of the middle ages, should bring influence to bear on the medieval, rational view of life. Revelation was held to be at once a norm and an aid to reason. Since the philosophers of the period were primarily scientific theologians, their rational interests were dominated by religious preoccupations. Hence, while in general they preserved the formal distinctions between reason and faith, and maintained the relatively autonomous character of philosophy, the choice of problems and the resources of science were controlled by theology. The most constant characteristic of Scholasticism was its method. This was formed naturally by a series of historical circumstances, The need of a medium of communication, of a consistent body of technical language tooled to convey the recently revealed meanings of religion, God, man and the material universe led the early Christian thinkers to adopt the means most viable, most widely extant, and nearest at hand, viz. Greek scientific terminology. This, at first purely utilitarian, employment of Greek thought soon developed under Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and St. Augustine into the "Egyptian-spoils" theory; Greek thought and secular learning were held to be propaedeutic to Christianity on the principle: "Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians." (Justin, Second Apology, ch. XIII). Thus was established the first characteristic of the Scholastic method: philosophy is directly and immediately subordinate to theology. Because of this subordinate position of philosophy and because of the sacred, exclusive and total nature of revealed wisdom, the interest of early Christian thinkers was focused much more on the form of Greek thought than on its content and, it might be added, much less of this content was absorbed by early Christian thought than is generally supposed. As practical consequences of this specialized interest there followed two important factors in the formation of Scholastic philosophy: Greek logic en bloc was taken over by Christians; from the beginning of the Christian era to the end of the XII century, no provision was made in Catholic centers of learning for the formal teaching of philosophy. There was a faculty to teach logic as part of the trivium and a faculty of theology. For these two reasons, what philosophy there was during this long period of twelve centuries, was dominated first, as has been seen, by theology and, second, by logic. In this latter point is found rooted the second characteristic of the Scholastic method: its preoccupation with logic, deduction, system, and its literary form of syllogistic argumentation. The third characteristic of the Scholastic method follows directly from the previous elements already indicated. It adds, however, a property of its own gained from the fact that philosophy during the medieval period became an important instrument of pedogogy. It existed in and for the schools. This new element coupled with the domination of logic, the tradition-mindedness and social-consciousness of the medieval Christians, produced opposition of authorities for or against a given problem and, finally, disputation, where a given doctrine is syllogistically defended against the adversaries' objections. This third element of the Scholastic method is its most original characteristic and accounts more than any other single factor for the forms of the works left us from this period. These are to be found as commentaries on single or collected texts; summae, where the method is dialectical or disputational in character. The main sources of Greek thought are relatively few in number: all that was known of Plato was the Timaeus in the translation and commentary of Chalcidius. Augustine, the pseudo-Areopagite, and the Liber de Causis were the principal fonts of Neoplatonic literature. Parts of Aristotle's logical works (Categoriae and de Interpre.) and the Isagoge of Porphyry were known through the translations of Boethius. Not until 1128 did the Scholastics come to know the rest of Aristotle's logical works. The golden age of Scholasticism was heralded in the late XIIth century by the translations of the rest of his works (Physics, Ethics, Metaphysics, De Anima, etc.) from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona, John of Spain, Gundisalvi, Michael Scot, and Hermann the German, from the Greek by Robert Grosseteste, William of Moerbeke, and Henry of Brabant. At the same time the Judae-Arabian speculation of Alkindi, Alfarabi, Avencebrol, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides together with the Neoplatonic works of Proclus were made available in translation. At this same period the Scholastic attention to logic was turned to metaphysics, even psychological and ethical problems and the long-discussed question of the universals were approached from this new angle. Philosophy at last achieved a certain degree of autonomy and slowly forced the recently founded universities to accord it a separate faculty.
hermeneutical ::: a. --> Unfolding the signification; of or pertaining to interpretation; exegetical; explanatory; as, hermeneutic theology, or the art of expounding the Scriptures; a hermeneutic phrase.
hermeneutics ::: n. --> The science of interpretation and explanation; exegesis; esp., that branch of theology which defines the laws whereby the meaning of the Scriptures is to be ascertained.
Historically, one may say that, in general, Greek ethics was teleological, though there are deontological strains in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In Christian moralists one finds both kinds of ethics, according as the emphasis is on the will of God as the source of duties (the ordinary view) or on the goodness of God as somehow the end of human life (Augustine and Aquinas), theology and revelation taking a central role in either case. In modern philosophical ethics, again, both kinds of ethics are present, with the opposition between them coming out into the open. Starting in the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain are both "intuitionism" (Cambridge Platonists, Clarke, Butler, Price, Reid, Whewell, McCosh, etc.) and utilitarianism (q.v.), with British ethics largely a matter of controversy between the two, a controversy in which the teleological side has lately been taken by Cambridge and the deontological side by Oxford. Again, in Germany, England, and elsewhere there have been, on the one hand, the formalistic deontologism of Kant and his followers, and, on the other, the axiological or teleological ethics of the Hegelian self-realizationists and the Wertethik of Scheler and N. Hartmann.
holy wars [{Usenet}, but may predate it] {flame wars} over {religious issues}. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularised the terms {big-endian} and {little-endian} was entitled "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace". Other perennial Holy Wars have included {Emacs} vs. {vi}, my personal computer vs. everyone else's personal computer, {ITS} vs. {Unix}, {Unix} vs. {VMS}, {BSD} Unix vs. {USG Unix}, {C} vs. {Pascal}, {C} vs. Fortran, etc., ad nauseam. The characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that in a holy wars most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. See also {theology}. [{Jargon File}]
holy wars ::: [Usenet, but may predate it] flame wars over religious issues. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularised the terms big-endian and little-endian was entitled time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. See also theology.[Jargon File]
homiletics ::: n. --> The art of preaching; that branch of theology which treats of homilies or sermons, and the best method of preparing and delivering them.
However, it is more than a mere commentary on the old testament, but a veritable storehouse of ancient Jewish philosophy, theology, history, ethics, sciences, folklore, etc., that accumulated during those eventful 8 centuries. The Talmud consists of an older layer, the Mishnah (q.v.) compiled in Palestine (200 A.D.) and younger layer -- the Gemara (q.v.) as commentary on the former. The Gemara produced in Palestine together with the Mishnah is known as the Jerusalem Talmud (q.v.) and the Gemara produced in Babylon together with the same Mishnah is known as the Babylonian Talmud.
hutchunsonian ::: n. --> A follower of John Hutchinson of Yorkshire, England, who believed that the Hebrew Scriptures contained a complete system of natural science and of theology.
Hypostasis (Greek) [from hypo under + sta stand, cf Latin substantia, English substance, Sanskrit avastha] The essential nature of a thing, the thing’s original foundation, apart from any attributes. In Greek philosophy, used to signify the underlying basis or primordial origin of what flowed forth, that which flowed forth becoming the differentiated. It is also used to denote the persons of a trinity, as in theology and in the triune Vishnu.
Idedi —in Akkadian theology, angels who have
Immanence ::: In theology, the aspect of God's nearness and intimacy, as opposed to God's transcendence.
Immanence: (late Lat. Immanere, to remain in) The state of being immanent, present, or in dwelling. In Medieval Scholasticism a cause is immanent whose effects are exclusively within the agent, as opposed to transient. For Kant the immanent is experiential as opposed to non-experiential or transcendent. In modern metaphysics and theology immanence signifies presence (of essence, being, power, etc.), as opposed to absence. According to pantheism the essence of God or the Absolute is completely immanent in the world, i.e. is identical with it. According to Deism God is essentially absent or transcendent from the world. According to immanent theism He is both immanent (in presence and activity) and transcendent (in essence) with respect to it. Mysticism in its broadest sense posits the mutual immanence of the human and the divine. -- W.L.
Immanence: Latin for in-dwelling. In general philosophical terminology, this term refers to an activity producing its effects from within, or to an entity whose being within something else contributes to the existence of the latter. In theology, the term refers to the complete or partial identification of the Deity with the world. (The belief in the absolute immanence of God in the universe is equivalent to pantheism.) Mysticism in its broadest sense posits the mutual immanence of the human and the divine.
Immanent and Transient Activity: In logic, the activity of the mind which produces no effect upon the object of knowledge is called immanent, that which does have such an effect is called transient (or transitive). According to Kant, the immanent use of the understanding is valid, since it deals only with subject-matter furnished by the senses, while the transcendent effort to conceive of things as they are in themselves is illegitimate. In Christian theology, Jesus was created by an immanent act, and the world by a transient, act. -- J.K.F.
In Theology: Unless otherwise defined, the term refers to the Christian denomination which emphasizes the universal fatherhood of God and the final redemption and salvation of all. The doctrine is that of optimism in attaining an ultimate, ordered harmony and stands in opposition to traditional pessimism, to theories of damnation and election. Universalists look back to 1770 as an organized body, the date of the coming to America of John Murray. Unitarian thought (see Unitarianism) was early expressed by Hosea Ballou (1771-1852), one of the founders of Universalism. -- V.F.
in Christian Theology.” Open Court, vol. 14, No. 8,
In cosmic evolution, no sooner does duality in evolutionary manifestation supervene, than matter of necessity appears as the other pole or alter ego of spirit, from the dual nature of manifestation itself. It is only by the interaction of polar forces that evolution can proceed, a process everywhere mystically or theologically typified by the various wars in heaven. The same duality is present in human nature: the adversary is the lower quaternary manifesting through the terrestrial nature, which first dominates, and then eventually is dominated by, the upper triad or spirit. In many old myths, Satan under various names appears as the benefactor of mankind, e.g., Prometheus, Venus-Lucifer, and the Serpent of Genesis. Christian theology, through misunderstanding of and loss of the keys to its own sacred writings, has perverted several symbols: the Fall of the angels in one of its aspects is really the descent of the manasaputras; the Serpent of Eden was not the devil; and the sin of mankind was not sexual generation but the abuse of spiritual and intellectual as well as of psychic powers.
Infernal Deities [from Latin inferi or inferni inhabitants of the lower world] Cosmic powers pertaining to the lower planes of manifestation. Classical mythology shows the earth and its beings between the heavens and the infernal regions, under the double influence of the higher and the lower deities. Sometimes they are called chthonian deities, gods of the earth or underworld, implying a duality of heaven and earth, or above and below. They are usually doubles of the superior gods, often with the same name but distinguished by an epithet, as in Jupiter Chthonius or Osiris-Typhon. The contrast between good and evil has given a sinister aspect to these deities, as being connected with death, destruction, and affliction, though they are necessary cosmic powers. Christian theology in particular has turned them into devils.
In genera, Anglo-Catholic philosophy has been an incarnational or sacramental one, finding God in the Biblical revelation culminating in Christ, but unwilling to limit his self-disclosure to that series of events. Incarnationalism provides, it is said, the setting for the historic Incarnation; general revelation is on sacramental lines, giving meaning to the particular sacraments. For Anglo-Catholic philosophical theology, in its central stream, the key to dogma is the cumulative experience of Christian people, tested by the Biblical revelation as source and standard of that experience and hence "classical" in its value. Revelation is the ultimate authority; the Church possesses a trustworthiness about her central beliefs, but statement of these may change from age to age. Sometimes this main tendency of Anglo-Catholic thought has been sharply criticized by thinkers, themselves Anglicans (cf. Tennant's Philosophical Theology); but these have, in general, served as useful warnings rather than as normal expressions of the Anglican mind.
In general, patristic philosophy is differentiated from medieval and modern philosophies in that it failed to distinguish adequately between the conclusions of reason and the facts of revelation. Philosophy, theology and the truths of religion made one amorphous body of truth. However, three stages mark the development of patristic thought.
In his chief work, the Ethica, Spinoza's teaching is expressed in a manner for which geometry supplies the model. This expository device served various purposes. It may be interpreted as a clue to Spinoza's ideal of knowledge. So understood, it represents the condensed and ordered expression, not of 'philosophy' alone, but rather of all knowledge, 'philosophy' and 'science', as an integrated system. In such an ideal ordering of ideas, (rational) theology and metaphysics provide the anchorage for the system. On the one hand, the theology-metaphysics displays the fundamental principles (definitions, postulates, axioms) upon which the anchorage depends, and further displays in deductive fashion the primary fund of ideas upon which the inquiries of science, both 'descriptive' and 'normative' must proceed. On the other hand, the results of scientific inquiry are anchored at the other end, by a complementary metaphysico-theological development of their significance. Ideally, there obtains, for Spinoza, both an initial theology and metaphysics -- a necessary preparation for science -- and a culminating theology and metaphysics, an interpretative absorption of the conclusions of science.
In later Babylonian history, one of the trinity Anu, Bel, and Ea, associated with the three divisions of the universe: heaven, earth, and the spatial or watery deep. In another aspect, Anu is identical with Sin (the moon). “And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabala is the Argha of the seed of all material life, and is still more closely connected, kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is double-sexed as Anu is. They are both represented in Esotericism and viewed from a dual aspect: male or spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic principles” (SD 2:62). In the astrological theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Bel, and Ea became the northern, middle, and southern zones of the ecliptic respectively.
In Mandaean theology, Shem is Shum-Kushta.
in political and legal philosophy and theology, doctrines based on the theory that there are certain unchanging laws which pertain to man"s nature, which can be discovered by reason, and therefore ethically binding in human society, and to which man-made laws should conform.
In short, the kabeiroi, identical with the kumaras and rudras, classed with the dhyani-buddhas and with the ’elohim of Jewish theology, directing “the mind with which they endued men” to the arts and sciences that build civilization, and closely linked with solar and earthly fires, are no other than the kumara-agnishvatta-manasaputras of theosophy: kumaras in their unsoiled divinity; agnisvattas (those who have tasted the fire) or solar lhas; and manasaputras (sons of mind) who in pity took upon themselves the heavy cross of incarnation that they might help struggling humanity to come up higher. They are classed as three, four, or seven; the names of four being Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos, and Kadmilos.
In the cosmic sense the sadhyas signify the names collectively of the twelve great gods, the first twelve cosmic hierarchs emanating from Brahma, out of which flow not only the twelve cosmic planes, but the hierarchies inherent in these twelve planes. Their importance lies in the fact that they are the earliest emanations in serial order from the formative and productive Brahma-prakriti, and therefore are really the origin of all beings and things in the cosmos arranged from the beginning in the duodenary hierarchical scheme. Plato had the same thought when he spoke of Divinity forming the universe according to the number twelve. They are reminiscent of the Latin dii consentes, taken over from the ancient mystical Etruscans who stated that these twelve “agreeing or consenting divinities” form the council of Jupiter, the Latin Brahma. The twelve dii consentes consisted of six feminine and six masculine divinities, and the Etruscan theology stated that they govern not only the world, but time also, coming into existence periodically at the commencement of a world period, and passing into rest or pralaya when the world period ended.
I. Period of Preparation (9-12 cent.). Though he does not belong in time to this period, the most dominant figure in Christian thought was St. Augustine (+430), who constructed the general framework within which all subsequent Scholastic speculation operated. Another influential figure was Boethius (+525) whose opuscula sacra established the Scholastic method and who furnished many of the classical definitions and axioms. The first great figure of this period was John Scottus Erigena (+c. 877) who introduced to Latin thought the works of Denis the Pseudo-Areopagite, broadened the Scholastic method by his glossary on Boethius' opuscule sacra and made an unfruitful attempt to interest his contemporaries in natural philosophy by his semi-pantheistic De Divisione Naturae. Other figures of note: Gerbert (+1003) important in the realm of mathematics and natural philosophy; Fulbert of Chartres (+1028) influential in the movement to apply dialectics to theology; Berengar of Tours (+1088) Fulbert's disciple, who, together with Anselm the Peripatetic, was a leader in the movement to rationalize theology. Peter Damiani (+1072), preached strongly against this rationalistic spirit. More moderate and more efficacious in his reaction to the dialectical spirit of his age was Lawfranc (+1089), who strove to define the true boundaries of faith and reason.
irenics ::: n. --> That branch of Christian science which treats of the methods of securing unity among Christians or harmony and union among the churches; -- called also Irenical theology.
Irony, Socratic: See Socratic method. Is, Isa, Isana, Isvara: (Skr.) "Lord", an example of the vacillating of Indian philosophy between theology and metaphysics. They often use such theistic nomenclature for the Absolute without always wishing to endow it as such with personal attributes except as may be helpful to a lower intelligence or to one who feels the need of worship and bhakti (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
isagogical ::: a. --> Introductory; especially, introductory to the study of theology.
It is just in these three logoi, considered as a cosmic unit, that arose the original teaching of the Christian Trinity. In the original Christian idea, the Son was identified with the Third Logos and proceeded from the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Second Logos, originally in Christianity a feminine cosmic power; whereas the Roman Catholic Church made the procession of the Son come directly from the First Logos or Father, the Holy Ghost being misplaced and made the Third Logos. In later developments of Christian theology, the Logos is spoken of as the Word made flesh, the manifestation of God on earth, the Son of God, Christ, the miscalled Second Person of the Trinity. This idea was still further narrowed and debased into the doctrine of a single and special earthy manifestation of the Godhead.
Jamblicus: (c. 270-330 A.D.) A Syrian Neo-Platonist, who wrote extensive commentaries on Hellenic and Oriental theology and transformed Plotinus' teachings into a dogmatic theology of metaphysical pantheism. -- R.B.W.
Jinn—in Moslem theology, the jinn were
Kant, Immanuel: (1724-1804), born and died in Königsberg. Studied the Leibniz-Wolffian philosoohv under Martin Knutzen. Also studied and taught astronomy (see Kant-Laplace hypothesis), mechanics and theology. The influence of Newton's physics and Lockean psychology vied with his Leibnizian training. Kant's personal life was that of a methodic pedant, touched with Rousseauistic piety and Prussian rigidity. He scarcely travelled 40 miles from Königsberg in his life-time, disregarded music, had little esteem for women, and cultivated few friends apart from the Prussian officials he knew in Königsberg. In 1755, he became tutor in the family of Count Kayserling. In 1766, he was made under-librarian, and in 1770 obtained the chair of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Heine has made classical the figure of Kant appearing for his daily walk with clock-like regularity. But his very wide reading compensated socially for his narrow range of travel, and made him an interesting coversationalist as well as a successful teacher. Kantianism: The philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804); also called variously, the critical philosophy, criticism, transcendentalism, or transcendental idealism. Its roots lay in the Enlightenment; but it sought to establish a comprehensive method and doctrine of experience which would undercut the rationalistic metaphysics of the 17th and 18th centuries. In an early "pre-critical" period, Kant's interest centered in evolutionary, scientific cosmology. He sought to describe the phenomena of Nature, organic as well as inorganic, as a whole of interconnected natural laws. In effect he elaborated and extended the natural philosophy of Newton in a metaphysical context drawn from Christian Wolff and indirectly from Leibniz.
latitudinarian ::: a. --> Not restrained; not confined by precise limits.
Indifferent to a strict application of any standard of belief or opinion; hence, deviating more or less widely from such standard; lax in doctrine; as, latitudinarian divines; latitudinarian theology.
Lax in moral or religious principles. ::: n.
legalist ::: n. --> One who practices or advocates strict conformity to law; in theology, one who holds to the law of works. See Legal, 2 (a).
Leibniz's philosophy was the dawning consciousness of the modern world (Dewey). So gradual and continuous, like the development of a monad, so all-inclusive was the growth of his mind, that his philosophy, as he himself says, "connects Plato with Democritus, Aristotle with Descartes, the Scholastics with the moderns, theology and morals with reason." The reform (if all science was to be effected by the use of two instruments, a universal scientific language and a calculus of reasoning. He advocated a universal language of ideographic symbols in which complex concepts would be expressed by combinations of symbols representing simple concepts or by new symbols defined as equivalent to such a complex. He believed that analysis would enable us to limit the number of undefined concepts to a few simple primitives in terms of which all other concepts could be defined. This is the essential notion back of modern logistic treatments.
licentiate ::: n. --> One who has a license to exercise a profession; as, a licentiate in medicine or theology.
A friar authorized to receive confessions and grant absolution in all places, independently of the local clergy.
One who acts without restraint, or takes a liberty, as if having a license therefor.
On the continent of Europe, a university degree intermediate between that of bachelor and that of doctor.
Limbo or Limbus [from Latin limbus border] The fringe of hell, according to the Scholastic conception, which was used by Dante and Milton in their epics. In patristic theology, it was regarded as a place for the souls of people who had lived before Christ, or imbeciles and unbaptized infants. Also in some churches it is regarded as a kind of purgatory or waiting place for the soul after death. Similar to kama-loka.
Locke also was a political, economic and religious thinker of note. A "latitudinarian" and broad churchman in theology and a liberal in politics, he argued against the divine right of kings and the authority of the Bible and the Church, and maintained that political sovereignty rests upon the consent of the governed, and ecclesiastical authority upon the consent of reason. He was also an ardent defender of freedom of thought and speech. Main works: Two Treatises on Gov't, 1689; Reasonableness in Christianity, 1695; Some Thoughts on Education, 1693; An Essay on Human Understanding, 1690. -- B.A.G.F.
Lucifer has been transformed in later Occidental theology into a synonym for the Evil One or the Devil. If the god Jehovah were the highest divinity, which this Jewish tribal deity is not, then any power withstanding him must necessarily be considered to be his adversary; and in the same way the teaching as to the immanent Christ, not only in the world but in each individual person, not being altogether agreeable with the doctrine of salvation by faith in an external savior, became transformed into the Tempter inspiring man to sinful rebellion against God. Lucifer in a very true sense stands for the self-conscious mind in man, which is at once tempter and enlightener — tempter in its lower aspects and enlightener and inspirer in its higher. See also MANASAPUTRAS; PROMETHEUS; SATAN
Lumen naturae; lumen naturale: Latin for light of nature or natural light, equivalent to luman naturalis rationis, in medieval philosophy and theology denoted the ordinary cognitive powers of human reason unaided by the supernatural light of grace, lumen gratiae, or divine revelation, lumen fidei.
Lumen naturale: Natural light, equivalent to lumen naturalis rationis, in medieval philosophy and theology denoted the ordinary cognitive powers of human reason unaided by the supernatural light of grace, lumen gratiae, or divine revelation, lumen fidei. -- J.J.R.
macrology /mak-rol'*-jee/ 1. Set of usually complex or {crufty} {macros}, e.g. as part of a large system written in {Lisp}, {TECO}, or (less commonly) {assembler}. 2. The art and science involved in comprehending a macrology. Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike archaeology, ecology, or {theology}, hence the sound-alike construction. See also {boxology}. (2003-09-02)
macrology ::: /mak-rol'*-jee/ 1. Set of usually complex or crufty macros, e.g. as part of a large system written in Lisp, TECO, or (less commonly) assembler.2. The art and science involved in comprehending a macrology. Sometimes studying the macrology of a system is not unlike archaeology, ecology, or theology, hence the sound-alike construction. See also boxology.(2003-09-02)
Methodology: The systematic analysis and organization of the rational and experimental principles and processes which must guide a scientific inquiry, or which constitute the structure of the special sciences more particularly. Methodology, which is also called scientific method, and more seldom methodeutic, refers not only to the whole of a constituted science, but also to individual problems or groups of problems within a science. As such it is usually considered as a branch of logic; in fact, it is the application of the principles and processes of logic to the special objects of the various sciences; while science in general is accounted for by the combination of deduction and induction as such. Thus, methodology is a generic term exemplified in the specific method of each science. Hence its full significance can be understood only by analyzing the structure of the special sciences. In determining that structure, one must consider the proper object of the special science, the manner in which it develops, the type of statements or generalizations it involves, its philosophical foundations or assumptions, and its relation with the other sciences, and eventually its applications. The last two points mentioned are particularly important: methods of education, for example, will vary considerably according to their inspiration and aim. Because of the differences between the objects of the various sciences, they reveal the following principal methodological patterns, which are not necessarily exclusive of one another, and which are used sometimes in partial combination. It may be added that their choice and combination depend also in a large degree on psychological motives. In the last resort, methodology results from the adjustment of our mental powers to the love and pursuit of truth. There are various rational methods used by the speculative sciences, including theology which adds certain qualifications to their use. More especially, philosophy has inspired the following procedures: The Soctattc method of analysis by questioning and dividing until the essences are reached; the synthetic method developed by Plato, Aristotle and the Medieval thinkers, which involves a demonstrative exposition of the causal relation between thought and being; the ascetic method of intellectual and moral purification leading to an illumination of the mind, as proposed by Plotinus, Augustine and the mystics; the psychological method of inquiry into the origin of ideas, which was used by Descartes and his followers, and also by the British empiricists; the critical or transcendental method, as used by Kant, and involving an analysis of the conditions and limits of knowledge; the dialectical method proceeding by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which is promoted by Hegelianlsm and Dialectical Materialism; the intuitive method, as used by Bergson, which involves the immediate perception of reality, by a blending of consciousness with the process of change; the reflexive method of metaphysical introspection aiming at the development of the immanent realities and values leading man to God; the eclectic method (historical-critical) of purposive and effective selection as proposed by Cicero, Suarez and Cousin; and the positivistic method of Comte, Spencer and the logical empiricists, which attempts to apply to philosophy the strict procedures of the positive sciences. The axiomatic or hypothetico-deductive method as used by the theoretical and especially the mathematical sciences. It involves such problems as the selection, independence and simplification of primitive terms and axioms, the formalization of definitions and proofs, the consistency and completeness of the constructed theory, and the final interpretation. The nomological or inductive method as used by the experimental sciences, aims at the discovery of regularities between phenomena and their relevant laws. It involves the critical and careful application of the various steps of induction: observation and analytical classification; selection of similarities; hypothesis of cause or law; verification by the experimental canons; deduction, demonstration and explanation; systematic organization of results; statement of laws and construction of the relevant theory. The descriptive method as used by the natural and social sciences, involves observational, classificatory and statistical procedures (see art. on statistics) and their interpretation. The historical method as used by the sciences dealing with the past, involves the collation, selection, classification and interpretation of archeological facts and exhibits, records, documents, archives, reports and testimonies. The psychological method, as used by all the sciences dealing with human behaviour and development. It involves not only introspective analysis, but also experimental procedures, such as those referring to the relations between stimuli and sensations, to the accuracy of perceptions (specific measurements of intensity), to gradation (least noticeable differences), to error methods (average error in right and wrong cases), and to physiological and educational processes.
Miracles [from Latin] Originally signifying some phenomenon in nature or human life which was considered highly noteworthy, extraordinarily remarkable, or a cause of wonderment; from this developed in Christian thought a conception regarding happenings originating in God Almighty, which were supposed to be contrary to or transcending the laws of nature. There are marvels enough in nature, and marvels that may be wrought in and upon nature by nature’s laws used by the developed wisdom and will power of the initiate or adept, to correspond to most, if not all, of the most extraordinary so-called miracles of Christian theology; but all such wondrous phenomena are wrought by means of a knowledge of the laws of nature, and it is nature and its laws which are behind them all, and actually prove them as realities. To suggest that anything can be contrary to nature is an absurdity. Thus miracles actually are unusual phenomena, produced by the use of natural means.
M. Lombard, Peter: (c. 1100-c. 1160) Was the author of the Four Books of Sentences, i.e. a compilation of the opinions of the Fathers and early teachers of the Catholic Church concerning various points in theology. He was born at Lumello in Lombardy, studied at Bologna, Rheims and the School of St. Victor in Paris. He was made Bishop of Paris in 1159. The Libri IV Sententiarum was used as a textbook in Catholic theology for more than two centuries, hence it has been commented by all the great theologians of the 13th and I4th centuries. The Franciscans of Quaracchi have published a critical edition in 2 vols. (Quaracchi, 1916). -- V. J.
Mystical Theology and the Celestial Hierarchy, “are
Mystically, the Uranides were the Greek prototypes of what in Christian theology are called fallen angels.
Natural Theology: In general, natural theology is a term used to distinguish any theology based upon the fundamental premise of the ability of man to construct his theory of God and of the world out of the framework of his own reason and of reasonable probability from the so-called "revealed theology" which presupposes that God and divine purposes are not open to unaided human understanding but rest upon a supernatural and not wholly understandable basis. See Deism; Renaissance. During the 17th and 18th centuries there were attempts to set up a "natural religion" to which men might easily give their assent and to offset the extravagant claims of the supernaturalists and their harsh charges against doubters. The classical attempt to make out a case for the sweet reasonableness of a divine purpose at work in the world of nature was given by Paley in his Natural Theology (1802). Traditional Catholicism, especially that of the late middle Ages developed a kind of natural theology based upon the metaphysics of Aristotle. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz developed a more definite type of natural theology in their several constructions of what now may well be called philosophical theology wherein reason is made the guide. Natural theology has raised its head in recent times in attempts to combat the extravagant declarations of theologians of human pessimism. The term, however, is unfortunate because it is being widely acknowledged that so-called "revealed theology" is natural (recent psychological and social studies) and that natural theology need not deny to reason its possible character as the bearer of an immanent divine revelation. -- V.F.
neologist ::: n. --> One who introduces new words or new senses of old words into a language.
An innovator in any doctrine or system of belief, especially in theology; one who introduces or holds doctrines subversive of supernatural or revealed religion; a rationalist, so-called.
Neology: Literally, the introduction of new words or new meanings. In theology the neologist is the heretic who introduces a new doctrine. In the latter sense, the rationalist was called a neologist by the traditional theologian. -- V.F.
of Christian theology; but see Orlinsky, “The So-
Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. (The adjective is: omniscient.)
ontologism ::: The ideological system that maintains that God and divine ideas are the first object of humans' intelligence and that the intuition of God is the first act of their intellectual knowledge. Note that Martin Heidegger used the term Onto-theology to refer to answering questions of being with direct reference to belief in God.
otani Kozui. (大谷光瑞) (1876-1948). Modern Japanese explorer to Buddhist archeological sites in Central Asia, and especially DUNHUANG; the twenty-second abbot of the NISHI HONGANJIHA, one of the two main sub-branches of the JoDO SHINSHu of the Japanese pure land tradition. otani was sent to London at the age of fourteen by his father, the twenty-first abbot of Nishi Honganji in Kyoto, to study Western theology. Inspired by the contemporary expeditions to Central Asia then being conducted by European explorers such as SIR MARC AUREL STEIN (1862-1943) and Sven Hedin (1865-1952), otani decided to take an overland route on his return to Japan so that he could survey Buddhist sites along the SILK ROAD. otani embarked on his first expedition to the region in 1902, accompanied by several other Japanese priests from Nishi Honganji. While en route, otani received the news of his father's death and returned to Japan to succeed to the abbacy; the expedition continued and returned to Japan in 1904. Even though his duties subsequently kept him in Japan, otani dispatched expeditions to Chinese Turkestan in 1908-1909 and between 1910 and 1914. The artifacts recovered during these three expeditions include manuscripts, murals, sculpture, textiles, etc., and are known collectively as the "otani collection." These materials are now dispersed in Japan, Korea, and China, but they are still regarded as important sources for the study of Central Asian Buddhist archeology.
Paley, William: (1743-1805) Was an English churchman well known for a number of works in theology. He is also widely remembered in the field of ethics. His Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy passed through many editions and served as a text book at Cambridge for many years. As an advocate of the doctrine of expediency, he gave impetus to the later Utilitarian School. He maintained that the beneficial tendency is what makes an action right. See Utilitarianism. Cf W. Paley, Horae Paulinae, 1790; View of the Evidences of Christianity, 1794; Natural Theology, 1802. -- L.E.D.
Palingenesis: (Gr palm, again, genesis, birth) Literally, a new birth or regeneration A rebirth of ideas and events (in a philosophy of history), a new birth of individuals (in theology). -- V.F.
pantheologist ::: n. --> One versed in pantheology.
pantheology ::: n. --> A system of theology embracing all religions; a complete system of theology.
Parousia: (Gr. presence) In Plato's philosophy, the presence of the Idea in the thing which, in turn, pirtakes of the Idea; in theology, the presence of Christ after his prophesied return to earth. -- K.F.L.
Pascal, Blaise: (1623-1662) French philosopher mathematician and scientist. He conducted scientific researches including experiments on atmospheric pressure and invented an ingenious calculating machine. He turned from preoccupation with the scientific to the study of man and his spiritual problems and found faith as a sounder guide than reason. At this stage of his thought, theology becomes central. These thoughts are developed in his Provincial Letters and in his posthumously published masterpieces of style, the Pensees. -- L.E.D.
Patristic Philosophy: The advent of Christian revelation introduced a profound change in the history of philosophy. New facts about God, the world and man were juxtaposed to the conclusions of pagan philosophy, while reason was at once presented with the problem of reconciling these facts with the pagan position and the task of constructing them into a new science called theology.
patristics ::: n. --> That departnent of historical theology which treats of the lives and doctrines of the Fathers of the church.
Persia. The theology of Zarathustra was a realistic and dualistic personalism. Nature is assumed to be a plastic order controlled by Ahura Mazda, personalized spirit of Good, against whom struggles in vain Ahriman, the personalized spirit of Evil.
Personal God The personal anthropomorphic extra-cosmic God of theology is a purely human creation — for personality is a limitation utterly inconsistent with the nature of the boundless and eternal. This theological God is merely a reflection of man. The infinite source of all cannot be defined, since every possible attribute which we might assign to it is a human mental creation. We are forced to speak of God as impersonal, but must beware lest in doing so we reduce the conception to an empty abstraction. God may denote a divine being, a being who was once in our present human stage but has evolved beyond it, having transcended the limit of personality but without losing individuality. Or God may be applied to a being who has emanated from the divine source but is on the downward arc of evolution, not having yet become man; or again it may be a projection of the human mind, like the personal God of theology, but in this case it is a human mental creation — therefore containing human limitations because the human mind is finite — and therefore inadmissible.
Pesach ::: Hebrew term for Passover. ::: Petuchowski, Jacob ::: (1925-1991) Professor of rabbinics, theology, and liturgy at Hebrew Union College from 1956 on; United States
Physico-Theology: A theology which finds corroboration in natural philosophy. A term now in general disuse. -- V.F.
physico-theology ::: n. --> Theology or divinity illustrated or enforced by physics or natural philosophy.
Pistology: A noun derived from the Greek, pistis, faith, hence in general the science of faith or religious belief. A branch of theology specially concerned with faith and its restricted scope, as distinguished from reason. -- J.J.R.
Pistology: A term derived from the Greek pistis, faith; hence in general the science of faith or religious belief. A branch of theology specially concerned with faith and its restricted scope, as distinguished from reason.
polemic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to controversy; maintaining, or involving, controversy; controversial; disputative; as, a polemic discourse or essay; polemic theology.
Engaged in, or addicted to, polemics, or to controversy; disputations; as, a polemic writer. ::: n.
Polytheism The doctrine of and belief in a plurality of gods, cosmic spirits, or celestial entities under whatever name they may be described. The word came into use as a correlative of monotheism — the doctrine as of the Jews, Christians, and Moslems, of one and only one God. The unphilosophical nature of monotheism, which in the Occident is quite different from the significance of divine unity, is shown by the subterfuges resorted to in order to supply its deficiencies. As divinity cannot be successfully imagined as individually concerned with every operation in the universe, the general term nature is used to denote a kind of secondary god; while the progress of science has analyzed this into various laws and forces, which paradoxically enough perform somewhat the same functions as the gods of polytheism, except in their wrongly supposed lack of intelligence. Less sophisticated and more profound intellects have never ceased to believe in a whole range of cosmic hierarchies, running from divinity down to the so-called nature spirits, and traditional peoples have always looked upon these as powers which are often dreaded and can be propitiated. Even Christianity has its saints, and its theology speaks of Angels and Archangels, of Dominions and Thrones, etc. As soon as we depart from the simple primeval idea of a universe filled with intelligent beings — and indeed formed of these beings themselves — of numerous hierarchies, grades, and kinds, we land in a maze of abstractions and contradictions.
Positive Theology: A term referring to doctrines alleged to be grounded upon a "positive" revelation and not upon the alleged "negative" conclusions of liberal and rationalistic speculations. The term was used to characterize Scriptural theologies from the freer deistic and rationalistic expositions of doctrines, also, it was used to oppose the conclusions of the so-called "higher critics" of the New and Old Testaments. The term has still another meaning: a theology is said to be positive if it is "constructive", by which is meant that it is apologetic of the spirit, if not the letter, of Protestant faith. In the latter sense positive theology is said to be distinguished from a philosophical theology. -- V.F.
Potentiality: See Dynamis. Power: In general: the physical, mental and moral ability to act or to receive an action; the general faculty of doing, making, performing, realizing, achieving, producing or succeeding; ability, capacity, virtue, virtuality, potency, potentiality, faculty, efficacy, efficacity, efficiency, operative causality, process of change or becoming; natural operative force, energy, vigor, strength, or effective condition applied or applicable to work; person, agent, body, institution, government or state, having or exercising an ability to act in accordance with its nature and functions; spirit, divinity, deity, superhuman agent, supernatural principle of activity; an attribute or name of God; in theology, an order of angels; in law the authority, capacity or right to exercise certain natural and legal prerogatives, also, the authority vestcd in a person by law; influence, prerogative, force. A. In psychology, power is sometimes synonymous with faculty (q.v.). It also means a quality which renders the nature of an individual agent apt to elicit certain physical and moral actions. Hence, power is a natural endowment enabling the intellect to condition the will and thus create hibits and virtues, in a higher degree, power is a moral disposition enabling the individual to cultivate his perfectibility. The distinction between powers is given by the distinction of their actions. Powers are acthe or operative, and passive or receptive; they are immediate or remote. Even impotence and incapacity are not different in kind from power, but simply in degree. These Aristotelian views on power, including its ontological interpretation, have held the ground for centuries, and we find them partly also in Hobbes and Locke who defined power as the ability to make or to receive change. Hume's analysis of power showed it to be an illusion; and with the advent of positivism and experimental psychology, this concept lost much of its value. The notion of power has been used by Fechner in his doctrine and law concerning the relation between stimuli and sensations.
Practical Theology: A special department of conventional theological study, called "practical" to distinguish it from general theology, Biblical, historical and systematic studies. As the term denotes, subjects which deal with the application of the theoretical phases of the subject come under this division: church policy (ccclesiology), the work of the minister in worship (lituigics and hymnology), in preaching (homiletics), in teaching (catechetics), in pastoral service (poimenics), and in missionary effort (evangelistics). For further discussion see Theological Propaedeutic (9th ed., 1912), Philip Schaff. -- V.F.
prasāda. (P. pasāda; T. dad pa/dang ba; C. chengjing; J. chojo; K. chingjong 澄淨). In Sanskrit, "clarity," or "trust." As "clarity," the term is used to describe both the serene sense consciousnesses of someone whose mind is at peace as well as such a state of mind itself. As "trust," the term is central to Buddhism, where it is employed in explanations of the psychology of faith or belief (see sRADDHĀ); it leads to zest or "desire-to-act" (CHANDA) that in turn leads to the cultivation of sAMATHA (serenity or calmness). These meanings of prasāda overlap when the term denotes the serenity or joy that results from trust. In the theology of the JoDO SHINSHu school of Japanese PURE LAND Buddhism, it refers to a serene acceptance of the grace of AMITĀBHA.
Preexistence ::: This term means that the human soul did not first come into being or existence with its present birth onearth; in other words, that it preexisted before it was born on earth.This doctrine of preexistence is by no means typically theosophical, for it likewise was a part of the earlyteachings of Christianity, as is evidenced in the writings that remain to us of Origen, the greatAlexandrian Church Father, and of his school. The theosophical student should be very careful indistinguishing the technical meanings that pertain to several words which in popular and mistaken usageare often employed interchangeably, as for example preexistence, metempsychosis, transmigration,reincarnation, reimbodiment, rebirth, metensomatosis, palingenesis. Each one of these words has aspecific meaning typically its own, and describes or sets forth one phase of the destiny of a reimbodyingand migrating entity. In popular usage, several of these words are used as synonyms, and this usage iswrong. Preexistence, for instance, does not necessarily signify the transmigration of an entity from planeto plane nor, indeed, does it signify as does reincarnation that a migrating monad reinfleshes orreincarnates itself through its ray on earth. Preexistence signifies only that a soul, be it human or other,preexisted before its birth on earth.The doctrine of the great Origen, as found in his works that remain to us, was that the human soulpreexisted in the spiritual world, or within the influence or range of the divine essence or "God," before itbegan a series of reincarnations on earth. It is obvious that Origen's manner of expressing his views is amore or less faithful but distorted reflection of the teaching of the esoteric philosophy. The teaching ofpreexistence as outlined by Origen and his school and followers, with others of his mysticalquasi-theosophical doctrines, was formally condemned and anathematized at the Home Synod held underMennas at Constantinople about 543 of the Christian era. Thus passed out of orthodox Christian theologyas a "newly discovered heresy" what was a most important and mystical body of teaching of the earlycenturies of the new Christian religion -- to the latter's great loss, spiritual and intellectual. The doctrinesof Origen and his school may be said to have formed an important part of original Christian theosophy, aform of universal theosophy of Christianized character. (See under their respective heads the variouscorrelated doctrines mentioned above.)
Proclus, Diadochus. The Elements of Theology. See
Qui Circumambulat Terram (Latin) Who walks around the earth — said of the Devil by medieval theologians; but there is no reason for restricting it to the maleficent works of Satan. The Fall of ethereal and spiritual beings has been distorted by Christian theology to signify the evil works of the Devil on earth, but theosophically the phrase could refer to the monads who fell from their spiritual estate in order to gain experiences in lower cosmic planes, and who thus pursue their peregrinations not only around the earth, but circle through the globes of our planetary chain and from planet to planet of the seven sacred planets of the solar system.
Reformation: The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and moral endeavors to win divine favor the peace demanded by a sensitive conscience; and when it came he found to his surprise that he had already parted company with a whole tradition. The ideology which found a response in his inner experience was set forth by Augustine, a troubled soul who had surrendered himself completely to divine grace and mercy. The philosophers who legitimized man's endeavor to get on in the world, the church which demanded unquestioned loyalty to its codes and commands, he eschewed as thoroughly inconsonant with his own inner life. Man is wholly dependent upon the merits of Christ, the miracle of faith alone justifies before God. Man's conscience, his reason, and the Scriptures together became his only norm and authority. He could have added a fourth: patriotism, since Luther became the spokesman of a rising tide of German nationalism already suspect of the powers of distant Rome. The humanist Erasmus (see Renaissance) supported Luther by his silence, then broke with him upon the reformer's extreme utterances concerning man's predestination. This break with the humanists shows clearly the direction which the Protestant Reformation was taking: it was an enfranchised religion only to a degree. For while Erasmus pleaded for tolerance and enlightenment the new religious movement called for decision and faith binding men's consciences to a new loyalty. At first the Scriptures were taken as conscience permitted, then conscience became bound by the Scuptures. Luther lacked a systematic theology for the simple reason that he himself was full of inconsistencies. A reformer is often not a systematic thinker. Lutheran princes promoted the reconstruction of institutions and forms suggested by the reformer and his learned ally, Melanchthon, and by one stroke whole provinces became Protestant. The original reformers were reformed by new reformers. Two of such early reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland and John Calvin (1509-1564) who set up a rigid system and rule of God in Geneva. Calvinism crossed the channel under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland. The English (Anglican) Reformation rested on political rather than strictly religious considerations. The Reformation brought about a Counter-Reformation within the Roman Church in which abuses were set right and lines against the Protestants more tightly drawn (Council of Trent, 1545-1563). -- V.F.
religious issues ::: Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off holy wars, such as What is the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?, What about that Heinlein guy, eh?, What should we add to the new Jargon File? See holy wars; see also theology, bigot.This term is a prime example of ha ha only serious. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the into the crossfire is mumble Get a life! and leave - unless, of course, one's *own* unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed. (1996-08-16)
religious issues Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off {holy wars}, such as "What is the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "What about that Heinlein guy, eh?", "What should we add to the new Jargon File?" See {holy wars}; see also {theology}, {bigot}. This term is a prime example of {ha ha only serious}. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible. The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the crossfire is mumble {Get a life!} and leave - unless, of course, one's *own* unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed. (1996-08-16)
Repentance In theology, a change of mental and spiritual habit respecting sin, involving a hatred of and sorrow because of it, and a genuine abandonment of it in conduct of life. The frequent reference made by Christians with regard to death-bed repentance, however distorted, nevertheless is based upon a truth. However, a person must always face the causes he has set in motion — which will appear as effects in some subsequent life, these lives being linked together with the present one by and through the skandhas.
Saraph (Hebrew) Śārāf Fiery, burning, glowing, filled with light and warmth; also serpent. In the Old Testament, the serpent that Moses is ordered to make is the mystical Saraph, and in this almost purely physiological connection it represents Jehovah, the chief of the fiery serpents (SD 2:387). Flying serpent is the generally accepted translation of saraph me‘opheph (Isaiah 30:6) — commonly connected in Christian theology with the Devil; but the expression is metaphorical and has nothing to do with the Evil One. This curious, significant phrase more accurately means both covered or enwrapped flame or fire, or flying fire. And as saraph also signifies serpent, it could equally mean covered or concealed serpent, or flying serpent.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich Ernst Daniel (1768-1834): Religion, in which Schleiermacher substitutes for a theology (regarded impossible because of the unknowableness of God) the feeling of absolute dependence, is sharply delineated from science as the product of reason in which nature may ultimately attain its unity. Schleiermacher, a romanticist, exhibits Fichtean and Schellingean influence, and transcends Kant by proclaiming an ideal realism. Nature, the totality of existence, is an organism, just as knowledge is a system. Through the unity of the real and the ideal, wisdom, residing with the Absolute as the final unity, arises and is ever striven for by man. A determinism is evident in religion where sin and grace provide two poles and sin is regarded partly avoidable, partly unreal, and in ethics where freedom is admitted only soteriologically as spontaneous acknowledgment of identity with the divine in the person of Christ. However, the right to uniqueness and individuality in which each attains his real nature, is stressed. An elaborate ethics is based on four goods: State, Society, School, and Church, to which accrue virtues and duties. An absolute good is lacking, except insofar as it lies in the complete unity of reason and nature. -- K.F.L.
scholastic ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or suiting, a scholar, a school, or schools; scholarlike; as, scholastic manners or pride; scholastic learning.
Of or pertaining to the schoolmen and divines of the Middle Ages (see Schoolman); as, scholastic divinity or theology; scholastic philosophy.
Hence, characterized by excessive subtilty, or needlessly minute subdivisions; pedantic; formal.
scholasticism ::: A school of philosophy taught by the academics (or schoolmen) of medieval universities circa 1100–1500. Scholasticism attempted to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers with medieval Christian theology. The primary purpose of scholasticism was to find the answer to a question or resolve a contradiction. It is most well known in its application in medieval theology but was applied to classical philosophy and other fields of study. It is not a philosophy or theology on its own, but a tool and method for learning that emphasizes dialectical reasoning.
Scholasticism: Scholasticism is both a method and system of thought. The name is derived from its proponents who were called doctores scholastici. This term, in turn, came from scholazein, which originally meant to have leisure or spare time but later, as in Xen. Cyr. 7. 5, 39, took the meaning to denote oneself to pupils or, conversely, to a master. The term Skolastikos is used for the first time by Theophrastus as recorded by Diog. L. 5. 37 (or V. 50 according to Ueberweg). From Roman antiquity the expression was handed down to the ninth century, when doctores scholastici came into general usage and was applied indifferently to those who taught the seven liberal arts or theology in the cloister and cathedral schools.
Scholasticism: The school of Western learning, especially in the fields of philosophy and theology, originating in the ninth century and ending in the fifteenth century; two outstanding features of this school are its intimate association with Catholic theology and its rigorous logical formalism.
Science with Theology in Christendom. 2 vols. New
Science with Theology in Christendom.
scotist ::: n. --> A follower of (Joannes) Duns Scotus, the Franciscan scholastic (d. 1308), who maintained certain doctrines in philosophy and theology, in opposition to the Thomists, or followers of Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican scholastic.
Second Birth In the New Testament, man is said to be born first of the flesh and afterwards of the spirit; in Christian theology, occasionally applied to regeneration — being admitted to the Kingdom of God or becoming a Christian. This is an echo of the Mysteries, where the successful candidate was said to be born again, just as in India the initiate is called dvija (twice-born), one who has undergone the second birth or the birth of the inner person in and from the subordinated outer or personal one. The second birth is no mere metaphor but an actual event in the candidate’s inner life, analogous in a way to the physical birth, resulting in a bringing into activity of the spiritual nature within, which thereafter passes through stages of growth from that of the newborn initiate or child upwards and onwards. An Egyptian papyrus bearing the emblem of an egg floating over a mummy typifies the second birth of the Osirified dead (SD 1:365).
Semi-Pelagianism: A movement in Christian theology which attempted to find a middle ground between the extreme doctrine of total depravity and predestination as over against the doctrine of the determinative character of the human will in the matter of salvation. The Semi-Pelagian view held that regeneration was the result of the cooperation of divine grace and the human will. Although the view was condemned by church councils in favor of predestination (q.v.), Semi-Pelagianism has continually reappeared in Christian theology without its label. -- V.F.
Seraphim ::: “Hybrid celestial beings [including Cherubim] with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics that are depicted in Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. They act as throne bearers or throne guardians of the deity. In later theology Cherubim is an angel of the second order, and Seraphim of the first. They correspond, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the Gandharvas and Venas of India tradition. (Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
seraphim ::: "Hybrid celestial beings [including Cherubim] with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics that are depicted in Jewish, Christian and Islamic literature. They act as throne bearers or throne guardians of the deity. In later theology Cherubim is an angel of the second order, and Seraphim of the first. They correspond, according to Sri Aurobindo, to the Gandharvas and Venas of India tradition. (Enc. Br.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
Sextus Empiricus: A physician who lived about 200 A.D. His writings contain numerous arguments of a sceptical empiricistic variety drawn from Pyrrho (q.v.) and directed against dogmatic claims to absolute truth, especially in the sciences and ethics. His Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians) is an important source for the history of the sciences of astronomy, geometry, and grammar as well is of the Stoic theology of the period. -- M.F.
Sin Evildoing, moral obliquity expressed in thought and act; in its relation to human evolution, it applies especially to the misuse of human creative powers which occurred after the fall into material existence. The procreative act, for example, in itself is not sinful, for this is but nature’s arrangement for the continuing of the human strain, but the abuse of this power, especially for black magical purposes. This truth has been perverted by Christian theology, which regards the procreative act as essentially sinful and permissible only as a concession to the “original sin” stamped upon us by our first parents in the Garden of Eden, and only to be purged by the Atonement.
slack ::: 1. (operating system) Internal fragmentation. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually used to store useful information.2. (jargon) In the theology of the Church of the SubGenius, a mystical substance or quality that is the prerequisite of all human happiness.Since Unix files are stored compactly, except for the unavoidable wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be said that Unix has no slack.See ha ha only serious.[Jargon File] (1995-03-01)
slack 1. "operating system" Internal fragmentation. Space allocated to a disk file but not actually used to store useful information. 2. "jargon" In the theology of the {Church of the SubGenius}, a mystical substance or quality that is the prerequisite of all human happiness. Since {Unix} files are stored compactly, except for the unavoidable wastage in the last block or fragment, it might be said that "Unix has no slack". See {ha ha only serious}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-03-01)
Socinians: Followers of the 16th century Italian, humanistic Christians, Socinus (Sotzzini), Laelius and Faustus. They advocated freedom of thought over against the orthodox expressions of Christianity. The Racovian Catechism (1605) states their method and doctrines. In general, they were anti-Trinitarians (see Trinitarianism), anti-Augustinian (opposing the doctrines or original sin, depravity, predestination), anti-Catholic institutionalism; their interpretation of Christianity was that it is a religion of the attainment of eternal life, Jesus being the revealer of God, and the Scriptures giving a supernatural revelation which is necessary and rationally defensible. A strong ethical note pervaded their theology. They opposed the view of sacramental mysteries. Although condemned by the Protestant churches, the Socinians exerted a tremendous influence even after their formal dissolution as a party. -- V.F.
softa ::: n. --> Any one attached to a Mohammedan mosque, esp. a student of the higher branches of theology in a mosque school.
SOKRATEAN REALIZATION The realization that man cannot on his own (by self-taught clairvoyance, meditation, speculation) attain to knowledge of reality and life. That realization is the result of sufficient experience of mankind&
Spens, Will: An English educator (born 1882), who as Master of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, has written widely on educational theory. In philosophy and theology, he has developed a theory of Christian doctrine as based on religious experience, which it generalizes and states in terms whose adequacy is determined by their capacity to nourish and develop that experience (Belief and Practice); he has also written on sacramental theology, including several essays (chiefly in the symposium Essays, Catholic and Critical) on the Eucharist; here his view is that by the "real presence" is meant the congeries of opportunities of experiencing through material means the spiritual reality of Christ. -- W.N.P.
Suarezianism: A school of philosophy and theology founded by Francisco Suarez, of the Society of Jesus, Spain, 1548-1617. His philosophic position is, in general, that of Christian Aristotelianism. The immediate background of his thought is to be found in Albertinism, Thomism, Scotism and Nominalism.
Supernatural Beyond or above nature; but, as nature in its esse is space, the Boundless both inner and outer, the term is meaningless. Supernormal fits better the common usage for phenomena beyond the customary range of our experiences or not explainable by what we know of the laws of nature. In theology supernatural implies a separation between divine beings, spiritual beings, or human saints on the one hand, and nature on the other hand, in virtue of which the normal procedure of nature supposedly can be interfered with — a conception which is an absurdity from the standpoint of theosophy. Physical nature surrounding us is actually the least part of universal nature, as it is the invisible inner universes and spheres of being which are causal, and our physical universe merely the garment or effect of the invisible superior parts of universal nature.
Syncretism: (Gr. syn., with; and either kretidzein, or kerannynai, to mix incompatible elements) A movement to bring about a harmony of positions in philosophy or theology which are somewhat opposed or different. Earliest usage (Plutarch) in connection with the Neo-Platonic effort to unify various pagan religions in the 2nd and 4th centuries A.D. Next used in Renaissance (Bessarion) in reference to the proposed union of the Eastern and Western Citholic Churches, also denoted the contemporary movement to harmonize the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle; again in 17th century used by Georg Calixt in regard to proposed union of the Lutheran with other Protestant bodies and also with Catholicism. -- V.J.B.
syncretism ::: The attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. It is especially associated with the attempt to merge or analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus to assert an underlying unity.
Talmud: An encyclopedic work in Hebrew-Aramaic produced during 800 years (300 B.C.-500 A.D.) in Palestine and Babylon. Its six Orders (sedarim), subdivided in sixty-three tractates (mas-sektoth), sum up the oral traditions of Jewry, expounding, developing and commenting on the civil and religious laws of Judaism. It is a veritable treasure-house of ancient Jewish philosophy, ethics, theology, folklore, sciences, etc. accumulated during those eight centuries. The Talmud consists of an older part, the Mishnah (q.v.), and the later part, Gemarah (q.v.), a commentary on the former.
Teleological Argument for God: (Gr. telos, end or purpose) Sometimes referred to as the argument from design. Events, objects, or persons are alleged to reveal a kind of relationship which suggests a purpose or end toward which they move. Such ends reveal a Fashioner or Designer who guides and directs toward the fulfillment of their functions. This Architect is God. Paley (1745-1805) in his Natural Theology is a classic expositor of the argument. Kant favored the argument, but held that it leaned too heavily upon the cosmological argument which in turn rested upon the ontological, both of which crumbled when critical analysis is applied. -- V.F.
term applied to Thoth in Hermetic theology. [Rf.
The Amshaspands in ancient Persian theology bore the same general relation to the universe that the seven or ten prajapatis have in the Hindu scriptures, or that the seven or ten Sephiroth have in the Hebrew Qabbalah. See also Amesha-Spenta.
the angel of death. In Roman Catholic theology, research,” reports Spence, An Encyclopaedia of
The Bible speaks of there having been giants in an early period in the earth’s history, and theology speaks of these as pre-Adamite races.
-. The Theology of Justin Martyr. E. R. Goodenough.
The Disputationes Metaphysicae (no Eng. translation) forms a complete exposition of Suarez general metaphysics, psychology, theory of knowledge, cosmology and natural theology. Basic is the rejection of the thomistic real distinction between essence and existence in finite things. Physical substances are individuated, neither by their matter nor their form, but by their total entities. Their components, matter and form, are individual entities united in the composite of physical substance by a "mode" (unio) which has itself no reality apart from the composite. Except in the case of the human form which is the soul, matter and form in the natural order cannot exist in isolation. Accidental "modes" are used to explain the association of accidents with their subjects. Spiritual creatures (angels and human souls) are not specific natures as in Thomism, but are individuals, constituted such by their own entities.
The early Greek notion of the universe as ordered by destiny or fate was gradually refined until the time of Plato and Aristotle who conceived the world as ordered by an intelligent principle (nous) of divine justice or harmony; Plato, Philebus, 30: ". . . there is in the universe a cause of no mean power, which orders and arranges . . ."; and Aristotle, Physics, 252a-12: "nature is everywhere the cause of order". This cosmic view was an essential element of the Stoic metaphysics, and was later incorporated into medieval philosophy and theology as the divine governance or ordering of creation, i.e. providence.
The general superiority of theology in this system over the admittedly distinct discipline of philosophy, makes it impossible for unaided reason to solve certain problems which Thomism claims are quite within the province of the latter, e.g., the omnipotence of God, the immortality of the soul. Indeed the Scotist position on this latter question has been thought by some critics to come quite close to the double standard of truth of Averroes, (q.v.) namely, that which is true in theology may be false in philosophy. The univocal assertion of being in God and creatures; the doctrine of universal prime matter (q.v.) in all created substances, even angels, though characteristically there are three kinds of prime matter); the plurality of forms in substances (e.g., two in man) giving successive generic and specific determinations of the substance; all indicate the opposition of Scotistic metaphysics to that of Thomism despite the large body of ideas the two systems have in common. The denial of real distinction between the soul and its faculties; the superiority of will over intellect, the attainment of perfect happiness through a will act of love; the denial of the absolute unchangeableness of the natural law in view of its dependence on the will of God, acts being good because God commanded them; indicate the further rejection of St. Thomas who holds the opposite on each of these questions. However the opposition is not merely for itself but that of a voluntarist against an intellectualist. This has caused many students to point out the affinity of Duns Scotus with Immanuel Kant. (q.v.) But unlike the great German philosopher who relies entirely upon the supremacy of moral consciousness, Duns Scotus makes a constant appeal to revelation and its order of truth as above all philosophy. In his own age, which followed immediately upon the great constructive synthesis of Saints Albert, Bonaventure, and Thomas, this lesser light was less a philosopher because he and his School were incapable of powerful synthesis and so gave themselves to analysis and controversy. The principal Scotists were Francis of Mayron (d. 1327) and Antonio Andrea (d. 1320); and later John of Basoles, John Dumbleton, Walter Burleigh, Alexander of Alexandria, Lychetus of Brescia and Nicholas de Orbellis. The complete works with a life of Duns Scotus were published in 1639 by Luke Wadding (Lyons) and reprinted by Vives in 1891. (Paris) -- C.A.H.
The importance of Arab philosophy has to be evaluated both in regard to the Oriental and the Western world. The latter was influenced, naturally, not by the originals but by the translations which do not always render exactly the spirit of the authors. In the East, theology remained victorious, but incorporated in its own teachings much of the philosophies it condemned. M. Horten, in Ueberweg-Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophie, 3d ed., Berlin, 1928, pp. 287-342. Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Vol. I, II, Weimar, 1898-1902, Vol. III-VI, Leiden, 1936-1941. The Encyclopedia of Islam, Leiden, 1913-1918. -- R.A.
Theism: (Gr. theos, god) Is in general that type of religion or religious philosophy (see Religion, Philosophy of) which incorporates a conception of God as a unitary being; thus may be considered equivalent to monotheism. The speculation as to the relation of God to world gave rise to three great forms: God identified with world in pantheism (rare with emphasis on God); God, once having created the world, relatively disinterested in it, in deism (mainly an 18th cent, phenomenon); God working in and through the world, in theism proper. Accordingly, God either coincides with the world, is external to it (deus ex machina), or is immanent. The more personal, human-like God, the more theological the theism, the more appealing to a personal adjustment in prayer, worship, etc., which presuppose either that God, being like man, may be swayed in his decision, has no definite plan, or subsists in the very stuff man is made of (humanistic theism). Immanence of God entails agency in the world, presence, revelation, involvement in the historic process, it has been justified by Hindu and Semitic thinkers, Christian apologetics, ancient and modern metaphysical idealists, and by natural science philosophers. Transcendency of God removes him from human affairs, renders fellowship and communication in Church ways ineffectual, yet preserves God's majesty and absoluteness such as is postulated by philosophies which introduce the concept of God for want of a terser term for the ultimate, principal reality. Like Descartes and Spinoza, they allow the personal in God to fade and approach the age-old Indian pantheism evident in much of Vedic and post-Vedic philosophy in which the personal pronoun may be the only distinguishing mark between metaphysical logic and theology, similarly as in Hegel. The endowment postulated of God lends character to a theistic system of philosophy. Much of Hindu and Greek philosophy stresses the knowledge and ration aspect of the deity, thus producing an epistemological theism; Aristotle, in conceiving him as the prime mover, started a teleological one; mysticism is psychologically oriented in its theism, God being a feeling reality approachable in appropriate emotional states. The theism of religious faith is unquestioning and pragmatic in its attitude toward God; theology has often felt the need of offering proofs for the existence of God (see God) thus tending toward an ontological theism; metaphysics incorporates occasionally the concept of God as a thought necessity, advocating a logical theism. Kant's critique showed the respective fields of pure philosophic enquiry and theistic speculations with their past in historic creeds. Theism is left a possibility in agnosticism (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
theogony ::: n. --> The generation or genealogy of the gods; that branch of heathen theology which deals with the origin and descent of the deities; also, a poem treating of such genealogies; as, the Theogony of Hesiod.
theologaster ::: n. --> A pretender or quack in theology.
theologian ::: n. --> A person well versed in theology; a professor of theology or divinity; a divine.
theological ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to theology, or the science of God and of divine things; as, a theological treatise.
theologics ::: n. --> Theology.
theologies ::: pl. --> of Theology
theologize ::: v. t. --> To render theological; to apply to divinity; to reduce to a system of theology. ::: v. i. --> To frame a system of theology; to theorize or speculate upon theological subjects.
theology 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to {religious issues}. 2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, especially those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively {marginal} with respect to actual use of a design or system. Used especially around software issues with a heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI. [{Jargon File}]
theology ::: 1. Ironically or humorously used to refer to religious issues.2. Technical fine points of an abstruse nature, especially those where the resolution is of theoretical interest but is relatively marginal with respect to heavy AI or language-design component, such as the smart-data vs. smart-programs dispute in AI.[Jargon File]
THEOLOGY Theology lies within the domain of subjective consciousness, and its dogmas belong to the superphysical. Religion is that feeling, attraction, which has no need for reason, or at any rate is impaired if it is locked up in untenable conceptions of reason. K 5.45.1
theology, Michael is the angel of death who “leads
theology ::: n. --> The science of God or of religion; the science which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of God, his laws and government, the doctrines we are to believe, and the duties we are to practice; divinity; (as more commonly understood) "the knowledge derivable from the Scriptures, the systematic exhibition of revealed truth, the science of Christian faith and life."
THEOLOGY—The science that treats of the being of God, the attributes of God, the doctrine of the Trinity and creation and providence.
The philosophy of Aristotle was continued after his death by other members of the Peripatetic school, the most important of whom were Theophrastus, Eudemus of Rhodes, and Strato of Lampsacus. In the Alexandrian Age, particularly after the editing of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes (about 50 B.C.), Aristotelianism was the subject of numerous expositions and commentaries, such as those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, John Philoponus, and Simplicius. With the closing of the philosophical schools in the sixth century the knowledge of Aristotle, except for fragments of the logical doctrine, almost disappeared in the west. It was preserved, however, by Arabian and Syrian scholars; from whom, with the revival of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it passed again to western Europe and became in Thomas Aquinas the philosophical basis of Christian theology. For the next few centuries the prestige of Aristotle was immense; he was "the philosopher," "the master of those who know." With the rise of modern science his authority has greatly declined. Yet Aristotelianism is still a force in modern thought: in Neo-Scholasticism; in recent psychology, whose behavioristic tendencies are in part a revival of Aristotelian modes of thought; in the various forms of vitalism in contemporary biology; in the dynamism of such thinkers as Bergson; and in the more catholic naturalism which has succeeded the mechanistic materialism of the last century, and which, whether by appeal to a doctrine of levels or by emphasis on immanent teleology, seems to be striving along Aristotelian lines for a conception of nature broad enough to include the religious, moral and artistic consciousness. Finally, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and in philosophy, is but the translation into modern tongues of the terms used by Aristotle, and carries with it, for better or worse, the distinctions worked out in his subtle mind. -- G.R.M.
Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist. Bibliography: B. Geyer, Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano, Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle, Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter, Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922). --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B. In logic, see Operationism. In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations. 1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events. 2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance. Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning). Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class. The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined. In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations. For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.) For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation. Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes. Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion. For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R. The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .). The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C. G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M. In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established. Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset: Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914; El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935; El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921; España Invertebrada, 1922; Kant, 1924; La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925; Espiritu de la Letra, 1927; La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929; Goethe desde Adentio, 1934; Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939; Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939; El Libro de las Misiones, 1940; Ideas y Creencias, 1940; and others. Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P
Thrones An angelic group in the Christian celestial hierarchy, as outlined by the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Thrones rank third in the ninefold scheme, being preceded by the Seraphim and Cherubim; the second and intermediate triad is formed of Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; while the third triad is formed of Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. This scheme was derived from Hebrew angelology, which comes from the Chaldean; although this Christian angelic scheme has been philosophically powerfully affected by Neoplatonic and neo-Pythagorean thought. “They who are called in Theology ‘the Thrones,’ and are the ‘Seat of God,’ must be the first incarnated men on Earth” (SD 2:80). The Zohar states that the Benei ’Elohim (sons of god) belong to the tenth subdivision of the Thrones. The ancient Syrians defined their world of Rulers similarly to the Chaldeans: the lowest world was the sublunary, our earth, ruled by Angels; then Mercury, Archangels; Venus, Principalities; Sun, Powers; Mars, Virtues; Jupiter, Dominions; and Saturn, Thrones.
to Christianity. He rules theology and morals and
Tov ::: (Heb.) Good. ::: Transcendent ::: In theology, the aspect of God that is beyond time and space, as opposed to God's immanence.
Transcendent: (L. transcendere to climb over, surpass, go beyond) That which is beyond, in any of several senses. The opposite of the immanent (q.v.). In Scholasticism notions are transcendent which cannot be subsumed under the Aristotelian categories. The definitive list of transcendentia comprises ens, unum, bonum, verum, res, and aliquid. For Kant whatever is beyond possible experience is transcendent, and hence unknowable. Metaphysics and Theology: God (or the Absolute) is said to be transcendent in the following senses: perfect, i e., beyond limitation or imperfection (Scholasticism); incomprehensible (negative theology, mysticism); remote from Nature (Deism); alienated from natural man (Barthianism). Pluralism posits the essential mutual transcendence of substances or reals. Epistemology: Epistemological dualism (q.v.) holds that the real transcends apprehending consciousness, i.e., is directly inaccessible to it. Thought is said to be "self-transcendent" when held to involve essentially reference beyond itself (s. intentionahty). Ethics. Moral idealism posits the transcendence of the will over Nature (see Freedom). --W.L. Transcendent Reference: The reference of a mental state to something beyond itself. See Reference. -- L.W.
Trichotomy: Literally, division into three parts. Specifically, in theology, the doctrine that man consists of soul, spirit and body. In occultism, the term is often applied also to any view involving or concerning a triad (q.v.).
Tridasa (Sanskrit) Tridaśa [from tri three + daśa ten] Thirty; as used in ancient India, it refers in round numbers to the general cycles of the Vedic deities, of which there were 33 ordinary ones: the 12 adityas, the 8 vasus, the 11 rudras, and 2 asvins. When the Hindu trimurti or triad is added to these, the number becomes 36, one of the archaic numbers of esoteric computation, not only in chronology but likewise in theology and theogony. Thirty-six is half of 72, which is 1/5 of 360, and 1/6 of the highly mystical key number 432, with ciphers added or not, according to the computation undertaken. Following the law of chronological analogy, thirty, which is 1/12 of 360, is the foundation number of esoteric computation, to which ciphers may be added according to the scheme held in mind. The 33 crores (330 million) deities usually enumerated in the Hindu pantheon are to be understood similarly, 33 being a round number for 36; for here too the 33 crores must be taken in connection with the trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, themselves aggregates, giving the important figure 36.
Unitarianism: The mme for the theological view which emphasises the oneness of God in opposition to the Triitarian formula (q.v.). Although the term is modern, the idea underlying Unitarianism is old. In Christian theology any expression of the status of Jesus as being less than a metaphysical part of Deity is of the spirit of Unitarianism (e.g., Dynamistic Monarchianists, Adoptionists, Socinians, and many others). Unitarians hold only the highest regard for Jesus but refuse to bind that regard to a Trinitarian metaphysics. In general, their views of the religious life have been prophetic of liberal thought. Today there are numbers of liberal Christian ministers who are Unitarian in thought but not in name. The British and Foreign Unitarian Association dates formally to 1825. Manchester College, Oxford, was claimed Unitarian. Leading theologians were Joseph Priestly (1733-1804), James Martineau (1805-1900), James Drummond and J. E. Carpenter. American Unitarianism wis given expression in King's Chapel, Boston (1785), in a number of associations, in Meaddville Theological School (1844) and Harvard Divinity School (the chief seat of the movement prior to 1878). Channing (1780-1842) and Theodore Parker (1810-1860) directed the movement into wider liberal channels. -- V.F.
university ::: n. --> The universe; the whole.
An association, society, guild, or corporation, esp. one capable of having and acquiring property.
An institution organized and incorporated for the purpose of imparting instruction, examining students, and otherwise promoting education in the higher branches of literature, science, art, etc., empowered to confer degrees in the several arts and faculties, as in theology, law, medicine, music, etc. A university may exist without
Veda: The generic name for the most ancient sacred literature of the Hindus, consisting of the four collections called (1) Rig Veda, hymns to gods, (2) Sama Veda, priests’ chants, (3) Yajur Veda, sacrificial formulae in prose, and (4) Atharva Veda, magical chants; each Veda is divided into two broad divisions, viz. (1) Mantra, hymns, and (2) Brahmana, precepts, which include (a) Aranyakas, theology, and (b) Upanishads, philosophy; the Vedas are classified as revealed literature; they contain the first philosophical insights and are regarded as the final authority; tradition makes Vyasa the compiler and arranger of the Vedas in their present form; the Vedic period is conservatively estimated to have begun about 1500 to 1000 B.C.
Verbum (Latin) Word; adopted by later Latin-speaking philosophers and Christian theologians to represent the cosmic Logos (word), often used in the more concrete sense as the spoken word in reference to the vibratory power of sound; or in its application to Christos in theology.
Vicarious Atonement In Christian theology, the idea that God accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as a substitution for the guilt incurred by man at the Fall, and that mankind will consequently escape punishment, provided that they accept by faith Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. The idea that by an atoning for evil done or sin committed, one undoes the past — broadened by Christian theology to include the doctrine of the vicarious atonement by some great spiritual being for the sins of others — is a theory rejected by the theosophic philosophy. To those who believe the Christian doctrine that every person was born into this world burdened with inevitable doom through Adam’s sin, such a compensatory doctrine seems to be necessary; but it discourages people’s faith in their own innate divinity and in their power thereby to effect their own spiritual and moral salvation, and violates our sense of justice by offering a way of avoiding the consequences of our own bad actions — which avoidance of sin already incurred is distinctly denied in several places in the New Testament where the ancient theosophical doctrine of karma is taught that as a man sows, that (and not something else) must he invariably reap. Vicarious atonement may be a distorted doctrine of reconciliation, in Christian notion reconciliation between God and man; also of the idea that the spiritual monad in man takes on itself the consequences for actions or “sins” committed by the less evolved human monad. Every human being is raised by the sacrifice made by the Christos within himself, so that whoever believes in and conforms his acts to his own spiritual nature, is “saved.”
Voluntarism: (Lat. voluntas, will) In ontology, the theory that the will is the ultimate constituent of reality. Doctrine that the human will, or some force analogous to it, is the primary stuff of the universe; that blind, purposive impulse is the real in nature. (a) In psychology, theory that the will is the most elemental psychic factor, that striving, impulse, desire, and even action, with their concomitant emotions, are alone dependable. (b) In ethics, the doctrine that the human will is central to all moral questions, and superior to all other moral criteria, such as the conscience, or reasoning power. The subjective theory that the choice made by the will determines the good. Stands for indeterminism and freedom. (c) In theology, the will as the source of all religion, that blessedness is a state of activity. Augustine (353-430) held that God is absolute will, a will independent of the Logos, and that the good will of man is free. For Avicebron (1020-1070), will is indefinable and stands above mature and soul, matter and form, as the pnmary category. Despite the metaphysical opposition of Duns Scotus (1265-1308) the realist, and William of Occam (1280-1347) the nominalist, both considered the will superior to the intellect. Hume (1711-1776) maintained that the will is the determining factor in human conduct, and Kant (1724-1804) believed the will to be the source of all moral judgment, and the good to be based on the human will. Schopenhauer (1788-1860) posited the objectified will as the world-substance, force, or value. James (1842-1910) followed up Wundt's notion of the will as the purpose of the good with the notion that it is the essence of faith, also manifest in the will to believe. See Will, Conation. Opposed to Rationalism, Materialism, Intellectualism. -- J.K.F.
with Metatron ( q.v .). In Persian theology, Mithra
Zim or Zikum (Chaldean) The spirit of the deep; spirit-substance, primordial matter. In later Babylonian theology, applied to the spirit present in both gods and men. Also the name of one of the seven gods represented as each producing a man, referring to the fashioning of man by the different classes of pitris.
Zwingliism: The theological thought of Huldreich Zwingli (1481-1531), early Protestant Reformer of Zurich, Switzerland. His theology was theocentric: God's activity is all-pervading and widely revealed. He was a student of the Greek N.T. and of humanistic subjects, a friend of Erasmus. (See Reformation). He followed Augustine's doctrine of man's original sin and sinfulness with some modifications. He anticipated Calvin's doctrine of election (see Calvinism) as an act of the Divine good and rational will, and he held the feudalistic theory of the atonement of substitution framed by Anselm. The sacraments were not mystical conveyors of divine grace to him, they were rather outward signs of an inward spiritual grace. In the famous Marburg Colloquy, he broke with Luther and his followers on the interpretation of the Lord's Supper. -- V.F.
KEYS (10k)
4 Robert Heinlein
4 Saint Thomas Aquinas
2 Wikipedia
1 Shepherd of Hermas)
1 Saint Maximus the Confessor
1 Saint John Klimakos
1 Proclus
1 Proclus
1 Peter Hodgson
1 Ken Wilber
1 Jonathan Swift
1 Jean Leclercq
1 James George Frazer
1 Hans Urs von Balthasar
1 Evagrius of Pontus
1 Bertrand Russell
1 Alfred Korzybski
1 Aleister Crowley
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
29 Anonymous
26 R C Sproul
21 C S Lewis
18 Ibrahim Ibrahim
18 G K Chesterton
18 Bertrand Russell
17 H L Mencken
15 John Piper
14 Martin Luther
14 Karl Barth
13 Richard Rohr
13 Richard Dawkins
12 Paul David Tripp
12 Marcella Althaus Reid
11 Wayne Grudem
11 Ludwig Feuerbach
11 A W Tozer
10 Oliver D Crisp
10 Karen Armstrong
10 Eric Metaxas
1:The climax of purity is the beginning of theology. ~ Saint John Klimakos, #KEYS
2:Theology without practice is the theology of demons ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #KEYS
3:Oct 1 ~ Theology 101: "No one will enter into the kingdom of God unless they receive the name of his Son." ~ Shepherd of Hermas), #KEYS
4:Be therefore followers of God as most dear children, and walk in love" ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Compendium of Theology 2.5)., #KEYS
5:The "Thou" of the mother is not the "I" of the child, but both centers move in the same ellipse of love. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology III, #KEYS
6:Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
~ Robert Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice, (1984).,#KEYS
7:Monastic Theology is a theology of admiration and therefore greater than a theology of speculation. ~ Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the desire for God p. 283, #KEYS
8:Quotations from a Friar, Theologian, Priest, Common Doctor, and Saint ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (1225-74). #KEYS
9:The fact that Christ died uttering a loud cry gave evidence of the divine power in Him ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Compendium of Theology, ch. 216)., #KEYS
10:In Christian theology, kenosis (Greek: κένωσις, kénōsis, lit. emptiness) is the self-emptying of ones own will and becoming entirely receptive to Gods divine will.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
11:One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973). This is sometimes misquoted as One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.,#KEYS
12:God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#KEYS
13:Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
14:I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
~ Robert Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, (1961).Quotes About Religion & Theology,#KEYS
15:When Christ descended into hell He freed those who were detained there for the sin of our first parent, but left behind those who were being punished for their own sins ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Compendium of Theology 2.235)., #KEYS
16:Simple or complicated, small or large, the passage from non-existence to existence is the most radical of all steps... the passage from non-being to being is the greatest possible transition. We are talking about creation itself. ~ Peter Hodgson, Theology and Modern Physics, #KEYS
17:The goal of praktike is to purify the intellect and to render it free of passions; that of gnostike is to reveal the truth hidden in all beings; but to distance the intellect from matter and to turn it towards the First Cause - this is a gift of theology. ~ Evagrius of Pontus, #KEYS
18:That which is present to all alike [through participation], that it may illuminate all, is not in any one, but is prior to them all... Inasmuch as it is both common to all that can participate and identical for all, it must be prior to all. ~ Proclus, Elements of Theology prop.23, #KEYS
19:Apotheosis (from Greek ἀποθέωσις from ἀποθεοῦν, apotheoun to deify; in Latin deificatio making divine; also called divinization and deification) is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre. this seems particularily important relative to define, which seems to be attempt at the highest potential of the word.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
20:For all the series of the ruling Gods (θεοὶ ἄρχοντες), are collected into the intellectual fabrication as into a summit, and subsist about it. And as all the fountains are the progeny of the intelligible father, and are filled from him with intelligible union, thus likewise, all the orders of the principles or rulers, are suspended according to nature from the demiurgus, and participate from thence of an intellectual life. ~ Proclus, The Theology of Plato, #KEYS
21:By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology; in the language of St. James, "faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." In other words, no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God. On the other hand, mere practice, divested of all religious belief, is also not religion. Two men may behave in exactly the same way, and yet one of them may be religious and the other not. If the one acts from the love or fear of God, he is religious; if the other acts from the love or fear of man, he is moral or immoral according as his behaviour comports or conflicts with the general good. ~ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, #KEYS
22:I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.
~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
23:... Every one knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas, by his contrivance, the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." He then led me to the frame, about the sides, whereof all his pupils stood in ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed in the middle of the room. The superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order. The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six-and-thirty of the lads, to read the several lines softly, as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys, who were scribes. This work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places, as the square bits of wood moved upside down. ~ Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels, #KEYS
24:STAGE TWO: THE CHONYID
The Chonyid is the period of the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities-that is to say, the subtle realm, the Sambhogakaya. When the Clear Light of the causal realm is resisted and contracted against, then that Reality is transformed into the primordial seed forms of the peaceful deities (ishtadevas of the subtle sphere), and these in turn, if resisted and denied, are transformed into the wrathful deities.
The peaceful deities appear first: through seven successive substages, there appear various forms of the tathagatas, dakinis, and vidyadharas, all accompanied by the most dazzlingly brilliant colors and aweinspiring suprahuman sounds. One after another, the divine visions, lights, and subtle luminous sounds cascade through awareness. They are presented, given, to the individual openly, freely, fully, and completely: visions of God in almost painful intensity and brilliance.
How the individual handles these divine visions and sounds (nada) is of the utmost significance, because each divine scenario is accompanied by a much less intense vision, by a region of relative dullness and blunted illuminations. These concomitant dull and blunted visions represent the first glimmerings of the world of samsara, of the six realms of egoic grasping, of the dim world of duality and fragmentation and primitive forms of low-level unity.
According to the Thotrol. most individuals simply recoil in the face of these divine illuminations- they contract into less intense and more manageable forms of experience. Fleeing divine illumination, they glide towards the fragmented-and thus less intense-realm of duality and multiplicity. But it's not just that they recoil against divinity-it is that they are attracted to the lower realms, drawn to them, and find satisfaction in them. The Thotrol says they are actually "attracted to the impure lights." As we have put it, these lower realms are substitute gratifications. The individual thinks that they are just what he wants, these lower realms of denseness. But just because these realms are indeed dimmer and less intense, they eventually prove to be worlds without bliss, without illumination, shot through with pain and suffering. How ironic: as a substitute for God, individuals create and latch onto Hell, known as samsara, maya, dismay. In Christian theology it is said that the flames of Hell are God's love (Agape) denied.
Thus the message is repeated over and over again in the Chonyid stage: abide in the lights of the Five Wisdoms and subtle tathagatas, look not at the duller lights of samsara. of the six realms, of safe illusions and egoic dullness. As but one example:
Thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu will produce in thee fear and terror, and thou wilt wish to flee from it. Thou wilt begat a fondness for the dull white light of the devas [one of the lower realms].
At this stage, thou must not be awed by the divine blue light which will appear shining, dazzling, and glorious; and be not startled by it. That is the light of the Tathagata called the Light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu.
Be not fond of the dull white light of the devas. Be not attached to it; be not weak. If thou be attached to it, thou wilt wander into the abodes of the devas and be drawn into the whirl of the Six Lokas.
The point is this: ''If thou are frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas [lower realms], then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer samsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Samsara, wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste the sufferings thereof."
But here is what is happening: in effect, we are seeing the primal and original form of the Atman project in its negative and contracting aspects. In this second stage (the Chonyid), there is already some sort of boundary in awareness, there is already some sort of subject-object duality superimposed upon the original Wholeness and Oneness of the Chikhai Dharmakaya. So now there is boundary-and wherever there is boundary, there is the Atman project. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, 129,#KEYS
25:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Science is the true theology. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 2:The cross alone is our theology. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 3:Theology is Classified Superstition. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 4:Theology is a science of mind applied to God. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 5:Theology is taught by God, teaches God, and leads to God. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 6:Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 7:Theology is taught by God, teaches God, and leads to God. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 8:Theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 9:Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 10:After theology I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 11:Men will never be great in theology until they are great in suffering. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 12:Be assured, there is nothing new in theology except that which is false. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 13:I do not believe in a God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 14:Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 15:My entire theology can be condensed into four words, & 16:Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 17:All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 18:The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 19:The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 20:If you meet with a system of theology which magnifies man, flee from it as far as you can. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 21:The Christ of Theology is not alive for us today. He is wrapped in the grave cloths of dogma. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 22:Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 23:Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 24:Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 25:Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 26:All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 27:Classical theology has erred in its insistence that theology be & 28:If you don't listen to theology, that won't mean you have no ideas about God, it will mean you have a lot of wrong ones. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 29:This is the reason why our Theology is certain: because it seizes us from ourselves and places us outside ourselves. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 30:Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 31:God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 32:What we need is a theology of salvation that begins and ends with a recognition of every person's hunger for glory. ~ robert-h-schuller, @wisdomtrove 33:Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 34:In the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 35:For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 36:If the gospel of Jesus Christ can be proclaimed as a theology of self-esteem, imagine the health this could generate in society! ~ robert-h-schuller, @wisdomtrove 37:I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 38:Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 39:Theology is an attempt to explain a subject by men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 40:One of the main tasks of theology is to find words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 41:Music is a fair and glorious gift of God. I am strongly persuaded that after theology, there is no art which can be placed on the level with music. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 42:The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 43:Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 44:Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which briefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 45:Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religious. The scientific point of view cannot fit any of these things, not even science itself. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 46:The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 47:The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 48:A general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the god portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy much less of a universe. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 49:A theology which is not based on revelation as a given reality but treats God as an idea would be as mad as a zoology which is no longer sure of the physical, tangible existence of animals. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 50:I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 51:The treatment of women in Muslim communities throughout the world is unconscionable. All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the Earth. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 52:[Science] must be amoral by its very nature: The minute it begins separating facts into the two categories of good ones and bad ones it ceases to be science and becomes a mere nuisance, like theology. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 53:No man should dogmatize except on the subject of theology. Here he can take his stand, and by throwing the burden of proof on the opposition, he is invincible. We have to die to find out whether he is right. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 54:The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 55:Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction. ~ michel-de-montaigne, @wisdomtrove 56:Theology is but a science of applied to God. As schools change theology must necessarily change. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas of truth are not. Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 57:... popular fundamentalist theology has emphasized the utility of the cross rather than the beauty of the One who died on it... The "work" of Christ has been stressed until it has eclipsed the person of Christ. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 58:World travel and getting to know clergy of all denominations has helped mold me into an ecumenical being. We're separated by theology and, in some instances, culture and race, but all that means nothing to me any more. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 59:I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by. ~ martin-rees, @wisdomtrove 60:The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 61:There is superstition in science quite as much as there is superstition in theology, and it is all the more dangerous because those suffering from it are profoundly convinced that they are freeing themselves from all superstition. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 62:Historical theology has too often failed to interpret repentance as a positive creative force. ... Essentially, if Christianity is to succeed in the next millennium, it must cease to be a negative religion and must become positive. ~ robert-h-schuller, @wisdomtrove 63:That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 64: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 can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 65:Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 66:Classical theology defines sin as & 67:All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 68: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. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 69:Whatever character our theology may ascribe to him, in reality God is the infinite ideal of Man, towards whom men move in their collective growth, with whom they seek their union of love as individuals, in whom they find their ideal of father, friend and beloved. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 70:I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people joyful; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 71:We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends tacit validity to this status quo. People have morally identified with a subset of humanity rather than with humanity as a whole. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 72:The classical error of historical Christianity is that we have never started with the value of the person. Rather, we have started from the & 73:Philosophy may serve as the bridge between theology and science. All atheism is a philosophy, but not all philosophy is atheism. Philosophy (& 74:The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 75:But if we admit God, must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain. Theology says to you in effect, & 76:This is the doctrine that we preach; if a man be saved, all the honor is to be given to Christ; but if a man be lost, all the blame is to be laid upon himself. You will find all true theology summed up in these two short sentences, salvation is all of the grace of God, damnation is all of the will of man. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 77:A man must have a stout digestion to feed upon some men's theology; no sap, no sweetness, no life, but all stern accuracy, and fleshless definition. Proclaimed without tenderness, and argued without affection, the gospel from such men rather resembles a missile from a catapult than bread from a Father's hand. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 78:Labels such as, & 79:When I am praying the most eloquently, I am getting the least accomplished in my prayer life. But when I stop getting eloquent and give God less theology and shut up and just gaze upward and wait for God to speak to my heart He speaks with such power that I have to grab a pencil and a notebook and take notes on what God is saying to my heart. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 80:Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 81:By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 82:Theology, by diverting the attention of men from this life to another, and by endeavoring to coerce all men into one religion, constantly preaching that this world is full of misery, but the next world would be beautiful - or not, as the case may be - has forced on men the thought of fear where otherwise there might have been the happy abandon of nature. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 83:As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized... The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 84:It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning , witchcraft and sacerdotalism. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 85:I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations... I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 86:Now, brethren, this is one of our greatest faults in our Christian lives. We are allowing too many rivals of God. We actually have too many gods. We have too many irons in the fire. We have too much theology that we don't understand. We have too much churchly institutionalism. We have too much religion. Actually, I guess we just have too much of too much. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 87:There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 88:Theres a verse thats meant a lot to me ever since I was in my early 20s. 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul told Timothy to remember Jesus Christ, descended from David and raised from the dead. Thats a good principle, that if my theology, my whole life can be focused on remembering Jesus. Just trying to remember who He is, what He did, being strong in what He did and what He accomplished. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 89:It can be a good thing if deeper theology, or philosophy, only makes one more uncertain. It may lead to a healthy doubt; he may throw his hands up saying, & 90:But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 91:There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 92:I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure. . . . When letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate. . . . It is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 93:The very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‚Äòdoing‚Äô his ‚ÄòEnglish prep‚Äô and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 94:Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question ‘What is God like?’ and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 95:The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 96:The sudden appearance of all the Laws of Nature is as untestable as Platonic metaphysics or theology. Why should we assume that all the Laws of Nature were already present at the instant of the Big Bang, like a cosmic Napoleonic code? Perhaps some of them, such as those that govern protein crystals, or brains, came into being when protein crystals or brains first arose. The preexistence of these laws cannot possibly be tested before the emergence of the phenomena they govern. ~ rupert-sheldrake, @wisdomtrove 97:The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the Thirteenth Century, but this yielding is always done grudgingly, and thus lingers a good while behind the event. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 98:Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God& 99:The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 100: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. ~ walt-whitman, @wisdomtrove 101:Thus the divine Bartholomew says that Theology is both much and very little, and that the Gospel is great and ample, and yet short. His sublime meaning is, I think, that the beneficent cause of all things says much, and says little, and is altogether silent, as having neither (human) speech nor (human) understanding, since He is essentially above all created things, and manifests Himself unveiled, and as He truly is to those only who pass beyond all that is either pure or impure, who rise above the highest height of holy things, who abandon all divine light and sound and heavenly speech, and are absorbed into that darkness where, as the Scripture says, He truly is, who is beyond all things. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 102:Divinity above all knowledge, whose goodness passes understanding . . . direct our way to the summit of thy mystical oracles, most incomprehensible, most lucid and most exalted, where the simple and pure and unchangeable mysteries of theology are revealed in the darkness, clearer than light, of that silence in which secret things are hidden; a darkness that shines brighter than light, that invisibly and intangibly illuminates with splendours of inconceivable beauty the soul that sees not. Let this be my prayer; but do thou, diligently giving thyself to mystical contemplation, leave the senses, and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intelligible, and things that are and things that are not, that thou mayest rise as may be lawful for thee, by ways above knowledge to union with Him who is above all knowledge and all being; that in freedom and abandonment of all, thou mayest be borne, through pure, entire and absolute abstraction of thyself from all things, into the supernatural radiance of the divine darkness. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 103:“Divinity above all knowledge, whose goodness passes understanding . . . direct our way to the summit of thy mystical oracles, most incomprehensible, most lucid and most exalted, where the simple and pure and unchangeable mysteries of theology are revealed in the darkness, clearer than light, of that silence in which secret things are hidden; a darkness that shines brighter than light, that invisibly and intangibly illuminates with splendours of inconceivable beauty the soul that sees not. Let this be my prayer; but do thou, diligently giving thyself to mystical contemplation, leave the senses, and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intelligible, and things that are and things that are not, that thou mayest rise as may be lawful for thee, by ways above knowledge to union with Him who is above all knowledge and all being; that in freedom and abandonment of all, thou mayest be borne, through pure, entire and absolute abstraction of thyself from all things, into the supernatural radiance of the divine darkness. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Theology is unnecessary. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
2:Science is the true theology. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
3:An Animated Cartoon Theology: ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
4:Theology is ignorance with wings. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
5:The cross alone is our theology. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
6:Academic theology is false. ~ Alexander Schmemann, #NFDB
7:Communion is deeper than theology. ~ Samuel Chadwick, #NFDB
8:Liberty's chief foe is theology. ~ Charles Bradlaugh, #NFDB
9:Theology is a subject without an object ~ Dan Barker, #NFDB
10:Theology is Classified Superstition. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
11:Theology made no provision for evolution. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
12:Prayer turns theology into experience. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
13:All theology is rooted in geography. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
14:Men are better than this theology. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
15:Bad theology dishonors God and hurts people. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
16:Prayer turns theology into experience. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
17:UNSETTLED QUESTIONS FOR THEOLOGY TODAY (1920) ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
18:theology is to religion what poisons are to food ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
19:Theology is the science of the divine lie. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
20:Theology is to religion what poisons are to food. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
21:Theology, it turns out, is Satan's favorite game. ~ Mike Mason, #NFDB
22:One man's pornography is another man's theology. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
23:theology touches every dimension of our lives. The ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
24:Theology is a science of mind applied to God. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
25:Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. ~ Martyn, #NFDB
26:Theosophy blesses the world; Theology is its curse. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
27:To downgrade the human mind is bad theology. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
28:A God-centered theology has to be a missionary theology ~ John Piper, #NFDB
29:One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
30:Theology is a superstition—Humanity a religion. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
31:Theology is only thought applied to religion. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
32:Theology is the doctrine or teaching of living to God. ~ William Ames, #NFDB
33:Theology must have the character of a living procession. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
34:Theology without love is simply very bad theology. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
35:Art is so often better at theology than theology is. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
36:A theology whose god is a metaphor is wasting its time. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
37:Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism. ~ Oswald Spengler, #NFDB
38:I consider theology to be the rhetoric of morals. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
39:[Theology is a] web of contradictions and delusions. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
40:In theology the conservative temper tends to formalism. ~ Edith Hamilton, #NFDB
41:Life offers no theology. There is but music and dance. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
42:Theology: (15) Somebody made everything for some reason. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
43:Theology must begin and end with the question of truth. ~ Peter L Berger, #NFDB
44:What I mean by spirituality is not theology, but attitude. ~ Mary Oliver, #NFDB
45:You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
46:Christian theology is a hair's breadth away from nihilism. ~ John Milbank, #NFDB
47:Show me a church's songs and I'll show you their theology. ~ Gordon D Fee, #NFDB
48:Theology: (15.) Somebody made everything for some reason. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
49:Theology, like fiction, is largely autobiographical. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
50:Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
51:We want Paul's theology and his results but not his methods. ~ Roland Allen, #NFDB
52:In all systems of theology, the devil figures as a male person. ~ Don Herold, #NFDB
53:I think that gardening is nearer to godliness than theology. ~ Vigen Guroian, #NFDB
54:There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
55:The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches. ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
56:You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
57:You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
58:Any old woman can love God better than a doctor of theology can. ~ Bonaventure, #NFDB
59:Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
60:The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
61:Theology” is a stuffy word, but it should be an everyday one. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
62:Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
63:The church today is dominated by this theology of silly women. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
64:The Puritans made me aware that all theology is also spirituality. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
65:Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
66:Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
67:Theology is taught by God, teaches God, and leads to God. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
68:Aside from theology and sex there is really nothing to talk about. ~ Harold Laski, #NFDB
69:Imprisoned professors taught imprisoned students free theology. ~ Jurgen Moltmann, #NFDB
70:Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
71:Theology without practice is the theology of demons ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #NFDB
72:Theology is a means to enjoying and worshiping God, or it is useless. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
73:We would do our theology better if more was at stake in what we said. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
74:...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology. ~ Fareed Zakaria, #NFDB
75:Theology masters the man; the man is never to master the theology. ~ Carl R Trueman, #NFDB
76:The call is to do theology in loving community with other people. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
77:Theology must work itself out in the most practical relationships. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
78:Theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
79:Theology is the post hoc rationalization of what you want to believe. ~ Jerry A Coyne, #NFDB
80:Aesthetics is really a much better approach to ethics than theology is. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
81:A professorship of theology should have no place in our institution. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
82:As in art, poetry, music, etc., the best theology is worked out in pain ~ Steve Chalke, #NFDB
83:Don't create theology about God so that you can feel better about Him. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
84:Exactly halfway between exegesis and practical theology stands dogmatics, ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
85:Exactly halfway between exegesis and practical theology stands dogmatics. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
86:I don't judge people by their theology, I judge them by their behavior ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
87:A theology without spirituality would be a sterile academic exercise. ~ John Macquarrie, #NFDB
88:I am fascinated in religion and theology and what people believe. ~ Sarah Wayne Callies, #NFDB
89:After theology I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
90:Every one of us loves Pauline theology, but few of us want Pauline pain. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
91:Grace is the essence of theology and gratitude is the essence of ethics. ~ G C Berkouwer, #NFDB
92:Not everyone can be a theologian, but everyone should know some theology. ~ Carl E Olson, #NFDB
93:Theology is that discipline whereby we stop talking nonsense about God. ~ Herbert McCabe, #NFDB
94:Men will never be great in theology until they are great in suffering. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
95:Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess. ~ Charles Colson, #NFDB
96:The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
97:There is too much theology in the Church now, and too little of the Gospel. ~ Lewis Tappan, #NFDB
98:Without action and fruit, all the theology in the world has little meaning. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
99:Be assured, there is nothing new in theology except that which is false. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
100:Religious conservatives still lack a theology of direct political action. ~ Ralph E Reed Jr, #NFDB
101:The essence of theology is grace; the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
102:We have to determine our theology from the Word of God, not from what we feel. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
103:It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
104:Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess. ~ Charles W Colson, #NFDB
105:My entire theology can be condensed into four words, 'JESUS DIED FOR ME'. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
106:Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
107:True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
108:Barth refused to enlist theology merely to sustain Western civilization. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
109:Every political theology is exorcising demons—the question is which demons. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
110:I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
111:My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated, but not signed. ~ Christopher Morley, #NFDB
112:Keep this in mind, though: loving people the way Jesus did is always great theology ~ Bob Goff, #NFDB
113:Theology tells us how we should think while ethics tells us how we should live. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
114:This one word 'grace' contains within itself the whole of New Testament theology. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
115:Theology very naturally follows belief, but belief very rarely follows judgment. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
116:Bad theology begets ugly Christianity. Good theology begets beautiful Christianity. ~ Tony Jones, #NFDB
117:EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
118:God doesn’t just want us to have good theology; He wants us to know and love Him. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
119:...science is the kind of sacred cow which theology was five hundred years ago.... ~ John Lukacs, #NFDB
120:This was a commercial situation, not some exercise in an Applied Theology course. ~ Vernor Vinge, #NFDB
121:My entire theology can be condensed into four words. Jesus died for me. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
122:No theology is genuinely Christian which does not arise from and focus on the cross. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
123:Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
124:So there are no nontheologians; there is just good theology and bad theology. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
125:Theology is not only about understanding the world; it is about mending the world. ~ Miroslav Volf, #NFDB
126:Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
127:Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
128:This is the purpose of theology. By it my life becomes clearer and more conscious. ~ Dorothee Solle, #NFDB
129:All theology consists in finding out what is meant by the words “He is.” Let us begin. ~ Frank Sheed, #NFDB
130:Bad theology will eventually hurt people and dishonor God in proportion to its badness. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
131:Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
132:The theology that matters is not the theology we profess but the theology we practice. ~ Tim Chester, #NFDB
133:Theology is ignorance of natural causes; a tissue of fallacies and contradictions. ~ Paul Henri Thiry, #NFDB
134:The sooner the doctrine of original sin disappears, the better it is for theology. ~ Georgia Harkness, #NFDB
135:The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
136:The theology that matters is not the theology we profess but the theology we practice. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
137:Theology in general seems to me a substitution of human ingenuity for divine wisdom. ~ Julia Ward Howe, #NFDB
138:Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
139:The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
140:Faith is the only thing that will ever close the gap between our theology and our reality. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
141:The world does not understand theology or dogma, but it understands love and sympathy. ~ Dwight L Moody, #NFDB
142:Attempting to separate life and theology is to lose the beauty and truthfulness of both. ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
143:Pelagianism is the natural heresy of zealous Christians who are not interested in theology. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
144:All true theology has an evangelistic thrust, and all true evangelism is theology in action. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
145:Except, perhaps, that he was an atheist in theology, he was a strict orthodox Christian. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
146:Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
147:This new project of hers was in experimental theology. But so is all of science she thought. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
148:I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
149:In brief, the Tree of Life is a compendium of science, psychology, philosophy and theology. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
150:There is no more hateful person than a Christian who thinks you’ve got your theology wrong. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
151:All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
152:A professorship of theology should have
no place in our institution. —THOMAS JEFFERSON ~ Richard Dawkins,#NFDB
153:History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — ie., none to speak of ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
154:How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state? ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
155:I study theology in the works of creation and find in it new reasons for adoring the creator. ~ Jan Potocki, #NFDB
156:To reject theology is to reject the knowledge of God. This is not an option for the Christian. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
157:William Ames (1576-1633) defined theology as the “teaching [doctrina] of living to God.”[2] ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
158:If our theology does not quicken the conscience and soften the heart, it actually hardens both. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
159:The Epistle to the Romans is an extremely important synthesis of the whole theology of St. Paul. ~ Hans Kung, #NFDB
160:For the progressive left, social activism grounded in faith and theology crested in the 1960s. ~ Mike McCurry, #NFDB
161:If you meet with a system of theology which magnifies man, flee from it as far as you can. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
162:I read science for the same reason I read theology: because I am a seeker after truth. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, #NFDB
163:Nelson had to smile. ‘Theology? David, this is the Church of England. We don’t do theology. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
164:The Scriptures were written with built-in tension between texts and its resultant theology. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
165:Could the highest level of “right theology” involve loving God and people like Jesus suggested? ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
166:For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
167:I still love the theology of the Mormon religion and think it is a wonderful way to grow up. ~ Katherine Heigl, #NFDB
168:Our theology is still in a time of crisis, and I think this will last for some years more. ~ Godfried Danneels, #NFDB
169:When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
170:Astronomy is what we have now instead of theology. The terrors are less, but the comforts are nil’. ~ Brian Cox, #NFDB
171:Conversation with God leads to an encounter with God. Prayer turns theology into experience. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
172:I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to result in confusion and frustration. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
173:It is the prerogative of the theologian to make fine distinctions; that is what theology is about. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
174:Liberation theology often ends up as little more than theological frosting on a Marxist cake. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
175:One of the things we in the Reformed tradition are very good at is writing doctrinal theology! ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
176:Since there was no Heaven in ancient Jewish theology,231 virtue had to be rewarded here or never. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
177:A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
178:Holy theology arises from knees bend before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
179:Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
180:The Christ of Theology is not alive for us today. He is wrapped in the grave cloths of dogma. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
181:We may not play with the new theology even if we may think we can turn it to our advantage. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
182:As Barrett puts it: “From nature the Greeks have evolved not natural theology but natural idolatry. ~ C Kavin Rowe, #NFDB
183:I think the devil has tricked us into thinking so much of biblical theology is story fit for kids. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
184:Reformed theology so far transcends the mere five points of Calvinism that it is an entire worldview. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
185:A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the University of Virginia] ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
186:Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of skepticism about skepticism itself. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
187:One can’t found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
188:When theology recognizes one thing properly, it mis-recognizes something else all the more thoroughly. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
189:Besides the missionary theology cultivated by many churches, we also need a theology of extinction. ~ Philip Jenkins, #NFDB
190:There's probably no concept in theology more repugnant to modern America than the idea of divine wrath. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
191:while theology should inform a Christian's relationship with God, it should never take its place. ~ Henry T Blackaby, #NFDB
192:The Institutes is not only the classic of Christian theology; it is also a model of Christian devotion. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
193:Damn, but science is just a constant feed of cool new facts and theories. Theology doesn't come close. ~ Jerry A Coyne, #NFDB
194:Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
195:Like all great rationalists you believed in things that were twice as incredible as theology. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
196:Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
197:Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
198:[...] the development of the Christian ethic slowly eroded Christian theology. Christ destroyed Jehovah. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
199:The theology you live out is much more important to your daily life than the theology you claim to believe. ~ Tim Lane, #NFDB
200:Third, the church’s music and songs constitute what Richard Mouw describes as a “compacted theology. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
201:In theology we must consider the predominance of authority; in philosophy the predominance of reason. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
202:It's theology. Were you expecting sex, drugs, and rock and roll?"
"One out of the three would be nice. ~ Katie Henry,#NFDB
203:Really, theology is simply what we think about God and then living that truth out in our right-now life. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
204:In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person. Yes, it is women who keep the church going. ~ Don Marquis, #NFDB
205:I would say that teleology is theology, and that God is not a "because," but rather an "in order to. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
206:Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
207:Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
208:There is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity in Nature. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
209:In Science, Correlation does not imply Causation; while in Theology, Creation does not imply Causation. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
210:Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
211:There is no conflict between science and theology, except where there is bad science or bad theology. ~ Theodore Hesburgh, #NFDB
212:all theology knowingly or not is by definition always engaged for or against the oppressed. ~ Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, #NFDB
213:Don’t belittle everyday pots and pans — they are the means to carry theology into the everyday of our lives. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
214:I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
215:Infinite possibility in all things is a certainty. That pretty much covers theology and philosophy for me. ~ Robert Fulghum, #NFDB
216:Whatever I may believe in theology, I do not believe in the doctrine of vicarious atonement in politics. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
217:If our theology doesn't shift and change over our lifetimes, then I have to wonder if we're paying attention. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
218:I wanted to construct a black theology—a theology that would be black like Malcolm and Christian like Martin. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
219:We are not all called to be PhDs in theology; we are each simply called to be faithful with what the Lord gives. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
220:A dog is grateful for what is, which I am finding to be the soundest kind of wisdom and very good theology. ~ Carrie Newcomer, #NFDB
221:I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
222:Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
223:Steven Hawking is a brilliant physicist and when it comes to theology I can say he's a brilliant physicist. ~ Guy Consolmagno, #NFDB
224:That is the great contribution of Reformed thinking to the Christian church: theology for a life well-lived. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
225:The gods and myths of Babylon and Nineveh are in many cases modifications or developments of Sumerian theology; ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
226:The kingdom is not about chatter. It is about action. Nike has some great theology. It is time to just do it. ~ Thom S Rainer, #NFDB
227:To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
228:All great literature has an uncreeded and luminous theology behind it... Art [is] a form of active prayer. ~ Melissa Pritchard, #NFDB
229:Deep theology is the best fuel of devotion; it readily catches fire, and once kindled it burns long. ~ Frederick William Faber, #NFDB
230:Every single Biblical doctrine of theology, directly or indirectly, ultimately has its basis in the book of Genesis. ~ Ken Ham, #NFDB
231:Theology is for homemakers who need to know who God is, who they are, and what this mundane life is all about. ~ Gloria Furman, #NFDB
232:Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under the cover of fiction without their knowing it. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
233:Before you call yourself a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or any other theology, learn to be human first. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
234:I fear theology is--in the words attributed to William Temple--"still in its infancy" when it comes to animals. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
235:Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory. ~ William A Dembski, #NFDB
236:All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
237:The rest is abortion and not-yet-science: which is to say metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
238:Governmental defense of any theology necessarily weakens the legitimacy of both the government and the theology. ~ Taslima Nasrin, #NFDB
239:Herbert Jemson was Methodist of the whole cloth: he was notoriously short on theology and a mile long on good works. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
240:the tight trousers that bulged offensively in the crotch in violation of all rules of theology and geometry. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
241:A robust biblical theology tends to safeguard Christians against the most egregious reductionisms,” says D. A. Carson. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
242:G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “All men matter. You matter. I matter. It’s the hardest thing in theology to believe. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
243:The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. It will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
244:So I offer my definition of theology: theology is the application of Scripture, by persons, to every area of life.11 ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
245:theology requires metaphors and concepts that come from our understanding of nature and therefore from science. ~ William A Dembski, #NFDB
246:Even religion had to invent some kind of science for itself (Theology = The philosophy of divinity) To justify its existence. ~ Rius, #NFDB
247:I flip a cognitive coin while reading Dr. Briggs' take on life, theology, science, and the conception of human life. ~ Asa Don Brown, #NFDB
248:If you don't listen to theology, that won't mean you have no ideas about God, it will mean you have a lot of wrong ones. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
249:One of my former teachers repeatedly reminded us that an imbalance in theology was the same as doctrinal insanity. ~ Charles C Ryrie, #NFDB
250:This is the reason why our Theology is certain: because it seizes us from ourselves and places us outside ourselves. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
251:While some friends declared my faith dead on arrival, others insisted on defibrillation via systematic theology. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
252:Theology, philosophy, metaphysics, and quantum physics are merely ways for God to have his smart people believe in him ~ Jeremy Aldana, #NFDB
253:Today's vivid demonstration of that which ancient Egypt had is not of a technology, it is rather that of a Theology. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
254:Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
255:God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
256:Satan could make an "A" in my Systematic Theology course. He knows the information and knows that the information is true. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
257:theology is the serious and joyful attempt to live blessedly with others, before God, in Christ, through the Spirit ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
258:I had a big event in my personal life. Then I reevaluated and started going to theology class, and then I found my husband. ~ Ali Landry, #NFDB
259:I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy. ~ Al Sharpton, #NFDB
260:The claim to be the infallible mouthpiece of God is as odious to me in art as in theology.. ~ Carl Jung [Letter to Walter Mertens, 1932], #NFDB
261:I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife ~ Kurt Godel, #NFDB
262:The miracle of the Resurrection, and the theology of that miracle, comes first: the biography comes later as a comment on it. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
263:Evangelical theology is modest theology, because it is determined to be so by its object, that is, by him who is its subject. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
264:Grace easily turns to hyper-grace in a world that has lost its view of God's throne room and a biblical theology of sin. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
265:Philosophy — the power of separate thought and the thought of separate power — was never by itself able to supersede theology. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
266:Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
267:The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology—a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
268:If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
269:If you walk in the Spirit, know your Bible, and spend sufficient time alone with God, your theology will take care of itself. ~ R T Kendall, #NFDB
270:In the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
271:And Richard Phillips writes, "Theology bores today's Christians, which is another way of saying we are bored with God himself. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
272:Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
273:I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
274:the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles’ Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
275:Theology is the mistress-science, without which the whole educational structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
276:[I]ndeed, one hears, in early Christian theology, as many echoes of Persian dualism as of Hebrew Puritanism or Greek philosophy. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
277:[...] central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
278:Our theology and experience of the Spirit must be more interwoven if our experienced life of the Spirit is to be more effective. ~ Gordon D Fee, #NFDB
279:The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral perceptions at this hour. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
280:For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
281:I went to Notre Dame. I don't know if that has any relevance, but maybe we all had a little too much philosophy and theology. ~ William Mapother, #NFDB
282:The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
283:A thoughtless or uninformed theology grips and guides our life with just as great a force as does a thoughtful and informed one. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
284:whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
285:If you do not listen to theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones! ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
286:I have become convinced that we must put an end to atonement theology or there will be no future for the Christian faith. This ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
287:A really religious person has no theology. Yes, he has the experience, he has the truth, he has that luminosity, but he has no theology. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
288:The literature of Ug is copious and of high merit, but consists altogether of fiction — mainly history, biography, theology and novels. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
289:The religion of tomorrow will be less concerned with the dogmas of theology and more concerned with the social welfare of humanity. ~ Tommy Douglas, #NFDB
290:We are not a religious tradition with a creed, but a religious movement that has always wedded social justice work to theology ~ James Luther Adams, #NFDB
291:Bonhoeffer was not interested in intellectual abstraction. Theology must lead to the practical aspects of how to live as a Christian. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
292:I have yet to see any good reason to suppose that theology (as opposed to biblical history, literature, etc.) is a subject at all. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
293:Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
294:The atmosphere of our time is fast being cleared of the fumes and deadly gases that arose during the carboniferous age of theology. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
295:When you're writing theology, you have to say everything all the time, otherwise people think you've deliberately missed something out. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
296:Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is more than that, it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
297:The theology of Christmas too easily gets lost under the gay wrappings, yet apart from its theological meaning it really has none at all. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
298:the theology of the Word of God is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is a radically grace-transformed life. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
299:Thomas Aquinas: “Theology is taught by God, teaches of God and leads to God” (Theologia a Deo docetur, Deum docet, et ad Deum ducit). ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
300:Dogma? Faith? These are the right and left pillars of every soul-crushing theology. Theosophists have no dogmas, exact no blind faith. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
301:Catholic theology believes that God gave man free will, and you can't give somebody free will and then send in a play from the sidelines. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
302:I know the established Christian theology... I know the enemy, but the enemy doesn't know me. Thus the enemy has already lost the war. ~ Sun Myung Moon, #NFDB
303:Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
304:Sound theology actually teaches the central importance of love and inclines us to love the God of the Scriptures and other people as well. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
305:The first is the fact that original sin is really original. Not merely in theology but in history it is a thing rooted in the origins. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
306:I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
307:The function of law and theology are the same: to keep the poor from taking back by violence what the rich have stolen by cunning. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
308:Allowing a person or thing to leave your life, without further pain is the basis of humanity. Everything else is the reason (theology). ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
309:Reformed theology belongs to this confessional tradition, and Reformed theologians and churches continue to write confessions even today. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
310:The best theology will not remove mystery from your life, so rest is found in trusting the One who rules, is all, and knows no mystery. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
311:Theology is reflection, a critical attitude. The commitment of love, of service, comes first. Theology follows; it is the second step. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez, #NFDB
312:I'm an enemy of what I call 'computer theology.' There's a class conflict out there. There's a techno-elite that lives in a different world. ~ Walt Mossberg, #NFDB
313:I recall hearing one of my professors in seminary say that one of the best tests of a person's theology was the effect it has on one's prayers. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
314:What is the difference between a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Theology? One prescribes drugs, while the other might as well be on drugs. ~ Pat Condell, #NFDB
315:I think everyone who has an interest in Reformed theology, or just in Christian theology more generally, should read John Calvin Institutes. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
316:Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
317:The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
318:As the grace grows nearer my theology is growing strangely simple, and it begins and ends with Christ as the only Savior of the lost. ~ Henry Benjamin Whipple, #NFDB
319:Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
320:To so many people, the Lord is in danger of being no more than a patron saint of our systematic theology instead of the Christ Who is our life. ~ W Ian Thomas, #NFDB
321:To so many people, the Lord is in danger of being no more than a patron saint of our systematic theology instead of the Christ who is our life. ~ W Ian Thomas, #NFDB
322:Like all successful organizations—be they businesses or religions—SeaWorld had its holy writ, a kind of theology at the heart of its existence. ~ John Hargrove, #NFDB
323:Philosophy finds itself to be no longer anything but the heir to a fabulous mystical theology, but missing a God and wiping the slate clean. ~ Georges Bataille, #NFDB
324:The Bible gives us a theology which is more human than Calvinism, and more divine than Arminianism, and more Christian than either of them.1243 ~ Philip Schaff, #NFDB
325:The sociology of many white communities shapes the theology of their churches, making them “conformed to the world” and disobedient to the gospel. ~ Jim Wallis, #NFDB
326:What makes you a Christian is whether or not you really are in accord with biblical theology and whether you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour. ~ Walter Martin, #NFDB
327:But biblical and other ancient Near Eastern sources do not share Enlightenment theology of sophisticated intellectuals (ancient and modern). ~ Richard A Horsley, #NFDB
328:Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements. ~ Kenneth Lee Pike, #NFDB
329:Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
330:Theology is an attempt to explain a subject by men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
331:All theology is a kind of birthday
Each one who is born
Comes into the world as a question
For which old answers
Are not sufficient… ~ Thomas Merton,#NFDB
332:Indifference to all the refinements of life--it's really shocking. Just Calvinism, that's all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin's theology. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
333:One of the main tasks of theology is to find words that do not divide but unite, that do not create conflict but unity, that do not hurt but heal. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
334:The minute your functional theology tells you that God is not good, it’s very hard to hold on to the confessional theology that declares he is. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
335:Theology, however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialized world ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
336:Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
~ Robert Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice, (1984).,#NFDB
337:Music is a fair and glorious gift of God. I am strongly persuaded that after theology, there is no art which can be placed on the level with music. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
338:Profound theology doesn’t make anyone righteous; what pleases me is an exemplary life. Regret for wrongdoing is better than knowing its definition. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
339: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. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
340:Theology created the fiction of Satan which represents the revolt if an infinite being against the existence of an absolute infinity, against God. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
341:We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of women within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
342:Liberation Theology led nowhere because it was neither a revolutionary nor a religious movement, but involved a weak, self-cancelling mixture of each. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
343:We need theology in addition to Scripture because God has authorized teaching in the church, and because we need that teaching to mature in the faith. ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
344:The central belief of liberation theology - to provide a preferential option for the poor...providing medicine in the places that needed it the most... ~ Tracy Kidder, #NFDB
345:Theology, not morality, is the first business on the church's agenda of reform, and the church, not society, is the first target of divine criticism. ~ Michael Horton, #NFDB
346:The people don’t care about theology. They are passion and fear and anger and they need gods to fuel that passion, soothe that fear, stoke that anger. ~ Max Gladstone, #NFDB
347:Psychology as a science has its limitations, and, as the logical consequence of theology is mysticism, so the ultimate consequence of psychology is love. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
348:The best Reformed theology isn't just about careful arguments for theologically sophisticated conclusions. It is about how to live the Christian life. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
349:The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, #NFDB
350:The Giza Plateau was an observatory machine which were engineered using a level of sophistication that is found in Theology rather than in Technology. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
351:The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
352:The humanities need to be defended today against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology. ~ Irving Babbitt, #NFDB
353:Dante thought a state of eternal, rapturous contemplation, and few have proffered more specifics than that. Post-redemption theology seems an oxymoron. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
354:God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good—and is no sillier than any other theology. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
355:most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology etc. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
356:God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
357:The constant challenge in Christian theology is to preach the whole counsel of God, while not emphazing one point of doctrine in a way that denies another. ~ Joel R Beeke, #NFDB
358:Theology is to-day recognised to be the instrument of myth, philosophy to be the instrument of science. ~ Garrigue Masaryk, Thomas (1919), The Spirit of Russia, I, p. 208, #NFDB
359:All good and faithful theology comes from God, who is the ultimate theologian—the only one who can, without weakness or misunderstanding, speak of himself. ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
360:Die Theologie ist die Anthropologie. - Theology is Anthropology. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity ["Wesen des Christenthums"], Preface to the 2nd Ed. (1843), #NFDB
361:Isaac Newton, the man who rejected the demonic Aryan theology of the Trinity and were recompensed by The Lord with CALCULUS as a reward for his fidelity. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
362:[John] Calvin's Institutes is often called a summary of Christian piety. You can't say that about many modern works of theology. You can say it of Calvin. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
363:The atonement chapter [from the book Saving Calvinism] shows how there are real riches in Reformed theology that most Christians today have no idea about. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
364:We are supposed to feel the weight and the power of the truth revealed in Scripture. Theology should do more than inform us—it should warm and stir our hearts. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
365:Liberation Theology needs to be understood as a continuing process of re-contextualisation, a permanent exercise of serious doubting in theology. By ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
366:The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more child-like will be our faith ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
367:Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundations and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received. ~ Paul Tillich, #NFDB
368:Almost the whole of Christian theology could perhaps be deduced from the two facts (a) That men make coarse jokes, and (b) That they feel the dead to be uncanny. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
369:I am a student of universal spiritual principles, and I read theology and spiritual writings, so my grasp of basic spiritual principles is fairly good. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
370:Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error. ~ Mortimer Adler, #NFDB
371:We ought not speak too long about God with our minds before we turn and speak to God from our heart. We must stir a lot of prayer into the stew of our theology. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
372:Faith is certainly not theology to me. Church is just one of the places I look for answers to the only real question I have: Why do we long for meaning? For ~ Frank Schaeffer, #NFDB
373:Reformed theology is committed to Christianity as a revealed faith, a faith that rests not on human insight but on information that comes to us from God himself. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
374:Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man? ~ Darrel Ray, #NFDB
375:I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything especially as I am now so much occupied with theology but I don't see my way to your conclusion. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
376:The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more child-like will be our faith ~ John Gresham Machen, #NFDB
377:Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
378:The people has no definite disbelief in the temples of theology. The people has a very fiery and practical disbelief in the temples of physical science. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
379:Promised Land theology becomes an earthbound reality only to those who cash in their fear and complacency for the one ticket out of their long-inhabited wilderness. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
380:The world doesn’t judge us by our theology; it judges us by our behavior. The validity of Scripture in the world’s view is determined by how it affects us. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
381: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. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
382:If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
383:In Christian theology, kenosis (Greek: κένωσις, kénōsis, lit. emptiness) is the self-emptying of ones own will and becoming entirely receptive to Gods divine will.
~ Wikipedia,#NFDB
384:Surely there must come a time when we will acknowledge the obvious: theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
385:Because patriarchy uses redemptive theology to legitimate itself, all believers who embrace the redeemer complex are accessory to the master scheme of domination. ~ John Lamb Lash, #NFDB
386:True theology is “teaching which accords with godliness” (1 Tim. 6:3), and theology when studied rightly will lead to growth in our Christian lives, and to worship. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
387:You will find all true theology summed up in these two short sentences: salvation is all of the grace of God; damnation is all of the will of man.”–1895, ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
388:For years I believed the bumper sticker theology that told me I was a “saved sinner” instead of the truth that I am now a saint (member of God’s family) who still sins. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
389:Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honor. And we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
390:One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. ~ Robert A. Heinlein (1974). Time Enough for Love (Twelfth Printing ed.). New York: Berkeley Medallion. p. 243. ISBN 9780425024935., #NFDB
391:Sociologists and anthropologists tell us that religion has three dimensions: creed, code, and cult; or words, works, and worship; or theology, morality, and liturgy. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
392:God helps those who help themselves' is common sense, 'God helps those who cannot help themselves' is sound theology, and 'God helps all the living', a simple ideation. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
393:Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
394:She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
395:Theology is not reserved for those in the academy; it is an aspect of thought and conversation for all who live and breathe, who wrestle and fear, who hope and pray. ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
396:We must always, always, remember that the theology of the Word of God is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is a radically grace-transformed ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
397:I wouldn't say philosophy and theology are dead. Brain science doesn't invent new philosophies but it helps remind us which of our existing philosophies are more true. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
398:Once the highest view of Scripture is abandoned by any theologian, group, denomination, or church, the downhill slide in both its theology and practice is inevitable. ~ James R White, #NFDB
399:To be disrespectful of tradition and of historical theology is to be disrespectful of the Holy Spirit who has been actively enlightening the church in every century. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
400:Me? You are laughing at me. Put your hand here. This has no theology.' I mocked myself while I made love. I flung myself into pleasure like a suicide on to a pavement. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
401:Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religious. The scientific point of view cannot fit any of these things, not even science itself. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
402:I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
403:Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
404:Sadducees viewed the Jewish adoption of the resurrection doctrine as traditionalist Christians regard suggestions that reincarnation be worked into Christian theology. ~ Robert M Price, #NFDB
405:The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty, and the more you will find worship welling up within you. That's why theology and worship belong together. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
406:We cannot become starched Christians, too polite, who speak of theology calmly over tea. We have to become courageous Christians and seek out those (who need help most). ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
407:Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #NFDB
408:In Islamic theology, the phallic symbol is very important. Your biggest phallic symbol is New York City and your tallest building will be the phallic symbol they will hit. ~ Isser Harel, #NFDB
409:the necessity of systematic theology for teaching what the Bible says comes about primarily because we are finite in our memory and in the amount of time at our disposal. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
410:When it comes to the hijab - why to wear it, whether to wear it, how to wear it - there is theology and then there is practice, and there is huge diversity in both. ~ Randa Abdel Fattah, #NFDB
411:The New Testament writers were not religious thinkers who speculated on matters of doctrine. Rather, theology was born out of necessity—the necessity of preaching the gospel. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
412:Theology isn't what drove them to their...theology." author writes on dealing with the embittering experience of those who protect a wounded place with abstract arguments. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
413:One moment of prayer, of weak worship, confused contrition, tepid thanksgiving, or pitiful petition will bring us closer to God than all the books of theology in the world. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
414: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. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
415:The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
416:Rest assured that there is nothing new in theology except that which is false; and that the facts of theology are today what they were eighteen hundred years ago. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
417:The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
418:Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
419:James 2:19- 'You believe there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that- and shudder.' God doesn't just want us to have good theology; He wants us to know and love Him. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
420:One of the primary services the arts can render to theology is their integrative power, their ability to interrelate the intellect with the other facets of our human makeup. ~ Jeremy Begbie, #NFDB
421:When a denomination begins to consider doctrine divisive, theology troublesome, and convictions inconvenient, consider that denomination on its way to a well-deserved death. ~ Albert Mohler, #NFDB
422:A general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the god portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy much less of a universe. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
423: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[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
424:The sensayer frowned. “You’re saying you discuss theology while having sex.”
“For beginners it’s before and after mostly, managing it during sex takes skill and concentration. ~ Ada Palmer,#NFDB
425:A theology of unknowing is necessary for a theology of knowing because without it God would not be worshipped as infinite but rather as a creature, and that would be idolatry.10 ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
426:Natural Theology says not only look up and look out-it also says look down and look in, and you will find the proofs of the reality of God in the depth of your own nature. ~ Christopher Dawson, #NFDB
427:Progressive revelation views the Bible not as a textbook on theology but as the continually unfolding revelation of God given by various means throughout the successive ages. ~ Charles C Ryrie, #NFDB
428:Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God? ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
429:Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
430:Conservative New Testament studies could also provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to German biblical criticism and to the liberal theology that accompanied it ~ John Gresham Machen, #NFDB
431:I do think that it is impossible to do Christian theology with integrity in America without asking the question, What has the gospel to do with the black struggle for liberation? ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
432:It is impossible to avoid the suspicion that historical Jesus research is a very safe place to do theology and call it history, to do autobiography and call it biography. ~ John Dominic Crossan, #NFDB
433:The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way. ~ William James, #NFDB
434:What has been excluded from Liberation Theology has been the result of a selective process of contexts of poverty and experiences of marginalisation in the continent. For ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
435:John Paul II made it clear that... liberation theology based on the teaching of Jesus Christ was necessary, but liberation theology that used a Marxist analysis was unacceptable. ~ Claudio Hummes, #NFDB
436:Virtually the whole of the scriptures and the understanding of the whole of theology—the entire Christian life, even—depends upon the true understanding of the law and the gospel. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
437:I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to be dry and boring. Theology is the study of God and all his works! Theology is meant to be lived and prayed and sung! All ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
438:The problem with a Separation Theology is that it produces a Separation Cosmology, a way of looking at all of life that says that everything is separate from everything else. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
439:Perhaps it’s not theology we’re missing, but rather theological integrity. Many have the knowledge but lack the courage to admit the discrepancy between what we know and how we live. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
440:Reformed theology’s doctrine of God and its emphasis on all of His attributes at every point in the unfolding of salvation sets it apart from other Christian understandings of the Lord. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
441:History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of. ~ Robert A. Heinlein (1973). Time Enough for Love. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 13. ISBN 9780399111518., #NFDB
442:Theology is faith seeking understanding, but understanding is more than theoretical. If we really grasp who and where we are as disciples, we should know how to live out our faith. ~ Kevin Vanhoozer, #NFDB
443:My theology is such that the God who loves Israel and will not forsake Israel - which is why I want to see Israel have a secure nation with secure borders - also loves the Palestinians. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
444:Theology is Anthropology... [T]he distinction which is made, or rather supposed to be made, between the theological and anthropological predicates resolves itself into an absurdity. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
445:Theology is in disrepute among most Western intellectuals. The word is taken to mean a passe form of religious thinking that embraces irrationality and dogmatism. So too, Scholasticism. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
446:I don't know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he'd choose the starving kids in Haiti. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
447:For students who have not been required to confess that it is easier to learn theology then live it, it is tempting to think maturity is more a matter of knowing in a matter of living ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
448:With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
449:Maybe you are beginning to sense that if your experience of sin is not all that bitter, and your experience of marriage not all that sweet, maybe your theology is not all that it should be. ~ Dave Harvey, #NFDB
450:I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
451:A theology which is not based on revelation as a given reality but treats God as an idea would be as mad as a zoology which is no longer sure of the physical, tangible existence of animals. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
452:Bad theology dishonors God and hurts people. Churches that sever the root of truth may flourish for a season, but they will wither eventually or turn into something besides a Christian church. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
453:To my mind [ Jonathan Edwards] is an interesting figure because he is both a canonical Reformed thinker, and yet also someone that pushed the envelope in a number of key areas of theology. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
454:When I was a young college teacher in my mid-twenties, an older colleague delighted in characterizing post-Enlightenment theology as “flat-tire theology”—“All the pneuma has gone out of it. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
455:It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years, it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which hampered it. ~ Mary Hesse, #NFDB
456:Perhaps the greatest lesson [Huxley] learned from reading Carlyle was that real religion, that emotive feeling for Truth and Beauty, could flourish in the absence of an idolatrous theology. ~ Adrian Desmond, #NFDB
457:To theology, … only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), Lecture 2, p. 11., #NFDB
458:Why shouldn't a mystical theology be possible? 'I want to touch God or become God,' I declared in my journal. All through that year I abandoned myself intermittently to these deliriums. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
459:An overemphasis upon imminence in preaching has banished transcendence and tended to a theology of God being technically present as an observer but effectively absent as a participant. When ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
460:Even if nothing worse than wasted mental effort could be laid to the charge of theology, that alone ought to be sufficient to banish it from the earth, as one of the worst enemies of mankind. ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
461:I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
462:Me and my father went through a war period where we wasn't talking. He wanted me to go to theology school - I didn't want to go. I wanted to do music. I told him I was a minister through music. ~ Wyclef Jean, #NFDB
463:A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
464:Bonhoeffer’s theology had always leaned toward the incarnational view that did not eschew “the world,” but that saw it as God’s good creation to be enjoyed and celebrated, not merely transcended. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
465:Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
466:Perhaps the gut issue is not how much theology we have studied or how much Scripture we have memorized. All that really matters is this: Have you experienced the furious longing of God or not? ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
467:But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren’t a priest.” “What?” asked the thief, almost gaping. “You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
468:In too many modern churches there is no emphasis on theology at all. There is a kind of justification by works or by keeping up with modern trends anything that will drag in a few more people. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
469:It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
470:One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973). This is sometimes misquoted as One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.,#NFDB
471:Possibly the most famous quote in all of Orthodox theology comes from Athanasius (c. 293–373), who in his book, On the Incarnation, wrote of Christ, “For he was made man so that we might become God. ~ Tony Jones, #NFDB
472:ANOTHER characteristic of the devil’s moral theology is the exaggeration of all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong. These distinctions become irreducible divisions. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
473:I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
474:I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field. ~ William O Douglas, #NFDB
475:For the next ten minutes we talked theology in the green corn while early summer clouds—the best clouds, the ones that float like schooners—sailed slowly above us, trailing their shadows like wakes. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
476:If the main thing the next generations know about Jewish history is that we were persecuted and suffered, they will lose sight of the tremendous heritage of Jewish culture, theology, and wisdom. ~ Deborah Lipstadt, #NFDB
477:I have, alas! Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence too, And to my cost Theology, With ardent labor, studied through. And here I stand, with all my lore, Poor fool, no wiser than before. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
478:Influential Swiss theologian and leader of *dialectical theology, known for, among other things, his opposition to liberalism, his emphatic Christocentrism and his fresh approach to *revelation. He ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
479:The purpose of theology is not to tickle our intellects but to instruct us in the ways of God, so that we can grow up into maturity and fullness of obedience to Him. That is why we engage in theology. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
480:The solution is to realize that theology is a kind of misdescribed anthropology. What we believe of God is really true of ourselves. Thus humanity can regain its essence, which in religion it has lost. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
481:Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
482:English is so past,’ she said. ‘Sure, we need people who can write about what we do, but they don’t have to be English graduates. Theology graduates who don’t believe any of it – that would be useful. ~ Ken MacLeod, #NFDB
483: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. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
484:J. B. Jackson, a historian of landscapes, makes a crucial point about such things in his essay “The Necessity for Ruins.” Things in decay, he says, express a theology of birth, death, and redemption. ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
485:[Science] must be amoral by its very nature: The minute it begins separating facts into the two categories of good ones and bad ones it ceases to be science and becomes a mere nuisance, like theology. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
486:the deeper I immersed myself in evangelical theology, the more I felt compelled to mistrust many sectors of society. Evolution and the Big Bang became ideologies to confront, not theories to understand. ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
487:Well, it's because I gladly acknowledge some ideas that are part of process theology, but which I think are not tied to all the details of process thought, and are very illuminating and helpful. ~ John Polkinghorne, #NFDB
488:When I was in seminary," Father Edward had told other guests around the table when he was purchasing his books, "my spiritual director told me not to read theology. 'Read novels,' he said, and I have. ~ Gail Godwin, #NFDB
489:if they believe that their fortunes are inversely correlated with the foreigners’ fortunes, that the foreigners have to lose for them to win—then their theology will probably be less inclusive. Let’s ~ Robert Wright, #NFDB
490:It has been well observed that Constantine wrote as a tolerant and liberal-minded statesman, but he certainly was not properly informed on delicate matters of theology. ~ Manly P Hall, The Bible, the Story of a Book, #NFDB
491:One compelling alternative to land theology is the recognition that Judaism consists most elementally in interpretation of and obedience to the Torah in its requirements of justice and holiness. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
492:Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunise against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
493:Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
494:You have to realize that, compared with the Korean brand of Confucianism, Christianity is a walk in the park. Compared with what came before, Protestantism is almost a freaking liberation theology. ~ Gary Shteyngart, #NFDB
495:Christian theology, in other words, always has a certain ineradicable complexity, which has serious implications for the modern evangelical predilection for simple and very brief statements of faith. ~ Carl R Trueman, #NFDB
496:Theology is either true everywhere or it isn’t true anywhere. This helps untangle us from the American God Narrative and sets God free to be God instead of the My-God-in-a-Pocket I carried for so long. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
497:Christianity ... that musty old theology, which already has its grave clothes on, and is about to be buried... A wall of Bible, brimstone, church and corruption has hitherto hemmed women into nothingness. ~ Lucy Stone, #NFDB
498:Fire-priests have an uncomplicated theology; immolating people purifies them from sin, so the more people you burn to death the less sin there is in the world, and the more holy you are for doing it ~ Graydon Saunders, #NFDB
499:the theology of the Word of God was never intended to be an end in itself, but a means to an end, and that end is a radically transformed life. The purpose of theology is not knowledge but holiness. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
500:WHEN IT COMES TO SPIRITUALITY, YOU DO WHAT' YOU DO BECAUSE you believe what you believe. Regardless of the importance you consciously place upon it, theology drives and determines your spirituality. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
501:By Tertullian’s time, the catholic (universal) church was recognized as a collection of any churches that had an affection for each other based on a shared theology passed down from apostolic times. ~ William J Bennett, #NFDB
502:In Reformed theology, if God is not sovereign over the entire created order, then he is not sovereign at all. The term sovereignty too easily becomes a chimera. If God is not sovereign, then he is not God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
503:Barth's approach tears up any possibility of dialogue between faith and unfaith or between theology and other human sciences. Theology just says what it says on the basis of scripture, and that's that. ~ George Pattison, #NFDB
504:The Protestant theology of Martin Luther was a thing that no modern Protestant would be seen dead in a field with; or if the phrase be too flippant, would be specially anxious to touch with a barge-pole. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
505:The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to prove God's existence apart from divine revelation. ~ William Lane Craig, #NFDB
506:The trouble with a lot of modern theology and a lot of modern thinking about God, is that we think of God a sort of being like ourselves, but bigger and better with likes and dislikes similar to our own. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
507:Formal theological teaching in Africa is deeply rooted in the Western missionary movement . However, in practice, the church wrestles with how to bring theology to bear on the realities it faces in the context. ~ Ed McBain, #NFDB
508:It appears likely that there was no normative pattern of church government in the apostolic age, and that the organizational structure of the church is no essential element in the theology of the church. ~ George Eldon Ladd, #NFDB
509:To Memor philosophy was like a blind being searching a dark room for an unknown, black beast. When philosophy verged into theology, it was like the same predicament, but the black beast did not even exist. ~ Gregory Benford, #NFDB
510:We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
511:But as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest."
"What?" asked the thief, almost gaping.
"You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology. ~ G K Chesterton,#NFDB
512:Indians, of course, have no "theology," and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
513:No man should dogmatize except on the subject of theology. Here he can take his stand, and by throwing the burden of proof on the opposition, he is invincible. We have to die to find out whether he is right. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
514:People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
515:A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
516:I had lots of books, most of them nonfiction, because I’d always felt that in nonfiction, specifically in the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and theology, I might find clues about ways to live my life. ~ Lauren Slater, #NFDB
517:I'm not sure that I've ever been drawn to the academic life as such. Theology has been a matter of survival for me. If I have a carapace of academic presentability, it is thanks to the wonderful teachers I had. ~ James Alison, #NFDB
518:Science is a limited way of knowing, looking at just the natural world and natural causes. There are a lot of ways human beings understand the universe - through literature, theology, aesthetics, art or music. ~ Eugenie Scott, #NFDB
519:theology still maintained its supremacy as the chief subject of human interest, other interests were rapidly growing up alongside of it, the most prominent being the study of classical literature. Besides ~ Ernest Belfort Bax, #NFDB
520:The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
521:I knew a witty physician who found theology in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was a disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
522:The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking "But I never knew before. I never dreamed...." I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas Aquinas said of all his own theology, "It reminds me of straw. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
523:..this noticeable in the South, where theology
and religious philosophy are on this account a long way behind the North, and where the religion of the poor whites is a plain copy of Negro thought and methods. ~ W E B Du Bois,#NFDB
524:Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
525:Wherever there is abuse there is also corruption. Politics, philosophy, theology, science, industry, any field with the potential to affect the well-being of others can be destroyed by abuse and saved by good will. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
526:You can't see the world the way you ought to if you let yourself do that. Any judgement of the kind is a great presumption. And presumption is a very grave sin. I believe this is sound theology, in its way. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
527:I have, alas! Philosophy,
Medicine, Jurisprudence too,
And to my cost Theology,
With ardent labor, studied through.
And here I stand, with all my lore,
Poor fool, no wiser than before. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,#NFDB
528:As far as theology is concerned, Christian understanding of the meaning of God, Christ, redemption, morality, and human existence is still weighed down by both prescientific and early modern cosmological assumptions. ~ Ilia Delio, #NFDB
529:Jake’s opinion is based on a theology I do not agree with. But like a lot of theologies it can do duty as a cracked mirror or a smudged lens through which we might be able to glimpse things that are informative. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
530:Now this creative power I think is the Holy Ghost. My theology may not be very accurate, but that is how I think of it. I know that William Blake called this creative power the Imagination, and he said it was God. ~ Brenda Ueland, #NFDB
531:The critical principle of feminist theology is the promotion of the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full humanity of women is, therefore, appraised as not redemptive. ~ Rosemary Radford Ruether, #NFDB
532:What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all? ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
533:I've studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,—
And even, alas! Theology,—
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before: ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,#NFDB
534:Theology is but a science of applied to God. As schools change theology must necessarily change. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas of truth are not. Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
535:What lay at the bottom of their savagery, of course, was their idiotic belief in Calvinism—beyond question the most brutal and barbaric theology ever subscribed to by mortal man, whether in or out of the African bush. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
536:All true knowledge of God begins with the knowledge of his hiddenness. ~ Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology. Volume II: The Theology of Israel's Prophetic Traditions (1960). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 377, #NFDB
537:Finally, we must understand that theology is never an end in itself, but a means to an end, the end that we would progressively become like the One who is the ultimate definition of what love is and what love does. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
538:For many decades now - and certainly during my adult life in academe - the Western intellectual world has not been convinced that theology is a pursuit that can be engaged in with intellectual honesty and integrity. ~ Arthur Peacocke, #NFDB
539:God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology.
~ Robert Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Time Enough for Love (1973).,#NFDB
540:My theology is based on what I tell my Sunday-school kids - that they are loved and chosen, AS IS, now, today. That the moment is holy, sacred, and all there is - and that we are only as sick as our secrets. So TELL IT. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
541:Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic. ~ Jennifer Stone, #NFDB
542:The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick, #NFDB
543:The question rather is how we should do science and theology in light of the impending collapse of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific naturalism. These ideologies are on the way out. They are on the way out. ~ William A Dembski, #NFDB
544:World travel and getting to know clergy of all denominations has helped mold me into an ecumenical being. We're separated by theology and, in some instances, culture and race, but all that means nothing to me any more. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
545:The most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
546:The very first step to a correct understanding of the Christian theology of contemplation is to grasp clearly the unity of God and man in Christ, which of course presupposes the equally crucial unity of man in himself. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
547:Here is the central error of most human theology: You think that one day you are going to meet God. You imagine that you are one day going to get back Home. You are not going to get back Home. You never left Home. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
548:In the bosom of the Church today, 'integralists' are those who do not understand that Christianity needs a new theology, and 'progressives' are those who do not understand that the new theology must be Christian. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila, #NFDB
549:No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian has a theology. The issue, then, is not, dowe want to have a theology? That's a given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology.? Do we embrace true or false doctrine? ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
550:The gospel preached during every television show is 'You only go around once in life, so get all the gusto you can.' It is a statement about theology; it is a statement about beer. It's lousy beer and even worse theology. ~ John Silber, #NFDB
551:The Summa Theologiae is not, as is sometimes supposed, a potpourri of theology and philosophy; it is wholly a Summa of Theology concerned with the Sacra Doctrina, the Holy Teaching of salvation given by God’s revelation. ~ Brian Davies, #NFDB
552:Thus moral theology leads us four steps deeper than law. To fulfill the moral law, we need love. To get love, we need union with God. To get union with God, we need the new birth. And to get the new birth, we need faith. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
553:Every Christian must strive to arrive at beliefs about God that faithfully reflect the realities of his or her life and experience, so that each may know how to live effectively before him in his world. That’s theology! ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
554:Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
555:How to read writers on writing: With respect, amusement, and skepticism. They will contradict one another-as they should-for each writer brings an individual history to the writing task. There is no single theology here. ~ Donald Murray, #NFDB
556:If the Gospel of Jesus is relational, that is, if our brokenness will be fixed not by our understanding of theology but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only Heaven knows. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
557:If we look into the matter of how Christian theology rose in the beginning, the Christian Church was always already earlier, and thus even now for each individual the Christian Church is earlier than theology. ~ Friedrich Schleiermacher, #NFDB
558:Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #NFDB
559:Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history. ~ John Polkinghorne, #NFDB
560:Therefore you don’t have a single answer to your questions?” “Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris.” “In Paris do they always have the true answer?” “Never,” William said, “but they are very sure of their errors. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
561:Edwards believed his Biblical theology was, in fact, a true rendering of reality, and therefore could stand confidently in the marketplace of philosophical ideas and give an account of itself--which in his hands it would do. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
562:Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are. ~ James A Baldwin, #NFDB
563:Most of the great universities of the West were founded with the conviction that theology is the queen of the disciplines. (...) Now, in the latter part of the twentieth century, that tradition has almost disappeared. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge, #NFDB
564:The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous. ~ William James, #NFDB
565:To be Biblically balanced is to let our theology and preaching be proportioned by the Bible's radically disproportionate focus on God's saving love for sinners seen and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ. ~ Tullian Tchividjian, #NFDB
566:What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
567:When Christians faced oppression at the hands of Roman imperialists, they did what Jews had done when they faced oppression at the hands of Babylonian imperialists: dreamed of vengeance and enshrined the dream in theology. ~ Robert Wright, #NFDB
568:I begin with a singular and passionate conviction: that the proper aim of all true theology is doxology. Theology that does not begin and end in worship is not biblical at all, but is rather the product of western philosophy. ~ Gordon D Fee, #NFDB
569:I do remember seeing Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar, one of those. It was a liberation theology venue. Anything radical seemed to be accepted there. I definitely picked up the idea there that you should question authority. ~ Ian MacKaye, #NFDB
570:I think that it's unfortunate that we have allowed politics to use theology to hit areas that we sincerely want to support. But I think that they are using us to some degree because they are using what concerns us to isolate us. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
571:memories of her parents would sneak up on her and hit her from behind at odd moments, sometimes for the most inane of reasons. One of her friends in Iceland, a theology student named Sigridur, had called them “grief tackles, ~ Sarah Wendell, #NFDB
572:The everyday lives of people always provide us with a starting point for a process of doing a contextual theology without exclusions, in this case without the exclusion of sexuality struggling in the midst of misery. ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
573:The theology of glory is inseparably linked with the theology of the Cross. The Suffering Servant has the great mission to bring God’s light to the world. Yet it is in the darkness of the Cross that this mission is fulfilled. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
574:Two erroneous impressions ... seem to be current among certain groups of uninformed persons. The first is that religion today stands for mediaeval theology; the second that science is materialistic and irreligious. ~ Robert Andrews Millikan, #NFDB
575:Children born to-day may see the beginnings of a genuine state church in the Republic, with a hierarchy of live wires and a purely American theology. I regret that I am too old to wait for it, for if it comes it will be a lulu. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
576:Now pastor Jón Prímus laughed. Philosophy and theology have no effect on him, much less plain common sense. Impossible to convince this man by arguments. But humour he always listens to, even though it be ill humour. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
577:The more rigid and exclusive one makes the border between philosophy and theology, the more that distinction itself has to fall on the side of theology, and the more inaccessible that very distinction becomes to philosophy ~ Gregory B Sadler, #NFDB
578:The problem with capitalism is that "we have a global theology without morality, without a Bible." And that's dangerous, he warns - "we're not going to be able to exist in a global context if we are the bastards of our business. ~ Joel Bakan, #NFDB
579:Church history has repeatedly and clearly proven one thing: Once the highest view of Scripture is abandoned by any theologian, group, denomination, or church, the downhill slide in both its theology and practice is inevitable. ~ James R White, #NFDB
580:Everyone reads, everyone hears things discussed. Consequently, if you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones--bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
581:Well, that's Philosophy I've read,
And Law and Medicine, and I fear
Theology, too, from A to Z;
Hard studies all, that have cost me dear.
And so I sit, poor silly man
No wiser now than when I began. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,#NFDB
582:Fulfilling Jesus’s command to make disciples is about more than having the right theology or well-developed teaching points. Remember that if you “understand all mysteries and all knowledge” yet don’t have love, you are nothing. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
583:It is not opinions that man needs: it is TRUTH. It is not theology; it is God. It is not religion: it is Christ. It is not literature and science; but the knowledge of the free love of God in the gift of His only-begotten Son. ~ Horatius Bonar, #NFDB
584:The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
585:This is the historical reality of the soul, which, unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision, and constraint. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
586:He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.” “In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
587:As these star groups do not resemble, in most cases, the creature or symbol assigned to them, the origin of the system must have been an arbitrary allocation according to the laws of ancient theology. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
588:H. Richard Niebuhr’s critical description of liberal theology in general has become a classic: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministration of a Christ without a cross.”[181] ~ Daryl Aaron, #NFDB
589:I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong. God gave man a mouth to receive bread, hands to feed it, and his hand has a right to carry bread to his mouth without controversy. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
590:It’s led me to believe that one of the surest signs of a dysfunctional church is perpetual navel gazing. When everything is about us—our theology, our pastor, our building, our ministries, our finances—something is sure to go wrong. ~ Mike Duran, #NFDB
591:The crisis of the church is not at its deepest level a crisis of authority, or a crisis of dogmatic theology. It is a crisis of powerlessness in which our sole recourse is to call on the help and inward power of the Holy Spirit. ~ James K Baxter, #NFDB
592:One of the things I try to do is take seriously some of the forms of American religion that people consider to be shallow and try and figure out why they have such a strong appeal and tease out the theology they actually represent. ~ Ross Douthat, #NFDB
593:Prayer and Theology are inseparable. True Theology is the adoration offered by the intellect. The intellect clarifies the moment of prayer, but only prayer can give it the fervor of the Spirit. Theology is light, prayer is fire. ~ Olivier Clement, #NFDB
594:The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we do - what we're really good at, which is - which is theology and morality. ~ Rick Santorum, #NFDB
595:THEOLOGY IS THE study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study man and his ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
596:In a wonderful cartoon, Calvin creates a theology to counter his mother's insistence that he eat his chicken dinner. Calvin shouts: "What if we die and it turns out that God is a big chicken? What then? Eternal consequences. That's what! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
597:I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by. ~ Martin Rees, #NFDB
598:Our ‘theological’ musings can thus be called a/theological insomuch as they acknowledge that we must still speak of God (theology, as traditionally understood) while also recognizing that this speech fails to define God (a/theology). ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
599:The study of theology is simply the study of the character of God, whose crowning virtue is love. Sound theology actually teaches the central importance of love and inclines us to love the God of the Scriptures and other people as well. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
600:We learned, in the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, that God is “in heaven.” But we also learned that God is everywhere—that is, omnipresent. When one combines the two, the result is panentheism. It is orthodox Christian theology. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
601:The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
602:This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed— because ‘Thou mayest. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
603:Ecology is the new theology. Big history is the new Genesis. Those who fail to understand that evidence is modern-day Scripture, and that the world we live in is an honorable world, betray God and humanity in the most egregious of ways. ~ Michael Dowd, #NFDB
604:There is superstition in science quite as much as there is superstition in theology, and it is all the more dangerous because those suffering from it are profoundly convinced that they are freeing themselves from all superstition. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, #NFDB
605:To be engrossed by something outside the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass--seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
606:In our generation there is no agreed-upon framework. All issues are up for grabs. Morality no longer has any broad-based theology upon which to rest its case. We are no longer a 'Christian nation,' not even a 'Judeo-Christian culture.' ~ F LaGard Smith, #NFDB
607:That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
608:This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But i have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
609:I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
~ Robert Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, (1961).Quotes About Religion & Theology,#NFDB
610:The priest looked puzzled also, as if at his own thoughts; he sat with knotted brow and then said abruptly: ‘You see, it’s so easy to be misunderstood. All men matter. You matter. I matter. It’s the hardest thing in theology to believe. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
611:Western religion and theology represent a synthesis of two different traditions, the Hebraic tradition of religious revelation, which is represented by the Bible, and the Hellenic tradition of metaphysical or natural theology. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson, #NFDB
612:I believe in the gospel of Good Living. You cannot make any god happy by fasting. Let us have good food, and let us have it well cooked — and it is a thousand times better to know how to cook than it is to understand any theology in the world. ~ Tim Page, #NFDB
613:Because religious training means credulity training, churches should not be surprised to find that so many of their congregations accept astrology as readily as theology, or a channeled Atlantean priest as readily as a biblical prophet. ~ Barbara G Walker, #NFDB
614:I've come to learn that theology matters. It matters not because we want to impress people, but because what we know about God shapes the way we think and live. Theology matters because if we get it wrong then our whole life will be wrong. ~ Joshua Harris, #NFDB
615:In anticipation, H. Richard Niebuhr’s critical description of liberal theology in general has become a classic: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministration of a Christ without a cross. ~ Daryl Aaron, #NFDB
616:Serious doubting as a theological method re-contextualises Liberation Theology by questioning those very hermeneutical principles which led liberationists to be indifferent to the reality of lemon vendors in the first place. Amongst ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
617:The evolutionary facts about the emergence of man, e.g., the sudden appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-Magnon man) no more than 35 thousand years ago, are as spectacular as the account in Genesis and allow hardly less room for theology. ~ Walker Percy, #NFDB
618:The proper understanding of human thinking and reasoning, then, must begin with a proper understanding of creation, and therefore of the Creator. In other words, the proper understanding of logic requires a proper understanding of theology. ~ Joel McDurmon, #NFDB
619:The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men, this postulate has met with little opposition. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
620:If you are a Christian, you are a theologian. You have no choice. Theology is simply knowing about God. In fact, since Christians are called to grow in their knowledge of God, part of the very goal of the Christian life is theology. Theology ~ James R White, #NFDB
621:In my eyes, concepts of theology have only as much value as they are able to interpret experience. It seems to me that we have long reached the point where we theologians only talk to ourselves and debate with our own history of concepts. ~ Eugen Drewermann, #NFDB
622: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 because of what I learned on the job, that is, you can lay only one brick at a time. ~ Stanley Hauerwas, #NFDB
623: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 can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
624:This whole Christian theology thing is that god came down to experience life through his son. Well, how's he experiencing life if he doesn't get laid? Give me a break. And why would he not get laid, as he created the apparatus in the first place? ~ Tori Amos, #NFDB
625:Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
626:Above all things have charity, which is the bond of perfection and may the peace of Christ exult in your hearts in which you are called unto one Body. And be grateful.Ӡ It seems to me that all mystical theology is contained in those two lines. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
627:Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to comprehend? Can it procure to its agents the marvellous faculty of having precise ideas of a god composed of so many contradictory qualities? ~ Baron d Holbach, #NFDB
628:Joseph Smith, and this is not always fully appreciated within the tradition he initiated, did not feel that direct communication from God, gifts of seership, and an open, continuously expanding canon in any way obviated the need for theology. ~ Terryl L Givens, #NFDB
629:There is a tradition of "modernist" theology arising out of post-Kantian thought - Fichte was the real father of it, but Schleiermacher and others also developed it - which might have more promise if it had greater influence on popular religion. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
630:They would be shocked to see the way Reformation worship was driven by theology, not by entertainment and evangelism. They would perhaps be uncomfortable with the fact that ministers were selected more for their learning than for their personality. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
631:I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
632:It seems obvious to me that the notion of God has never been anything but a kind of ideal projection, a reflection upward of the human personality, and that theology never has been and never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology. ~ Alfred Loisy, #NFDB
633:When I was a child, Mama had the best voice of all the members of the church. She had loved to sing. Her words had soared like an angel's over the swells of the organ. In fact, I now suspected, her entire theology had been taken from the hymnal. ~ Siri Mitchell, #NFDB
634:Doubt signals not God’s death but the need for our own—to die to the theology we hold to with clenched fists. Our first creeping feelings of doubt are like the distant toll of a graveyard chapel, alerting us that the dying process is coming our way. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
635:I don’t think the biggest threat to our theology is humanism or the host of world religions. Our biggest threat is cut-and-paste Christianity. If man places his faith in a god he has recreated in his own image, has he placed his faith in God at all? ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
636:I've written a book entitled 'Islam: the Challenges of Democracy,' because it is a challenge. It requires careful interpretation of the Islamic tradition and Islamic theology, and there's a lot in there that would support democratic ideals. ~ Khaled Abou El Fadl, #NFDB
637:In sum, passing over to Buddhist spiritual practice has taught me, and can teach my church, that all our words, whether in Christian theology or Christian liturgy, must arise from and lead back to Silence. Only then do they have something to say. ~ Paul F Knitter, #NFDB
638:theology, the doctrine of God, which is always attacked and ridiculed by philosophy, which claims to be wisdom itself. And medicine, which always questions the validity of philosophy, and doesn’t consider theology a science but a superstition… ~ August Strindberg, #NFDB
639:Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
640:What woman, indeed, among the most faithful adherents of the truth, believes the promises and threats of the Word in the sense in which she believes in her own children, or would not throw her theology to the wind if weighed against their happiness? ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
641:I think Pope Francis is a guy who comes from a certain place in the world, and that shapes how he processes things. He's like a liberation theology guy, but I think that what he's done is focused the Catholic Church where it should be - on the poor. ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
642:Learn that there are no basilisks in nature, that people are always healthy with sobriety and exercise, and that the art of making intemperance and health together is as chimerical as the philosopher's stone, judicial astrology, and the theology of magi. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
643:Mythology was not about theology, in the modern sense, but about human experience. People thought that gods, humans, animals and nature were inextricably bound up together, subject to the same laws, and composed of the same divine substance. There ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
644:When someone uses Philosophy as an indispensable tool for tackling Theology and knows no other way for approaching that scripture-related Science, then you must have already figured out by now that he is a gentile who is standing right before you. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
645:Lincoln is theology, not historiology. He is a faith, he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom have a vested interest in [him] and who are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him. ~ Lerone Bennett Jr, #NFDB
646:Too often, however, the church professes its faith but is unsure how to practice it. Even some of my seminary students come to theology classes somewhat reluctantly, assuming that doctrine is neither practical nor relevant to their future ministry. ~ Kevin Vanhoozer, #NFDB
647:Contemporaries relate that hearing Martin Luther pray was "an experience in theology". They said the reformer began praying with such humility that he could be pitied, only to proceed with such boldness before God that the human hearer would fear for him. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
648:People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently—and generally better—than people who serve other masters.” “So it is like believing in God.” “Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
649:As already noted, "Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine. ~ Dave Hunt, #NFDB
650:If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt. ~ Leslie Stephen, #NFDB
651:So when Paul and other early Christians proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” (and the Son of God and the savior who brings true peace on earth), he and they were directly challenging Roman imperial theology and the imperial domination system that it legitimated. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
652:Those two little words -- says you -- are the most powerful argument in any discipline: theology, philosphy, even domestic harmony. They are powerful because they are true. Whenever you say something, it is you who says it. You. And what do you know? ~ J Mark Bertrand, #NFDB
653:In God's eyes, all creatures have value whether we find them cuddly, affectionate, beautiful or otherwise. Our own perspective-in a way-is neither here nor there. Theology, at its best, can help to liberate us from our own anthropocentric limitations. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
654:It required an understanding of theology, and ethics, and ancient religions and philosophies. You had to have a working knowledge in a plethora of fields just to have the background to be able to deal with a book as rich and complex as the Bible. ~ Ben Witherington III, #NFDB
655:I work in theology and Christian books all day long, when Im studying, so its just kind of nice to pick up something different. The books that have influenced me, theres not just one book that was a watershed, although Mere Christianity was as much as any. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
656:Music will inevitably get you into Philosophy, and once you logically see that through, will end up getting you into Theology. Once you see that through, it will end up getting you to a simple place of being happy with yourself and everybody around you. ~ Gino Vannelli, #NFDB
657:Although he eventually chose theology over music, music remained a deep passion throughout his life. It became a vital part of his expression of faith, and he taught his students to appreciate it and make it a central aspect of their expressions of faith. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
658:Before Vatican II, in theology, as in other areas, the discipline was fixed. After the council there has been a revolution - a chaotic revolution - with free discussion on everything. There is now no common theology or philosophy as there was before. ~ Godfried Danneels, #NFDB
659:The harm that theology has done is not to create cruel impulses, but to give them the sanction of what professes to be lofty ethic, and to confer an apparently sacred character upon practices which have come down from more ignorant and barbarous times. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
660:It seldom seems to strike the ultra-Darwinists that theology might have its own richness and subtleties, and might strange thought actually tell us things about the world that are not only to our real advantage, but will never be revealed by science. ~ Simon Conway Morris, #NFDB
661:I've studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine And even, alas, Theology From end to end with labor keen; And here, poor fool; with all my lore I stand no wiser than before. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, I. Night. Bayard Taylor's translation., #NFDB
662:On a given Sunday morning I might spot six or seven people who have wronged or hurt me, people whose politics, theology, or personalities drive me crazy. The church is positively crawling with people who don’t deserve to be here . . . starting with me. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
663:was somewhat upsetting to a decent Catholic girl, for there was no room for that in the orthodox theology. However, she’d always concentrated on the old maxim that the best course was to do the good that was in front of her, and to put such doubts aside. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
664:You have to be doubly foolish to be a Satanist,” Stoney muttered.
“Doubly?”
“Not only do you need to believe all the nonsense of Christian theology, you then have to turn around and back the preordained, guaranteed-to-fail, absolutely futile losing side. ~ Greg Egan,#NFDB
665:However, because the Ulama have tended to regard Islamic practice as informing Islamic theology, orthopraxy and orthodoxy are intimately bound together in Islam, meaning questions of theology, or kalam, are impossible to separate from questions of law, or fiqh. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
666:Actually, one of the most dangerous things we can do as Christians is to determine our theology by our experience, because no one's experience is normative for the Christian life. We have to determine our theology from the Word of God, not from what we feel. Not ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
667:I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I’m home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, “Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.” ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
668:A missional theology...appl ies to the whole of life of every believer. Every disciple is to be an agent of the kingdom of God, and every disciple is to carry the mission of God into every sphere of life. We are all missionaries sent into a non-Christian culture. ~ Alan Hirsch, #NFDB
669:Too many American (and other) Christians revel in feelings and/or morality and don't care to develop a biblically-shaped Zeitgeist or worldview. The result is folk religion rather than classical, historical Christianity which has always included sound theology. ~ Roger E Olson, #NFDB
670:We can study the whole history of salvation, we can study the whole of Theology, but without the Spirit we cannot understand. It is the Spirit that makes us realize the truth or - in the words of Our Lord - it is the Spirit that makes us know the voice of Jesus. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
671:At its core, black theology is predicated on the assertion that God has a unique relationship with African Americans. God is not a passive bystander in human history but rather an active participant in the struggles of oppressed and dispossessed people. ~ Melissa V Harris Perry, #NFDB
672:But there was no question in Jung’s mind that psychology had replaced theology. Indeed, he believed that twentieth-century man had devised a psychology precisely because theology no longer provided any explanation of the world or any comfort for the soul. Jung ~ Vine Deloria Jr, #NFDB
673:Although she was unenthusiastic about theology, she had long since realised that the real point of prayer was not to flatter those addressed; prayer was a form of meditation, she decided, and it did not detract from its efficacy that nobody was listening. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
674:In fact, the best of modern theology is revealing a strong “turn toward participation,” as opposed to religion as mere observation, affirmation, moralism, or group belonging. There is nothing to join, only something to recognize, suffer, and enjoy as a participant. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
675:Give to it the place in our institutions of learning now occupied by scholastic theology and physiology, and it will 142 eradicate sickness and sin in less time than the old systems, devised for subduing them, have required for self-establishment and propagation. ~ Mary Baker Eddy, #NFDB
676:All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
677:All theology is sexual theology. Indecent Theology is sexier than most. What can sexual stories from fetishism and sadomasochism tell us about our relationship with God, Jesus and Mary? Isn't it time the Christian heterosexuals came out of their closets too? ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
678: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. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
679:If you never engage gentiles in theological matters, they'd never even consider Theology as part of their lives and will always leave it for war to settle it. Lots of them exist among Arabs -as mentioned by name in Koran- and many more among the Romans themselves. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
680:In saying we are in immediate relation with God, the latter term is used only to designate the Whence of our spontaneous and receptive life, of which we become aware in our feeling of absolute dependence. ~ Friedrich Schleiermacher, in Theology of Schleiermacher (1911), pp. 121-122, #NFDB
681:The Bible reveals God’s soul to us in a way that no other book is able to do. It is history, wisdom, and poetry. It is unparalleled as a compendium of theology, philosophy, and ethics. It is a gospel tract, distilling the essence of our relationship with an eternal God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
682:The problem with Prosperity Theology is not that it promises too much, but that it aims for so little. What God promises us in Christ is far above anything that can be measured in earthly wealth - and believers are not promised earthly wealth nor the gift of health. ~ Albert Mohler, #NFDB
683:Your theology won't always work toward your obedience, because your use of theology is dictated by the condition of your heart. If your heart is not submitting to the plan of God, you will actually use your theology to justify things that should not be justified. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
684:Although Christianity has a poor record on animals (as it does, it must be said, on the treatment of slaves, women, children, and gays), it is also the case that Christian theology, when creatively and critically handled, can provide a strong basis for animal rights. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
685:One of the greatest disconnects for this generation is how life and work fit together. There is a need to talk about purpose in life, vocation, and calling. We need to provide a stronger theology of work to help them make integrated connections to their daily lives. ~ David Kinnaman, #NFDB
686:I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science. ~ John Polkinghorne, #NFDB
687:Economic relationships do not operate on value-neutral laws, but are rather carriers of specific convictions about the nature of the human person - the person's origins and
destiny. There is an implicit anthropology and an implicit theology in every economics. ~ William T Cavanaugh,#NFDB
688:I want to finish my race in the Promised Land, not in the wilderness. You too? Then we have to cash in our fear and complacency and spend all we have on the only ticket out: BELIEF. Faith is the only thing that will ever close the gap between our theology and our reality. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
689:I went over to my bookshelves, makeshift boards on bricks. I had a lot of books, most of them nonfiction, because I’d always felt that in nonfiction, specifically in the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and theology, I might find clues about ways to live my life. ~ Lauren Slater, #NFDB
690:No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle in Bethlehem. And yet, all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders that God became man. Alongside the brilliance of holy night there burns the fire of the unfathomable mystery of Christian theology.” It ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
691:People will certainly continue to say old things in a fresh new way to keep the study contemporary, but that doesn’t change the fact that, barring an archaeological discovery to blow us all out of the water, Christian theology is probably not going to change very much. ~ Scott Douglas, #NFDB
692:Whatever character our theology may ascribe to him, in reality God is the infinite ideal of Man, towards whom men move in their collective growth, with whom they seek their union of love as individuals, in whom they find their ideal of father, friend and beloved. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
693:I think a lot it was the theology, that the road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad, that somehow if we broke apart the rejectionist states, like Iraq, then the whole Middle East would reconfigure itself into a more favorable environment for democracy and Israel and us. ~ Chris Matthews, #NFDB
694:Theology reminded me that, however diabolical the act, it did not turn the perpetrator into a demon. We had to distinguish between the deed and the perpetrator, between the sinner and the sin, to hate and condemn the sin while being filled with compassion for the sinner. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
695:Brace yourself! If we take in what the Holy Father is saying in his Theology of the Body, we will never view ourselves, view others, view the Church, the Sacraments, grace, God, heaven, marriage, the celibate vocation...we will never view the world the same way again. ~ Christopher West, #NFDB
696:living. Trusted theological resource— Tabletalk avoids trends, shallow doctrine and popular movements to present biblical truth simply and clearly. Thought-provoking topics—each issue contains challenging, stimulating articles on a wide variety of topics related to theology ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
697:These were quirks, and at first I understood them as little more than strict rules that I could either comply with or get around. Yet I was a curious kid, and the deeper I immersed myself in evangelical theology, the more I felt compelled to mistrust many sectors of society. ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
698:To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
699:I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people joyful; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
700:In any previous empire the religion of the ruling class had always been distinct from the faith of the subjugated masses, so the Christian emperors’ attempt to impose their theology on their subjects was a shocking break with precedent and was experienced as an outrage. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
701:Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it is poor psychology. It has to borrow from law to give eyes to love. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
702:This is what Jesus had in mind: folks coming together, forming close-knit communities and meeting each other's needs-- no kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. His is a theology and practice for the people of God, not a set of suggestions for empire. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
703:False assumptions about technical meaning In this fallacy, an interpreter falsely assumes that a word always or nearly always has a certain technical meaning—a meaning usually derived either from a subset of the evidence or from the interpreter’s personal systematic theology. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
704:It is of great importance for a student of Old Testament theology to notice that in every period of the discipline, the questions, methods, and possibilities in which study is cast arise from the sociointellectual climate in which the work must be done.
(p. 11) ~ Walter Brueggemann,#NFDB
705:That is the greatest danger in theology and deities—that they create the impression that goodness cannot be created or maintained by mere humans without divine help. This allows all measure of excuses … and strange contortions to explain perfectly logical occurrences … . ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
706:To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass - seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
707:The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory. ~ William A Dembski, #NFDB
708:We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends tacit validity to this status quo. People have morally identified with a subset of humanity rather than with humanity as a whole. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
709:Because what touches His heart is not how much we know, but how much we love. Not how pure we are, but how passionate. Maybe that is why, when Pharisees were fighting over theology, prostitutes were falling at the Savior’s feet and slipping into the kingdom of God on their tears. ~ Ken Gire, #NFDB
710:But many people long for some links between the great doctrines of the faith and the reality of growth. So two of the questions this book will answer are these: What helps people grow? How do those processes fit into our orthodox understanding of spiritual growth and theology? ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
711:Christian theology is for the liberation of all humanity, and it could never be neutral in the fight against oppression. That much I knew. And that was how A Black Theology of Liberation was born: with the spirit of Martin and Malcolm, Jimmy, and the black poets of the 1960s. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
712:For American evangelicals riding the fumes of a previous generation’s assumptions, a triumphalistic theology of celebration and privilege rooted in a praise-only narrative is perpetuated by the absence of lament and the underlying narrative of suffering that informs lament. ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB
713:Good theology is not the knowledge of theology but the knowledge of God. Bad theology is the theology of the theologian who died and went to Heaven and at the gates of Heaven God offered him the choice between Heaven and a theology lecture on Heaven, and he chose the lecture. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
714:It’s pleasant to sit by, a demi-god, and hear the surmisings of mortals, upon things they know nothing about; theology, or amber, or ambergris, it’s all the same. But then, did I always out with every thing I know, there would be no conversing with these comical creatures. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
715:God only has one Son whom He gave for all—so He and He alone must be the object of worship and the means of forgiveness from sin. The new, twisted, Emergent theology is not only heresy; it is false! Jesus could say He is the (only) way to eternal life—because He is the only way! ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
716:Luke's Gospel was clear: Jesus's ministry was essentially liberation on behalf of the poor and the oppressed. I didn't need a doctorate in theology to know that liberation defined the heart of Jesus's ministry. Black people had been preaching and singing about it for centuries. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
717:The concept of a supermind running the universe objectively, without compassion, is not new. Several religions are built around it. Thinking of God in these terms is not heresy but is advanced theology. The old-time God—the big bearded man sitting on a throne in the sky—is dead. ~ John A Keel, #NFDB
718:Philosophy may serve as the bridge between theology and science. All atheism is a philosophy, but not all philosophy is atheism. Philosophy ('love of wisdom') is simply a tool depending on how one uses it, and in some cases, logically understanding the nature of God and existence. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
719:There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that Jesus ever separated theology from ethics, or that if you remove His theology - His beliefs about God and judgment, future woe for the wicked and future blessedness for the good - you can leave His ethical teaching intact. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
720:To me the separation of church and state is a thread that ought to run through public policy so that we can always recognize that we make laws in this country, based not on theology of any particular group, but on the basis of a commonly shared values of the Constitution itself. ~ Barry W Lynn, #NFDB
721: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. ~ Andreas J K stenberger, #NFDB
722:I do theology as a matter of survival,” explained Rev. Broderick Greer, who is black and gay, “because if people can do theology that produces brutality against black, transgender, queer, and other minority bodies, then we can do theology that leads to our common liberation. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
723:Theology, I am persuaded, derives its initial impulse from a religious wavering; for there is quite as much, or more, that is mysterious and calculated to awaken scientific curiosity in the intercourse with God, and it [is] a problem quite analogous to that of theology. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce, #NFDB
724:William Blake is dreaming of Jerusalem under that sod, and Daniel Defoe is probably dreaming about something a fair bit earthier. You’ve also got John Owen and Isaac Watts, the reservoir dogs of eighteenth-century theology. What can I tell you? I just feel at ease in their company. ~ Mike Carey, #NFDB
725:For Rome justification is the result of faith plus works. In Reformed theology justification is the result of faith alone, a faith that always produces works. Antinomianism teaches justification by faith minus works. Reformed theology rejects both the Roman and the antinomian views. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
726:I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us. Who has skill in the art of music is of good temperament and fitted for all things. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
727:In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
728:Many of the seminal social issues of our time - poverty, lack of education, human trafficking, war and torture, domestic abuse - can track their way to our theology of, or beliefs about, women, which has its roots in what we believe about the nature, purposes, and character of God. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
729:Walter Brueggemann calls these parts of the Bible Israel’s “countertestimony” . . . This spot-on term to name the dark side of the Bible, and which calls into question Israel’s main storyline, comes from Walter Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
730:The occasional nature of the Epistles also means that they are not first of all theological treatises; they are not compendia of Paul's or Peter's theology. There is theology implied, but it is always "task theology," theology being written for or brought to bear on the task at hand. ~ Gordon D Fee, #NFDB
731:To be a Christian is to be a theologian—a student of God and his will. The church is where believers should be nurtured in the practice of correct theology. The contemporary disdain for theological content and emphasis on self-image and emotions were not shared by the apostolic church. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
732:These systems attempt to box God into a government confined within the perspective of man. Yet when humanity is used as the starting point for interpreting and interacting with God's creation, faulty theology and sociology emerge as mankind attempts to fashion God into the image of man. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
733:This is the mission we are all called to as believers, the noble task of the church. It’s not enough to be theologically brilliant without the heart of a missionary. It’s sometimes intangible work planted in the messy soil of relationships instead of the cleaner territory of theology. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
734:A fundamental principle of Catholic theology is that grace perfects nature rather than setting it aside; and that means that the Christian life is not a two-layer cake, the supernatural simply added on to the natural. It transforms the natural but by perfecting it, not by demeaning it. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
735:Science tells us what we can know, but what we
can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that wehave knowledge where in fact we have ignorance ~ Bertrand Russell,#NFDB
736:The Aryan identity of the Roman Judeo-Christian is ancient Egyptian in origin; to which the Hindu nation also belongs. The Aryan theology is based on the begotten god, and the mere archetypal name of 'Hathor' demonstrates the mechanism of that theology as the 'house of the son god'. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
737:The Catholic Church was derived from three sources. Its sacred history was Jewish, its theology was Greek, its government and canon law were, at least indirectly, Roman. The Reformation rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek elements, and greatly strengthened the Judaic elements. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
738:Theology must be political if it is to be evangelical. Rule out the political questions and you cut short the proclamation of God’s saving power; you leave people enslaved where they ought to be set free from sin—their own sin and others’. Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
739:The true foundation of theology is to ascertain the character of God. It is by the aid of Statistics that law in the social sphere can be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of the character of God thereby revealed. The study of statistics is thus a religious service. ~ Florence Nightingale, #NFDB
740:How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
741:I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music. ~ Igor Stravinsky, #NFDB
742:You see,” said Father Brown in low but easy tone, “Scotch people before Scotland existed were a curious lot. In fact, they’re a curious lot still. But in the prehistoric times I fancy they really worshipped demons. That,” he added genially, “is why they jumped at the Puritan theology. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
743:I don’t think the biggest threat to our theology is humanism or the host of world religions. Our biggest threat is cut-and-paste Christianity. If man places his faith in a god he has recreated in his own image, has he placed his faith in God at all? And if not, how can such a man be saved? ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
744:Intelligent Design has been hijacked by a narrow group of creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it didn't originally mean at all. It's another form of the God of the gaps. It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning. ~ Guy Consolmagno, #NFDB
745:its best, the church administers the sacraments by feeding, healing, forgiving, comforting, and welcoming home the people God loves. At its worst, the church withholds the sacraments in an attempt to lock God in a theology, a list of rules, a doctrinal statement, a building. But our ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
746:Theology is a serious quest for the true knowledge of God, undertaken in response to His self-revelation, illumined by Christian tradition, manifesting a rational inner coherence, issuing in ethical conduct, resonating with the contemporary world and concerned for the greater glory of God. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
747:Thus, far more than with words like ‘tea’ or ‘coffee,’ words about theology, faith, doctrine, worship, and devotion have the potential to be misunderstood, because of inadequate or missing context, or as a result of certain assumptions or experiences on the part of the reader or listener. ~ Holly Ordway, #NFDB
748:Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
749:Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
750:Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
751:herself in powerlessness to the ridicule of the world. We can’t blame the devil. For the most part we’ve dumbed-down New Testament Christianity and accepted our reality as theology rather than biblical theology as our reality. We’ve reversed the standard, walking by sight and not by faith. We ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
752:No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian is a theologian. Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless. The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
753:The two should really go hand in hand; for one deals with causes and the other with effects. True philosophy and true science will some day meet on a common basis; and, working together, will give to the world a theology of reality. Then, indeed, will "God go forth anew into Creation." A ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
754:Briefly and generally stated, mystical theology or Christian mysticism seeks to describe an experienced, direct, non-abstract, unmediated, loving knowing of God, a knowing or seeing so direct as to be called union with God.”[97] Such an experience of God came through “contemplation”—observing ~ Daryl Aaron, #NFDB
755:For Barth, and for us, Nazi Germany was the supreme test for modern theology. There we experienced the “modern world,” which we had so labored to understand and to become credible to, as the world, not only of the Copernican world view, computers, and the dynamo, but also of the Nazis. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
756:Greek theology was greatly hampered by the dogma that God cannot in any way suffer. Cyril and Nestorius were at one in their desire to insist that in the Incarnation our Lord’s Godhead was exempt from all suffering. No doubt there is a true and important sense in which God is ‘without passions. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
757:Biblical Theology...is that part of Exegetical Theology which deals with the revelation of God in its historic continuity...Biblical Theology, rightly defined, is nothing else than the exhibition of the organic progress of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity. ~ Geerhardus Vos, #NFDB
758:The quest for knowledge is the essence of science. The science of biology is a quest to gain a knowledge of living things, the science of physics is an attempt to gain knowledge about physical things, and the science of theology is an attempt to gain a coherent, consistent knowledge of God. All ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
759:Though I understand the theology behind it, the image does not bring me peace; it makes me feel sorry for the lion. It strips him of his essence, the fundamental part of his being. A lion that does not behave as a lion i snot a lion. It isn't even the lion's opposite. It's a mockery of a lion. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
760:Time with God will open up His ways. Reading books won't do it. Reading theology won't do it. Studying the creation won't do it. Going to church won't do it. Listening to religious music won't do it. Listening to great preaching won't do it. Even worshiping through hymns and songs won't do it. ~ R T Kendall, #NFDB
761:A theology of love cannot be allowed merely to serve the interests of the rich and powerful, justifying their wars, their violence and their bombs, while exhorting the poor and underprivileged to practice patience, meekness, long-suffering and to solve their problems, if at all, nonviolently. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
762:I`m impressed that people out there in Pennsylvania, deer hunter country, have had it with these stupid wars, that they don`t go along with the neocon theology, they don`t go along with the big money people or the evangelicals that always seem to want to fight, especially in the Middle East. ~ Chris Matthews, #NFDB
763:Modern science gives lectures on botany, to show there is no such thing as a flower; on humanity, to show there is no such thing as a man; and on theology, to show there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as a man, but only a mechanism, No such thing as a God, but only a series of forces. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
764:The 'law of wills and causes,' formulated by Comte, . . . is that when men do not know the natural causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the place of science, and this theory forms a basis for theology. ~ Andrew Dickson White, #NFDB
765:But if we admit God, must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain. Theology says to you in effect, 'Admit God and with Him the risk of a few miracles, and I in return will ratify your faith in uniformity as regards the overwhelming majority of events. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
766:This does not mean that the knowledge of the world, church history, theology, philosophy, and the Scriptures is without value. Such knowledge can be very useful.[105] But it is not central. Theological competence and a high-voltage intellect alone do not qualify a person to serve in God’s house. ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
767:Darwin’s theory, laid out in On the Origin of Species in 1859, suggested that people and apes shared a common ancestor, and, coupled with recent discoveries of fossils revealing that humans had been on earth far longer than the Bible stated, helped irrevocably to sever anthropology from theology. ~ David Grann, #NFDB
768:Did the Service design it so no one had time to think, really think? He still hadn’t found time to finish reading the handouts on Revenant theology, perhaps because he kept getting hung up on the whole question of why anyone would believe a prophet without any real physical evidence of a god. ~ L E Modesitt Jr, #NFDB
769: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. ~ Robert G Ingersoll, #NFDB
770:Science and theology are both lenses through which to interact with and interpret reality, sort of like a microscope and a pair of binoculars. Both sets of lenses tell us more about the world than we could see with the naked eye, but the information we get from each can diverge considerably. ~ T Colin Campbell, #NFDB
771:Several of the [crowd's] outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
772:A theologian is a person who makes bold to speak about God because he speaks out of God and through God. To profess theology is to do holy work. It is a priestly ministration in the house of the Lord. It is itself a service of worship, a consecration of mind and heart to the honour of His name. ~ Herman Bavinck, #NFDB
773:Broadly speaking, Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good. Hence, the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
774:Harm to you is not harm to me in the strict sense, and that is a great part of the problem. He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom. But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I'm afraid theology would fail me. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
775:I realize that many dear followers of Christ have been taught that God only speaks to his sons and daughters through the Bible. The irony of that theology is this: that’s not what the Bible teaches! The Scriptures are filled with stories of God speaking to his people—intimately, personally. Adam ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
776:The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth. ~ Sydney J Harris, #NFDB
777:Calvinism is an all-embracing system of principles... It is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and form that specific religious consciousness there was developed first a particular theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life. ~ Abraham Kuyper, #NFDB
778:All I can claim in this respect, alas, is that I think I may know just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens—a couplet I shall henceforth reduce for convenience to the solitary signifier Ditchkins—is talking out of the back of his neck. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
779:In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another. ~ Bart D Ehrman, #NFDB
780:I think the opportunity to deal with students and getting them properly oriented on science and theology and the relation between those is going to be important because science has been such an instrument used by the materialists to undermine the Christian faith and religious belief generally. ~ William A Dembski, #NFDB
781:Oppressed and oppressors cannot possibly mean the same thing when they speak of God. The God of the oppressed is a God of revolution who breaks the chains of slavery. The oppressors' God is a God of slavery and must be destroyed along with the oppressors. ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), p. 61, #NFDB
782: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. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
783:Scientology, as its critics point out, is unlike any other Western religion in that it withholds key aspects of its central theology from all but its most exalted followers. This would be akin to the Catholic Church telling only a select number of the faithful that Jesus Christ died for their sins. ~ Janet Reitman, #NFDB
784:The Resurrection of Jesus is...a symbol of hope...I don't see how you can show love...without being in solidarity with the victims of this world. And if you are in solidarity with the victims, I don't see how you can avoid the cross. The theology of the cross is the theology of love in our real world. ~ Jon Sobrino, #NFDB
785:When Paul moved the heart of Christian theology from Christ’s life to his death, it made the implication of the Jews in his killing not just unavoidable but central to the new religion’s teaching. And since Christ was inseparably of the same substance as God the Father, that made their crime deicide. ~ Simon Schama, #NFDB
786:For the most part we’ve dumbed-down New Testament Christianity and accepted our reality as theology rather than biblical theology as our reality. We’ve reversed the standard, walking by sight and not by faith. We want to be the best of what we see, but frankly what we see is far removed from God’s best. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
787:So Marxism, Freudianism: any one of these things I think is an irrational cult. They're theology, so they're whatever you think of theology; I don't think much of it. In fact, in my view that's exactly the right analogy: notions like Marxism and Freudianism belong to the history of organized religion. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
788:But this book is not a theology of kingdom, nor an exposition of the kingdom passages in the Bible. No, it is simply a meditation on what Jesus meant when he called us to “seek first his kingdom.” What does it really look like to expand everything our lives contain to touch the size of his kingdom? ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
789:Catholic theology accounts for the fact that there's evil in the world. People say, well, how could God let this happen. Well, what God did was set the mechanism in motion and then allow people to do the best they can under the circumstances that they're dealt in order to gain grace and get into heaven. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
790:We can pursue the Cartesian project without restricting ourselves to theology and a priori faculties. A better, broader perspective is properly sought if we pursue the project with reliance on science broadly and on our full span of epistemic competences, including the empirical as well as the a priori. ~ Ernest Sosa, #NFDB
791:C. Sproul: No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian is a theologian. Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless. The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones.1 ~ Dave Harvey, #NFDB
792:The psalmist [of Psalm 119] was interested in truth and orthodoxy, in biblical teaching and theology, not as ends in themselves, but as means to the further ends of life and godliness. His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand (pp. 22-23). ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
793:You know how it is in the symphony when you are listening to the symphony, the last notes die away, and there's often a beat of silence in the auditorium before the applause begins. It's a very full and pregnant silence. Now theology should bring us to live into that silence, into that pregnant pause. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
794:Bonhoeffer’s interest was not only in teaching them as a university lecturer. He wished to “disciple” them in the true life of the Christian. This ran the gamut, from understanding current events through a biblical lens to reading the Bible not just as a theology student but as a disciple of Jesus Christ. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
795:Theology, as it proves the existence of a Diety, and the immortality of souls, is composed partly of reasonings concerting particular partly concerning general fact. It has foundation in reason, so far as it is supported be experience . But it’s best and most solid foundation is faith and divine revelation. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
796:Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
797:Theology does not thrive in the world of action and reaction, change: it grows on calm, like the scum on a stagnant pool. And it flourishes, it prospers, on decline. Only in a world where everything is patently being lost can a priest stir men's hearts as a poet would by maintaining that nothing is in vain. ~ John Gardner, #NFDB
798:This is the doctrine that we preach; if a man be saved, all the honor is to be given to Christ; but if a man be lost, all the blame is to be laid upon himself. You will find all true theology summed up in these two short sentences, salvation is all of the grace of God, damnation is all of the will of man. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
799:an exercise in what Cabezón calls “academic theology,” or what I would call a self-conscious experiment in well-grounded constructive theology. It weds together the interests and needs of two diverse communities of readers in a way that, I here argue, only a scholar-practitioner is capable of doing. In ~ Christopher D Wallis, #NFDB
800:My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
801:If he believed it all, he was just like those theologians who store their theology somewhere in a locked compartment of the brain, or rather, perhaps, like those travellers who carry a bottle of iodine in their luggage and take care to keep it tightly corked in case it leaks and ruins their belongings. ~ Halld r Kiljan Laxness, #NFDB
802:If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
803:A man must have a stout digestion to feed upon some men's theology; no sap, no sweetness, no life, but all stern accuracy, and fleshless definition. Proclaimed without tenderness, and argued without affection, the gospel from such men rather resembles a missile from a catapult than bread from a Father's hand. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
804:Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that “the unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Studying theology is therefore a spiritual activity in which we need the help of the Holy Spirit. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
805:We lost the knowledge of God,” he went on to say, “at the moment when we transformed the Ecclesia from experience into theology, from a living reality into moralistic principles, good values, and high ideals. When that happened,” Father Maximos said humorously, “we became like tin cans with nothing inside. ~ Kyriacos C Markides, #NFDB
806:In the cross of Christ God is taking man dead-seriously so that he may open up for him the happy freedom of Easter. God takes upon himself the pain of negation and the God forsakenness of judgement to reconcile himself with his enemies and to give the godless fellowship with himself. ~ Theology of Play, p.33 ~ J rgen Moltmann, #NFDB
807:In every system of theology, therefore, there is a chapter De libero arbitrio. This is a question which every theologian finds in his path, and which he must dispose of; and on the manner in which it is determined depends his theology, and of course his religion, so far as his theology is to him a truth and reality ~ Charles Hodge, #NFDB
808:it began to be noted that the Wig had gone over the edge. Specifically, the Finn said, the Wig had become convinced that God lived in cyberspace, or perhaps that cyberspace was God, or some new manifestation of same. The Wig’s ventures into theology tended to be marked by major paradigm shifts, true leaps of faith. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
809:Oppression theology and supremacist spirituality developed in the belief ecosystem of an angry God who needed appeasement in order to dispense grace, who favored some and disfavored others, and who welcomed the favored into religious institutions that accumulated and hoarded privilege and protected the status quo. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
810:The object is evident in the name of the discipline. Similarly, theology (theologia) is the study of God. The object of theology is not the church's teaching or the experience of pious souls. It is not a subset of ethics, religious studies, cultural anthropology, or psychology. God is the object of this discipline. ~ Michael Horton, #NFDB
811:The scientific doctrine of progress is destined to replace not only the myth of progress, but all other myths of human earthly destiny. It will inevitably become one of the cornerstones of man's theology, or whatever may be the future substitute for theology, and the most important external support for human ethics. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
812:the two priests were talking exactly like priests, piously, with learning and leisure, about the most aerial enigmas of theology. The little Essex priest spoke the more simply, with his round face turned to the strengthening stars; the other talked with his head bowed, as if he were not even worthy to look at them. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
813:Evidently, rigging cables is therapy for the Swiss: or part of their theology. What was it that he used to say? A balanced arc between mountain rows / as servant to his master shows / the power of besieged belief / in something something something, something something something-something to do with ducks, or rainbows. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
814:Public theology is first and foremost a reaction against the tendency to privatize the faith, restricting it to the question of an individual’s salvation. As we shall see in later chapters, the church is not a collection of saved individuals but the culmination of the plan of salvation: to create a people of God. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
815:My husband’s faith is unwavering. His integrity stellar. His courage to be a truth teller unstoppable. His knowledge of theology deep. But will he get flowery about his love for Jesus or anything else? Not likely. His walk with God looks different from mine, just as your walk with God might look different from mine. ~ Courtney Joseph, #NFDB
816:The third major characteristic of God - "infinitude" - is the catchall, the universal modifier of Christian theology. God is not merely a being; he is infinite being. God is not merely good; he is infinite goodness. God is not merely wise; he is infinite wisdom. And so on down the list. God is exaggeration run amuck. ~ George H Smith, #NFDB
817:Before the work of Georg Cantor in the nineteenth century, the study of the infinite was as much theology as science; now, we understand Cantor’s theory of multiple infinities, each one infinitely larger than the last, well enough to teach it to first-year math majors. (To be fair, it does kind of blow their minds.) ~ Jordan Ellenberg, #NFDB
818:In that moment I realized the extent to which we, as churches and Christians across America, are in some cases explicitly and in other cases implicitly exporting a theology that equates faith in Christ with prosperity in this world. This is fundamentally not the radical picture of Christianity we see in the New Testament. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
819:Philadelphia caught my attention in 1995 when a group of homeless families were living in an abandoned cathedral. Even from the beginning they connected theology with what they were doing. They put a banner on the front of the cathedral that said, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday." ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
820: St. Irenaeus (125–203), The Scandal of the Incarnation, and St. Athanasius (297–373), On the Incarnation, are two early classics that set a bar of good theology that we have since seldom matched or even understood. The mystery of incarnation is the unique trump card that Christianity adds to the deck of world religions. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
821: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. ~ Josef Pieper, #NFDB
822:Out of the struggles of these men after truth, out of their prayers and meditations, out of debate and controversy, out of feud and schism emerged Christian theology - the product of fallible men, dreaming after the infallible, seeking with finite minds to probe the mysteries of the infinite. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
823:The cross was the centerpiece of Paul’s theology. It wasn’t merely one of Paul’s messages; it was the message. He taught about other things as well, but whatever he taught was always derived from, and related to, the foundational reality that Jesus Christ died so that sinners would be reconciled to God and forgiven by God. ~ C J Mahaney, #NFDB
824:What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one. ~ Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
825:God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works. This is boldly taught by prophet and apostle and is accepted by Christian theology generally. That is, it appears in the books, but for some reason it has not sunk into the average Christian's heart so as to become a part of his believing self. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
826:If you are a Christian, you are a theologian. You have no choice. Theology is simply knowing about God. In fact, since Christians are called to grow in their knowledge of God, part of the very goal of the Christian life is theology. Theology is a normal part of the Christian life—a part that gives rise to everything else. ~ James R White, #NFDB
827:I think gardening is nearer to godliness than theology. True gardeners are both iconographers and theologians insofar as these activities are the fruit of prayer 'without ceasing.' Likewise, true gardeners never cease to garden, not even in their sleep, because gardening is not just something they do. It is how they live. ~ Vigen Guroian, #NFDB
828:You see, my Lord Archbishop, what is "dubious" about my theology is not that it contradicts particular doctrinal teachings, things are much worse or better: what I want, is no more and no less than a fundamental change in the whole way that theology is done today; but I want this out of faith, not out of faithlessness. ~ Eugen Drewermann, #NFDB
829:For theology to remain formally one as a science, all the natural knowledge it contains must be directed and subordinated to the point of view proper to the theologian, which is that of revelation. Thus incorporated into the theological order, human learning becomes a part of the sacred doctrine which is founded on faith. ~ tienne Gilson, #NFDB
830:I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to be dry and boring. Theology is the study of God and all his works! Theology is meant to be LIVED and PRAYED and SUNG! All of the great doctrinal writings of the Bible (such as Paul's epistle to the Romans) are full of praise to God and personal application to life. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
831:The significant contribution of empiricism was not the eradication of certainty, but the eradication of infallibility as a criterion of certainty. And this shift from infallibilism to fallibilism has profound consequences not only for toleration, but also for the subordination of faith to reason and theology to philosophy. ~ George H Smith, #NFDB
832:[I]f a current president of Harvard were to preach the theology of Increase Mather he would be locked up as a lunatic, though he is still free (and expected) to merchant the prevailing political balderdash. Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
833:The longer ending of Mark (16:9-20) is almost certainly not what Mark wrote. The two oldest and most reliable copies of the Gospel do not contain it (Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus). The style is quite different from the rest of Mark's Gospel, and some of the theology is potentially both heretical and fatal (see v. 18)! ~ Craig L Blomberg, #NFDB
834:The story of theology in the Civil War was a story of how a deeply entrenched intellectual synthesis divided against itself, even as its proponents were reassuring combatants on either side that each enjoyed a unique standing before God and each exercised a unique role as the true bearer of the nation's Christian civilization. ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
835:sadly, the book of Job was but a speed bump on the Deuteronomic superhighway. The delusion of divine punishments still prevails inside and outside religion over the clear evidence of human consequences, random accidents, and natural disasters. This does not simply distort theology; it defames the very character of God. ~ John Dominic Crossan, #NFDB
836:The ancient Egyptian/Roman Judeo-Christian religion was based on witnessing death and resurrection of its god. The Osirian heritage were passed down to the Roman Jews and the Akhenatenian one to the Roman Christians; with the ever repeating cycled theology of the former and the one single dimensioned theology of the latter. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
837:If you expound the teaching of the Logos from the standpoint of the moral life, using materialistic words and examples which correspond to the capacity of your hearers, you make the Logos flesh. Conversely, if you elucidate mystical theology by means of the higher forms of contemplation you make the Logos spirit. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #NFDB
838:Indecent Theology is a theology which problematises and undresses the mythical layers of multiple oppression in Latin America, a theology which, finding its point of departure at the crossroads of Liberation Theology and Queer Thinking, will reflect on economic and theological oppression with passion and imprudence. An ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
839:Every faith uses some kind of tool to understand itself better. Faith seeks understanding. The Western tradition has used philosophy to understand the truths of the faith and you come up with theology. Where as, Islam at a certain point said: we'll use law. There are these four major, developed schools of Islamic jurisprudence. ~ Francis George, #NFDB
840:The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
841:Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements. ~ Gregory of Nazianzus, #NFDB
842:I have seen men and women without culture, who have had almost no advantages in school, but who knew their Bibles; and I would rather sit at their feet and learn the wisdom that falls from their lips, than listen to the man who knows much about philosophy and science and theology even, and does not know anything about the Word of God. ~ R A Torrey, #NFDB
843:One must be very cautious when using biblical data in systematic theology. The questions which we ask are *our* questions. Our answers must be capable of holding up in biblical terms, but it would be false to treat them as exegetical conclusions because the way we have decided in their favor is that appropriate to systematic thought. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
844:Describing the relationship between the biblical witnesses and the theologians who come after, the author challenges that the theologian is not to correct the notebooks of the biblical writers like some high school teacher. Instead, our theology is always subject to what THEY say, as we willingly submit our notebooks for their approval. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
845:Genesis 1 and the scientific evidence. The literary framework interpretation can easily be reconciled with any contemporary scientific theory of origin one chooses to embrace. Yet at the same time, reconciliation is not necessary. Genesis 1 has no bearing on science, for it is strictly interested in theology, not science. Responding ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
846:I began to discover that my healing theology of twenty years was not really based on Scripture, but on my erratic healing experiences and what others had taught from their erratic experiences. Because my experiences had matched theirs, I accepted what I heard as being the truth, without serious examination and comparison with Scripture. ~ Roger Sapp, #NFDB
847:Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view which seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure with ever greater precision the multiple manifestations of life … while theology extracts … the final meaning according to the Creator’s designs. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
848:Visual reminders of creation and Eden could be found throughout this meeting point between heaven, earth and the world below. Carvings on the entry pillars, doors and walls depicted palm trees, sacred floral designs and cherubim (1Ki 6:29). These were all motifs from the garden, whose story had always factored into the theology of Israel. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
849:For it is the bitter grief of theology and its blessed task, too, always to have to seek (because it does not clearly have present to it at the time)...always providing that one has the courage to ask questions, to be dissatisfied, to think with the mind and heart one ACTUALLY has, and not with the mind and heart one is SUPPOSED TO have. ~ Karl Rahner, #NFDB
850:Paul gives clear, practical guidelines for the believers in Rome. The Christian life is not abstract theology unconnected with life, but it has practical implications that will affect how we choose to behave each day. It is not enough merely to know the gospel; we must let it transform our lives and let God impact every aspect of our lives. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
851:The language of sin as used by Western Christianity does not provide the necessary nuance to understand how a victim of sin experiences sin. “Traditional theology has emphasized one-sidedly the sin of all people, while ignoring the pain of the victim. Its doctrine of sin must be complemented by dealing with the suffering of the victim. ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB
852:There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees a complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost canonical status in Protestant theology. But now we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
853:I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed— because ‘Thou mayest. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
854:Religion is about God's truth, but none of us can grasp that truth absolutely, because of our own imperfections and limitations. We are only children of God, not God. Therefore, we must not attempt to fit God into little boxes, claiming that He supports this or that political position. This is not only bad theology; it marginalizes God. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
855:The gloomy theology of the orthodox--the Calvinists--I do not, I cannot believe. Many of the notions--nay, most of the notions--which orthodox people have of the divinity of the Bible, I disbelieve. I am so nearly infidel in all my views, that too, in spite of my wishes, that none but the most liberal doctrines can command my assent. ~ Rutherford B Hayes, #NFDB
856:Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
857:There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis , because it guarantees complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost a canonical status in Protestant theology. But now, we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
858:Christian theology provides some of the best arguments for respecting animal life and for taking seriously animals as partners with us within God's creation. It may be ironical that this tradition, once thought of as the bastion of human moral exclusivity, should now be seen as the seed-bed for a creative understanding of animal liberation. ~ Andrew Linzey, #NFDB
859:I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing -maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed -because 'Thou mayest. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
860:Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
861:Depression can kill you. It can also be a spiritually enriching experience. It's really an important part of my theology now and my spirituality that life is not perfect, and I grew up wanting it to be and thinking that if it wasn't, I could make it that way, and I had to acknowledge that I had all kinds of flaws and sadnesses and problems. ~ Krista Tippett, #NFDB
862:Reformed theology does NOT teach that God brings the ELECT kicking and screaming, against their will, into His kingdom. It teaches that God so-works in the hearts of the Elect as to make them willing and pleased to come to Christ. They come to Christ because they want to. They want to because God has created in their hearts a desire for Christ. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
863: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, but the very way in which we experience the world around and taste the blessing and fellowship of God himself. pp.48-49 ~ Carl R Trueman, #NFDB
864:We live in an age where too many who profess to be Christians rarely consider their spiritual maturity - an age when many consider spiritual immaturity a mark of authenticity, and when people associate doubt with humility and assurance with pride. Far too many people consider sound theology the mark of a person who is argumentative and proud. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
865:When you say Yes to God unconditionally, you have no idea how far this Yes is going to take you. Certainly farther than you can guess and calculate beforehand... but just how far and in what form? At the same time, this Yes is the sole, non-negotiable prerequisite of all Christian understanding, of all theology and ecclesial wisdom. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
866:Based on my own personal experiences with other people, I think that many nonbelievers haven’t spent a great deal of time studying the Bible or exploring Christian theology. That is why I was determined to include in this book not just the arguments advanced by classical Christian apologists, but also a discussion of what Christians believe. ~ David Limbaugh, #NFDB
867:Jalaluddin Rumi is completely rooted in Islamic teachings of Quran. He was a great scholar, he belonged to a madrassa, and he knew Islamic theology and jurisprudence very well. He knew Persian, Arabic and Turkish, which was coming into Anatolia at that time, very well. He was a remarkable, remarkable scholar, besides being a great saint. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
868:Plato has given to all posterity the model of a new art form, the model of the novel--which may be described as an infinitely enhanced Aesopian fable, in which poetry holds the same rank in relation to dialectical philosophy as this same philosophy held for many centuries in relation to theology: namely the rank of ancilla. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
869:As shown in the splendid recent biography by Harry Stout, Whitefield’s style — popular preaching aimed at emotional response — has continued to shape American evangelicalism long after Whitefield’s specific theology (he was a Calvinist), his denominational origins (he was an Anglican), and his rank (he was a clergyman) are long since forgotten.65 ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
870: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 patterns, then correspondence, then causality and dissident sense.
Vardy even smiled. "Paranoid," he said. "Theology. ~ China Mi ville,#NFDB
871:Think about that: at a time when it was inconceivable to have a woman rabbi or a woman scholar of Christian theology or canon law, the Islamic civilization boasted hundreds of women who were authorities in Islamic law and Islamic theology and that taught some of the most famous male jurists and left behind a remarkable corpus of writings. ~ Khaled Abou El Fadl, #NFDB
872:If a theology student in lowa should get up at a PTA luncheon in Sioux City and attack the President's military policy, my guess is that you would probably find it reported somewhere the next morning in the New York Times. But when 300 Congressmen endorse the President's policy, the next morning it is apparently not considered news fit to print. ~ Spiro T Agnew, #NFDB
873:Language changes. If it does not change, like Latin it dies. But we need to be aware that as our language changes, so does our theology change, particularly if we are trying to manipulate language for a specific purpose. That is what is happening with our attempts at inclusive language, which thus far have been inconclusive and unsuccessful. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
874:The basic gist: theology has been more or less banished from Jerusalem. Theology is in exile and, as a result, the knowledge of God is in ecclesial eclipse. The promised land, the gathered people of God, has consequently come to resemble a parched land: a land of wasted opportunities that no longer cultivates disciples as it did in the past. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
875:And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing - maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'thou mayest'. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
876:The geocentric picture in Scripture is a depiction through man’s ancient perspective of God’s purpose and humankind’s significance. For a modern heliocentrist to attack that picture as falsifying the theology would be cultural imperialism. Reducing significance to physical location is simply a prejudice of material priority over spiritual purpose. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
877:The summation of much pre-Socratic theology and philosophy can be stated as follows: The kosmos is not as it appears to be, and what it probably is, at its deepest level, is exactly that which the human being is at his deepest level — call it mind or soul, it is something unitary which lives and thinks, and only appears to be plural and material. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
878:There are some today who are trying to devise a theology that leaves out the blood of Christ. Poor fools! Christianity without atoning blood is a Christianity without mercy for the sinner, without settled peace for the conscience, without genuine forgiveness, without justification, without cleansing, without boldness in approaching God, without power. ~ R A Torrey, #NFDB
879:I have never quite managed to see how we can make sense of the sacramental life of the Church without a theology of the risen body; and I have never managed to see how to put together such a theology without belief in the empty tomb. If a corpse clearly marked ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ turned up, I should save myself a lot of trouble and become a Quaker. ~ Rowan Williams, #NFDB
880:Some fundamentalists go so far as to reject psychology as a disciplined study, which is unfortunate and polarizing. By definition, psychology is the study of the soul, theology is the study of God. Generally speaking, systematic theology is a study of all the essential doctrines of faith, and that would include the study of our souls (psychology). ~ Neil T Anderson, #NFDB
881:The theology she taught was unsophisticated, but it provided a message I needed to hear. To coast through life was to squander my God-given talent, so I had to work hard. I had to take care of my family because Christian duty demanded it. I needed to forgive, not just for my mother’s sake but for my own. I should never despair, for God had a plan. Mamaw ~ J D Vance, #NFDB
882:When the claims of God are revealed to the mind, it must necessarily yield to them, or strengthen itself in sin. It must, as it were, gird itself up, and struggle to resist the claims of duty. This strengthening self in sin under light is the particular form of sin which we call impenitence. ~ Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878), p. 369, #NFDB
883:By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
884:Now, brethren, this is one of our greatest faults in our Christian lives. We are allowing too many rivals of God. We actually have too many gods. We have too many irons in the fire. We have too much theology that we don't understand. We have too much churchly institutionalism. We have too much religion. Actually, I guess we just have too much of too much. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
885:We must not, however, begin with theology. The religion which is founded merely on theology can never contain anything of morality. Hence we derive no other feelings from it but fear on the one hand, and hope of reward on the other, and this produces merely a superstitious cult. Morality, then, must come first and theology follow; and that is religion. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
886:For this knowledge of right living, we have sought a new name... . As theology is the science of religious life, and biology the science of [physical] life ... so let Oekology be henceforth the science of [our] normal lives ... the worthiest of all the applied sciences which teaches the principles on which to found... healthy... and happy life. ~ Ellen Swallow Richards, #NFDB
887:an evangelical theology of the body begins with the normative understanding that every human being is born biologically assigned as male or female. That biological assignment is not a naturalistic accident, but a sign of God’s purpose for that individual human being to display his glory and aim for flourishing and obedience to that creative purpose. ~ R Albert Mohler Jr, #NFDB
888:The capacity for the accomplishment of religious virtuosos the "intellectual sacrifice" is the decisive characteristic of the positively religious man. That this is so is shown by the fact that in spite of (or rather in consequence) of theology (which unveils it) the tension between the value-spheres of "science" and the sphere of "the holy" is unbridgeable. ~ Max Weber, #NFDB
889:Theology, by diverting the attention of men from this life to another, and by endeavoring to coerce all men into one religion, constantly preaching that this world is full of misery, but the next world would be beautiful - or not, as the case may be - has forced on men the thought of fear where otherwise there might have been the happy abandon of nature. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
890:As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized...The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
891:I hope and believe my co-religionists understand and admit that I disclaim their theology in toto, and that by no twisting of language or darkening of its meanings can I be made to have any thing whatever in common with them about religious matters... they must take my word for it that there is nothing in common between their theology and my philosophy. ~ Harriet Martineau, #NFDB
892:It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning , witchcraft and sacerdotalism. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
893:So when you hold the “Institutes” of John Calvin in your hand, remember that theology, for John Calvin, was forged in the furnace of burning flesh, and that Calvin could not sit idly by without some effort to vindicate the faithful and the God for whom they suffered. I think we would, perhaps, do our theology better today if more were at stake in what we said. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
894:This is one of the hard-and-fast ironies of the Christian tradition: views that at one time were the majority opinion, or at least that were widely seen as completely acceptable, eventually came to be left behind; and as theology moved forward to become increasingly nuanced and sophisticated, these earlier majority opinions came to be condemned as heresies. ~ Bart D Ehrman, #NFDB
895:His classical reading is great: he can quote Horace, Juvenal, Ovid and Martial by rote. He has read Metaphysics * * * Spinoza and Kant And Theology too: I have heard him descant Upon Basil and Jerome. Antiquities, art, He is fond of. He knows the old masters by heart, And his taste is refined. ~ Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Canto II, Part IV., #NFDB
896:Our conduct has a direct influence on how people think about the gospel. The world doesn't judge us by our theology; the world judges us by our behavior. People don't necessarily want to know what we believe about the Bible. They want to see if what we believe makes a difference in our lives. Our actions either bring glory to God or misrepresent His truth. ~ Carolyn Mahaney, #NFDB
897:The purpose of theology—the purpose of any thinking about God—is to make the silences clearer and starker to us, to make the unmeaning—by which I mean those aspects of the divine that will not be reduced to human meanings—more irreducible and more terrible, and thus ultimately more wonderful. This is why art is so often better at theology than theology is. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
898:I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations...I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
899:So far, so vindictive: par for the Old Testament course. New Testament theology adds a new injustice, topped off by a new sadomasochism whose viciousness even the Old Testament barely exceeds. It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. Lenny ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
900:When climate change gets some attention in a 100-page document, the most important parts of which will have to do with the theology of stewardship and the theology of "human ecology," it's almost certainly going to be rapturously embraced, or bitterly opposed, as a "global-warming encyclical," despite the evidence that it's much more broadly gauged than that. ~ George Weigel, #NFDB
901:Even if nothing worse than wasted mental effort could be laid to the charge of theology, that alone ought to be sufficient to banish it from the earth ... What a vast amount of labour and learning has been expended, as uselessly as emptying shallow puddles into sieves! How much intellect has been employed mousing after texts, to sustain preconceived doctrines! ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
902:For the soul of a person to be inflamed with passion for the living God, that person's mind must first be informed about the character and will of God. There can be nothing in the heart that is not first in the mind. Though it is possible to have theology on the head without its piercing the soul, it cannot pierce the soul without first being grasped by the mind. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
903:These guys [liberals] will never tire of spending our money and will never hold themselves accountable for their boondoggles. For them the failure of $5 trillion to eradicate poverty simply means that we haven't spent enough money. Ditto with education. The solution is always more money. No amount of empirical evidence will shake their socialist theology. ~ David Limbaugh, #NFDB
904:Reformed theologians, however, self-consciously see the doctrine of God as informing the whole scope of Christian theology. That’s one of the reasons why Calvinists tend to focus so much on the Old Testament. We’re concerned about the character of God as defining everything—our understanding of Christ, our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of salvation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
905:Religious believers today, as in ancient times, are not as a rule much interested in theology, and not at all in the evolutionary steps that led to the present-day world religions. They are concerned instead with religious faith and the benefits it provides. The creation myths explain all they need to know of deep history in order to maintain tribal unity. In ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
906:In The Lost Message of Jesus I claim that penal substitution is tantamount to 'child abuse - a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.' Though the sheer bluntness of this imagery (not original to me of course) might shock some, in truth, it is only a stark 'unmasking' of the violent, pre-Christian thinking behind such a theology. ~ Steve Chalke, #NFDB
907:Theology is “practical” in the fullest, most robust sense: it is a matter not of building systems of ideas so much as it is of world-building, or rather, of building up the world into the fullness of Christ (Eph. 1:22–23). Being biblical, then, ultimately refers to what may be termed a “political” task: building the city of God amidst the ruins of the city of Man. ~ Gary T Meadors, #NFDB
908:Tolerance is not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions are tolerated and the standard or truth of God's Word rightly divided and applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism? ~ John Stott, #NFDB
909:Conversation with God leads to an encounter with God. Prayer is not only the way we learn what Jesus has done for us but also is the way we 'daily receive God's benefits.' Prayer turns theology into experience. Through it we sense his presence and receive his joy, his love, his peace and confidence, and thereby we are changed in attitude, behavior, and character. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
910:Sex is an aspect of human existence that has fallen prey in special measure to a very special form of theological science: the theological outgrowth or offshoot known as moral theology. Its biblical foundations are meager in the sense that nothing of the kind exists in the New Testament, so it has had to achieve its ambition largely by dint of its own efforts. ~ Uta Ranke Heinemann, #NFDB
911:The discipline of theology is about learning to read Scripture more faithfully. It is also about speaking the truth of Scripture in ways that fit new contexts, new times, and new places. It is true that human beings are very talented at using reason, tradition, and experience to support our own sins. It is also true that reading Scripture well is very hard work. ~ Beth Felker Jones, #NFDB
912:Trinity. It wasn’t until the third century that Tertullian (150–240), sometimes called “the founder of Western Christian theology,” first coined this word Trinity from the Latin trinitas, meaning “triad,” or trinus, meaning “threefold.” Again, the word itself is not found in the Bible; it took history awhile to find a proper word for this always-elusive “rubber band. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
913:There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
914:Jesus clearly believed in the reality of Satan and other principalities and powers. Now, I have very compelling historical, philosophical, and existential reasons for concluding that Jesus is Lord, and if I confess him to be Lord, I don't see how I can consider myself in a position to ever correct his theology, especially about such a foundational theological matter! ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
915:Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.
Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there.
Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and shouting "I found it!"
Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat while using a flashlight. ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
916:we have a theology that is Earth-centered and involves a tiny piece of space, and when we step back, when we attain a broader cosmic perspective, some of it seems very small in scale. And in fact a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less of a universe. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
917:I read it in a book, one line, and carry it around with me for days, a new map: “The literal translation for the words ‘pray always’ is ‘come to rest.’” . . . Prayer is the essence of rest, the essence of theology, the essence of idol destruction, the essence of communion. We came from His breath and we’re most our real selves when our breath is offered back to Him.6 ~ Jessica N Turner, #NFDB
918:The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the Poetry of an epoch. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
919:What it does remind us is that 'God' is not to be separated from the quest for the Kingdom of God and is not and cannot be the object of any detached 'scientific' contemplation. Heidegger's critique of onto-theology is also driving a wedge between speaking of God and the aims of science - not so as to get rid of God but rather to free God from a false objectification. ~ George Pattison, #NFDB
920:You know, all mystics - Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion - are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
921:I find this to be the real gift of others - the elegance of their perceptions, the labor that has been put into developing interesting positions and perfection of expression. Just as you read fiction in order to discover the names for emotions and experiences that we have all had, you read the philosophy and theology of others in order to enrich your own perceptions. ~ Omar Saif Ghobash, #NFDB
922:Theres a verse thats meant a lot to me ever since I was in my early 20s. 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul told Timothy to remember Jesus Christ, descended from David and raised from the dead. Thats a good principle, that if my theology, my whole life can be focused on remembering Jesus. Just trying to remember who He is, what He did, being strong in what He did and what He accomplished. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
923:Theology can be useful only when it does not retreat from the divine judgment that accompanies the work of all men, but, instead unreservedly exposes and submits itself to this judgment. Only by not rejecting or resisting the threat that encounters it, but, instead, acknowledging it propriety, reconciling itself to it, and enduring and bearing it, can theology become useful. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
924:There are only two places where the powerful and great in this world lose their courage, tremble in the depths of their souls, and become truly afraid. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ....No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle of Bethlehem. And yet, all Christian theology finds its beginnings in the miracle of miracles, that God became human. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
925:To merely blank the page and vaguely assume that 'religion' is the cause of all the world's problems is, on the contrary, an allegation brought about by nothing more than cognitive lethargy; it is when unburied, unpacked, and exposed but a stale conclusion and a misdirection for the one overwhelmed by centuries of sound theology, scholarly thought, and spiritual development. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
926:Biblical inerrancy and the absolute authority of the Bible are thus a post-Reformation Protestant development. The first time the Bible was described as “inerrant” and “infallible” was in a book of Protestant theology written in the second half of the 1600s. Widespread affirmation of biblical inerrancy is even more recent, largely the product of the past one hundred years. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
927:In the decade of the 1980s, a massive and comprehensive study of religion in American life was undertaken by the Gallup organization. The results of the study were as terrifying as they were revealing. Americans, even evangelical Americans, are woefully ignorant of the content of Scripture and even more ignorant of the history of Christianity and classical Christian theology. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
928:There is a kind of orthodoxy in which the several loci of systematic theology, or stages of redemptive history, are all in place, but that lacks the life of the whole, just as arms, legs, torso, head, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth may all be present—while the body as a whole lacks energy and perhaps life itself. The form of godliness is not the same as its power. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
929:Maybe with chastened humility we could ask if cultures who have lived in close harmony with creation for thousands of years can teach us how to become custodians instead of conquistadors, participants instead of plunderers. For in plundering the planet we have pillaged our souls, leaving us with an emptiness that systematic theology alone cannot fill. So mysticism beckons. We ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
930:There is the view I call penal non-substitution, or the penal example view. (It is also called the Governmental View in textbooks of theology.) This is often associated with Arminian theology stemming from the great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. However, the view was taken up by [Jonathan] Edwards's disciples in New England, who developed a Calvinistic strand of the doctrine. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
931:Aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation... reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature. With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained. ~ Andrew Dickson White, #NFDB
932:Defining systematic theology to include "what the whole Bible TEACHES US today" implies that application to life is a necessary part of the proper pursuit of systematic theology. Thus a doctrine under consideration is seen in terms of its practical value for living the Christian life. Nowhere in Scripture do we find doctrine studied for its own sake or in isolation from life. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
933:God is “the Truth.” The Bible is the “truth about the Truth.” Theology is the “truth about the truth about the Truth.” Christian people live in these many truths about the Truth, and, because of them, have not “the Truth.” Hungry, beaten, and drugged, we had forgotten theology and the Bible. We had forgotten the “truths about the Truth,” therefore we lived in “the Truth. ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
934:If I advance new views in Philosophy or Theology, I cannot expect to have many adherents among minds altogether unprepared for such views; yet it is certain that even those who most fiercely oppose me will recognize the power of my voice if it is not a mere echo; and the very novelty will challenge attention, and at last gain adherents if my views have any real insight. ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
935:Let us no longer be blinded by the dim theology that only in the far seeing vision discovers a millennium, when violence shall no more be heard in the land wasting nor destruction in her borders; but let us behold it now, nigh at the door lending faith and confidence to our hopes, assuring us that even we ourselves shall be instrumental in proclaiming liberty to the captive. ~ Lucretia Mott, #NFDB
936:the seven “liberal arts”: Grammar, the foundation of science; Logic, which differentiates the true from the false; Rhetoric, the source of law; Arithmetic, the foundation of order because “without numbers there is nothing”; Geometry, the science of measurement; Astronomy, the most noble of the sciences because it is connected with Divinity and Theology; and lastly Music. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
937:There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets “things” with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
938:Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
939:It can be a good thing if deeper theology, or philosophy, only makes one more uncertain. It may lead to a healthy doubt; he may throw his hands up saying, 'God, I just don't know anymore. If you're out there, I'm giving it all to you.' From there, after the surrender, he is allowing God himself, rather than theories, books, and documents, to take over and lead him into all truth. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
940:Can I ask a question, sir?” said Maurice, as Death turned to go.
YOU MAY NOT GET AN ANSWER.
““I suppose there isn’t a Big Cat in the Sky, is there?”
I’M SURPRISED AT YOU, MAURICE. OF COURSE THERE ARE NO CAT GODS. THAT WOULD BE TOO MUCH LIKE… WORK.
Maurice nodded. One good thing about being a cat, apart from the extra lives, was that the theology was a lot simpler. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
941:Can I ask a question, sir?" said Maurice, as Death turned to go.
You May Not Get An Answer.
"I suppose there isn't a Big Cat in the Sky, is there?"
I'm Surprised At You, Maurice. Of Course There Are No Cat Gods. That Would Be Too Much Like...Work.
Maurice nodded. One good thing about being a cat, apart from the extra lives, was that the theology was a lot simpler. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
942:The study of religion is chiefly the study of a certain kind of human behavior, be it under the rubric of anthropology, sociology, or psychology. The study of theology, on the other hand, is the study of God. Religion is anthropocentric, theology is theocentric, the difference between religion and theology is ultimately the difference between God and man-hardly a small difference. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
943:Bonaventure’s theology is never about trying to placate a distant or angry God, earn forgiveness, or find some abstract theory of justification. He is all cosmic optimism and hope! Once it lost this kind of mysticism, Christianity became preoccupied with fear, unworthiness, and guilt much more than being included in—and delighting in—an all-pervasive plan that is already in place. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
944:Christians also speak of the Bible as the revelation of God, indeed as the “Word of God.” Yet orthodox Christian theology from ancient times has affirmed that the decisive revelation of God is Jesus. The Bible is “the Word” become words, God’s revelation in human words; Jesus is “the Word” become flesh, God’s revelation in a human life. Thus Jesus is more decisive than the Bible. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
945:It is part of our "Mormon" theology that the Constitution of the United States was divinely inspired; that our Republic came into existence through wise men raised up for that very purpose. We believe it is the duty of the members of the Church to see that this Republic is not subverted either by any sudden or constant erosion of those principles which gave this Nation its birth. ~ David O McKay, #NFDB
946:The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the thirteenth century. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
947:The great end of all study--all theology--is a heart for God and a life of holiness. The great goal of all Edwards's work was the glory of God. And the greatest thing I have ever learned from Edwards, and the driving vision of this book, is that God is glorified most not merely by being known, nor by merely being dutifully obeyed, but by being enjoyed in the knowing and the obeying. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
948:What sort of God do we serve? Certainly not one who can be tamed or boxed or fully understood. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for precise theology and sound doctrine. Squishy, undefined theology is a breeding ground for heresy. But if we're not careful, the regular handling of sacred truths can slowly diminish our capacity for awe and make us think we've got our minds around God. ~ Stephen Altrogge, #NFDB
949:Much of our problem is not, as is often said, that we have failed to get what is in our head down in our heart. Much of what hinders us is that we have had a lot of mistaken theology in our head and it has gotten down into our heart. And it is controlling our inner dynamics so that the head and heart cannot, even with the aid of the Word and the Spirit, pull one another straight. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
950:Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common. ~ Lawrence Wright, #NFDB
951:What I see now is that even with the Islamists, who have been portraying themselves as the alternative to corruption and dictatorship and in defence of more transparency, there is one respect in which they have now changed completely. Since the beginning of the 1920's, Islamism was very close in positioning in some respects to 'liberation theology'. But that is no longer the case. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
952:As the medieval historian Richard Kieckhefer notes, the people of medieval Europe thought of magic as rational for two reasons: “first of all, that it could actually work (that its efficacy was shown by evidence recognized within the culture as authentic) and, secondly, that its workings were governed by principles (of theology or of physics) that could be coherently articulated. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
953:Iconographic tradition has theologically interpreted the manger and the swaddling cloths in terms of the theology of the Fathers. The child stiffly wrapped in bandages is seen as prefiguring the hour of his death: from the outset, he is the sacrificial victim, as we shall see more closely when we examine the reference to the first-born. The manger, then, was seen as a kind of altar. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
954:It should not be assumed that the Quran is the Islamic analogue of the Bible. It isn’t. For Muslims, the Quran is the closest thing to an incarnation of Allah, and it is the very proof they provide to demonstrate the truth of Islam. The best parallel in Christianity is Jesus himself, the Word made flesh, and his resurrection. That is how central the Quran is to Islamic theology.94 ~ Nabeel Qureshi, #NFDB
955:The architectural proof of ancient Egypt's heximal system is demonstrated by its very first constructed pyramid (of Djoser) which consisted of six mastabas. Then came the Great Pyramid later on and coupled theology with astronomy using the septimal system. And Menkaure culminated the process by marking Egypt with the new decimal system. Ancient Egypt breathed through its calendar. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
956:Theology is a non-subject. I'm not saying that professors of theology are non-professors. They do interesting things, like study biblical history, biblical literature. But theology, the study of gods, the study of what gods do, presupposes that gods exist. The only kind of theology that I take account of are those theological arguments that actually argue for the existence of God. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
957:Before the Arabic numerals replaced the Roman ones, the hexadecimal system (taken from Chinese) was present in italian which didn't recognize 'Zero' - hence, the present flipflopping from sedici (16) into diciassette (17) instead from 15 to 16. Therefore, Spanish got linguistically reverted back by the Semitic heritage while maintaining the numeric theology of the gentile heritage. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
958:Beginning with the Psalms and continuing with Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, Luther dug into Scripture, and it was these years of study, exegesis, writing, teaching, and preaching that formed the foundation of his theology—a theology that not only informed the Ninety-five Theses and his belief in salvation through grace alone, but also saved Luther from his own spiritual despair. ~ Michelle DeRusha, #NFDB
959:But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme power that is simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or does it volatilize itself in the simulacra that, alone, deploy their power and pomp of fascination - the visible machinery of icons substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
960:The world knows about our Jesus. They know about His poverty and love of the underdog. They know He told His followers to care for the poor and to share. They’ve heard about His radical economic theories and revolutionary redistribution concepts. They might not understand the nuances of His divinity or the various shades of His theology, but they know He was a friend of the oppressed. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
961:Warren knows God doesn't chow down on Doritos or caviar. What he fails to see, however, is that there is no difference in principle between the old animal sacrifice theology and his own. Surely the same principle applies to emotional gratification. He is still manifestly talking about the care and feeding of God. His God, like an insecure boyfriend, seems to need emotional stroking. ~ Robert M Price, #NFDB
962:About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church... As long as I can remember. I have resented mass indoctrination. I cannot prove to you there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
963:American Christians that flourish under the existing system seek to maintain the existing dynamics of inequality and remain in the theology of celebration over and against the theology of suffering. Promoting one perspective over the other, however, diminishes our theological discourse. To only have a theology of celebration at the cost of the theology of suffering is incomplete. The ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB
964:I had begun to comprehend that the Bible’s story is about the relationship of God to human beings, and of human beings to one another, and that this meant that it is our friendships, marriages, families, and even church congregations that best reveal what kind of theology we have, who our God is. Or, as Thomas Merton once put it, “because we love, God is present.” That is the story. ~ Kathleen Norris, #NFDB
965:Science may be weird and incomprehensible--more weird and less comprehensible than any theology--but science works. It gets results. It can fly you to Saturn, slingshotting you around Venus and Jupiter on the way. We may not understand quantum theory (heaven knows, I don't), but a theory that predicts the real world to ten decimal places cannot in any straightforward sense be wrong. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
966:The pope [Francis] takes his vocabulary from his pastoral experience, not from the rhetorical tool kit of liberation theology, with its Marxist yammering about "center" and "periphery." The "peripheries," for Francis, are all those who have fallen through the cracks of late-modernity and post-modernity - in his native Argentina, because of colossal corruption, political and financial. ~ George Weigel, #NFDB
967:Be quite sure, the words we will hear on that day will come not from theology, not from the saints, not from the churches. They will come from the hungry and from the poor. They will come not from creeds and doctrines. They will come from the naked and the homeless. They will come not from Bibles and books of prayer. They will come from the glasses of water that we gave or did not give. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
968:In North Pittman is a particularly striking theology. There, one church memorably teaches that if all the trains were to be still, together, for one moment, if there were no rails percussing the iron road, all human life would wink instantly out. Because such noises are the snoring, the sleep-breathing of a railsea world, & it is the rails that dream us. We do not dream the rails. ~ China Mi ville, #NFDB
969:the seeker who embraces positive theology finds ... that you can have all that stuff in the mall, as well as the beautiful house and car, if only you believe that you can. But ... if you don't have all that you want, if you feel sick, discouraged, or defeated, you have only yourself to blame. Positive theology ratifies and completes a world without beauty, transcendence, or mercy. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich, #NFDB
970:His lover appeared to have boarded the train at Auguste Comte and passed by the station of theology, where the password was 'Yes, Mother.' This train was now traversing the realm of metaphysics, where the password was 'Certainly not, Mother.' In the distance, visible through a telescope, was the mountain of reality on which was inscribed its password, 'Open your eyes and be courageous. ~ Naguib Mahfouz, #NFDB
971:Indeed, theological discourse offers its strange jubilation only to the strict extent that it permits and, dangerously, demands of it wokman that he speak beyond his means, precisely because he does not speak of himself. Hence the danger of a speech that, in a sense, speaks against the one who lends himself to it. One must obtain forgiveness for every essay in theology. In all senses. ~ Jean Luc Marion, #NFDB
972:[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
973:Christianity in our country is a lot like what the Ducksters profess. No longer doctrinaire or demanding, the mishmash of pop-religion practiced in churches across America is an extension of the therapeutic culture: festooned with feelings, mostly misdirected. Untempered by intelligent interpretation of scripture... American pop-theology: light on doctrine, heavy on hellfire and damnation. ~ Ilana Mercer, #NFDB
974:We frolic in our emancipation from theology, but have we developed a natural ethic—a moral code independent of religion—strong enough to keep our instincts of acquisition, pugnacity, and sex from debasing our civilization into a mire of greed, crime, and promiscuity? Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities? ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
975:Palestinian believers have a unique experience with US foreign policy and our close ties with Israel. This alliance has many layers, but given the strong support of the US church, and the frequency of religious language surrounding these policies, Palestinian Christian friends raise important and challenging questions about how we understand the intertwining of theology and politics in the US. ~ Ed McBain, #NFDB
976:Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
977:As part of this process, the location of areas of exclusion in theology is one of crucial importance; for instance, poverty and sensuality as a whole (and not as separate units) has been marginalised in theology. A theology from the poor needs also to be a sexual theology, a theology of economics and desires that have been excluded from our way of ‘doing theology’ as a second act. I ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
978:every Christian must be “fully human” by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some “spiritual” realm. To be an ethereal figure who merely talked about God, but somehow refused to get his hands dirty in the real world in which God had placed him, was bad theology. Through Christ, God had shown that he meant us to be in this world and to obey him with our actions in this world. So ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
979:There are many, many discrepant views within the Shia theology about what's the proper role of religion in society or in the State, should it rule now, should it claim to govern people in the here and now, or should it wait until the Messiah, the 12th Imam, comes back and would it only be then appropriate for religious rule to bring about a world of universal justice and vindication. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
980:ANTITYPE (A'NTITYPE) n.s.[ which is resembled or shadowed out by the type; that of which the type is the representation.It is a term of theology.See TYPE. When once upon the wing, he soars to an higher pitch, from the type to the antitype, to the days of the Messiah, the ascension of our Saviour, and, at length, to his kingdom and dominion over all the earth.Burnet’sTheory of the Earth. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
981:Ask him, what he understands by a spirit? He will answer you, that it is an unknown substance, perfectly simple, that has no extension, that has nothing common with matter. Indeed, is there any one, who can form the least idea of such a substance? What then is a spirit, to speak in the language of modern theology, but the absence of an idea? The idea of spirituality is an idea without model. ~ Paul Henri Thiry, #NFDB
982:Simply speaking truth out loud is healing in and of itself. When people courageously voice a true, hard thing, they’ve already stolen some of its dark power before we offer one word to fix it. Theology backs that up. Of our own Jesus, Scripture says, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4–5). ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
983:That's the first time I've ever heard the idea of unconditional love outside the context of religion. In theology class, I always hear about God's love, about his loving us even though we're sinners. But the idea that real live parents could be unconditionally loving is completely foreign... How can anyone be loved not for what they do but for who they are? Isn't who you are defined by what you do? ~ Cara Chow, #NFDB
984:But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements of the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent; as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town. ~ Eric Ambler, #NFDB
985:From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari). ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
986:The fact that many churches avoid uncomfortable topics, not only in the preaching of the Word but in Bible study as well, leads to the creation of blind spots in the theology of even the most devout Christians. These blind spots can then function as a door through which false teaching is introduced; hence the importance of doing as Paul said, preaching the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27 ESV). ~ James R White, #NFDB
987:when theologians read the Bible through the lens of the Exodus narrative, they are called “liberation theologians,” but their counterparts who read it through the Greco-Roman narrative are never labeled “domination theologians” or “colonization theologians.” Similarly, we have “black theology” and “feminist theology,” but Greco-Roman orthodoxy is never called “white theology” or “male theology. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
988:I whispered to Dad during Rosh Hashanah services, "Do you believe in God?"
"Not really," he said. "No."
"Then why do we come here?"
He sucked thoughfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. "I've been wrong before," he said.
And that pretty much summed up what theology there was to find in the Foxman home. ~ Jonathan Tropper,#NFDB
989:The older liberal theology, which indeed was still primarily a theology or a view of God, died and was resurrected in the form of a social ethic that one could share with people who had no reliance on a present God or a living Christ at all. Total inclusivism of all beliefs and practices except oppressive ones, such as the exclusivism of traditional Christianity itself, was the natural next step. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
990:But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
991:Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires. Our chief end is to glorify God, the great Object. We do so most fully when we treasure him, desire him, delight in him so supremely that we let goods and kindred go and display his love to the poor and the lost. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
992:I think Jesus is a fact of history. I think a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and was crucified. I think his death interpreted his life in a fantastic way, because if you study that life carefully underneath an overlay of theology and mythology, you'll find that the power of that life was that he was constantly giving himself away. He was constantly calling people to be all that they could be. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
993:Commandments are the railroad tracks on which the life empowered by the love of God poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit runs. Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it is poor psychology. It has to borrow from law to give eyes to love. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
994:I wondered if when we take Christian theology out of the context of its narrative, when we ignore the poetry in which it is presented, when we turn it into formulas to help us achieve the American dream, we lose its meaning entirely, and the ideas become fodder for the head but have no impact on the way we live our lives or think about God. This is, perhaps, why people are so hostile toward religion. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
995:Problem is, a lot of Christians who believe the world is headed for imminent destruction don’t use their eschatology to motivate altruism. Some, in fact, use their belief in the coming apocalypse to justify negligence and destruction. Critics of pretrib theology point out that rapture obsession can make Christians overlook glaring social needs in the present, like genocide, disease, and abject poverty. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
996:futurism” as a new academic discipline. It’s an interdisciplinary field combining mathematics, engineering, art, technology, economics, design, history, geography, biology, theology, physics, and philosophy. As a futurist, my job is not to spread prophecies, but rather to collect data, identify emerging trends, develop strategies, and calculate the probabilities of various scenarios occurring in the future. ~ Amy Webb, #NFDB
997:Romans 8 contains a powerful theology of suffering. There’s the groaning of those dying without hope, and in contrast, the groaning of those in childbirth. Both processes are painful, yet they are very different. The one is the pain of hopeless dread, the other the pain of hopeful anticipation. The Christian’s pain is very real, but it’s the pain of a mother anticipating the joy of holding her child. It ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
998:scholarship together with down-to-earth writing, Tabletalk helps you understand the Bible and apply it to daily living. Trusted theological resource— Tabletalk avoids trends, shallow doctrine and popular movements to present biblical truth simply and clearly. Thought-provoking topics—each issue contains challenging, stimulating articles on a wide variety of topics related to theology and Christian living. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
999:In short, Aristotle destroys the soul in order to give it immortality; the immortal soul is "pure thought," undefiled with reality, just as Aristotle's God is pure activity, undefiled with action. Let him who can, be comforted with this theology. One wonders sometimes whether this metaphysical eating of one's cake and keeping it is not Aristotle's subtle Way of saving himself from anti-Macedonian hemlock? ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
1000:There is no discussing theology, sociology and politics when someone is under the spell of a self-enclosed totalitarian ideology. Intentionally or out of ignorance, Ahmed, who is empirical in all matters, detests pointless and laborious philosophical imaginings, never-ending discussions, or clashes of ideas that might be respectful of non-believer opponents and sinners deserving only of complete contempt. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
1001:He considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that he was really interested in books dealing with politics, philosophy and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his nature; but in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it, Aleksey Aleksandrovich never missed anything in the world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1002:Theology is indispensable for religious communities to make sense of themselves and their changing views about the world in light of what is perceived to be revelation, but, at the same time, that theology can have a pretentiousness, or double pretentiousness, if it is acontextual as opposed to contextual, if it is foundationalist as opposed to antifoundationalist, or ahistorical as opposed to historicist. ~ Cornel West, #NFDB
1003:to do Christian theology within the framework of religious pluralism and the cross-cultural study of religion. Given its Christian focus and audience, it is written primarily for Christians but also for anybody interested in listening in on a Christian conversation. The conversation is one that has been going on within myself, with other Christians in the present, and with Christian voices from the past. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
1004:I guess I will say, going back to the Judaism questions, there are mental reflexes or patterns that I think of as Jewish in my own feelings about mysticism and theology.Franz Kafka is someone I very much revere. If I believed in holy texts I'd go to him as a touchstone. Not that I read Kafka all the time at this point. In a way, this is what I most want to talk about and it's the hardest to talk about. ~ Jonathan Raymond, #NFDB
1005:Margaret Miles offers a stunning treatment of human experience, coaxing humans to leave dualisms behind and embrace our intelligent bodies. In a foundational text, she draws on the arts, philosophy and theology, and her experience as a hospice volunteer to explore concrete alternatives to privileging the rational mind. Her erudition, wisdom, and graceful writing are compelling proof of the intelligent body. ~ Mary E Hunt, #NFDB
1006:The ultimate test of my understanding of the scriptural teaching is the amount of time I spend in prayer. As theology is ultimately the knowledge of God, the more theology I know, the more it should drive me to seek to know God. Not to know about Him but to know Him! The whole object of salvation is to bring me to knowledge of God. If all my knowledge does not lead me to prayer there is something wrong somewhere. ~ Martyn, #NFDB
1007:Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
1008:We see in the 20th Century an unfortunate trench warfare, in which psychoanalysis, in a struggle against the internalized compulsion and superstition of a particular doctrine, has expressed itself atheistically. By contrast, theology is not merely under suspicion of talking soullessly about God. Both theology and psychology, in striving for human health, need one another like the right and the left hand. ~ Eugen Drewermann, #NFDB
1009:Systematic theology will ask questions like "What are the attributes of God? What is sin? What does the cross achieve?" Biblical theology tends to ask questions such as "What is the theology of the prophecy of Isaiah? What do we learn from John's Gospel? How does the theme of the temple work itself out across the entire Bible?" Both approaches are legitimate; both are important. They are mutually complementary. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1010:The crime of liberation theology was that it takes the Gospels seriously. That's unacceptable. The Gospels are radical pacifist material, if you take a look at them . . . Liberation theology, in Brazil particularly, brought the actual Gospel to peasants. They said, let's read what the Gospels say, and try to act on the principles they describe. That was the major crime that set off the Reagan wars of terror. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1011:At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
1012:At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
1013:Listen to his dangerous and inclusionary thinking: “My Father's sun shines on the good and the bad, his rain falls on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). Or “Don't pull out the weeds or you might pull out the wheat along with it. Let the weeds and the wheat both grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:29–30). If I had presented such fuzzy thinking in my moral theology class, I would have gotten an F! ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1014:Everything we learn—economics, philosophy, biology, mathematics—has to be understood in light of the overarching reality of the character of God. That is why, in the Middle Ages, theology was called “the queen of the sciences” and philosophy “her handmaiden.” Today the queen has been deposed from her throne and, in many cases, driven into exile, and a supplanter now reigns. We have replaced theology with religion. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1015:On the Rebbe’s willingness to offer opinions and advice on a large range of issues, including theology, business, family affairs, and even medical questions: “[First] I am not afraid to answer that I don’t know. If I know, then I have no right not to answer. When someone comes to you for help and you can help him to the best of your knowledge, and you refuse him this help, you become a cause of his suffering. ~ Joseph Telushkin, #NFDB
1016:When we talk about the theology of “God is dead,”
this means that the notion of God must be dead in order
for God to reveal himself as a reality. The theologians, if
they only use concepts, words, and not direct
experience, are not very helpful. The same goes for
nirvana, which is something to be touched and lived and
not discussed and described. We have notions that
distort truth, reality. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#NFDB
1017:Apotheosis (from Greek ἀποθέωσις from ἀποθεοῦν, apotheoun to deify; in Latin deificatio making divine; also called divinization and deification) is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre. this seems particularily important relative to define, which seems to be attempt at the highest potential of the word.
~ Wikipedia,#NFDB
1018:Dad stepped forward. "Mr. Zelden, I'm Patrick Silver."
Zelden Frowned. “It’s Doctor Zelden, if you don’t mind. I do hold a doctorate in theology, you know.”
Dad gave him a stiff smile. “Of course.”
Both my parents held doctorates in psychology, but they never referred to themselves as doctors. They said that title should be reserved for people who could actually save lives, not just write a thesis. ~ Mara Purnhagen,#NFDB
1019:Focusing on the intellectual artifacts of the earthly polis, we miss the formative power of its rituals. This is the inconvenient truth that is pressed upon us by the new black theology of Willie Jennings, J. Kameron Carter, and Brian Bantum, for example.38 The church’s capitulation to ideologies of race will be a case study of our assimilation by earthly-city liturgies despite our best arguments and convictions. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1020:If God were a theory, the study of theology would be the way to understand Him. But God is alive and in need of love and worship. This is why thinking of God is related to our worship. In an analogy of artistic understanding, we sing to Him before we are able to understand Him. We have to love in order to know. Unless we learn how to sing, unless we know how to love, we will never learn to understand Him". ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
1021:If we look at it more from a philosophical standpoint, these foundations of atheism and secular humanism believe that you are your own God. That leads us to something that unfortunately has crept into many churches across America, and it is what I call the Social Gospel. The social gospel, that could creep into something that is called Liberation Theology, which is a mixture of leftist, pseudo-Christianity with Marxism. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
1022:That this network is complex explains much about our faith. It explains why people with higher activity in their frontal lobes will be drawn to apologetics or theology—they want to know how God works. On the other hand, people with higher activity in their limbic systems will know God through feelings and have little concern with rational justifications for God’s existence. They know God because they feel God. Either ~ Mike McHargue, #NFDB
1023:Our best hope is not found in correct theology, the Bible or any other book, but in the love we express through action rather than words. Our best hope is that love predates creation and thus that the Creator sees us as ever young. Our hope is that when we look at God through the eyes of the loving Christ we will see who God really is. Our ultimate hope is that God will be looking back at us as we’d like to be seen. ~ Frank Schaeffer, #NFDB
1024:The beginning of Christendom, is, strictly, at a point out of time. A metphysical trigonometry finds it among the spiritual Secrets, at the meeting of two heavenward lines, one drawn from Bethany along the Ascent of the Messias, the other from Jerusalem against the Descent of the Paraclete. That measurement, the measurement of eternity in operation, of the bright cloud and the rushing wind, is, in effect, theology. ~ Charles Williams, #NFDB
1025:Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
1026:Theology differs from science in many respects, because of its different subject matter, a personal God who cannot be put to the test in the way that the impersonal physical world can be subjected to experimental enquiry. Yet science and theology have this in common, that each can be, and should be defended as being investigations of what is, the search for increasing verisimilitude in our understanding of reality. ~ John Polkinghorne, #NFDB
1027:I have spent much of my life around death. I have sat with people as they died. I have listened to others relate near-death experiences. I have studied theology and am aware of what scriptures and religions say about life and death. And I have come to the conclusion that death is not to be feared. Moreover, when it is time for me to move out of this tenement in which I am housed, I intend to look forward to it joyfully. ~ Steve Goodier, #NFDB
1028:We fail to embrace a oneness perspective rooted in kingdom theology, though, unless we, like Joshua, surrender to the truth that God’s kingdom is not here to take sides. God’s kingdom is not black. God’s kingdom is not white. God’s kingdom is not Hispanic. Nor is it Asian, Middle Eastern, or Indian. God did not come to take sides. God came to take over. And until we bow beneath the overarching rules set forth by the Ruler in ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
1029:What is the right time [to discuss theology]? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually 'to be still' (Ps. 46:10) in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, 'to judge uprightly' (Ps. 75:2) in theology. ~ Gregory of Nazianzus, #NFDB
1030:You are reformed, you may be a better man, but you are not a different man. How can you convince yourself of such a thing when you are so conversant with the theology of your faith? From one end of this life to the other, you carry with you all that you have done. Absolution grants you forgiveness for it, but does not expunge the past. The man you were still lives within you, repressed by the man you have struggled to become. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1031:Apart from all theology and its contentions, it is quite clear that the world is not good and not bad (to say nothing of its being the best or the worst), and that the terms "good" and "bad" have only significance with respect to man, and indeed, perhaps, they are not justified even here in the way they are usually employed; in any case we must get rid of both the calumniating and the glorifying conception of the world. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1032:It was not pastoral teaching, or small group fellowship, or worship services, or books of theology — rather, they mentioned suffering. “People said they grew more during seasons of loss, pain, and crisis than they did at any other time.” We discover the hidden value of suffering only by suffering — not as part of God’s original or ultimate plan for us, but as a redemptive transformation that takes place in the midst of trial. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1033:Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done Theology calls it building a conscience or developing a spirit of selflessness. Psychology calls it the growth of the superego. Considering how long society has been at it, you'd expect a better job. But the campaigns have been badly planned and the victory has never been secured. ~ B F Skinner, #NFDB
1034:I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this . . . “A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss". ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
1035:Without the withering criticism by nominalism, medieval Christian philosophy and theology would not have relinquished their claim to the role of knowledge in discovering the nature of things in light of higher principles; instead, it caused them to leave the field of battle without any defense before the onslaught of secularism, rationalism, and empiricism, which were, as a result, able to gain a remarkably easy victory. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1036:Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1037:To discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods. They need but common sense. They have only to look within themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their obvious interests, to consider the object of society and of each of the members who compose it, and they will easily understand that virtue is an advantage, and that vice is an injury to beings of the species. ~ Jean Meslier, #NFDB
1038:I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1039:The sixteenth-century parallel: (1) medieval scholasticism as a synthesis between the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle; (2) the heresy of works-salvation, perhaps with Tetzel as an extreme case; (3) Luther the Reformer, who like Athanasius pushes hard for the fundamental principle of justification by faith alone; and (4) Calvin the consolidator, who rethinks the whole of theology in the light of the knowledge gained in the Reformation. ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
1040:Contemporary Christian proclamation is faced with the question whether, when it demands faith from men and women, it expects them to acknowledge this mythical world picture from the past. If this is impossible, it has to face the question whether the New Testament proclamation has a truth that is independent of the mythical world picture, in which case it would be the task of theology to demythologize the Christian proclamation. ~ Rudolf Bultmann, #NFDB
1041:I refuse to turn to theology to justify the life or redeem it. There is a question always of the connection to the eternal. I say to myself above all, keep alive your conviction that there are sacred elements in the life in the practice of the life that must be respected. But the conviction in the existence of the sacred does not necessarily imply that you need to believe in a creator, because we are the ones that made the sacred. ~ Stanley Kunitz, #NFDB
1042:Searching for a better description of this rotting sadness, I came upon the concept of acedia. In Christian theology, it’s an antecedent to sloth, the least sexy of the seven deadly sins. Thomas Aquinas winnowed it down for me: acedia is sorrow so complete that the flesh prevails completely over the spirit. You don’t just turn your back on the world, you turn your back on God. You don’t care, and you don’t care that you don’t care. ~ Mishka Shubaly, #NFDB
1043:Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done Theology calls it building a conscience or developing a spirit of selflessness. Psychology calls it the growth of the superego.
Considering how long society has been at it, you'd expect a better job. But the campaigns have been badly planned and the victory has never been secured. ~ B F Skinner,#NFDB
1044:At the center of Zoroastrian theology was a unique monotheistic system based on the sole god, Ahura Mazda (“the Wise Lord”). Like most ancients, Zarathustra could not easily conceive of his god as being the source of both good and evil. He therefore developed an ethical dualism in which two opposing spirits, Spenta Mainyu (“the beneficent spirit”) and Angra Mainyu (“the hostile spirit”), were responsible for good and evil, respectively. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1045:Paul was the only scholar among the apostles. He never displays his learning, considering it of no account as compared with the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, for whom he suffered the loss of all things, but he could not conceal it, and turned it to the best use after his conversion. Peter and John had natural genius, but no scholastic education; Paul had both, and thus became the founder of Christian theology and philosophy. ~ Philip Schaff, #NFDB
1046:The most important decision in Christian theology is to decide whether you will speak of God as a person or as a concept, as a name or as an idea. Talk about God as, to use Paul Tillich's term, "ultimate reality," and you will get a safe, dead abstraction that you can utilize in whatever salvation project you happen now to be working. Name God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and God will enlist you in God's move upon the world. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
1047:the Branch Davidians’ theology is not so different from that of a large fraction of Americans. We call Koresh a “cult leader,” which allows us to file him away reassuringly as a one-off nut, like Charles Manson or Jim Jones. But it’s important to recognize that his church was a long-standing subgroup of a 150-year-old Protestant denomination that is one of the twenty largest churches in America, with six thousand U.S. congregations.*1 ~ Kurt Andersen, #NFDB
1048:The friends of evangelical doctrine, and the advocates of orthodoxy, have the following objects to keep ever in view in this age; they must take care of their Bibles, that they be not mutilated or curtailed by lawless criticism; they must take care of their theology, that it be not perverted by false philosophy; and they must take care of their pulpits, that they be not occupied by heretical, unspiritual, or incompetent ministers. ~ John Angell James, #NFDB
1049:Conclusion Not all agree with Augustine’s theology, but all agree that he was one of the greatest and most influential theologians ever. His thought cannot be underestimated and should not be overlooked. It has profoundly influenced not just theology but political and psychological theory as well. “It is little exaggeration to say that the whole history of the Western Church for the last 1,500 years is the story of Augustine’s influence. ~ Daryl Aaron, #NFDB
1050:Mostly things are not that way, that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as life sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass--seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1051:There is however difference between the theology of liberation and traditional theology, the latter being based primarily On the Word of God made incarnate in the Holy Scripture Liberation theology is of course also inspired by the Word, but its representatives are convinced that God also speaks to us in everyday events and that, for example, information obtained through the mass media can be a special way in which God speaks to us. ~ Ernesto Cardenal, #NFDB
1052:There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
1053: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. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1054:The way to judge of religion is by doing our duty; and theology is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we must first see, and then love; but here, on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts; and we shall then, see and perceive, and understand. ~ Jeremy Taylor, "A sermon preached to the University of Dublin", The whole works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor. Vol 6, (1839) Sermon VI, p. 379, #NFDB
1055:I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soulI hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the true Faith of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past. ~ Pope Pius XII, #NFDB
1056:There is a broad distinction between religion and theology. The one is a natural, human experience common to all well-organized minds. The other is a system of speculations about the unseen and the unknowable, which the human mind has no power to grasp or explain, and these speculations vary with every sect, age, and type of civilization. No one knows any more of what lies beyond our sphere of action than thou and I, and we know nothing. ~ Lucretia Mott, #NFDB
1057:The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty in the process as possible. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1058:in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterion that we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
1059:I should interweave my theology with prayer. I should frequently interrupt my talking about God by talking to God. Not far behind the theological sentence, "God is generous," should come the prayerful sentence, "Thank you, God." On the heels of, "God is glorious," should come, "I adore your glory." What I have come to see is that this is the way it must be if we are feeling God's reality in our hearts as well as describing it with our heads. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1060:For all the series of the ruling Gods (θεοὶ ἄρχοντες), are collected into the intellectual fabrication as into a summit, and subsist about it. And as all the fountains are the progeny of the intelligible father, and are filled from him with intelligible union, thus likewise, all the orders of the principles or rulers, are suspended according to nature from the demiurgus, and participate from thence of an intellectual life. ~ Proclus, The Theology of Plato, #NFDB
1061:The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon Hell and Damnation-upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer. ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
1062:The union team of New Zealand's national sport of Rugby has incorporated the static posture of the Haka war dance into its symbols. That symbol of the sprawling arms and legs is similar to that of the Dogon's Kanaga mask which I trace back to Egypt; it resembles the Ka signaling the beginning of the solar and/or lunar cycle based on the Egyptian theology when Osiris proceeds from the Great Pyramid (which is the House of Ka) into the Duat. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1063:Christianity, if it is to triumph over pantheism, must absorb it. To our pusillanimous eyes Jesus would have borne the marks of a hateful pantheism, for he confirmed the Biblical phrase "ye are gods," and so would St. Paul, who tells us that we are of "the race of God." Our century wants a new theology - that is to say, a more profound explanation of the nature of Christ and of the light which it flashes upon heaven and upon humanity. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
1064:Theologians, and religionists in general, start with a fantasy premise and then proceed to apply rigorous formal logic to tease out its implications. Stark himself points out that “theology consists of formal reasoning about God.” This is admirably exact. Theologians, beginning with a wished-for creation of their own minds, analyze that creation’s characteristics by rigorous application of the principles of formal—that is, deductive—logic. ~ Andrew Bernstein, #NFDB
1065:To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself that you don't believe in it, you accept its spells. Like an avowed atheist who sees the Devil at night, you reason: He certainly doesn't exist; this is therefore an illusion, perhaps a result of indigestion. But the Devil is sure that he exists, and believes in his upside-down theology. What, then, will frighten him? You make the sign of the cross, and he vanishes in a puff of brimstone. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
1066: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 can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1067:The third class is made up of the scientists...they attack the boundary lines of the known...Those who wage this war in the cause of science are mostly concrete thinkers who follow as far as their instruments will lead them and then must wait for instruments still more powerful. Most of these minds are atheistic or at least agnostic...The miracles of theology are incapable of chemical analysis and are consequently taken cum grano salis by the scientific world, #NFDB
1068: The two most important things in our holy religion are the life of faith and the walk of faith. He who shall rightly understand these is not far from being a master in experimental theology, for they are vital points to a Christian. You will never find true faith unattended by true godliness; on the other hand, you will never discover a truly holy life which has not for its root a living faith upon the righteousness of Christ. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1069:I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure. . . . When letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate. . . . It is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1070:This practice of discerning the theological testimony, unity and development of the biblical *canon was a concern of the Reformers, but it began to emerge as an approach distinct from *dogmatic theology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Having much in common with *covenant theology, Reformed approaches usually emphasize the unity of Scripture as a *redemptive-historical drama, all of which reveals the person and work of Christ. Notable ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
1071:The very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1072:Bashir told bin Laden to move out. Bin Laden replied, according to a Sudanese official involved in the exchange, “If you think it will be good for you, I will leave. But let me tell you one thing: If I stay or if I go, the Americans will not leave you alone.”30 Osama bin Laden now had every reason to believe that the United States was his primary persecutor. His political theology identified many enemies, but it was America that forced him into flight. ~ Steve Coll, #NFDB
1073:Kant's treatments of rational theology and metaphysics were aimed primarily at theoretical questions. His attitude toward the pseudo-sciences of "special metaphysics" in Wolff and Baumgarten was always double-edged. He did see them as pseudo-sciences but also valued their doctrinal value and especially their regulative value for the empirical sciences. Like his views about religion, I don't think any of this is any longer viable in its original form. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
1074:So we didn't get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What's happened then, of course, is now that we've had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship? ~ Michael Emerson, #NFDB
1075:The first hint of what is to come occurs near the end of Luther’s obscurity. In September 1517 the dutiful Johann Rhau-Grunenberg publishes a one-page broadsheet by Luther with a boring title: A Disputation against Scholastic Theology. In his broadsheet, Luther ironically lists concise propositions to be argued over—a central practice of scholasticism—in order to criticize scholasticism itself, sort of like a poet writing a poem to criticize poetry. ~ Brad S Gregory, #NFDB
1076:in the long run. He’s just universal in his politics and American in his Catholicism. He thinks the church should be democratized as if it were a solution in and of itself; he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the lowest Italian peasant is probably more educated in Catholic theology than some of the lay theologians he works with, and more honest about it, too. And in Greeley's politics, Americans can’t do anything right unless the universe—or the UN—agrees. ~ Declan Finn, #NFDB
1077:Think about it,” Pastor Pete said, deciding to give more concrete examples they could relate to before going into the theology of it. “They voted for people promising them ‘free’ medical care, ‘progressive’ tax rates where, pretty soon, they weren’t paying any taxes, but getting lots of free goods and services. They convinced themselves that the little bit they paid into Social Security entitled them to the much bigger amounts they took out of the system. ~ Glen Tate, #NFDB
1078:All speculative theology, which rests on philosophical reasoning rather than biblical revelation, is at fault here. Paul tells us where this sort of theology ends: “The world by wisdom knew not God” (1 Cor 1:21 KJV). To follow the imagination of one’s heart in the realm of theology is the way to remain ignorant of God, and to become an idol-worshipper, the idol in this case being a false mental image of God, made by one’s own speculation and imagination. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1079:I don't have a system." "Theology is a system." "Not my theology." "Then what is it?" "What is it? It's the overwhelming combination of all that I've seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me and refused to depart, that drives me again and again to a faith of which I am not sure, that is alluring because it will not stoop to be defined by so inadequate a creature as man. Unlike Marxism, it is ineffable, and it cannot be explained in words. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
1080:Our pop theology has eliminated the place for risk and insulated us with a comfort-and-security theology. This view runs counter to what is found in the Scriptures. I want to reiterate the fact that the center of God’s will is not a safe place, but the most dangerous place in the world. God fears nothing and no one. God moves with intentionality and power. To live outside God’s will puts us in danger, but to live in His will makes us dangerous. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus, #NFDB
1081:The shnorrer was no fool, please note, no simpleton. He often had read a good deal, could quote from the Talmud, and was quick on the verbal draw. Shnorrers were “regulars” in the synagogue and, between prayers, took part in long discussions of theology with their benefactors. The status points involved here are too delicate for Newtonian physics, or Parsonian sociology,* to handle. (Certain Hindu and Oriental groups recognize the beggar in the same way.) ~ Leo Rosten, #NFDB
1082:Whereas theology is the primary driving force behind Christianity and the great Eastern religions, Islam's backbone is a system of law covering all areas of conduct, including commerce. Thus, the new monotheism from Arabia was especially attractive to those engaged in any organized economic activity that flourished wherever rules were plainly visible and vigorously enforced by disinterested parties—again, as in the more secular English common law. ~ William J Bernstein, #NFDB
1083:As far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics. ~ Martin Gardner, #NFDB
1084:Theology is for everyone. Indeed, everyone needs to be a theologian. In reality, everyone is a theologian—of one sort or another. And therein lies the problem. There is nothing wrong with being an amateur theologian or a professional theologian, but there is everything wrong about being an ignorant or a sloppy theologian. Therefore, every Christian should read theology. Theology simply means thinking about God and expressing those thoughts in some way. ~ Charles C Ryrie, #NFDB
1085:When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics. ~ Frank J Tipler, #NFDB
1086:[A historian] will more seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; ten volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology, included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest productions of the sciences and literature of ancient Greece. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1087:In matters of theology and the complex arena of Church politics, journalists do what they do in any situation where the facts are too exhausting and time-consuming to uncover: they go with the guy the conservatives hate, which in this case means siding with McCarrick and Francis. As Ben Shapiro points out, “The media have rushed to Francis’s defense…Because Francis is widely perceived to share leftist sensibilities regarding issues like climate change, ~ Milo Yiannopoulos, #NFDB
1088:it is likely that even if string theory is right, no one ever will. Strings are so small that a direct observation would be tantamount to reading the text on this page from a distance of 100 light-years: it would require resolving power nearly a billion billion times finer than our current technology allows. Some scientists argue vociferously that a theory so removed from direct empirical testing lies in the realm of philosophy or theology, but not physics. ~ Brian Greene, #NFDB
1089:I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”
– President Jimmy Carter ~ Jimmy Carter,#NFDB
1090:We believe that the creation of a woman was the crowning and final and most glorified moment of human creation. That we start with light & dark and land & sea and we move through fish & fowl & beasts of the field and we get to Adam and it's still not good enough. And only when Eve was created -- this is our theology [...] -- that is our theology, that the crowning creation and the glory of the human experience came with the creation of Eve. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
1091:The problem of knowing man is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God. In conventional Western theology the attempt is made to know God by thought, to make statements about God. It is assumed that I can know God in my thought. In mysticism, which is the consequent outcome of monotheism, the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room—and no need—for knowledge about God. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1092:There is a historic strain of dominion theology which says, taking its references from the Psalms, that man is made just a little lower than God, and that we are the crown of creation. That interpretation has come at the expense of the one that says when God, in the story of Noah, intervened to save human life against the flood, against the acts of nature, He did not stop with human beings. He made sure that every kind of animal was represented twice on that ark. ~ Bill Moyers, #NFDB
1093:One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past--they say their deities are the masters of all universes, and yet they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become better for it. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
1094:we find the university dominated by theology of another kind – a godless theology, to be sure, but one no less insistent upon unquestioning submission to doctrine, and no less ardent in its pursuit of heretics, sceptics and debunkers. People are no longer burned at the stake for their views: they simply fail to get tenure, or, if they are students, they flunk the course. But the effect is similar, namely to reinforce an orthodoxy in which nobody really believes. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1095:The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil (this is traditionally called the problem of theodicy) is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics. Surely there must come a time when we will acknowledge the obvious: theology is not little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1096:The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1097:Religion in Chinatown, as in most places, is based less on a cogent theology and more on a collection of random fears, superstitions, prejudices, forgotten customs, vestigial animism, and social control. Mrs. Ling, while a professed Buddhist of the Pure Land tradition, also kept waving cat charms, lucky coins, and put great faith in the good fortune of the color red...and was very much in favor of any tradition, superstition, or ritual that involved fireworks... ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
1098:Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution. ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy (Chicago: 1963), p. 44., #NFDB
1099:The kingdom of God is not a geographic domain with set boundaries and settled decrees, but a set of relationships in which Christ is sovereign. At the table, Jesus moves us from ideas about life and love to actual living and loving. Martin Luther was right. Theology is table talk.[38] Jesus didn’t sell the food of his Father. He issued invitations to the table. In fact, Jesus’ favorite image for the kingdom of God is a banquet where everyone is sitting around a table. ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
1100:It sounds superficially fair. But it presupposes that that there is something in Christian theology to be ignorant about. The entire thrust of my position is that Christian theology is a non-subject. It is empty. Vacuous. Devoid of coherence or content. I imagine that McGrath would join me in expressing disbelief in fairies, astrology and Thor's hammer. How would he respond if a fairyologist, astrologer or Viking accused him of ignorance of their respective subjects? ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1101:Just when I get my church all sorted out, sheep from the goats, saved from the damned, hopeless from the hopeful, somebody makes a move, get out of focus, cuts loose, and I see why Jesus never wrote systematic theology. So you and I can give thanks that the locus of Christian thinking appears to be shifting from North America and northern Europe where people write rules and obey them, to places like Africa and Latin America where people still know how to dance. ~ William Henry Willimon, #NFDB
1102:Omar directed the Umma for ten years, and during that time he set the course of Islamic theology, he shaped Islam as a political ideology, he gave Islamic civilization its characteristic stamp, and he built an empire that ended up bigger than Rome. Any one of these achievements could have earned him a place in a who’s who of history’s most influential figures; the sum of them make him something like a combination of Saint Paul, Karl Marx, Lorenzo di Medici, and Napoleon. ~ Tamim Ansary, #NFDB
1103:To put it in Quaker terms, my inner light flickered a lot, like the overhead fluorescent at a Motel 6, and sometimes, it burnt out altogether. The closest I came to consistent faith was during my senior year religion class, when we learned about the Central and South American liberation theology movements and I became briefly convinced that God was a left-wing superhero who led the global struggle against imperialism and corporate greed. Sort of a celestial Michael Moore. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
1104:This is the process of Self realization about which Eastern mystics have written. It is the process of salvation to which much Western theology has devoted itself. This is a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, moment-to-moment act of supreme consciousness. It is a choosing and a re-choosing every instant. It is ongoing creation. Conscious creation. Creation with a purpose. It is using the tools of creation we have discussed, and using them with awareness and sublime intention. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
1105:We have to understand it to mean that it includes his bringing life to dead situations in our lives. God is not only Creator but also recreator of life. Helping other people becomes an issue of the life they are trying to create and also the life God is trying to create in them. It becomes the theology of how one overcomes a depression or heals a marriage or rescues a failing business career. In other words, “How do I bring this marriage or this business career back to life? ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1106:For Bigger’s tragedy is not that he is cold or black or hungry, not even that he is American, black; but that he has accepted a theology that denies him life, that he admits the possibility of his being sub-human and feels constrained, therefore, to battle for his humanity according to those brutal criteria bequeathed him at his birth. But our humanity is our burden, our life; we need not battle for it; we need only to do what is infinitely more difficult—that is, accept it. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1107:One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past--they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
1108:It's better to emphasize biblical theology, partly because there are fine Study Bibles already available that lean into systematic theology, and partly because biblical theology is particularly strong at helping readers see how the Bible hangs together in its own categories: that is, God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1109:According to the Evangelical Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the final authority of doctrine, not tradition, believers are obligated to first find out what the Bible text says and then adjust their theology to be in line with Scripture, not the other way around. All too often we find individuals ignoring or redefining a Biblical text because it does not fit their preconceived notion of what the Bible should say, rather than what it actually says. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1110:Avoid participating in any religious community where the clear truth-claims of Scripture are ignored while contemplative and mystical practices are favored simply for their spiritual experience. Be careful of any church or ministry wherein acts of mercy and environmental stewardship are devoid of a theology of the cross and wind up being little more than the worship of created people and things. And be careful not to worship a good thing as a god thing for that is a bad thing. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
1111:I do not admit that theological points are small points. Theology is only thought applied to religion; and those who prefer a thoughtless religion need not be so very disdainful of others with a more rationalistic taste. The old joke that the Greek sects only differed about a single letter is about the lamest and most illogical joke in the world. An atheist and a theist only differ by a single letter; yet theologians are so subtle as to distinguish definitely between the two. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1112:This category of divine risk, which is proper to a personal God freely creating personal beings endowed with freedom, is foreign to all abstract conceptions of the divine dominion - to the rationalist theology which thinks it exalts the omnipotence of the living God in attributing to him the perfections of a lifeless God who is incapable of being subject to risk. But he who takes no risk does not love… God’s dominion must be thought of in these terms of God’s personal love... ~ Vladimir Lossky, #NFDB
1113:The sudden appearance of all the Laws of Nature is as untestable as Platonic metaphysics or theology. Why should we assume that all the Laws of Nature were already present at the instant of the Big Bang, like a cosmic Napoleonic code? Perhaps some of them, such as those that govern protein crystals, or brains, came into being when protein crystals or brains first arose. The preexistence of these laws cannot possibly be tested before the emergence of the phenomena they govern. ~ Rupert Sheldrake, #NFDB
1114:In the official imperial theology, the titles “Son of God” and “Lord” usually applied to the emperor and the word “gospel” referred to his achievements. By speaking of Jesus in these terms, Paul was tacitly inviting the Roman community to declare its loyalty to the true ruler of the universe. Members were to become co-conspirators with him in acknowledging that, unbeknownst to the powers that be, a fundamental change had occurred when God had vindicated the crucified Messiah.49 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1115:poor people are presented in the Theology of Liberation as decent, that is, asexual or monogamous heterosexual spouses united in the holy sacrament of marriage, people of faith and struggle who do not masturbate, have lustful thoughts at prayer times, cross-dress, or enjoy leather practices. However, if we keep falsifying human relationships in the name not only of God (a habit to which we have grown accustomed) we must remember that we do it also in our love for justice. ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
1116:sn The Table of the Bread of the Presence (Tyndale’s translation, “Shewbread,” was used in KJV and influenced ASV, NAB) was to be a standing acknowledgment that Yahweh was the giver of daily bread. It was called the “presence-bread” because it was set out in his presence. The theology of this is that God provides, and the practice of this is that the people must provide for constant thanks. So if the ark speaks of communion through atonement, the table speaks of dedicatory gratitude. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1117:The difference between the idea that our Christian traditions describe God and the view that they are worshipful responses to God is important to grasp, for while the former seeks to define, the latter is engaged with response. By charting the latter course, those within the emerging conversation perceive a very different way of understanding theology. It is no longer thought of as a human discourse that speaks of God but rather as the place where God speaks into human discourse. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
1118:We’re seeking — imperfectly at every turn, no doubt — an incarnational theology, a theology that brings radical good news of great joy for all the people, good news that God loves the world and didn’t send Jesus to condemn it but to save it, good news that God’s wrath is not merely punitive but restorative, good news that the fire of God’s holiness is not bent on eternal torment but always works to purify and refine, good news that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1119:At any rate, an attack upon Calvin or Turrettin or the Westminster divines does not seem to the modern churchgoer to be a very dangerous thing. In point of fact, however, the attack upon doctrine is not nearly so innocent a matter as our simple churchgoer supposes; for the things objected to in the theology of the Church are also at the very heart of the New Testament. Ultimately the attack is not against the seventeenth century, but against the Bible and against Jesus Himself. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
1120:Great spiritual teachers learn to balance knowing with not knowing, as illustrated in this oft-quoted aphorism: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time--when the truth is the exact opposite. But we have little theology of darkness today. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1121:Many of the religious apologists out there are not stupid people, they are often brilliant. People working in the field of theology and philosophy smart people everywhere. What they are those religious apologists are smart poeple who can build these amazingly intricate rationalizations for whatever weird practice they favor. Whether it's ritual cannibalism, or praying to spirits, or treating women as chattel. And they always building this on terrible shaky foundation of false premises. ~ PZ Myers, #NFDB
1122:Many of the religious apologists out there are not stupid people, they are often brilliant. People working in the field of theology and philosphy smart people everywhere. What they are those religious apologists are smart poeple who can build these amazingly intricate rationalizations for whatever weird practice they favor. Whether it's ritual cannibalism, or praying to spirits, or treating women as chattel. And they always building this on terrible shaky foundation of false premises. ~ P Z Myers, #NFDB
1123:Those who don't feel this Love pulling them like a river, those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take in the sunset like supper, those who don't want to change, let them sleep on. This Love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. If you want to improve your mind that way, sleep on. I've given up on my brain. I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away. If you're not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you, and sleep on ~ Rumi, #NFDB
1124:War in Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology: “The Bible is to the theologian what nature is to the man of science. It is his store-house of facts; and his method of ascertaining what the Bible teaches, is the same as that which the natural philosopher adopts to ascertain what nature teaches.... The duty of the Christian theologian is to ascertain, collect, and combine all the facts which God has revealed concerning himself and our relation to him. These facts are all in the Bible.”135 ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
1125:The existence of very pious feelings, in conjunction with intolerance, cruelty, and selfish policy, has never ceased to surprise and perplex those who have viewed it calmly from a distance. ... It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. What destruction of the beautiful monuments of past ages, what waste of life, what disturbance of domestic and social happiness, what perverted feelings, what blighted hearts, have always marked its baneful progress! ~ Lydia M Child, #NFDB
1126:Doctrines that make people uncomfortable can be ignored or reinterpreted. The Person of Christ must be obeyed. The Pharisees were diligent theologians who spent untold hours reading the Scriptures and debating minute aspects of theology. Jesus condemned them in spite of their theological acumen: “You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, yet they testify about Me. And you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40 HCSB). ~ Henry T Blackaby, #NFDB
1127:Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
1128:Cyrus Scofield, a preacher from Dallas, Texas, was another link in the chain that connected missionary theology on both sides of the Atlantic. This violent priest produced an annotated, fundamentalist version of the Bible that was published by Oxford University Press in 1909. It was, in a way, the most explicit sketch of the three prongs that form the basis for U.S. policy today: the return of the Jews, the decline of Islam, and the rising fortunes of the United States as a world power. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1129:Where is there a systematic theology class that helps students realize that when you unpack the inclination or the nature of the Trinity or the two natures of Christ or the substitutionary atonement, you commune with the Lord as you defend and contend for the doctrine, or else you are not doing it right? No wonder people often don't want to be around doctrinally driven individuals! They are not doing doctrine right. They are not emotionally in touch with the truths they are teaching. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
1130:A spiritual path is a living thing, and living things grow and change. Many people fear change when it involves their spiritual practice or theology for various reasons. However, growth involves change. If we do not grow, we risk begrudgingly plodding down a path that doesn’t serve our highest good. We must allow ourselves to expand, revise, and find our own spiritual truth and path. A healthy spiritual path is one that includes constant growth. Growth almost inherently includes change. ~ Deborah Blake, #NFDB
1131:Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of great importance. Theology induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1132:In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality—including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth—the faith—of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else’s sacred creation myth is “religious bigotry.” It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
1133:Our problem in evangelism is not that we don’t have enough information—it is that we don’t know how to be ourselves. We forget we are called to be witnesses to what we have seen and know, not to what we don’t know. The key on our part is authenticity and obedience, not a doctorate in theology. We haven’t grasped that it really is OK for us to be who we are when we are with seekers, even if we don’t have all the answers to their questions or if our knowledge of Scripture is limited. ~ Rebecca Manley Pippert, #NFDB
1134:Two or three of the ladies had pronounced views on points of doctrine, particularly sin and damnation, which they never learned from me. I blame the radio for sowing a good deal of confusion where theology is concerned. And television is worse. You can spend forty years teaching people to be awake to the fact of mystery and then some fellow with no more theological sense than a jackrabbit gets himself a radio ministry and all your work is forgotten. I do wonder where it will end. p. 208 ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
1135:Religious people of modern societies have then a weaker and more abstract religion than our ancestors had. The modern rest religions are by no means detached from psychological developmental stages but reflect transitional stages. Atheism and agnosticism clearly result from the gradual evolution of the adolescent stage of formal operations. Henceforth, the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Hans Küng, J. B. Metz, or J. Ratzinger reflects transitional phases of the psychological evolution. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1136:In biblical studies, as noted above, “intertextuality” is sometimes used merely to refer to the procedure by which a later biblical text refers to an earlier text, how that earlier text enhances the meaning of the later one, and how the later one creatively develops the earlier meaning.[32] In this respect, “intertextuality” may be seen as a procedure of inner-biblical or intrabiblical exegesis, which is crucial to doing biblical theology[33] and for understanding the relation of the OT to the NT. ~ G K Beale, #NFDB
1137:Once, when I was old enough to ponder these things and young enough to think there might be credible answers, I whispered to Dad during Rosh Hashanah services, “Do you believe in God?” “Not really,” he said. “No.” “Then why do we come here?” He sucked thoughtfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. “I’ve been wrong before,” he said. And that pretty much summed up what theology there was to find in the Foxman home. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
1138:The circular zodiac of Dendera is the Mill of Oath because the biblical Beersheba (i.e., Well of Seven) is a reference to Egyptian theology manifested on the zodiac as the Well of the Sun where the region of the 7 days extends. Beersheba also means the Well of Oath which renders the whole circular zodiac as its region; the proof lies in the existence of the foreleg (including the Thigh) in the middle of the Well since the Thigh biblically marks an oath and a swearer's obligation to obedience. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1139:The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
1140:Would it not be prudent to get our civilization tools together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to continue the business or sellout the property and start a new Civilization Scheme on the proceeds. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1141:Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1142:Theology is not merely another branch of philosophy, but something else entirely. For him, philosophy was man's search for truth apart from God... But theology begins and ends with faith in Christ, who reveals himself to man; apart from such revelation, there could be no such thing as truth. Thus the philosopher-- and the theologian who operates on a philosopher's assumptions-- chases his own tail and gazes at his own navel. He cannot break out of that cycle, but God, via revelation, can break in. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1143:I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum.. you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1144:The single most damaging and distorting thing that religion has done to faith involves overlooking, undervaluing, and even outright suppressing this interior, ulterior kind of consciousness. So much Western theology has been constructed on a fundamental disfigurement of the mind and reality. In neglecting the voices of women, who are more attuned to the immanent nature of divinity, who feel that eruption in their very bodies, theology has silenced a powerful—perhaps the most powerful—side of God. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
1145:Boredom seeps from the monstrosity of Sade’s work, but it is this very boredom which constitutes its significance. As the Christian Klossowski says, his endless novels are more like prayer books than books of entertainment. The accomplished technique behind them is that of the ‘monk … who sets his soul in prayer before the divine mystery’. One must read them as they were written, with the intention of fathoming a mystery which is no less profound, nor perhaps less ‘divine’, than that of theology. ~ Georges Bataille, #NFDB
1146:God is glorified in his people by the way we experience him, not merely by the way we think about him. Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires. Our chief end is to glorify God, the great Object. We do so most fully when we treasure him, desire him, delight in him so supremely that we let goods and kindred go and display his love to the poor and the lost. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1147:He had gone to several universities . . . and had found only curves and credits. He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind. His solitude now was the result of his metabolism, that constant breathing in of joy and exhalation of sadness. ~ Edward Lewis Wallant, #NFDB
1148:Constance FitzGerald, a contemporary Carmelite authority on John’s theology, points out John’s assertion that this divine inflow is the “loving Wisdom of God.” Specifically, she says, it is the active presence of Jesus Christ as Wisdom, as divine Sophia. Thus, “Dark night is not primarily some thing, an impersonal darkness like a difficult situation or distressful psychological condition, but someone, a presence leaving an indelible imprint on the human spirit and consequently on one’s entire life.”21 ~ Gerald G May, #NFDB
1149:For those within the emerging conversation this a/theology is not a way of understanding God and neither is it simply the result of filtering God through our minds in order for God to be provisionally understood. Rather, our a/theology should be thought of as a dark glass which protects God from being spoken, which responds to and returns to the love of God, and which encourages others to seek God for themselves. God is not revealed via our words but rather via the life of the transformed individual. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
1150:Religion in the West has a very wrong connotation. It has almost reached to a point where the very word 'religion' creates a repulsion, where the very word 'religion' reminds one of dead churches and dead priests. It reminds one of serious looking people, long faces. It has lost the capacity to dance, to sing, to celebrate. And when a religion has lost the capacity to dance, to celebrate, to sing, to love, just to be, then it is no more religion - it is a corpse, it is theology. Theology is dead religion. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1151:Those who don't feel this Love pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water
or take sunset like supper, those who don't want to change,
let them sleep.
This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way sleep on.
I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked wrap your beautiful robe
of words around you, and sleep ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1152:Orthodoxy is idolatry if it means holding the 'correct opinions about God' - 'fundamentalism' is the most extreme and salient example of such idolatry - but not if it means holding faith in the right way, that is, not holding it at all but being held by God, in love and service. Theology is idolatry if it means what we say about God instead of letting ourselves be addressed by what God has to say to us. Faith is idolatrous if it is rigidly self-certain but not if it is softened in the waters of 'doubt. ~ John D Caputo, #NFDB
1153:Barth was possibly the less efficacious of the two remedies. A bracingly stringent Calvinist, he did supply Updike with one of the enduring tenets of his personal creed (the idea that God is “Wholly Other”: “We cannot reach Him, only He can reach us”), and he did become, in the sixties, Updike’s favorite theologian (“Ipswich belonged to Barth”)—but as Barth himself insisted, theology cannot protect faith from doubt. For Updike, it was one buttress in a system of reinforcements necessary to sustain belief. ~ Adam Begley, #NFDB
1154:Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for. ~ Saul Bellow, #NFDB
1155:Imagine for a moment that one of your friends writes you a twenty-page letter passionately wanting to share her excitement about a new teacher. This letter has only one topic, your friend’s new teacher. [But] at the end of her letter, you still do not know one thing about her teacher. Yet, Paul presents the central figure of his theology this way. . . . It [seems] impossible to imagine how Paul could avoid telling one story or parable of—or fail to note one physical trait or personal quality of—Jesus. ~ Richard C Carrier, #NFDB
1156:Although it has been fashionable to deny it, anti-slavery doctrines began to appear in Christian theology soon after the decline of Rome and were accompanied by the eventual disappearance of slavery in all but the fringes of Christian Europe. When Europeans subsequently instituted slavery in the New World, they did so over strenuous papal opposition, a fact that was conveniently 'lost' from history until recently. Finally, the abolition of New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
1157:Regarding faith, my adherence to Islam had not diminished over the years since my conversion, but I had modified it from the intense orthodoxy I had followed at first to a more streamlined version that I felt was more progressive and inclusive. I practiced quietly on my own without the need to proselytize. I had been able to separate my faith in the theology from using it to make a cultural statement about black Americans. My only interest in Islam was spiritual and ethical guidance, not politics. In ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar, #NFDB
1158:Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1159:For by either eliminating mention of God from the curriculum altogether (departments of religious studies concern themselves with various types of belief in God, not with God), or by restricting reference to God to departments of theology, such universities render their secular curriculum Godless. And this Godlessness is, as I already noted, not just a matter of the subtraction of God from the range of objects studied, but also and quite as much the absence of any integrated and overall view of things. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
1160:Because the gospel is news, good news… it is to be announced; that is what one does with news. The essential heraldic element in preaching is bound up with the fact that the core message is not a code of ethics to be debated, still less a list of aphorisms to be admired and pondered, and certainly not a systematic theology to be outlined and schematized. Though it properly grounds ethics, aphorisms, and systematics, it is none of these three: it is news, good news, and therefore must be publicly announced ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1161:In other words, thinking aims at and ends in contemplation, and contemplation is not an activity but a passivity; it is the point where mental activity comes to rest. According to traditions of Christian time, when philosophy had become the handmaiden of theology, thinking became meditation, and meditation again ended in contemplation, a kind of blessed state of the soul where the mind was no longer stretching out to know the truth but, in anticipation of a future state, received it temporarily in intuition. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1162:Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. Consequently Agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology. On the whole, the "bosh" of heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
1163:Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend and theology, sages in the seventh age meditated upon the ancient past, and recalled through visions the events as they happened. Contrary to all expectation, the conflict did not begin on the council stair of Etarra, nor even on the soil of Athera itself; instead the visions started upon the wide oceans of the splinter world, Dascen Elur. This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself. ~ Janny Wurts, #NFDB
1164:This withdrawal of theology from the world of secular affairs is made more complete by the work of biblical scholars whose endlessly fascinating exercises have made it appear to the lay Christian that no one untrained in their methods can really understand anything the Bible says. We are in a situation analogous to one about which the great Reformers complained. The Bible has been taken out of the hands of the layperson; it has now become the professional property not of the priesthood but of the scholars. ~ Lesslie Newbigin, #NFDB
1165:Because the gospel is news, good news… it is to be announced; that is what one does with news. The essential heraldic element in preaching is bound up with the fact that the core message is not a code of ethics to be debated, still less a list of aphorisms to be admired and pondered, and certainly not a systematic theology to be outlined and schematized. Though it properly grounds ethics, aphorisms, and systematics, it is none of these three: it is news, good news, and therefore must be publicly announced2. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1166:Religion does a lot of good, especially the loving kind, like at Grace Church. I know people who went to a more liberal kind of Christianity and were happy with that. The problem is, for me, there was a process involved in moving from Pentecostalism to a more liberal theology, like Grace Church. What makes me different is that process didn't stop, and it took me all the way. In the end, I couldn't help feeling that all religion, even the most loving kind, is just a speed bump in the progress of the human race. ~ Jerry DeWitt, #NFDB
1167:The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the Thirteenth Century, but this yielding is always done grudgingly, and thus lingers a good while behind the event. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1168:The intellectual climate has become increasingly unfavorable to the study of the relations between religion and culture in the modern world and the modern university. For theology has long since lost its position as a dominant faculty in the university and as an integral part of the general educational curriculum. It continues to exist on sufferance only as a specialized ecclesiastical study designed for the clergy. Consequently the student in a modern university may be totally ignorant of religion. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson, #NFDB
1169:Acknowledging the interpreted status of the gospel should translate into a certain humility in our public theology. It should not, however, translate into skepticism about the truth of the Christian confession. If the interpretive status of the gospel rattles our confidence in its truth, this indicates that we remain haunted by the modern desire for objective certainty. But our confidence rests not on objectivity but rather on the convictional power of the Holy Spirit (which isn't exactly objective). [pg. 51] ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1170:Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1171:It is Augustine who is really the patron saint of the Reformation – and only because the Reformers saw Augustine’s theology as a powerful expression of a robustly Pauline theology. So without wanting to sound overly pious or triumphant, I think it is very important to see that “Reformed theology” was not a sixteenth-century invention. It was a recovery and rearticulation of a basically Augustinian worldview, which was itself first and foremost an unpacking of Paul’s vision of what it meant that Christ is risen. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1172:Only the artistic will to transform the future into a space of unlimited art-elevating chances enables us to understand the core of the procreation rule: 'a creator shall you create [...] a self-propelling wheel, a first movement'. This rule contains no less than Nietzsche's theology after the death of God: there will continue to be a God and gods, but only humanity-immanent ones, and only to the extent that there are creators who follow on from what has been achieved in order to go higher, faster and further. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
1173:With the neatness of a Euclidean demonstration, the energy of the sun was now united with the smaller concentrations of energy at man's command: thus the Sun God had in effect undergone a human incarnation, and his priests at last commanded a commensurate authority. Theirs is a Calvinist theology, only slightly revised, in which the mass of men are predestined to awful damnation, and only the elect-that is, the technocratic elite-will be saved. In short, the eschatology of Jehovah's Witnesses, brought up to date. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
1174:If everybody believed as Job believed—that God does not always punish the wicked and reward the godly—then what motive would people have for obeying God? Religion would not be worth it! But this is the Devil’s theology, the very thing that God was using Job to refute! If people serve God only for what they get out of it, then they are not serving God at all; they are only serving themselves by making God their servant. Their “religion” is only a pious system for promoting selfishness and not for glorifying God. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1175:People were no longer concerned with understanding what a text said or what a thing was from the aspect of its fulfillment, but from that of its beginning, its source. As a result of this isolation from the whole and of this literal-mindedness with respect to particulars, which contradicts the entire inner nature of the Bible but which was now considered to be the truly scientific approach, there arose that conflict between the natural sciences and theology which has been, up to our own day, a burden for the faith. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1176:The fourth principle in "Mormon" theology teaches that after baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost is conferred which enlightens the mind, clears the intelligence, and brings man nearer the presence of God. So also in science, to the man who obeys the law of nature, come greater power and intelligence, to him who winds the wire right, the electric current comes, with all its latent powers. Thus is the Holy Ghost conferred in science; and thus, also, in a more subtle and greater degree is it conferred in the Church. ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
1177:The stealth jihadists employ this kind of obfuscation to great effect. Their immediate goal is not to overpower America directly through combat, but rather to convince Americans that there is nothing at all to fear from Islamic theology, and that anyone who argues otherwise is an Islamophobe motivated solely by hate. With the population lulled into complacency, they can go about their work of forcing Western “accommodation” to Islamic practices. This is meant to set the stage for Islam eventually to emerge supreme. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
1178:Perhaps, when the Master Cobbler makes all things new, every good gift from each tradition will be melded together into one, all the impurities refined away. But in the meantime, our various traditions seem a sweet and necessary grace. And when we check our pride long enough to pay attention to the presence of the Spirit gusting across the globe, we catch glimpses of a God who defies our categories and experiences, a God who both inhabits and transcends our worship, art, theology, culture, experiences, and ideas. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1179:I am convinced that there is an urgent need in the church today for much greater understanding of Christian doctrine, or systematic theology. Not only pastors and teachers need to understand theology in greater depth -- the WHOLE CHURCH does as well. One day by God's grace we may have churches full of Christians who can discuss, apply and LIVE the doctrinal teachings of the Bible as readily as they can discuss the details of their own jobs or hobbies - or the fortunes of their favorite sports team or television program. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1180:SCIENCE AROSE ONLY IN Europe because only medieval Europeans believed that science was possible and desirable. And the basis of their belief was their image of God and his creation. This was dramatically asserted to a distinguished audience of scholars attending the 1925 Lowell Lectures at Harvard by the great philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), who explained that science developed in Europe because of the widespread “faith in the possibility of science... derivative from medieval theology. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
1181:Prayer is never an isolated event. When we pray, we convey our entire theological system. Our theology is never so clearly displayed before our own eyes and before the world as in our prayers. Praying forces us to articulate our doctrines, convictions, and theological assumptions. These aspects of our Christian life come to a unique focus in prayer because when we speak to God we are explicitly revealing who we believe he is, who we believe we are, what his disposition toward us is, and why he has that disposition. ~ R Albert Mohler Jr, #NFDB
1182:The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer.
[Essay entitled 'On Christianity', published posthumously] ~ W E B Du Bois,#NFDB
1183:It’s—it’s as if there is a dragon inside me. I don’t know how big she is; she may still be growing. But she has wings, and strength, and—and I can’t keep her in a cage. She’ll die. I’ll die. I know it isn’t modest to say these things, but I know I’m capable of more than life in Scirland will allow. It’s all right for women to study theology, or literature, but nothing so rough and ready as this. And yet this is what I want. Even if it’s hard, even if it’s dangerous. I don’t care. I need to see where my wings can carry me. ~ Marie Brennan, #NFDB
1184:Jesus is not a doctrine, a theology, an abstract principle, a ministry, a church, a denomination, an activity, or even a way of life. Jesus is a person, a real person. And he demands that we put him above all of these good things. None of these things died for us; the Son of God did. None of these things controls our destiny; the Son of God does. Anytime I begin to give more attention to one of these things or pursue one of them more than I am pursuing the Son of God, it will become an idol in my life to take me away from him. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1185:Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world. But some of the most important elements in the real world can be known only by the revelation of God, which it is theology’s business to study. Lacking this knowledge, the mind must live a half-blind life, trying to cope with a reality most of which it does not know is there. This is a wretched state for an immortal spirit, and pretty certain to lead to disaster. There is a good deal of disaster around at this moment. ~ Frank Sheed, #NFDB
1186:A noncontextual reading of Scripture is not only methodologically arbitrary but also theologically problematic. It fails to grasp in its entirety a foundational principle of theology that informs not only our understanding of the Bible but of all of God’s dealing with humanity recorded there, particularly in Jesus himself: God condescends to where people are, speaks their language, and employs their ways of thinking. Without God’s condescension—seen most clearly in the incarnation—any true knowledge of God would cease to exist. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1187:Susannah Heschel's The Aryan Jesus is a brilliant and erudite investigation of the convergence between major trends in German Protestantism and Nazi racial anti-Semitism. By concentrating on the history of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, Heschel describes in forceful detail the Nazification of all aspects of Protestant theology, including the Aryanization of Jesus himself. This is a highly original and important contribution to our understanding of the Third Reich. ~ Saul Friedlander, #NFDB
1188:The sermons of pastors convert no one. Just consider how many sermons you've heard in your life. Circumstances convert people! You have to make your way to new circumstances so that reality can really get through to you, because that's where Jesus has hidden himself : in the human condition and even in the humiliation of human flesh. Christ always comes into the world on an ass, Christ always comes into the world as a beggar. We would so much like to have him enclosed in the Church and in our theology. But God is always free. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1189:Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1190:The sermons of pastors convert no one. Just consider how many sermons you've heard in your life. Circumstances convert people! You have to make your way to new circumstances so that reality can really get through to you, because that's where Jesus has hidden himself : in the human condition and even in the humiliation of human flesh. Christ always comes into the world on an ass, Christ always comes into the world as a beggar. We would so much like to have him enclosed in the Church and in our theology. But Good is always free. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1191:I think one of the great strengths of Americans United is that it has such diversity. That it has not only people who have no religious belief, but lots of people who do and who take that belief very seriously. And I think that provides us with a great opportunity to talk about the separation of church and state. There are plenty of other groups, and some of them are quite good at what they do, but they also have an agenda of non-theism, but we don't have, you might say, a theology. We just have a commitment to the Constitution. ~ Barry W Lynn, #NFDB
1192:The foundations of Property and Propriety are laid bare, twin rocks; Family Pride flounders to the surface, puffing and blowing and refusing to be comforted; Theology, vaguely ascetic, gets up a nasty ground swell. Then the lawyers are aroused — cold brood — and creep out of their holes. They do what they can; they tidy up Property and Propriety, reassure Theology and Family Pride. Half-guineas are poured on the troubled waters, the lawyers creep back, and, if all has gone well, Love joins one man and woman together in Matrimony. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
1193:A living metaphor for God, sexuality and the struggle in the streets of Buenos Aires comes from the images of lemons vendors. A materialist-based theology finds in them a starting point from which ideology, theology and sexuality can be rewritten from the margins of society, the church and systematic theologies. Our point of departure is the understanding that every theology implies a conscious or unconscious sexual and political praxis, based on reflections and actions developed from certain accepted codifications. These ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
1194:The seminaries have generally been so covetous of academic recognition, and so anxious for locus within the ethos and hierarchy of the university, that they have not noticed how alien and hostile those premises are to the peculiar vocation of the seminary. Thus the seminaries succumb to disseminating ideological renditions of the faith which demean the vitality of the biblical witness by engaging in endless classifications and comparisons of ideas. All this eschews commitment and precludes a confessional study of theology. ~ William Stringfellow, #NFDB
1195:Jesus’ harshest words are aimed at hypocrites, and the second harshest at the people who are primarily concerned with possessions. He says that power, prestige, and possessions are the three things that prevent us from recognizing and receiving the reign of God. . . . The only ones who can accept the proclamation of the reign are those who have nothing to protect, not their own self-image or their reputation, their possessions, their theology, their principles, or their certitudes. And these are called “the poor,” anawim in Hebrew. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1196:The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitiousfabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
1197:Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world. But some of the most important elements in the real world can be known only by the revelation of God, which it is theology’s business to study. Lacking this knowledge, the mind must live a half-blind life, trying to cope with a reality most of which it does not know is there. This is a wretched state for an immortal spirit, and pretty certain to lead to disaster. There is a good deal of disaster around at this moment. F. J. S. ~ Frank Sheed, #NFDB
1198:Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God--experiences compared with which many thrills of pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further you must use the map. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1199:It's - it's as if there is a dragon inside me. I don't know how big she is; she may still be growing. But she has wings, and *strength*, and - and I can't keep her in a cage. She'll die. *I'll* die. I know it isn't modest to say these things, but I *know* I'm capable of more than life in Scirland will allow. It's all right for women to study theology, or literature, but nothing so rough and ready as this. And yet this is what I *want*. Even if it's hard, even if it's dangerous. I don't care. I need to see where my wings can carry me. ~ Marie Brennan, #NFDB
1200:But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet’s old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free-will. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1201:Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
1202:When I talk on the phone with my brother Ivo, who is a theology instructor at Baylor, he invariably wants to talk politics, and I hear clicking in the background, and I say, Why talk politics, just remember where we are! I used to have that experience with my older brother Vlado in Yugoslavia: I would want to expound my political views, but he would point to the phone, and say, Why talk politics, remember where we are. This is not America. How things have changed! Now I tell my brother Ivo, Remember where we are. This is not Croatia! ~ Josip Novakovich, #NFDB
1203:Even if the intelligent design of some structure has been established, it still is a separate question whether a wise, powerful, and beneficent God ought to have designed a complex, information-rich structure one way or another. For the sake of argument, let's grant that certain designed structures are not simply, as Gould put it, "odd" or "funny," but even cruel. What of it? Philosophical theology has abundant resources for dealing with the problem of evil, maintaining a God who is both omnipotent and benevolent in the face of evil. ~ William A Dembski, #NFDB
1204:Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction—studying nothing. In the Middle Ages, the great minds capable of transforming the world did not study the world; and so, for most of a millennium, as human beings screamed in agony—decaying from starvation, eaten by leprosy and plague, dying in droves in their twenties—the men of the mind, who could have provided their earthly salvation, abandoned them for otherworldly fantasies. ~ Andrew Bernstein, #NFDB
1205:In the name of compassion, Obama advocates seemingly endless extensions of unemployment benefits because his economic theology holds that by paying people not to work, you will create jobs. It not only fails to factor in the obvious deterrent that extended benefits have on their recipients but also falsely assumes that transferring money from one pocket to the next generates more spending - by some mythical multiple factor, no less. Back on planet Earth, studies reveal that extending unemployment benefits results in more unemployment. ~ David Limbaugh, #NFDB
1206:Evangelical Christians need to notice..., that the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the Revelation of God in Christ Alone'. If you do not have the view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really have no content in the word 'Christ' - and this is the modern drift in theology. Modern theology uses the word without content because 'Christ' is cut away from the Scriptures. The Reformation followed the teaching of Christ Himself in linking the revelation Christ gave of God to the revelation of the written Scriptures. ~ Francis A Schaeffer, #NFDB
1207:According to the Evangelical Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the final authority of doctrine, not tradition, believers are obligated to first find out what the Bible text says and then adjust their theology to be in line with Scripture, not the other way around. All too often we find individuals ignoring or redefining a Biblical text because it does not fit their preconceived notion of what the Bible should say, rather than what it actually says. The existence of other gods in Scripture is one of those issues. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1208:Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,
let them sleep.
This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way
sleep on.
I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,
and sleep. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1209:J. I. Packer, in his potent study of what the Bible teaches about God, develops the subtle distinction between knowledge about God (mind) and knowledge of God personally (mind and heart—as well as soul and strength). If eternity is eternal fellowship with the Father (and not a theology test), then we need to get started right now in knowing this One with whom we will share the table. As Packer says it, “The rule . . . is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into a matter for meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
1210:Forgive me,' said Abbot Zerchi. 'I wasn't getting ready to argue moral theology with you. I was speaking only of this spectacle of mass euthanasia in terms of human motivation. the very existence of the Radiation Disaster Act, and like laws in other countries, is the plainest possible evidence that governments were fully aware of the consequences of another war, but instead of trying to make the crime impossible, they tried to provide in advance for the consequences of the crime. Are the implications of that fact meaningless to you, Doctor? ~ Walter M Miller Jr, #NFDB
1211:The sin of bad theology has been precisely this - to set Christ up against man, and to regard all flesh and blood men as “not-Christ.” Indeed to assume that many men, whole classes of men, nations, races, are in fact “anti-Christ.” To divide men arbitrarily according to their conformity to our own limited disincarnate mental Christ, and to decide on this basis that most men are “anti-Christ” - this shows up our theology. At such a moment, we have to question not mankind, but our theology. A theology that ends in lovelessness cannot be Christian. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1212:"Biblical theology" refers to something more precise than theology that is faithful to the Bible. It might be helpful to draw a contrast: at the risk of oversimplification, systematic theology tends to organize theology topically and with an eye cast on its contemporary relevance, while biblical theology tends to organize the same biblical material so that it is easier to see the distinctive contribution of each biblical book and human author, and to trace the trajectories of themes across the Bible so we see how the books of the Bible hold together. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1213:A counselor, David Seamands, summed up his career this way: Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people.… We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1214:More than once I've had discussions with persons who say things based on a misunderstanding. 'Oh you Catholics worship images.' No we don't, 'yes you do,' no we don't, 'yes you do,' no we don't! The final retort to that is: I have a doctorate in Catholic theology that I have earned the hard way - by sitting in university classrooms for twelve years. I know what we believe! You get a doctorate in Catholic theology? What do you know about it? Nothing! You don't know anything about it. You're saying things that are born of misunderstanding or ignorance. ~ John Corapi, #NFDB
1215:The question is, what happens when we as human beings confront a world that is radically unhuman, impersonal, and even indifferent to the human? What happens to the concept of politics once one confronts the possibility that the world only reveals its hiddenness, in spite of the attempts to render it as a world-for-us, either via theology (sovereign God, sovereign king) or via science (the organismic analogy of the state)? In the face of politics, this unresponsiveness of the world is a condition for which, arguably, we do not yet have a language. ~ Eugene Thacker, #NFDB
1216:In fact, contemporary systematic theology frequently generates dissertations on, say, John Owen’s view of the atonement (which properly belongs to historical theology) or perichoresis and personhood in the Trinity (which largely turns on philosophical theology), with relatively little work devoted to the kind of constructive, normative theology that builds a case, starting from the Bible, of what Christians ought to believe. Moreover, systematicians are sometimes at least as disdainful of rigorous exegesis as biblical scholars are of systematic theology. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1217:It is sad to see this dynamic of the law happen in the church and then see the opposite happen in Twelve Step groups. In these recovery groups, people are taught that the very first thing to do when you fail is to call someone in the group and get to a meeting. They are taught to “run to grace,” as it were, to turn immediately to their higher power and their support system. The sad part is that this theology is more biblical than what is practiced in many Christian environments, where people in failure run from instead of to God and the people they need. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1218:According to Romish theology, all past sins both as respects their eternal and temporal punishment are blotted out in baptism and also the eternal punishment of the future sins of the faithful. But for the temporal punishment of post-baptismal sins the faithful must make satisfaction either in this life or in purgatory. In opposition to every such notion of human satisfaction Protestants rightly contend that the satisfaction of Christ is the only satisfaction for sin and is so perfect and final that it leaves no penal liability for any sin of the believer. ~ John Murray, #NFDB
1219:Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems - poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict - that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation? [The Communion, which] used to be known for embodying the attribute of comprehensiveness, of inclusiveness, where we were meant to accommodate all and diverse views, saying we may differ in our theology but we belong together as sisters and brothers [now seems] hell-bent on excommunicating one another. God must look on and God must weep. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
1220:In his book Peace, Walter Brueggemann writes about this contrast between a theology of the “have-nots” versus a theology of the “haves.” The “have-nots” develop a theology of suffering and survival. The “haves” develop a theology of celebration. Those who live under suffering live “their lives aware of the acute precariousness of their situation.” Worship that arises out of suffering cries out for deliverance. “Their notion of themselves is that of a dependent people crying out for a vision of survival and salvation.” Lament is the language of suffering. ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB
1221:All discourses and disciplines proceed from commitments and beliefs that are ultimately religious in nature. No scientific discourse (whether natural science or social science) simply discloses to us the facts of reality to which theology must submit; rather, every discourse is, in some sense, religious. The playing field has been leveled. Theology is most persistently postmodern when it rejects a lingering correlational false humility and instead speaks unapologetically from the the primacy of Christian revelation and the church's confessional language. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1222:And that is how Theology started. People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet He was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic. He made them believe Him. They met Him again after they had seen Him killed. And then, after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not do before. And when they worked it all out they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1223:The church has contributed nothing to civilization. It has progressed somewhat, and it has become a little more decent, in reflection of the movements of civilization that have taken place outside of the church and usually in the face of the strong opposition of the church. But the church has always resisted the process of civilization. It has struggled to the last ditch, by fair means and foul, to preserve as long as it could the vestiges of ancient and medieval theology, with all the puerile moralities and harsh customs and medieval styles of belief. ~ E Haldeman Julius, #NFDB
1224:One phrase of Murray’s resonated particularly, that we were called to an intelligent mysticism. That means an encounter with God that involves not only the affections of the heart but also the convictions of the mind. We are not called to choose between a Christian life based on truth and doctrine or a life filled with spiritual power and experience. They go together. I was not being called to leave behind my theology and launch out to look for “something more,” for experience. Rather, I was meant to ask the Holy Spirit to help me experience my theology. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1225:A counselor, David Seamands, summed up his career this way: Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people. . . . We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1226:In general, in the matters that relate to theology or behavior, people to one another, Paul was obviously biblically correct. But when he said that women should always cover their hair or that women should not teach men, women should not have leadership positions in the church, women should not speak in the church, I don't' think that those writings of Paul can be extracted by themselves to stand alone. Also, Paul said that women should be subservient to their husbands but if you read a couple of verses down it says husbands should treat their wives as equals. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1227:Whether we admit it or not, as people of faith, we sift our theology through Scripture, Church history and tradition, our reason, and our own experience. Most Christians, even the most committed of the sola scriptura crowd, use these four pillars—at varying degrees of importance and strength—to figure out the ways of God in our world and what it means here and now for our walking-around lives. And taking this a bit further into postmodern territory, we can also admit that we are relying on our own imperfect and subjective interpretations of those pillars, too. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
1228:Since God is the author, the Bible is authoritative. It is absolute in its authority for human thought and behaviour. "As the Scripture has said" is a recurring theme throughout the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament contains more than two hundred direct quotations of the Old Testament. In addition, the New Testament has a large and uncertain number of allusions to the Old. New Testament writers, following the example of Jesus Christ, built their theology on the Old Testament. For Christ and the apostles, to quote the Bible was to settle an issue. ~ Robertson McQuilkin, #NFDB
1229:Somehow the True Self in all humans has a natural access to that “hidden” will of God—if the mind and heart and soul are open and undefended (which is always the spiritual task and not easily achieved). Jeremiah called it “the law written in your heart” (31:33). The Catholic tradition called it “natural law” or “natural theology.” The soul or True Self has responded naturally to the soul of other things since the beginning of human consciousness. The False Self almost always distorts even good things, because it still thinks “it's all about me”—and it never is. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1230:The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1231:Do you realize that, ultimately, every single biblical doctrine of theology directly or indirectly is founded in Genesis 1-11? Why did Jesus die on a cross?—Genesis 1-11. Why is He called “the last Adam” (1Co 15:45)?—Genesis 1-11. Why do we sin?—Genesis 1-11. Why is there death in the world?—Genesis 1-11. Why do you have a seven-day week?—Genesis 1-11. Why do we need new heavens and a new earth?—Genesis 1-11. Why is marriage between one man and one woman?—Genesis 1-11. Is it therefore important? Genesis 1-11 is the foundational history for the whole rest of the Bible! ~ Ken Ham, #NFDB
1232:The vulgar, indeed, we may remark, who are unacquainted with science and profound inquiry, observing the endless disputes of the learned, have commonly a thorough contempt for philosophy; and rivet themselves the faster, by that means, in the great points of theology which have been taught them. Those who enter a little into study and inquiry, finding many appearances of evidence in doctrines the newest and most extraordinary, think nothing too difficult for human reason; and, presumptuously breaking through all fences, profane the inmost sanctuaries of the temple. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1233:our theology of Christ’s love will be determinative of how a Christian wife is loved. How a man understands ultimate covenantal loving will settle how he sets about covenantal loving. How he understands the thing to be imitated will determine how and what he imitates. If his theology is biblical (and thereby federal or covenantal), then his wife will be loved as Christ really did love the Church. If the theology is either sub-federal or anti-covenantal, then a woman, when she is loved at all, will be loved sentimentally, not for very long, or in fits and starts. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1234:The post-Reformation theology is more academic, more detailed, more argumentative. It makes more use of philosophy and therefore is often described by the phrase Protestant Scholasticism.266 That is appropriate in a way, because one of their main interests was to present a version of Protestant theology suitable for academic study and therefore academically respectable. This is not wrong in itself, and it has not been proved that this drive for academic respectability led the Protestant scholastics into any specific departure from the teaching of Luther and Calvin. ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
1235:Our goals should stretch us bit by bit. So often when we think we have encountered a ceiling, it is really a psychological or experimental barrier that we have built ourselves. We built it and we can remove it. Just as correct principles, when applied, carry their own witness that they are true, so do correct personal improvement programs. But we must not expect personal improvement without pain or some 'remodeling.' We can't expect to have the thrills of revealed religion without the theology. We cannot expect to have the soul stretching without Christian service. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1236:A major theme for Bonhoeffer was that every Christian must be "fully human" by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some "spiritual" realm. To be an ethereal figure who merely talked about God, but somehow refused to get his hands dirty in the real world in which God had placed him, was bad theology. Through Christ, God had shown that he meant us to be in this world and to obey him with our actions in his word. So Bonhoeffer would get his hands dirty, not because he had grown impatient, but because God was speaking to him about further steps of obedience. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1237: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. ~ Walt Whitman, #NFDB
1238:The Virgin imaginary in Latin America is the permanent dichotomy of lust and love: this is why poor people are presented in the Theology of Liberation as decent, that is, asexual or monogamous heterosexual spouses united in the holy sacrament of marriage, people of faith and struggle who do not masturbate, have lustful thoughts at prayer times, cross-dress, or enjoy leather practices. However, if we keep falsifying human relationships in the name not only of God (a habit to which we have grown accustomed) we must remember that we do it also in our love for justice. ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
1239:Emotional and intellectual persecution, coupled perhaps with subtle exclusions…often seduces [believers]. For the sake of gaining plaudits, it is easy to trim one’s theology or keep silent about the bits that we know will cause umbrage, in the hope of gaining the approval we crave. Alternatively, some believers fight back with a nasty anti-intellectualism, a “circle-the-wagons” mentality that is neither loving nor evangelistic but merely defensive. Ironically, Christians who adopt these postures become just as scurrilously condescending as those who are attacking them (p. 66). ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1240:It is often reported that the Five Points of Calvinism are the conceptual hard-core of Reformed thought. That is very misleading. The Five Points supposedly originate with the Synod of Dort in the early seventeenth century. Yet we find important Reformed leaders who were signatories to that documentation who don't think that limited atonement is the right way to think about the scope of Christ's saving work. How can this be? The answer that recent historical theology has thrown up is that the canons of the Synod don't require adherence to the doctrine of limited atonement. ~ Oliver D Crisp, #NFDB
1241:I no longer follow the voices of the sane. I follow the ill because they see farther, feel much more and change what the sane will not. This is the paradox of philosophers---trying to understand mass delusion among great people that have faith and knowledge, yet they can’t graduate from their institutions of religious theology to apply the knowledge they have gained for the shifting of Zion---- from words to action; from comfort to uncomfortable; from self serving to self giving; from competition to supporting; to tradition to unity; from bias to acceptance; from me to us. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
1242:Anyone at all acquainted with Edwards’s theology knows that he is not speaking of becoming merged with the Godhead nor of a pantheistic dissolution of the boundaries between the self and the universe. Heiler is right to point out that the mystics were often seeking a kind of self-salvation through meditation, and that is as far as can be from Edwards’s understanding of redemption through faith alone and grace alone. Nevertheless, his experience of fellowship with God sounds similar to many of the experiences of deep love and delight in the accounts of the mystical writers. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1243:If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. [...] The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1244:The public had an endless appetite for stories like that. Subconsciously, I think they think the gods of luck will favor them when the tromp of doom starts to thump. As for survivor interviews, I find them very boring, but I'm apparently in the minority. At least half of them had this to say: "God was watching over me." Most of those people didn't even believe in a god. This is the deity-as-hit-man view of theology. What I always thought was, if God was looking out for you, he must have had a real hard-on for all those folks he belted into the etheric like so many rubbery javelins. ~ John Varley, #NFDB
1245:The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse says that Dawkins’s arguments are so bad that he’s embarrassed to call himself an atheist.10 Terry Eagleton, an English literature and cultural theory professor, severely criticizes “Ditchkins”—his composite name for Dawkins and Hitchens. He considers them to be both out of their depth and misrepresenters of the Christian faith: “they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be.”11 ~ Paul Copan, #NFDB
1246:Ulrich had talked himself into a state of excitement. Basically, he now maintained, this experience of almost total ecstasy or transcendence of the conscious mind is akin to experiences now lost but known in the past to the mystics of all religions, which makes it a kind of contemporary substitution for an eternal human need. Even if it is not a very good substitute it is better than nothing, and boxing or similar kinds of sport that organize this principle into a rational system are therefore a species of theology, although one cannot expect this to be generally understood as yet. ~ Robert Musil, #NFDB
1247:The first authentic record on this subject (alchemy) is an edict of Diocletian, about 300 years after Christ, ordering a diligent search to be made in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art of making gold and silver, that they might be consigned to the flames. This edict necessarily presumes a certain antiquity to the pursuit; and fabulous history has recorded Solomon, Pythagoras, and Hermes among its distinguished votaries. ~ William Godwin, quoted by**H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, Vol. I, (1877) (p. 504), #NFDB
1248:Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or any of it, really but I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that knowing what I've lost... ~ Joss Whedon, #NFDB
1249:Discipleship means adherence to Christ and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship. An abstract theology, a doctrinal system, a general religious knowledge of the subject of grace or the forgiveness of sins, render discipleship superfluous, and in fact exclude any idea of discipleship whatsoever, and are essentially inimical to the whole conception of following Christ....Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1250:the "small goodness" from one person to his fellowman is lost and deformed as soon as it seeks organization and universality and system, as soon as it opts for doctrine, a treatise of politics and theology, a party, a state, and even a church. Yet it remains the sole refuge of the good in being. Unbeaten, it undergoes the violence of evil, which, as small goodness, it can neither vanquish nor drive out. A little kindness going only from man to man, not crossing distances to get to the places where events and forces unfold! A remarkable utopia of the good or the secret of its beyond. ~ Emmanuel Levinas, #NFDB
1251:Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God's radical demand that we be holy. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
1252:It is simply diabolical, despicable, downright evil that the heart should be so misunderstood, maligned, feared, and dismissed. But there is our clue again. The war we are in would explain so great a loss. This is the last thing the Enemy wants you to know. His plan from the beginning was to assault the heart, just as the Wicked Witch did to the Tin Woodman. Make them so busy, they ignore the heart. Wound them so deeply, they don't want a heart. Twist their theology, so they despise the heart. Take away their courage. Destroy their creativity. Make intimacy with God impossible for them. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
1253:A stydy today of the products of the animated cartoon industry of the twenties, thirties and forties would yield the following theology: 1. People are animals. 2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain. 3. Life is antagonistic to the living. 4. The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music. 5. The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart are destroyed by their own cunning. 6. The small are tortured by the large and the large destroyed by their own momentum. 7. We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us. ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
1254:There’s a lot of dirty theology out there, the religious counterpart to dirty politics and dirty business, I suppose. You might call it spiritual pornography—a kind of for-profit exploitative nakedness. It’s found in many of the same places as physical pornography (the Internet and cable TV for starters), and it promises similar things: instant intimacy, fantasy and make-believe, private voyeurism and vicarious experience, communion without commitment. That’s certainly not what we’re after in these pages. No, we’re after a lost treasure as old as the story of the Garden of Eden: the... ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1255:this consciousness I’m describing is gendered (and I think it is), it is clearly feminine. The single most damaging and distorting thing that religion has done to faith involves overlooking, undervaluing, and even outright suppressing this interior, ulterior kind of consciousness. So much Western theology has been constructed on a fundamental disfigurement of the mind and reality. In neglecting the voices of women, who are more attuned to the immanent nature of divinity, who feel that eruption in their very bodies, theology has silenced a powerful—perhaps the most powerful—side of God. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
1256:Frying Pan's Theology
Shock-headed blackfellow,
Boy (on a pony).
Snowflakes are falling
Gentle and slow,
Youngster says, "Frying Pan
What makes it snow?"
Frying Pan, confident,
Makes the reply -"Shake 'im big flour bag
Up in the sky!"
"What! when there's miles of it?
Surely that's brag.
Who is there strong enough
Shake such a bag?"
"What parson tellin' you,
Ole Mister Dodd,
Tell you in Sunday-School?
Big pfeller God!
"Him drive 'im bullock dray,
Then thunder go;
Him shake 'im flour bag -Tumble down snow!"
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
1257:After the birth of printing books became widespread. Hence everyone throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature... Every year, especially since 1563, the number of writings published in every field is greater than all those produced in the past thousand years. Through them there has today been created a new theology and a new jurisprudence; the Paracelsians have created medicine anew and the Copernicans have created astronomy anew. I really believe that at last the world is alive, indeed seething, and that the stimuli of these remarkable conjunctions did not act in vain. ~ Johannes Kepler, #NFDB
1258:It is not that the Word of God is threatening us with fire and brimstone, but rather it is saying that goodness is its own reward and evil is its own punishment. If we do the truth and live connected in the world as it really is, we will be blessed and grace can flow, and the consolation will follow from the confrontation with the Big Picture. If we create a false world of separateness and egocentricity, it will not work and we will suffer the consequences even now. In Catholic theology we call this our tradition of “natural law.” In short, we are not punished for our sins, but by our sins! ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1259:Strange as it may seem, not all of the great mathematicians have been professors in colleges or universities. Quite a few were soldiers by profession; others went into mathematics from theology, the law, and medicine, and one of the greatest was as crooked a diplomat as ever lied for the good of his country. A few have had no profession at all. Stranger yet, not all professors of mathematics have been mathematicians. But this should not surprise us when we think of the gulf between the average professor of poetry drawing a comfortable salary and the poet starving to death in his garret. ~ Eric Temple Bell, #NFDB
1260:It may be observed in general that the future is purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure distant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some immediate gratification. This is so evidently true with regard to the whole of our existence that all precepts of theology have no other tendency than to enforce a life of faith; a life regulated not by our senses but by our belief; a life in which pleasures are to be refused for fear of invisible punishments, and calamities sometimes to be sought, and always endured, in hope of rewards that shall be obtained in another state. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1261:At first, I was almost offended by the nonchalance with which people probed my soul. Within five minutes of meeting a new hallmate, I’ve been asked how often I pray, which is not something I’m used to. But after answering enough of these questions, I’m starting to realize that in the evangelical world, prying can be an indicator of compassion. In Liberty’s theology, there are only two categories of people: believers and nonbelievers, people headed to heaven and people condemned to hell. So Rodrigo’s attempt to suss out my faith isn’t intended to be obnoxious. He just wants to make sure I’m safe. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
1262:When He wrote the Bible, God didn’t give us a ponderous theology book divided into sections labeled God, Creation, Man, Sin, and so forth. Instead, He gave us a story, a narrative that begins in eternity past and ends in eternity future. It’s a story about God and His dealings with all kinds of people and how they responded to His Word. As we read these narratives, we learn a great deal about God, ourselves, and our world, and we discover that our own personal story is found somewhere in the pages of Scripture. If you read long enough and honestly enough, you will meet yourself in the Bible. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1263:The truth model held that the truth would set you free. If you were not “free,” if some area of your life were not working, it must be because you lacked “truth” in your life. So the helper’s role was to urge you to learn more verses, memorize more Scripture, and learn more doctrine (particularly your “position in Christ”), and then all of this truth would make its way from your head to your heart and ultimately into your behavior and emotions. Passages that emphasize knowing truth, renewing your mind, and how you “think in your heart” became a new theology of “thinking truth to gain emotional health. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1264:To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, #NFDB
1265:It is often said that Europeans learned religious intolerance from the Old Testament. Then how did we happen to skip over the parts where the laws protect and provide for the poor, and where oppression of them is most fiercely forbidden? It is surely dishonest to suggest we learned anything at all from the Torah, if we have not learned anything good from it. Better to say our vices are our own than to try to exculpate ourselves by implying that our attention strayed during the humane and visionary passages. The law of Moses puts liberation theology to shame in its passionate loyalty to the poor. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
1266:The sense of beauty puts a brake upon destruction, by representing its object as irreplaceable. When the world looks back at me with my eyes, as it does in aesthetic experience, it is also addressing me in another way. Something is being revealed to me, and I am being made to stand still and absorb it. It is of course nonsense to suggest that there are naiads in the trees and dryads in the groves. What is revealed to me in the experience of beauty is a fundamental truth about being - the truth that being is a gift, and receiving it is a task. This is a truth of theology that demands exposition as such. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1267:A theology for our time should help us to know that Being is indeed the theater of God's glory, and that, within it, we have a terrible privilege, a capacity for profound error and grave harm. We might venture an answer to God's question, Where were you when I created—? We were there, potential and implicit and by the grace of God inevitable, more unstoppable than the sea, impervious than Leviathan, in that deep womb of time almost hearing the sons of God when they shouted for joy. And we are here, your still-forming child, still opening our eyes on a reality whose astonishments we can never exhaust. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
1268:Clearly, then, the orthodox concept of laws of physics derives directly from theology. It is remarkable that this view has remained largely unchallenged after 300 years of secular science. Indeed, the “theological model” of the laws of physics is so ingrained in scientific thinking that it is taken for granted. The hidden assumptions behind the concept of physical laws, and their theological prov-enance, are simply ignored by almost all except historians of science and theologians. From the scientific standpoint, however, this uncritical acceptance of the theological model of laws leaves a lot to be desired. ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
1269:That there was no God was a given, as far as Hope was concerned, and being nice to people and making the most of your life struck her as a reasonable enough conclusion to draw from it, and in any case what she wanted to do. But besides the spires of theology and the watch-towers of ideology, it seemed a very shaky hut indeed, and not one that offered her much shelter or would stand up in court.
She couldn't see a way to make her objection to the fix a deduction from any body of thought. It came from a body of flesh, her own, and that was enough for her. She doubted that this would be enough for anyone else. ~ Ken MacLeod,#NFDB
1270:When St. Augustine was asked why four of the apostles were especially designated from the rest, he replied that it was necessary that there be four principal gospels, because there were four corners to the world, thus admitting a relationship between cosmogony and theology. The association of these four selected evangelists with certain creatures representing the four fixed signs of the zodiac intensifies the realization that we are dealing not with human beings, but with the characters of a sublime cosmologic drama, reduced to human estate by ignorance of clergy and laity alike. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1271:I was irresistibly drawn to write about Latter-Day Saints not only because I already knew something about their theology, and admired much about their culture, but also because of the utterly unique circumstances in which their religion was born: the Mormon Church was founded a mere 173 years ago, in a literate society, in the age of the printing press. As a consequence, the creation of what became a worldwide faith was abundantly documented in firsthand accounts. Thanks to the Mormons, we have been given an unprecedented opportunity to appreciate--in astonishingly detail--how an important religion came to be. ~ Jon Krakauer, #NFDB
1272:The general tendency in Emergence Christian theology is to question with real vigor and precision whether or not the connection between faith and doctrinal precision is essential to the soul’s salvation. Dogma, yes, but doctrine, not so much. That is, do one’s brainwaves and verbal utterances actually make one’s faith? Emergence Christians can often take this even a step further and reference those places of spiritual primacy where Jesus taught (as in his judgment of the nations as told in the Gospel of Matthew, for example) that a life is what constitutes and demonstrates a disciple, rather than a mind-set. ~ Phyllis A Tickle, #NFDB
1273:One of the most common criticisms of my theology is that I have placed compassion ahead of orthodoxy. Aside from the fact that this is a very false assumption, as my stances are based on deeply studied convictions, there seems to be another assumption that compassion and orthodoxy are inherently at odds, with the latter being more more authoritative.
God is "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth". That is no mere sentiment.
If your orthodoxy doesn't fully affirm compassion- if it is not, itself, deeply compassionate- then it is no orthodoxy at all. ~ Jamie Arpin Ricci,#NFDB
1274:Photius even went so far as to propound a new and deeply heretical theory that he had just thought up, according to which man possessed two separate souls, one liable to error, the other infallible. His dazzling reputation as an intellectual ensured that he was taken seriously by many—including, of course, Ignatius, who should have known better; and after his doctrine had its desired effect by making the patriarch look thoroughly silly he had cheerfully withdrawn it. It was perhaps the only completely satisfactory practical joke in the history of theology, and for that alone Photius deserves our gratitude. ~ John Julius Norwich, #NFDB
1275:With Bible believers, he quotes Scripture and John the Baptist; with pagans he argues from general revelation and the greatness of creation. The biblical content in his presentation varies as well, depending on the audience. He changes the order in which various truths are introduced, as well as the emphasis he gives to different points of theology. With Jews and God-fearers, Paul spends little time on the doctrine of God and gets right to Christ. But with pagans, he concentrates most of his time on developing the concept of God. With Greeks and Romans, Paul goes to Christ’s resurrection first — not the cross. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1276:Jürgen Habermas currently ranks as one of the most influential philosophers in the world. Bridging continental and Anglo-American traditions of thought, he has engaged in debates with thinkers as diverse as Gadamer and Putnam, Foucault and Rawls, Derrida and Brandom. His extensive written work addresses topics stretching from social-political theory to aesthetics, epistemology and language to philosophy of religion, and his ideas have significantly influenced not only philosophy but also political-legal thought, sociology, communication studies, argumentation theory and rhetoric, developmental psychology and theology. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1277:I don't know how to speak about heaven in the traditional, lovely, paradisiacal beauty that we speak of heaven. I wouldn't know how to speak of heaven, without my wife or my children. It would not be heaven for me.
Now, you can say that's wishful thinking, or you can say that's just because you love each other and you've gotten cozy here on earth and you like each others company. It's a lot more than that.
There is something eternal in the statement that, "neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord." That isn't just good sociology, that is theology, it's eternal. ~ Jeffrey R Holland,#NFDB
1278:A doctrine like that of the Trinity tells us that the very life of God is a yielding or giving-over into the life of an Other, a 'negation' in the sense of refusing to settle for the idea that normative life or personal identity is to be conceived in terms of self-enclosed and self-sufficient units. The negative is associated with the 'ek-static', the discovery of identity in self-transcending relation. And accordingly, theology itself has to speak in a mode that encourages us to question ourselves, to deny ourselves, in the sense of denying systems and concepts that are the comfortable possession of individual minds. ~ Rowan Williams, #NFDB
1279:Anyone who thinks he or she does fully understand what theology calls the atonement undoubtedly has some surprises coming. Nowhere, I think, is theological arrogance more commonly displayed than on this subject. But the fact is something we must always have before our minds. That is the good reason to wear or display a cross. For all the false and misleading associations that may surround it, it still says—even without the knowledge of the one displaying it—“I am bought by the sufferings and death of Jesus and I belong to God. The divine conspiracy of which I am a part stands over human history in the form of a cross. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1280:These were common preoccupations for sophisticated Romans, who conducted their daily lives-in their private concerns as much as in affairs of finance or state-against a background of sacrifice, augury, omens and prophecies. Animals were offered on the charcoal brazier, statues venerated, libations poured out, entrails examined as keenly as the flight patterns of birds. Yet much of Roman religion-a broad and tolerant paganism-was conducted more as a matter of observance than of internalised faith.4 It was certainly no formalised theology offering the promise of divinely democratic judgement followed by an afterlife. ~ Elizabeth Speller, #NFDB
1281:I have challenged several theologians to provide evidence contradicting the premise that theology has made no contribution to knowledge in the past five hundred years at least, since the dawn of science. So far no one has provided a counterexample. The most I have ever gotten back was the query, ‘What do you mean by knowledge?’ From an epistemological perspective this may be a thorny issue, but I maintain that, if there were a better alternative, someone would have presented it. Had I presented that same challenge to biologists, or psychologists, or historians, or astronomers, none of them would have been so flummoxed. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
1282:The three-volume work on Jesus Christ, on its own, makes this pontificate unique. With it, Benedict XVI created a handbook for the future of theology, catechesis and priestly formation – in short, a foundation for the teaching of the faith for the third millennium. It was not on a professorial chair, but on the chair of Peter, that things could come full circle. And there was no one else with the educational formation, the background, the strength and the inspiration, to make the image of Jesus transparent again, with intellectual meticulousness and a level-headed spirituality, after it had been obscured beyond recognition. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1283:If I speak in the tongues of Reformers and of professional theologians, and I have not personal faith in Christ, my theology is nothing but the noisy beating of a snare drum. And if I have analytic powers and the gift of creating coherent conceptual systems of theology, so as to remove liberal objections, and have not personal hope in God, I am nothing. And if I give myself to resolving the debate between supra and infralapsarianism, and to defending inerrancy, and to learning the Westminster Catechism, yea, even the larger one, so as to recite it by heart backwards and forwards, and have not love, I have gained nothing. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
1284:Mystical writing was indeed the forerunner of today's radical theology and deconstruction...
Jacques Derrida can be described as an intellectual subversive whose work leads to the view that any text may be interpreted to mean almost anything, and as a mystic will.
Well, yes, mystical writing is indeed politically and linguistically subversive and always was so the mystic seeks to create an effect of religious happiness by liberating religious language from the Babylonian captivity of metaphysics. When the writing does succeed in melting God and the soul down into each other, the effect of happiness is astonishing. ~ Don Cupitt,#NFDB
1285:About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indoctrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws. ~ Albert Einstein, in an interview (1948), quoted in Einstein and the Poet : In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983) by William Hermanns, p. 132, #NFDB
1286:When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology. A fundamentalist would deny this, since fundamentalism is antihistorical: it believes that Abraham, Moses and the later prophets all experienced their God in exactly the same way as people do today. Yet if we look at our three religions, it becomes clear that there is no objective view of “God”: each generation has to create the image of God that works for it. The same is true of atheism. The statement “I do not believe in God” has meant something slightly different at each period of history. The ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1287: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. ~ Charles M Schulz, #NFDB
1288:One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime,” Moyers said, “is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seats of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologies hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The offspring of ideology and theology are not always bad but they are always blind. And that is the danger; voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. ~ Susan Jacoby, #NFDB
1289:In evoking the figures of the devil and the divine, Jung interpreted the trickster figure in comparative terms that made sense to European psychologists and scholars, but which had little to do with American Indians. His misreading should caution us about the dangers of this kind of comparative work. Indeed, having laid this base in Western theology, Jung found it hard to stop, and he found himself arguing that the trickster is: a forerunner of the saviour, and, like him, God, man and animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness.23 ~ Vine Deloria Jr, #NFDB
1290:The reason why we see sphinxes (including that of Queen Hetepheres II from the Fourth Dynasty) instead of lion statues in history is because of the guardian role that had to be played and manifested by the Pharaohs for protecting their theological domains. We also testify to the symbolism of the lion being inverted during the New Kingdom which in turn explains the reclaiming of the Great Sphinx of Giza by Thutmose IV. And in the New Kingdom, Ram heads were introduced on sphinxes signaling the aspiration for receiving the to-be-sacrificed Messiah as in the case with the Aryan Christian theology in contrast to that of the Aryan Jew's. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1291:The Enlightenment, finally, invented progressive 'history' as an inner-worldly purgatory in order to develop the conditions of possibility of a perfected 'society'. This provided the required setting for the aggressive social theology of the Modern Age to drive out the political theology of the imperial eras. What was the Enlightenment in its deep structure if not an attempt to translate the ancient rhyme on learning and suffering - mathein pathein - into a collective and species-wide phenomenon? Was its aim not to persuade the many to expose themselves to transitional ordeals that would precede the great optimization of all things? ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
1292:I used unexpectedly to experience a consciousness of the presence of God, or such a kind that I could not possibly doubt that He was within me or that I was wholly engulfed in Him. This was in no sense a vision: I believe it is called mystical theology. The soul is suspended in such a way that it seems to be completely outside itself. The will loves; the memory, I think, is almost lost; while the understanding, I believe, thought it is not lost, does not reason—I mean that it does not work, but is amazed at the extent of all it can understand; for God wills it to realize that it understands nothing of what His Majesty represents to it. ~ Teresa of vila, #NFDB
1293:As I waited for the time for preaching, I said within myself, “Oh Lord, she doesn’t have faith. How’s this going to work?” In a moment the Holy Spirit spoke back to me, “Today it’s not her faith, it’s your faith. You are going to see a great miracle.” This idea was too big for my theology-in-a-nutshell. She didn’t have faith, but my faith was enough for her miracle? Immediately, my mind raced through the Scriptures. Could I find an example in the New Testament that would demonstrate that Jesus healed someone based on the faith of another? Suddenly it came to me: the story of the paralyzed man who was let down through the roof to Jesus. ~ Reinhard Bonnke, #NFDB
1294:All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development - in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent god became the omnipotent lawgiver - but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. Only by being aware of this analogy can we appreciate the manner in which the philosophical ideas of the state developed in the last centuries. ~ Carl Schmitt, #NFDB
1295:Descartes's declaration that reality divides neatly into two realms reassured the Church that the province of science would never overlap, and therefore never challenge , the world of theology and the spiritual. Science ceded the soul and the conscious mind to religion and kept the material world for itself. In return for this neat dividing up of turf, Descartes hoped, religious leaders would lay off scientists who were studying natural laws operating in the physical, nonmental realm. The ploy was only partly successful for Church science relations. Descartes himself was forced to flee Paris for Holland in search of greater tolerance. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
1296:Double-mindedness only leads to spiritual instability, and those who love money can make no progress in the Christian life. No matter how often they attend church or study orthodox theology, they remain “destitute of the life, power, and comfort of religion, so long as they cleave to those things which are incompatible with it.”13 Gospel simplicity dies by split motives. Befriending the world and befriending God is impossible (James 4:1–10). You cannot have both a love of drunkenness and a desire for health. Split desires and split motives lead to sickness, decay, and death. Spiritual health is gained—and maintained—only by singular motives. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
1297:This was the side which Ruskin acted up when he stayed as Gladstone’s guest – ‘We had a conversation once about Quakers,’ Gladstone recalled, ‘and I remarked how feeble was their theology and how great their social influence. As theologians, they have merely insisted on one or two points of Christian doctrine, but what good work they have achieved socially! – Why, they have reformed prisons, they have abolished slavery, and denounced war.’ To which Ruskin answered, ‘I am really sorry, but I am afraid I don’t think that prisons ought to be reformed, I don’t think slavery ought to have been abolished, and I don’t think war ought to be denounced. ~ A N Wilson, #NFDB
1298:Modern man is determined to believe; that he has demonstrated by the very strength with which he has clutched at absurdities, at fleeting phantasms of the mind. ·Yet he is a rational being who must be brought to salvation in a rational manner. If it is to be equal to the task, theology must no longer be a second class subject in the curriculum. Rather must theology as the prince of sciences attract not only the beSt heans, but the best minds too, the purest intellects-those which find no satisfaction in the discipline of the individual sciences nor even in philosophy, but which are commensurate with the totality of things, with. the universe. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
1299:The theology of littleness is a basic category of Christianity. After all, the tenor of our faith is that God's distinctive greatness is revealed precisely in powerlessness. That in the long run, the strength of history is precisely in those who love, which is to say, in a strength that, properly speaking, cannot be measured according to categories of power. So in order to show who he is, God consciously revealed himself in the powerlessness of Nazareth and Golgotha. Thus, it is not the one who can destroy the most who is the most powerful...but, on the contrary, the least power of love is already greater than the greatest power of destruction. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1300:We reject the idea of a personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of man, and not of man at his best, either. The God of theology, we say—and prove it—is a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility... Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain; it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible atom and divisible molecule; for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality. ~ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,The Key to Theosophy (1889), #NFDB
1301:cult of cosmic pessimism. Cosmic pessimism is the belief that nature has no purpose and that whatever meaning exists in the world is our own human creation. This belief is taken for granted by most scientific thinkers today, but with the aid of the new idea of an unfinished universe, theology may point out that cosmic pessimism, which is usually taken as the epitome of hard-nosed realism, is not as self-evidently justifiable as it seems to most contemporary intellectuals. Geology, evolutionary biology, and cosmology now situate Earth, life, and human existence within the framework of an immense cosmic drama of transformation that is still going on. ~ Ilia Delio, #NFDB
1302:Vaporized by the sun! Wasn't that what the universe had in store for all of us? There would come a day when the sun exploded like a red balloon, and everyone on earth would be reduced in less than a camera flash to carbon. Didn't Genesis say as much? For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. This was far more than dull old theology: It was precise scientific observation! Carbon was the Great Leveler--the Grim Reaper.
Diamonds were nothing more than carbon, but carbon in a crystal lattice that made it the hardest known mineral in nature. That was the way we all were headed. I was sure of it. We were destined to be diamonds! ~ Alan Bradley,#NFDB
1303:In reality, where everything passes on naturally, the copy follows the original, the image the thing which it represents, the thought its object, but on the supernatural, miraculous ground of theology, the original follows the copy, the thing its own likeness.
"it is strange" says St. Augustine, "But nevertheless true, that this world could not exist if it was not known to God." That means the world is known and thought before it exists; nay it exists only because it was thought of. The existence is a consequence of the knowledge or of the act of thinking, the original a consequence of the copy, the object a consequence of its likeness. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,#NFDB
1304:And yet, truth be told, we identify. Especially when we’re afraid or feeling threatened, we start to divide the world between “us” and “them,” between those who matter and those who don’t, between those who are competent and those who struggle, between those who are enlightened and those who aren’t, between the good people and the bad people. We are essentially competitive by nature. This explains our posture. This explains why it feels so natural for us to take sides in destructive ways on all sorts of subjects—politics, the use of money, parenting, sexuality, philosophy, theology, and even our favorite (and least favorite) “brands” of Christianity. ~ Scott Sauls, #NFDB
1305:There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. For Jesus and for his followers, the crucifixion became the dramatic symbol of that necessary and absurd stumbling stone. Yet we have no positive theology of such necessary suffering, for the most part. Many Christians even made the cross into a mechanical “substitutionary atonement theory” to fit into their quid pro quo worldview, instead of suffering its inherent tragedy, as Jesus did himself. They still want some kind of order and reason, instead of cosmic significance and soulful seeing.1 ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1306:For what is the world if it lacks this heavenly and spiritual light which we have from theology? The teaching of the jurists and physicians has its place, and it is excellent, necessary, and very profitable. But if all are given to these studies, where will that heavenly light remain when scholars and students of theology are lacking? Of what benefit are gold, silver, good health, and for that matter, this whole life if this lamp of the Word has become extinct? And yet it is now fostered by few, although it really has need of the diligence and interest of very many and although it is retained only with difficulty, for the devil and the world hate it. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1307:In theology, and in revolutionary theology, it is discontinuity and not continuation which is most valuable and transformative, so the location of excluded areas in theology is crucial. For instance, poverty and sensuality as a whole has been marginalised from theology. Why does a theology from the poor need to be sexually neutral, a theology of economics which excludes their desires? And what do those desires tell us about Christ in Latin America? The gap between Liberation Theology and Postcolonial Theory is one of identity and consciousness, but the gap between a Feminist Liberation Theology and an Indecent Theology is one of sexual honesty. ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
1308:Natural Theology
'Once CAGN was like a father, kind and good,
But He was spoiled by fighting many things;
He wars upon the lions in the wood,
And breaks the Thunder-bird's tremendous wings;
But still we cry to Him,--'We are thy brood O Cagn, be merciful!' and us He brings
To herds of elands, and great store of food,
And in the desert opens water-springs.'
So Qing, King Nqsha's Bushman hunter, spoke,
Beside the camp-fire, by the fountain fair,
When all were weary, and soft clouds of smoke
Were fading, fragrant, in the twilit air:
And suddenly in each man's heart there woke
A pang, a sacred memory of prayer.
~ Andrew Lang,#NFDB
1309:What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reason! Are these contradictions? Of course they are not. Reason concerning this Truth ought to be mightily eloquent, as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is theology on fire. And a theology which does not take fire, I maintain, is a defective theology; or at least the man’s understanding of it is defective. Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
1310:Just as Martin Luther King Jr. learned much from Reinhold Niebuhr, Niebuhr could have deepened his understanding of the cross by being a student of King and the black freedom movement he led. King could have opened Niebuhr’s eyes to see the lynching tree as Jesus’ cross in America. White theologians do not normally turn to the black experience to learn about theology. But if the lynching tree is America’s cross and if the cross is the heart of the Christian gospel, perhaps Martin Luther King Jr., who endeavored to “take up his cross, and follow [Jesus]” (Mark 8:34) as did no other theologian in American history, has something to teach America about Jesus’ cross. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
1311:what is this word “logos”? It’s a term that is always difficult to translate in Greek philosophical texts; in this case, it’s even harder. Basically logos means “word,” but it expands to mean many other things too, like “account” and “reason,” or even “proportion” or “measure.” It’s where we get all those English words that end in “-ology.” For example, “theology” is giving an “account,” a logos, of “god,” theos; “anthropology” is giving an “account,” a logos, of “man,” anthropos; and we just saw that bios means “life,” hence our word “biology.” So, quite an important word, and it’s here in Heraclitus that it first becomes really crucial in philosophical Greek. ~ Peter Adamson, #NFDB
1312: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 views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. truth advances, & error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
[Comment on establishing Jefferson's University of Virginia, a secular college, in a letter to Thomas Cooper 7 October 1814] ~ Thomas Jefferson,#NFDB
1313:You are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41-42)
Choosing to please God sounds right at first, but it so often leads to a performing life, a girl trying to become good, a lean-on-myself theology. If I am trying to please God, it is difficult trust God. But when I trust God, pleasing him is automatic.
Anything we do to get life and identity outside of Christ is an idol, even service to Christ. He doesn't want my service. He wants me. And from that life-giving relationship, "streams of living water will flow from within" (John 7:38 NIV) ~ Emily P Freeman,#NFDB
1314:To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can imagine how this can exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1315:Therefore to make pretensions about honoring him more, while not calling people to the most radical, soul-freeing satisfaction in God alone, is self-contradictory. It won't happen. God is glorified in His people by the way we experience him, not merely by the way we think about him. Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires. Our chief end is to glorify God, the great Object. We do so fully when we treasure him. desire him, delight in him so supremely that we let goods and kindred go and display his love to the poor and the lost. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1316:...indeed, if there were any modesty left in mankind, the histories of the Bible might abundantly assure men of the existence of angels and spirits... I look upon it as a special piece of Providence that . . . fresh examples of apparitions may awaken our benumbed and lethargic minds into an assurance that there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clothed in heavy earth or clay . . . for this evidence, showing that there are bad spirits, will necessarily open a door to the belief that there are good ones, and lastly, that there is a God. ~ Henry More, quoted by H.P. Blavatsky, in Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, (1877), #NFDB
1317:Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy. SECOND ARTICLE [I, Q. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
1318:Christians who fail also avoid other Christians, especially when they are feeling bad and guilty in the midst of their failure. It's sad to see this dynamic of the law happen in the church and then see the opposite happen in Twelve Step groups. In these recovery groups, people are taught that the very first thing to do when you fail is to call someone in the group and get to a meeting. They are taught to "run to grace," as it were, to turn immediately to their higher power and their support system. The sad part is that this theology is more biblical than what is practices in many Christian environments, where people in failure run from instead of to God and the people they need. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1319:It is a tedious cliché (and, unlike many clichés, it isn't even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with the word 'why' is a legitimate question. Why are unicorns hollow? Some questions simply do not deserve an answer. What is the colour of abstraction? What is the smell of hope? The fact that a question can be phrased in a grammatically correct English sentence doesn't make it meaningful, or entitle it to our serious attention. Nor, even if the question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that religion can. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1320:The church of Jesus Christ is not necessarily present when there is a correct administration of the sacrament and faithful preaching of the Word of God. The church of God is present where people gather together in the power of the resurrected life of Jesus Christ. It is possible to have the administration of the sacraments and the preaching of the Word of God and to have it be simply a human exercise. And the misunderstanding of the church in this respect is one of the things that create a primary problem for the integration of theology and spirituality. Because, as was emphasized yesterday, a bad theology will kill any prospects of a spirituality that comes from life in Christ. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1321:It is important to note that the Great Reversal preceded the rise of the welfare state in America. Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty did not occur until the 1960s, and even FDR’s relatively modest New Deal policies were not launched until the 1930s. In short, the evangelical church’s retreat from poverty alleviation was fundamentally due to shifts in theology and not—as many have asserted—to government programs that drove the church away from ministry to the poor. While the rise of government programs may have exacerbated the church’s retreat, they were not the primary cause. Theology matters, and the church needs to rediscover a Christ-centered, fully orbed perspective of the kingdom. ~ Steve Corbett, #NFDB
1322:It is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects than can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1323:To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: They have need only of common sense. They have only to commune with themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consider the objects of society, and of the individuals, who compose it; and they will easily perceive, that virtue is advantageous, and vice disadvantageous to themselves. Let us persuade men to be just, beneficent, moderate, sociable; not because such conduct is demanded by the gods, but, because it is pleasant to men. Let us advise them to abstain from vice and crime; not because they will be punished in another world, but because they will suffer for it in this.— ~ Paul Henri Thiry, #NFDB
1324:They're ghosts, surely, and Rabbit absolutely believes in them. There are things in the world, strange machinations of physics and chemistry,queer intersections of biology and theology, that Rabbit hasn't the slightest interest in assuming he'll ever understand or be able to solve. They're simply there to be believed in, and Rabbit is a born believer. He wants to believe. He has always thought of life as pregnant with possibility-- a freak twister or wardrobe the only thing separating him from another world-- so ghosts, spirits, aliens and supreme beings coexist within Rabbit with ease. There's a kind of beauty in accepting the possibility, if not the plausibility, of everything imaginable. ~ Kate Racculia, #NFDB
1325:Well, here we are. Let’s change. Let’s change the world. Together.” “You sound like my father.” “Your father wants the gods back on their pedestals. I want us working as one: humans with Craft, gods with divine power, priests with Applied Theology. But we need space to build that society. We need the time and the power to change, and we’ll never have that time or power with Craftsmen crushing us. We need freedom, and I can win that freedom. Not in a decade or three. Today. In one stroke.” “You want a moderate revolution. You just need to kill a few people first.” “A few people. Yes. To free a city. To save a planet. Dresediel Lex will be a model for the world.” “I kind of like it the way it is. ~ Max Gladstone, #NFDB
1326:Are we among those who yearn for the coming of the kingdom of justice and peace, who seek peace through justice? Or do we, like advocates of imperial theology, seek peace through victory? Where do we see the light of the world? Is America, the American empire, the light shining in the darkness? Jim Wallis, in his important book God’s Politics, reports that our president on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 2001 spoke of America as “the light shining in the darkness.”1 The statement is remarkably similar to Rome’s claim to be Apollo, the bringer of light. Or do we see the light of the world in Jesus, who stood against empire and indeed was executed by imperial authority? ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
1327:Like so many of his fellow Americans, Cooper was drawn to the ideas of a primitive, free access to the bounty of nature, the rough equality of all men in a society, and of a natural, intuitive theology. These themes enjoyed something of a vogue in the America of Custer’s youth, especially among intellectuals and reformers, who were disappointed at (or resentful of) America’s failure to become a “new society” in a New World. In their eyes, the United States had repeated all the mistakes of Europe, with individual appropriation and inviolable property rights locking the many out from access to the wealth of the few, leading to a social stratification based on unequal distribution of property.1 ~ Stephen E Ambrose, #NFDB
1328:At the same moment when massive global institutions seem to rule the world, there is an equally strong countermovement among regular people to claim personal agency in our own lives. We grow food in backyards. We brew beer. We weave cloth and knit blankets. We shop local. We create our own playlists. We tailor delivery of news and entertainment. In every arena, we customize and personalize our lives, creating material environments to make meaning, express a sense of uniqueness, and engage causes that matter to us and the world. It makes perfect sense that we are making our spiritual lives as well, crafting a new theology. And that God is far more personal and close at hand than once imagined. ~ Diana Butler Bass, #NFDB
1329:The study of theology is not merely a theoretical exercise of the intellect. It is a study of the living God, and of the wonders of all his works in creation and redemption. We cannot study this subject dispassionately! We must love all that God is, all that he says, and all that he does. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart" (Deut. 6:5). Our response to the study of the theology of Scripture should be that of the psalmist who said, "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!" (Ps. 139:17). In the study of the teachings of God's Word, it should not surprise us if we often find our hearts spontaneously breaking forth in expressions of praise and delight like those of the psalmist. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1330:Lack of true understanding as to the meaning of the "temptation" and the "fall" led Christian theologians to regard all female kind as the embodiment of temptation and corruption. In fact, the old story to the effect that "with Adam's fall we sinned us all" is one of the most ludicrous errors of theology. Nowhere is it more evident in scriptural writings that "the letter of the law killeth" than in this particular instance. In fact, the whole Christian theory of redemption, and the estate of Christ in the concepts of orthodox theologians depends upon the literal and benighted misunderstanding of the ancient Chaldean myth, long regarded not only as history but as scripture. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1331:Rivers of medieval ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered over the 'mystery' of the Trinity, and in suppressing deviations such as the Arian heresy. Arius of Alexandria, in the fourth century AD, denied that Jesus was consubstantial (i.e. of the same substance or essence) with God. What on earth could that possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance? What 'substance'? What exactly do you mean by 'essence'? 'Very little' seems the only reasonable reply. Yet the controversy split Christendom down the middle for a century, and the Emperor Constantine ordered that all copies of Arius's book should be burned. Splitting Christendom by splitting hairs - such has ever been the way of theology. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1332:You still waste time with those things, Lenù? We are flying over a ball of fire. The part that has cooled floats on lava. On that part we construct buildings, the bridges, and the streets, and every so often the lava comes out of Vesuvius or causes an earthquake that destroys everything. There are microbes everywhere that make us sick and die. There are wars. There is a poverty that makes us cruel. Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you'll never have enough tears. And what are you doing? A theology course in which you struggle to understand what the Holy Spirit is? Forget it, it was the Devil who invented the world, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
1333:Alcohol doesn't console," she wrote. "All it replaces is the lack of God." It does not necessarily follow, however, that if and when a substance vacates the spot (renunciation), God rushes in to fill it. For some, the emptiness itself is God; for others, the space must stay empty. "Lots of space, nothing holy": one Zen master's definition of enlightenment. For Emerson, dreams and drunkenness were but the "semblance and counterfeit" of an "oracular genius." Therein lies their danger: they mimic-- often quite well-- the "flames and generosities of the heart." I suppose he is advocating, in his "sermon", which steadily displace the God of theology with one of Nature, what we might now term "a natural high. ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB
1334:Love has won infinitely more converts than theology. The first believers were drawn to Christ’s mercy long before they understood His divinity. That brings us back to the overemphasis on Sunday morning as the front door: If love is the most effective way—and the Bible says it is—then how much genuine love can one pastor show an entire congregation? His bandwidth is not wide enough; this is a crippling, impossible burden. When he fails to connect with every person (which he will), the congregation becomes disgruntled because he can’t fulfill what should have been their mission. Nor can a random group of strangers standing in a church lobby offer legitimate community to some sojourner who walks in the door. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1335:There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my' and `mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1336:was a watershed event, establishing a utilitarian morality that runs through Islamic theology: anything that benefits Muslims and Islam is good, and anything that harms them is evil. The twentieth century jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb accordingly explained that “Islam is a practical and realistic way of life which is not based on rigid idealistic dogma.” Islam “maintains its own high moral principles,” but only when “justice is established and wrongdoing is contained”—i.e., only when Islamic law rules a society—can “sanctities be protected and preserved.”7 In other words, Muslims need not feel themselves bound by those “high moral principles” until Islamic law is established in the society where they live. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
1337:It is pluralism, not secularism, that defines democracy. A democratic state can be established upon any normative moral framework as long as pluralism remains the source of its legitimacy. England continues to maintain a national church whose religious head is also the country’s sovereign and whose bishops serve in the upper house of Parliament. India was, until recently, governed by partisans of an élitist theology of Hindu Awakening (Hindutva) bent on applying an implausible but enormously successful vision of “true Hinduism” to the state. And yet, like the United States, these countries are considered democracies, not because they are secular but because they are, at least in theory, dedicated to pluralism. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1338:There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly. [...] No, there is nothing notably dignified about religious ideas. They run, rather, to a peculiarly puerile and tedious kind of nonsense. At their best, they are borrowed from metaphysicians, which is to say, from men who devote their lives to proving that twice two is not always or necessarily four. At their worst, they smell of spiritualism and fortune telling. Nor is there any visible virtue in the men who merchant them professionally. Few theologians know anything that is worth knowing, even about theology, and not many of them are honest. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1339:It is therefore an analogical knowledge: a knowledge of a being who is unknowable in himself, yet able to make something of himself known in the being he created. Here, indeed, lies something of an antinomy. Rather, agnosticism, suffering from a confusion of concepts, sees here an irresolvable contradiction in what Christian theology regards as an adorable mystery. It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in the finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1340:for the first time, there burst upon me the idea that there might be real marvels all about us, that the visible world might be only a curtain to conceal huge realms uncharted by my very simple theology. And that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since—the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the passion for the Occult. Not everyone has this disease; those who have will know what I mean. I once tried to describe it in a novel. It is a spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts. It is probably this passion, more even than the desire for power, which makes magicians. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1341:The survival instinct, however, is self-conscious in human beings; and when it consciously motivates our behavior, it defines us as radically self-centered creatures. Our self-centered drive to survive is a universal reality rooted in our biology. It was this aspect of our humanity that led our ancient religious mythmakers to try to describe its origins. “Original sin” was their answer to the question of the source of our universal human self-centeredness. No one understood that survival was an involuntary biological drive in life. Instead it was understood as the result of sinfulness and of disobedience. Atonement theology was born as a way to address this universal flaw in our understanding of human life. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
1342:Only in the latest of our Gospels, John, a Gospel that shows considerably more theological sophistication than the others, does Jesus indicate that he is divine. I had come to realize that none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about himself. And surely if Jesus had really spent his days in Galilee and then Jerusalem calling himself God, all of our sources would be eager to report it. To put it differently, if Jesus claimed he was divine, it seemed very strange indeed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all failed to say anything about it. Did they just forget to mention that part? I had come to realize that Jesus’ divinity was part of John’s theology, not a part of Jesus’ own teaching. ~ Bart D Ehrman, #NFDB
1343:Theology creates an anthropology. Discovering God, singular and alone, the first monotheists discovered the human person singular and alone. Monotheism internalises what dualism externalises. It takes the good and bad in the human situation, the faith and the fear, the retribution and the forgiving, and locates them within each of us, turning what would otherwise be war on the battlefield into a struggle within the soul. ‘Who is a hero?’ asked the rabbis, and replied, ‘One who conquers himself.’ This is the moral drama that has been monotheism’s contribution to the civilisation of the West: not the clash of titans on the field of battle, but the quiet inner drama of choice and will, restraint and responsibility. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
1344:Reigns of terror are thus the bastard child of the Enlightenment. Terror in the name of utopian ideals would rise again and again in the coming centuries. The Nazi death camps and the Soviet gulags were spawned by the enlightenment. Fascists and communists were bred on visions of human perfectibility. Tens of millions of people have been murdered in the futile effort to reform human nature and build utopian societies. During these reigns of terror, science and reason served, as they continue to serve, interests purportedly devoted to the common good-- and to vast mechanisms of repression and mass killing. The belief in human perfectibility, in history as a march towards a glorious culmination, is a malformed theology. ~ Chris Hedges, #NFDB
1345:It is a strange misunderstanding to make Paul either a fatalist or a particularist; he is the strongest opponent of blind necessity and of Jewish particularism, even in the ninth chapter of Romans. But he aims at no philosophical solution of a problem which the finite understanding of man cannot settle; he contents himself with asserting its divine and human aspects, the religious and ethical view, the absolute sovereignty of God and the relative freedom of man, the free gift of salvation and the just punishment for neglecting it. Christian experience includes both truths, and we find no contradiction in praying as if all depended on God, and in working as if all depended on man. This is Pauline theology and practice. ~ Philip Schaff, #NFDB
1346:If some watcher or holy one who has spent his glad centuries by the sea of fire were to come to earth, how meaningless to him would be the ceaseless chatter of the busy tribes of men. How strange to him and how empty would sound the flat, stale, and profitless words heard in the average pulpit from week to week. And we're such a one to speak on earth would he not speak of God? Would he not charm and fascinate his hearers with rapturous descriptions of the Godhead? And after hearing him could we ever again consent to listen to anything less than theology, the doctrine of God? Would we not thereafter demand of those who would presume to teach us that they speak to us from the mount of divine vision or remain silent altogether? ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1347:At the point in his evolutionary progress where we first call him `Man' beyond a doubt - Homo sapiens sapiens - and when he came to know, also beyond a doubt, what awe and reverence were, he clearly felt that Soma was conferring on him ntvsterious sensations and powers, which seemed to him more than normal: at that point Religion was horn, Religion pure and simple, free of Theology, free of Dogmatics, expressing itself in awe and reverence and in lowered voices, mostly at night, when people would gather together to consume the Sacred Element. The first entheogenic experience could have been the first, and an authentic, perhaps the only authentic miracle. This was the beginning of the Age of the Entheogens, long, long ago. ~ R Gordon Wasson, #NFDB
1348:No matter where I look, I keep finding additional evidence supporting my discovery of the link between Ancient Egypt and Mecca! Budge's work tells us that Smy was another name of Set and it does not only have the phonetics of Sema in it but also the hieroglyph as well. And not only that, but Set was the personification of the forces of the waters. Hence, I validly assert that these waters (based on the evidence that links the BenBen with ZamZam that I have already presented) are those of the well/jug of Mecca. Linking evil with Abraham's heritage and cutting all kinship ties to the original theology was a wild fervor that marked the development of ancient Egyptianian religion. Egypt tried its best to break loose from Mecca. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1349:I can’t fathom the transformation of a basket of food to accommodate a multitude (heck, I’m not even sure how our toaster works), but I can see the boundless compassion of the open table and endeavor to re-create that on whatever spot I stand at any given moment and with the people in my midst. Jesus feeds people. That’s what he does. And as striking as what he does is, equally revelatory is what he doesn’t do here. There’s no altar call, no spiritual gifts assessment, no membership class, no moral screening, no litmus test to verify everyone’s theology and to identify those worthy enough to earn a seat at the table. Their hunger and Jesus’ love for them alone, nothing else, make them worthy. This is a serious gut check for us. ~ John Pavlovitz, #NFDB
1350:The church is wherever the people of God—the public of Jesus Christ—live out their faith and fellowship in the Triune God. This is public theology: children of light being “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14), bringing to light “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages” (Eph. 3:9), namely, “to unite all things in [Christ]” (Eph. 1:9–10). In Newbigin’s words: “This koinōnia is indeed the very being of the Church as a sign, instrument, and foretaste of what God purposes for the whole human family.”[67] The church, as public spire, is the vanguard of the realization of this plan. As such, the church is the public truth of Jesus Christ, and not only truth, but also the public goodness and public beauty of God’s plan of redemption. ~ Kevin J Vanhoozer, #NFDB
1351:There is a biblical benchmark I now use. We will refer to this criterion for every hard question, big idea, topic, assessment of our own obedience, every “should” or “should not” and “will” or “will not” we ascribe to God, every theological sound bite. Here it is: If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If a sermon promises health and wealth to the faithful, it isn’t true, because that theology makes God an absolute monster who only blesses rich westerners and despises Christians in Africa, India, China, South America, Russia, rural Appalachia, inner-city America, and everywhere else a sincere believer remains poor. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1352:That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.
As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition. ~ Thomas Paine,#NFDB
1353:As we consider this text, two things ought to remain in our minds. It states that we humans do not have the ability to apprehend divine things, but it also states that the ability can be given us from heaven. It is quite plain in the scriptural revelation that spiritual things are hidden by a veil, and by nature, a human does not have the ability to comprehend and get hold of them. He comes up against a blank wall. He takes doctrine and texts and proofs and creeds and theology, and lays them up like a wall—but he cannot find the gate! He stands in the darkness and all about him is intellectual knowledge of God—but not the knowledge of God, for there is a difference between the intellectual knowledge of God and the Spirit-revealed knowledge. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1354:Our modern theology, which in many ways has ceased to be personal, i.e. centered on the Christian experience of "person," nevertheless - and maybe as a result of this - has become utterly individualistic. It views everything in the Church - sacraments, rites, and even the Church herself - as primarily, if not exclusively, individual "means of grace," aimed at the individual, at his individual sanctification. It has lost the very categories by which to express the Church and her life as that new reality which precisely overcomes and transcends all "individualism," transforms individuals into persons, and in which me are persons only because and inasmuch as they are united to God, and, in Him, to one another and to the whole of life. ~ Alexander Schmemann, #NFDB
1355:John Duns Scotus, OFM, taught that the opposite of good was not bad but nonbeing itself. The opposite of truth was not falsity but nonbeing itself. And the opposite of unity was not multiplicity but nonbeing itself. All the opposites are all held and contained within pure being, even the finite and the infinite, matter and Spirit, male and female, etc., and this harmony between things is called beauty, which for some is a fourth transcendental itself. This worldview creates a very positive theology and anthropology based on original blessing instead of original sin. It also creates a philosophical basis for nondual thinking and the nature of evil. Evil is nonbeing and unconsciousness. Beauty is the fullness of being and full consciousness. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1356:Should a woman keep her pants on in the streets or not? Shall she remove them, say, at the moment of going to church, for a more intimate reminder of her sexuality in relation to God? What difference does it make if that woman is a lemon vendor and sells you lemons in the streets without using underwear? Moreover, what difference would it make if she sits down to write theology without underwear? The Argentinian woman theologian and the lemon vendors may have some things in common and others not. In common, they have centuries of patriarchal oppression, in the Latin American mixture of clericalism, militarism and the authoritarianism of decency, that is, the sexual organisation of the public and private spaces of society. However, ~ Marcella Althaus Reid, #NFDB
1357:Mother Teresa's missionaries were able to embrace people—complete with all sorts of weaknesses, failures, foibles, strengths, and faiths—and work with them wholeheartedly. The sisters lived their entire lives in faith, but to me, it seemed that they needed to whisper barely a word about their theology because the integrity of their work said everything. After spending time in a place of such care and love, I came to understand that when we see self-righteousness it is often an expression of self-doubt and self-hatred. In a place where people are able to accept themselves, love themselves, and know that they are loved, there is no need to criticize or compare, cajole or convince. The sisters concentrated, instead, on loving their neighbors. ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
1358:The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,—the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1359:The Stillborn God is not a fairy tale. It is a book about the fragility of our world, the world created by the intellectual rebellion against political theology in the West. This may seem an unusual, even perverse, theme, given that Western nations are currently at peace with one another and that the norms of liberal democracy, especially regarding religion, are generally accepted. The West does appear to have passed some kind of historical watershed, making it barely imaginable that theocracies could spring up among us or that armed bands of religious fanatics could set off a civil war. Even so, our world is fragile—not because of the promises our political societies fail to keep, but because of the promises our political thought refuses to make. ~ Mark Lilla, #NFDB
1360:Rather, I have long contended that Islam is unique among the major world religions in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system mandating warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. There is no orthodox sect or school of Islam that teaches that Muslims must coexist peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis. I use the term “radical Islam” merely to distinguish those Muslims who are actively working to advance this subjugation from the many millions who are not, as well as to emphasize that the stealth jihad program is truly radical: it aims at nothing less than the transformation of American society and the imposition of Islamic law here, subjugating women and non-Muslims to the status of legal inferiors. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
1361:One of the responsibilities of the pastor as political theologian, then, is to help the people of God “read” the festivals of their own polis, whether the annual militarized Thanksgiving festivals that feature gladiators from Dallas or the rituals of mutual display and haughty purity that suffuse online regions of “social justice.” Our politics is never merely electoral. The polis doesn’t just rear to life on the first Tuesday of November. Elections are not liturgies; they are events. The politics of the earthly city is carried in a web of rituals strung between one occasional ballot box and the next. Good political theology pierces through this, unveils it—not to help the people of God withdraw but to equip them to be sent into the thick of it. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1362:What’d you think?” Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top. “I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology,” I said with a sigh. “Also, what’s this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn’t actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we’re at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice.” “Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility.” Lord, have mercy. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1363:conviction in the goodness of God and human responsibility for evil. The rabbis did teach that in human beings was a yetzer hara, or evil impulse, but this is not a doctrine of a fall or inherited original sin.6
Therefore, I believe we are justified, at least for the moment, to set aside the biblical story of a paradise in our discussion of original sin and evil. All theologians up to perhaps Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834), the father of modern theology, assumed that the story of Adam and Eve was historical. But at the same time many early theologians, especially in the Eastern part of the church, believed that the reality of original sin could be seen to be operative in all people. This means that even though they believed in a historical Adam ~ Diogenes Allen,#NFDB
1364:Since seminary tends to academize the faith, making it a world of ideas to be mastered (I will write about this at length later in this book), it is quite easy for students to buy into the belief that biblical maturity is about the precision of theological knowledge and the completeness of their biblical literacy. So seminary graduates, who are Bible and theology experts, tend to think of themselves as being mature. But it must be said that maturity is not merely something you do with your mind (although that is an important element of spiritual maturity). No, maturity is about how you live your life. It is possible to be theologically astute and be very immature. It is possible to be biblically literate and be in need of significant spiritual growth. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1365:I am well aware that various movements have taken “Ye are gods” theology to bizarre conclusions. But the fact remains, as we are told in Psalm 82:6, “I said, ‘You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.’” Some have tried to mitigate this verse to suggest we are simply “judges” or “mighty ones.” But the literal word here is Elohim – gods. And to further bolster the point, Jesus quotes this passage – the New Testament Greek using the word Theoi – which is clearly translated as “gods.” “It is a serious thing,” says C.S. Lewis, “to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.”95 ~ John Crowder, #NFDB
1366:All his life, Bonhoeffer had applied the same logic to theological issues that his father applied to scientific issues. There was only one reality, and Christ was Lord over all of it or none. A major theme for Bonhoeffer was that every Christian must be "fully human" by bringing God into his whole life, not merely some "spiritual" realm. To be an ethereal figure who merely talked about God, but somehow refused to get his hands dirty in the real world in which God had placed him, was bad theology. Through Christ, God had showed that he meant for us to be in this world and to obey him with our actions in this world. So Bonhoeffer would get his hands dirty, not because he had grown impatient, but because God was speaking to him about further steps of obedience. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1367:When we talk about the theology of 'God is Dead,' this means that the notion of God must be dead in order for God to reveal himself as a reality. The theologians, if they only use concepts, and not direct experience, are not very helpful. The same goes for nirvana, which is something to be touched and lived and not discussed and described. We have notions that distort truth, reality. A Zen master said the following to a large assembly: 'My friends, every time I use the word Buddha, I suffer. I am allergic to it. Every time I do it, I have to go to the bathroom and rinse my mouth three times in succession.' He said this in order to help his disciples not to get caught up in the notion of Buddha. The Buddha is one thing, but the notion of Buddha is another. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
1368:[Genesis] is not myth. It is not history in the conventional sense, a mere recording of events. Nor is it theology: Genesis is less about God than about human beings and their relationship with God. The theology is almost always implicit rather than explicit. What Genesis is, in fact, is philosophy written in a deliberately non-philosophical way. It deals with all the central questions of philosophy: what exists (ontology), what can we know (epistemology), are we free (philosophical psychology), and how we should behave (ethics). But it does so in a way quite unlike the philosophical classics from Plato to Wittgenstein. To put it at its simplest: philosophy is truth as system. Genesis is truth as story. It is a unique work, philosophy in the narrative mode. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
1369:I began to understand how so many of the ancient myths recast the Goddess, and her symbols such as the snake and the apple, in negative terms. […] Violence enforced theology; stoning and other brutal deaths were inflicted on women who worshipped the Goddess, who refused arranged marriages, who were not virgins at marriage, who had sexual relations outside of marriage, or who were raped! In contrast to the increasing restrictions placed on women, the Bible simultaneously chronicled the rampant practice of polygamy in men. […] The roots of women’s inequality and the destruction of the earth are to be found in this early religious shift away from the mother Goddess, who was immanent and present in the world, to the father God, who was transcendent and removed. ~ Phyllis Curott, #NFDB
1370:The Rev. Brown, the Wesleyan minister, sturdily declares that he cares nothing for creeds, but only for education; meanwhile, in truth, the wildest Wesleyanism is tearing his soul. The Rev. Smith, of the Church of England, explains gracefully, with the Oxford manner, that the only question for him is the prosperity and efficiency of the schools; while in truth all the evil passions of a curate are roaring within him. It is a fight of creeds masquerading as policies. I think these reverend gentlemen do themselves wrong; I think they are more pious than they will admit. Theology is not (as some suppose) expunged as an error. It is merely concealed, like a sin. Dr. Clifford really wants a theological atmosphere as much as Lord Halifax; only it is a different one. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1371:central imperative of liberation theology—to provide a preferential option for the poor—seemed like a worthy life’s goal to him. Of course, one could pursue it almost anywhere, but clearly the doctrine implied making choices among degrees of poverty. It would make sense to provide medicine in the places that needed it most, and there was no place needier than Haiti, at least in the Western Hemisphere, and he hadn’t seen any place in Haiti needier than Cange. He didn’t stick around in Léogâne to see the blood bank get installed. He’d found out that the hospital would charge patients for its use. He told me he had these thoughts, as he headed back toward the central plateau: “I’m going to build my own fucking hospital. And there’ll be none of that there, thank you. ~ Tracy Kidder, #NFDB
1372:To summarize all of this, we have the following: (1) Archaeologists discovered 7 pits for boats around the Great Pyramid. (2) The longest of which is 44 meters; it is called the solar barque. (3) That boat (hypothetically speaking) needs [230/44]*4 steps to complete one single rotation (which looks like a square around the pyramid). (4) It therefore covers a distance which equals to the pyramid's height if it completes seven full rotations around the pyramid's base. (5) This mimics the application of Kaaba; even though the Kaaba has no dimensional merit for its structure (according to pure orthodox Islamic tradition) but the number seven is dominant and serves as an evidence that Egypt tried to plagiarize Adam's heritage and remodeled its theology accordingly. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1373:While this method is interesting because it makes sin and salvation the principal theme and brings Christ the Redeemer into the foreground, yet it is neither a natural nor a logical method. God incarnate is only a single person of the Godhead; redemption is only one of the works of God; and sin is an anomaly in the universe, not an original and necessary fact. The christological method, therefore, is fractional. It does not cover the whole ground. It is preferable to construct theological science upon the Trinity—to begin with the trinal nature and existence of the Godhead and then come down to his acts in incarnation and redemption. It is not logical or natural to build a science upon one of its divisions. Christology is a division in theology. ~ William Greenough Thayer Shedd, #NFDB
1374:The Reign of God is not about churchiness at all. It has everything to do with everything. In fact, as we listen to Jesus’ images and examples, it appears that it is the world of house and field and job and marriage where we are converted to right relationship. The secular has become the place where we encounter the True Sacred. As Catholic theology would say, it is a sacramental universe. It is the domestic Church that converts us; it is the job of the liturgical Church to send us back there. It is the unexciting world of details, diapers and “women who have lost one dime” (see Luke 15:8-10) that appears to offer the teachable moment for Jesus. It is much more, it seems, than the world of stipends, sermons and sacristies, which tend to become their own industry. An ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1375:I wanted to be clear that non-Christians have been lying about us from the very beginning of Christianity. Most of these lies are the result of ignorance, as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Some are the result of intentional misinformation, and a handful are a malicious personal attack upon Jesus in an attempt to discredit the entire Christian faith. Some of these lies are aimed at our theology and beliefs, and others are aimed at the Christian way of life. The sad thing about all these lies is they have destroyed real people’s chances at happiness. They have done tremendous damage to so many people, and it is important to acknowledge that. These lies have stopped millions, possibly billions of people from discovering the joy and genius of Christianity. ~ Matthew Kelly, #NFDB
1376:Students are welcome at such schools to study historical and contemporary theology, and to relate these to auxiliary disciplines such as philosophy and literary criticism. But they are not taught to seek ways of applying Scripture for the edification of God’s people. Rather, professors encourage each student to be “up to date” with the current academic discussion and to make “original contributions” to that discussion, out of his autonomous reasoning. So when the theologian finishes his graduate work and moves to a teaching position, even if he is personally evangelical in his convictions, he often writes and teaches as he was encouraged to do in graduate school: academic comparisons and contrasts between this thinker and that, minimal interaction with Scripture itself. ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
1377:You still waste time with those things, Lenu? We are flying over a ball of fire. The part that has cooled floats on the lava. On that part we construct the buildings, the bridges, and the streets, and every so often the lava comes out of Vesuvius or causes an earthquake that destroys everything. There are microbes everywhere that make us sick and die. There are wars. There is a poverty that makes us all cruel. Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you'll never have enough tears. And what are you doing? A theology course in which you struggle to understand what the Holy Spirit is? Forget it, it was the Devil who invented the world, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Do you want to see the string of pearls that Stefano gave me? ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
1378:How one views Scripture will determine the rest of one's theology. There is no more basic issue: Every system of thought that takes seriously the claims of the Bible to be the inspired, authoritative Word of God will share a commitment to particular central truths, and that without compromise. Those systems that do not begin with this belief in Scripture will exhibit a wide range of beliefs that will shift over time in light of the ever-changing whims and views of culture. Almost every single collapse involving denominations and churches in regard to historic Christian beliefs can be traced back to a degradation in that group's view of the Bible as the inspired and inerrant revelation of God's truth. Once this foundation is lost, the house that was built upon it cannot long stand ~ James R White, #NFDB
1379:Contrary to John Anthony West's assertion (in his book, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt) that there are no other possible interpretations of the mummy figure looking at the stars on the depiction in the tomb of Tutankhamen beyond being a matter of consciousness, many proofs point to ancient Egypt's aspiration to be among the stars and it is an essential part of its theology. It is after all evident that [the Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of eternal travelling with the sun god amongst the stars]. Staying loyal to the Upper Heavens' authority or breaking away from it, made ancient Egypt yearn to such a high position beyond Earth's physical realm where the Sun's shadow (i.e., snake) of the Lower Heavens' authority cannot fly. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1380:(from chapter 24, "Heather-scented Theology")
"...I was more than ever what I had been becoming for a long time - a contemplative pastor. In these early years when I was becoming a pastor, I needed a pastor. Some deep and cultivated pastoral instinct in Ian responded: he became my pastor without making me a project, without giving me advice, without smothering me with his concerns... I learned, without being aware that I was learning of the immense freedom that comes in pastoral relationships that are structured by prayer and ritual and let everything else happen more or less spontaneously. The competitiveness didn't exactly leave me, but it developed a root system that didn't depend on artificial stimulants or chemical additives - like 'start another building campaign. ~ Eugene H Peterson,#NFDB
1381:Our faith is a person; the gospel that we have to preach is a person; and go wherever we may, we have something solid and tangible to preach, for our gospel is a person. If you had asked the twelve Apostles in their day, ‘What do you believe in?’ they would not have stopped to go round about with a long sermon, but they would have pointed to their Master and they would have said, ‘We believe him.’ ‘But what are your doctrines?’ ‘There they stand incarnate.’ ‘But what is your practice?’ ‘There stands our practice. He is our example.’ ‘What then do you believe?’ Hear the glorious answer of the Apostle Paul, ‘We preach Christ crucified.’ Our creed, our body of divinity, our whole theology is summed up in the person of Christ Jesus." (Ray Ortlund blog, Christ Is Deeper Still) ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1382:The Keswick, “higher-life” movement ... also contributed to a reduction of interest in biblical theology and deeper scholarship. No Christian in his right mind will desire anything other than true holiness and righteousness in the church of God. But Keswick had isolated one doctrine, holiness, and altered it by the false simplicity contained in the slogan, “Give up, let go and let God.” If you want to be holy and righteous, we are told, the intellect is dangerous and it is thought generally unlikely that a good theologian is likely to be a holy person.... You asked me to diagnose the reasons for the present weakness and I am doing it.... If you teach that sanctification consists of “letting go” and letting the Holy Spirit do all the work, then don’t blame me if you have no scholars!171 ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
1383:Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy—Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human—are deeply embedded not just in Christian history but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous viruses often lie hidden, malware that must be identified and purged from our software if we want our future to be different from our past. We are realizing that our ancestors didn’t merely misinterpret a few Scriptures in their day; rather, they consistently practiced a dangerous form of interpretation that deserves to be discredited, rejected, and replaced by a morally wiser form of interpretation today. (We ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1384:This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets "things" with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns "my" and "mine" look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1385:I took up reading fiction again. Part of this was due to the fact that some of my favorite Christian writers (like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton) wrote fiction. This was surprising, mainly because fiction was not a main staple of most of the pastors I knew. In fact, the consensus seemed to be that reading fiction was a waste of time. What pastors needed was books on theology, pastoral counseling, and administration, not fairy tales and outer space adventures. However, I discovered just the opposite--reading fiction stoked my imagination. Good stories spoke in ways that exposition and data could not. As some have said, 'thou shalt not' speaks to the head, but 'once upon a time' speaks to the heart. Reinforcing this was the fact that Jesus, the greatest teacher ever, was a prolific storyteller. ~ Mike Duran, #NFDB
1386:When John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, published Honest to God in 1963, stating that he could no longer subscribe to the old personal God “out there,” there was uproar in Britain. A similar furor has greeted various remarks by David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham, even though these ideas are commonplace in academic circles. Don Cupitt, Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, has also been dubbed “the atheist priest”: he finds the traditional realistic God of theism unacceptable and proposes a form of Christian Buddhism, which puts religious experience before theology. Like Robinson, Cupitt has arrived intellectually at an insight that mystics in all three faiths have reached by a more intuitive route. Yet the idea that God does not really exist and that there is Nothing out there is far from new. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1387:Theology is especially suited for reading within the community of faith, because the community shares a personal stake in its promises. Marilynne Robinson says this beautifully: Good theology is always a kind of giant and intricate poetry, like epic or saga. It is written for those who know the tale already, the urgent messages and the dying words, and who attend to its retelling with a special alertness, because the story has a claim on them and they on it. . . . Theology is written for the small community of those who would think of reading it. So it need not define freighted words like “faith” or “grace” but may instead reveal what they contain. To the degree that it does them any justice, its community of readers will say yes, enjoying the insight as their own and affirming it in that way.2 ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
1388:All theology is a doomed but necessary attempt to express the inexpressible. God is the elusive mystery we try to capture and convey in language, but how can that ever be done? If the word water is not itself drinkable, how can the words we use to express the mystery of God be themselves absolute? They are metaphors, analogies, figures of speech, yet religious people have slaughtered and condemned each other over these experimental uncertainties. Our glory and agony as humans is that we long to find words that will no longer be words, mere signifiers, but the very experience they are trying to signify; and our tragedy is that we never succeed. This is the anguish that lies at the heart of all religion, because, though our words can describe our thirst for the absolute, they can never satisfy it. ~ Richard Holloway, #NFDB
1389:THE theology of the devil is really not theology but magic. “Faith” in this theology is really not the acceptance of a God Who reveals Himself as mercy. It is a psychological, subjective “force” which applies a kind of violence to reality in order to change it according to one’s own whims. Faith is a kind of supereffective wishing: a mastery that comes from a special, mysteriously dynamic will power that is generated by “profound convictions.” By virtue of this wonderful energy one can exert a persuasive force even on God Himself and bend His will to one’s own will. By this astounding new dynamic soul force of faith (which any quack can develop in you for an appropriate remuneration) you can turn God into a means to your own ends. We become civilized medicine men, and God becomes our servant. Though ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1390:The number of books on theology must be reduced and only the best ones published. It is not many books that make people learned or even much reading. It is, rather, a good book frequently read, no matter how small it is, that makes a person learned in the Scriptures and upright. Indeed, the writings of all the holy Fathers should be read only for a time so that through them we may be led into the Scriptures. As it is, however, we only read them these days to avoid going any further and getting into the Bible. We are like people who read the signposts and never travel the road they indicate. Our dear Fathers wanted to lead us to the Scriptures by their writings, but we use their works to get away from the Scriptures. Nevertheless, the Scripture alone is our vineyard in which we must all labor and toil. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1391:Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation.
All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogmas as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides, and this No Man’s Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. ~ Bertrand Russell,#NFDB
1392:Bonhoeffer’s theology had always leaned toward the incarnational view that did not eschew “the world,” but that saw it as God’s good creation to be enjoyed and celebrated, not merely transcended. According to this view, God had redeemed mankind through Jesus Christ, had re-created us as “good.” So we weren’t to dismiss our humanity as something “un-spiritual.” As Bonhoeffer had said before, God wanted our “yes” to him to be a “yes” to the world he had created. This was not the thin pseudohumanism of the liberal “God is dead” theologians who would claim Bonhoeffer’s mantle as their own in the decades to come, nor was it the antihumanism of the pious and “religious” theologians who would abdicate Bonhoeffer’s theology to the liberals. It was something else entirely: it was God’s humanism, redeemed in Jesus Christ. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1393:The Afghanis converted from Buddhism and some of the greatest Muslims came out of that Buddhist tradition. In fact Balkh was a center for Buddhist logic and those logicians became Muslim and introduced interestingly enough into Islamic theology some Buddhist logical formations that dont exist in Greek logic.
Greek logic does not have a "neither A nor B" type scenario whereas Nagarjunian logic which is Buddhist logic does. In traditional Islamic theology you have situations where they do have that "neither A nor B". [...] I can't say "definitely" but I really believe that it does come out of the influence that the Buddhist logicians had on Islam. I actually wrote a paper “how the Buddhists saved Islam” which was about that but somebody said [...] [do not submit it] as you will get too much flak.
(audio) ~ Hamza Yusuf,#NFDB
1394:Unruffled by Herbert Jemson’s breach of allegiance, because he had not heard it, Mr. Stone rose and walked to the pulpit with Bible in hand. He opened it and said, “My text for today is taken from the twenty-first chapter of Isaiah, verse six: For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” Jean Louise made a sincere effort to listen to what Mr. Stone’s watchman saw, but in spite of her efforts to quell it, she felt amusement turning into indignant displeasure and she stared straight at Herbert Jemson throughout the service. How dare he change it? Was he trying to lead them back to the Mother Church? Had she allowed reason to rule, she would have realized that Herbert Jemson was Methodist of the whole cloth: he was notoriously short on theology and a mile long on good works. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
1395:Roman imperial theology is the oppositional context for much of early Christian language about Jesus. The gospels, Paul’s letters, and the other New Testament writings use the language of imperial theology, but apply it to Jesus. Jesus is the “Son of God”— the emperor is not. Jesus is the “Lord” - the emperor is not. Jesus is the “Savior” who brings “peace on earth” - the emperor is not. The contrast is not just a matter of language. The contrast is also about two different visions of how the world should be. The world of the domination system is a world of political oppression, economic exploitation, and chronic violence. The alternative is a world in which everyone has enough and no one needs to be afraid. The gospel phrase for this is the “kingdom of God,” the heart, as the gospels proclaim, of Jesus’s message. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
1396:In an age of religious violence like ours, people care much less about what you believe, and much more about whether you will kill for what you believe. So if you haven’t figured out what you’re going to do with passages like Deuteronomy 7 and 1 Samuel 15 and Psalms 137:9, you still have some important work to do.3 If you haven’t grappled with these passages and others like them, your Bible is like a loaded gun and your theology is like a license to kill. You have to find a way to disarm your faith as a potential instrument of hate and convert it into an instrument of love.4 You have to convert Christianity from a warrior religion to a reconciling religion. Otherwise, your neighbors around this seminary will tolerate you the way they might tolerate a chemical plant that could at any moment blow up and kill them all. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1397:As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
1398:Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1399:What had become of the girl who sought out British Socinian texts all on her own, argued over Swedenborgian theology with adults three times her age, read the New Testament thirty times in one summer, and taught herself Hebrew so that she could make her own translation of the Old Testament? There had been many obstacles. Because of financial hardship, she had been “thrown too early” into the working world, teaching long hours when she might have studied and written more. And there was the fact of her sex. Without the option of college or a profession, Elizabeth had not known how or where to apply herself. She had looked to men of genius to confirm her talents and grown “dependent on the daily consolations of friendship.” She could see now that she had “constantly craved . . . assurances” that should have “come from within.” Yet ~ Megan Marshall, #NFDB
1400:Mine is the best theology, the theology of utter hostility to all beings whose sufferings may mitigate mine. In this flattering theory, your crimes become my virtues,–I need not any of my own. Guilty as I am of the crime that outrages nature, your crimes (the crimes of those who offend against the church) are of a much more heinous order. But your guilt is my exculpation, your sufferings are my triumph. I need not repent, I need not believe; if you suffer, I am saved,–that is enough for me. How glorious and easy it is to erect at once the trophy of our salvation, on the trampled and buried hopes of another's! How subtle and sublime that alchemy, that can convert the iron of another's contumacy and impenitence into the precious gold of your own redemption! I have literally worked out my salvation by your fear and trembling. ~ Charles Robert Maturin, #NFDB
1401:Intellectuals and artists concerned with faith tend to underestimate the radical, inviolable innocence it requires. We read and read, write long, elaborate essays and letters, engage in endlessly inflected philosophical debates. We talk of poetry as prayer, artistic discipline as a species of religious devotion, doubt as the purest form of faith. These ideas are not inherently false. Indeed, there may be a deep truth in them. But the truth is, you might say, on the other side of innocence—permanently. That is, you don’t once pass through religious innocence into the truths of philosophy or theology or literature, any more than you pass through the wonder of childhood into the wisdom of age. Innocence, for the believer, remains the only condition in which intellectual truths can occur, and wonder is the precondition for all wisdom. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
1402:In the West, the great problem that was created for Christianity from the 17th century onward and even earlier during the Renaissance was that religion began to retreat from one domain after another in order to accommodate the forces of modernism and secularism. One can point to the Galileo trial, after which the Church ‘‘lost the cosmos.’’ In fact, the Church was right in many ways, because what Galileo was saying did not concern astronomy alone, but also theology, which was quite something else. As a consequence of this trial, the Church withdrew from its concern with the sciences of nature and no longer challenged what kind of science was developed, and suf- fered the results of accepting the reductionism and materialistic views of modern science. This process resulted in the complete secularization of nature and the cosmos. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
1403:It was the honest conviction of the Patristic Fathers that the deeper mysteries of Christian dispensation were beyond the understanding of the laity. In order, therefore, not to 'cast pearls before swine,' they devised a cycle of fables which have come to be accepted as literal historical facts. From various causes the same general condition has arisen in most religions. Spiritual matters can not be understood by those not spiritually enlightened. Again, enlightenment can not be bestowed; it must be evolved. To be serviceable, a religion must be comprehensible to the mass of its followers. The result is inevitably a compromise with truth. In serving the uninformed many, theology leaves the enlightened few without adequate spiritual food. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible: A Philosopher's Interpretation of Obscure and Puzzling Passages, #NFDB
1404:My life has been a disaster on the grand scale - that I'd better make clear from the start. A catalogue of my former ambitions would give a Napoleon stage-fright. Art, Ethics, Theology, the Sciences (both practical and occult), even Perception itself, to say nothing of my later efforts at Empire Building, Commerce and Exploration - each of these were at some stage fields which I intended to master. My personality accepted no limits; all that could be conceived was possible. For me, personally. And now, even when I've come to the point where all personal considerations disgust me, I still realise the sublime inevitability of it all. I wasn't mistaken; I was merely trapped. Born trapped. Condemned for the length of a lifetime to play this buffoon Arthur Rimbaud. Yes, it's true what I always used to think when I was a kid: I is another. ~ Paul Strathern, #NFDB
1405:Some terrorism analysts have seen the southern insurgency as an Islamic jihad that forms part of the broader network of AQ-linked extremism, with Islamic theology and religious aspirations (for shari’a law or an Islamic emirate) as a key motivator.73 This surface impression is reinforced by the facts that the violence is led by ustadz74 and other religious teachers, that the mosques and ponoh (Islamic schools) have a central role as recruiting and training bases, and that militants repeatedly state that they are fighting a legitimate defensive jihad against the encroachment of the kafir (infidel) Buddhist Thai government. Clearly, also, the AQ affiliate Jema’ah Islamiyah (JI) has used Thailand as a venue for key meetings, financial transfers, acquisition of forged documents,75 and money laundering and as a transit hub for operators. ~ David Kilcullen, #NFDB
1406:The results of that charismatic takeover have been devastating. In recent history, no other movement has done more to damage the cause of the gospel, to distort the truth, and to smother the articulation of sound doctrine. Charismatic theology has turned the evangelical church into a cesspool of error and a breeding ground for false teachers. It has warped genuine worship through unbridled emotionalism, polluted prayer with private gibberish, contaminated true spirituality with unbiblical mysticism, and corrupted faith by turning it into a creative force for speaking worldly desires into existence. By elevating the authority of experience over the authority of Scripture, the Charismatic Movement has destroyed the church’s immune system—uncritically granting free access to every imaginable form of heretical teaching and practice. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1407:In the conclusion of his "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon, Johnathan Edwards says, "The axe is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root of the trees, that every tree that brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down, and cast into the fire." And I say "Amen." I thank God that the theological tree that produced the bitter fruit of belief in an angry, violent, and retributive God has at last been hewn down and cast into the fire. In my life the poisonous tree of angry God theology is now gone. In its place grows the tree of Life, a tree whose leaves bring healing. It's a tree that looks like it once may have been an ugly cross, but it is now beautiful and verdant, producing the fruit of eternal life. Planted by the Father himself, this tree is an everlasting reminder that I am a forgiven sinner in the hands of a loving God. ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1408:We often fail to deconstruct how proslavery theology still influences American Christianity. But simply put: Theological arguments upheld the institution of slavery long after every other argument failed. American Christian theology was born in a cauldron of proslavery ideology, and one of the spectacular failures of the Christian church today is its inability to name, interrogate, confront, repent, and dismantle the cauldron which has shaped much of its theology. We are daily living with the remnants of a theological white supremacy, coupled with social and political power, which continues to uphold racist ideologies….Can this nation afford to keep ignoring the truth that black people in America live under a threat of racial violence, never quite feeling that we are fully equal citizens in the nation that our enslaved ancestors built? ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1409:The Coptic Achievement In vivid contrast, the Egyptian churches certainly did reach the hearts of their natives, and from early times. Even the name Copt is a corruption of Aigyptos—that is, native Egyptians, whose language descends from the tongue of the pyramid builders. (The word Aigyptos derives from the name of ancient Memphis, the city of Ptah.) When nineteenth-century scholars translated the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone, they did so by using the language they found spoken in the liturgies of the Coptic church. Though Alexandrians wrote and thought in Greek, Coptic was from the earliest years a sophisticated language of Christian literature and theology, making it easy to spread the faith among ordinary Egyptians. The famous Nag Hammadi collection of alternative scriptures, probably written in the fourth century, is in Coptic. ~ Philip Jenkins, #NFDB
1410:May God have mercy upon us! So many of us are children and are only interested in the presents and the gifts and the entertainments. That is not proof that we are truly born again. The Devil can counterfeit experiences and gifts and most other things, but there is one thing the Devil cannot do, and that is give us a desire for a personal knowledge of God. The Devil can give you an interest in theology and encourage it; as you go on, you become more and more proud of your vast knowledge. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the crying out of a child’s need for his or her Father, the true filial cry and desire. The Devil cannot counterfeit that; he knows nothing about it, and he cannot produce it. Only one person can produce it; that is God himself through the Spirit as he implants within us a seed of this living life. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
1411:Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend—belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. ~ Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (1946), Introduction, #NFDB
1412:The jacket had a purpose, and so did the boy. His purpose in life was to travel, and, after two years of walking the Andalusian terrain, he knew all the cities of the region. He was planning, on this visit, to explain to the girl how it was that a simple shepherd knew how to read. That he had attended a seminary until he was sixteen. His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and thereby a source of pride for a simple farm family. They worked hard just to have food and water, like the sheep. He had studied Latin, Spanish, and theology. But ever since he had been a child, he had wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man's sins. One afternoon, on a visit to his family, he had summoned up the courage to tell his father that he didn't want to become a priest. That he wanted to travel. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1413:Being eclectic in terms of his theology, Fat listed a number of saviors: the Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus and Abu Al-Qasim Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah Abd Al-Muttalib Ibn Hashim (i.e., Muhammad). Sometimes he also listed Mani. Therefore, the next Savior would be number five, by the abridged list, or number six by the longer list. At certain times, Fat also included Asklepios, which, when added to the longer list, would make the next Savior number seven. In any case, this forthcoming savior would be the last; he would sit as king and judge over all nations and people. The sifting bridge of Zoroastrianism had been set up, by means of which good souls (those of light) became separated from bad souls (those of darkness). Ma'at had put her feather in the balance to be weighed against the heart of each man in judgment, as Osiris the Judge sat. It was a busy time. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1414:Christian theology, however, never is and never can be anything more than the thoughts that Christians have (alone or with others) after they have said yes to Jesus. Sure, it can be a thrilling subject. Of course, it is something you can do well or badly - or even get right or wrong. And naturally, it is one of the great fun things to do on weekends when your kidney stones aren't acting up. Actually, it is almost exactly like another important human subject that meets all the same criteria: wind-surfing. Everybody admires it, and plenty of people try it. But the number of people who can do it well is even smaller than the number who can do it without making fools of themselves.
Trust Jesus, then. After that, theologize all you want. Just don't lose your sense of humor if your theological surfboard deposits you unceremoniously in the drink. ~ Robert Farrar Capon,#NFDB
1415:Who can pray this request and mean it? Only he who looks at the whole of life from this point of view. Such a man will not fall into the trap of superspirituality, so concentrating on God’s redemption as to disregard his creation; people like that, however devoted and well-meaning, are unearthly in more senses than one, and injure their own humanity. Instead, he will see everything as stemming ultimately from the Creator’s hand, and therefore as fundamentally good and fascinating, whatever man may have made of it (beauty, sex, nature, children, arts, crafts, food, games, no less than theology and church things). Then in thankfulness and joy he will so live as to help others see life’s values, and praise God for them, as he does. Supremely in this drab age, hallowing God’s name starts here, with an attitude of gratitude for the goodness of the creation. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1416:If the Bible is infallible, my professors all say, and if the parts about Jesus dying for our sins are true, then a host of other things must also be true, including the sinfulness of homosexuality, the pro-life platform, and the imminence of the rapture. In Liberty’s eyes, the ultra-conservative interpretation of scripture carries the same inerrancy as scripture itself, and if you don’t buy it all—if you’re a liberal or moderate Christian—you’re somehow less than faithful. That sort of prix fixe theology, where Christianity comes loaded with a slate of political views, is a big part of the reason I’ve been hesitant to accept Liberty’s evangelicalism this semester. Somewhere down the road, I might be able to believe in Jesus as Lord, but I could never believe that homosexuality is a sinful lifestyle or tell my future wife to submit to me as her husband. ~ Kevin Roose, #NFDB
1417:Atonement theology assumes that we were created in some kind of original perfection. We now know that life has emerged from a single cell that evolved into self-conscious complexity over billions of years. There was no original perfection. If there was no original perfection, then there could never have been a fall from perfection. If there was no fall, then there is no such thing as “original sin” and thus no need for the waters of baptism to wash our sins away. If there was no fall into sin, then there is also no need to be rescued. How can one be rescued from a fall that never happened? How can one be restored to a status of perfection that he or she never possessed? So most of our Christology today is bankrupt. Many popular titles that we have applied to Jesus, such as “savior,” “redeemer,” and “rescuer,” no longer make sense, because they assume ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
1418:In general, according to theologian Carolyn Custis James, egalitarians “believe that leadership is not determined by gender but by the gifting and calling of the Holy Spirit, and that God calls all believers to submit to one another.” In contrast, complementarians “believe the Bible establishes male authority over women, making male leadership the biblical standard.”5 Both sides can treat the Bible like a weapon. On both sides, there are extremists and dogmatists. We attempt to outdo each other with proof texts and apologetics, and I’ve heard it said that there is no more hateful person than a Christian who thinks you’ve got your theology wrong. In our hunger to be right, we memorize arguments, ready to spit them out at a moment’s notice. Sadly, we reduce each other, brothers and sisters, to straw men arguments, and brand each other “enemies of the gospel. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
1419:Among colleges, the evangelical feminist position is the dominant position at Wheaton College, Azusa Pacific University, and several other Christian colleges. Among seminaries, evangelical feminism is the only position allowed at Fuller Seminary, and it is strongly represented on the faculty at Denver Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Bethel Seminary, Asbury Seminary, and Regent College–Vancouver. Even among seminaries that are committed to a complementarian position, some have begun hiring women to teach Bible and theology classes to men, arguing that “we are not a church” (see discussion in chapter 11 above).2 But it seems to me that having a woman teach the Bible to men is doing just what Paul said not to do in 1 Timothy 2:12. And I don’t think such a position will remain stable for very long, but will lead to further movement in an egalitarian direction. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1420:It appears now to be universally admitted that, before the exile, the Israelites had no belief in rewards and punishments after death, nor in anything similar to the Christian heaven and hell; but our story proves that it would be an error to suppose that they did not believe in the continuance of individual existence after death by a ghostly simulacrum of life. Nay, I think it would be very hard to produce conclusive evidence that they disbelieved in immortality; for I am not aware that there is anything to show that they thought the existence of the souls of the dead in Sheol ever came to an end. But they do not seem to have conceived that the condition of the souls in Sheol was in any way affected by their conduct in life. If there was immortality, there was no state of retribution in their theology. Samuel expects Saul and his sons to come to him in Sheol. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
1421:The Book of Jubilees follows a solar calendar of 364 days per year, to which it refers as a “complete year”, and so is 1 Enoch 71 which additionally refers to the eastern six gates and points to the solar revolution northwards and eastwards between them as I have demonstrated on the circular zodiac of Dendera. The Book of Enoch goes on with the narrative acknowledging the presence of four days (in Chapter 74) which are not counted in the computation of the year during the monthly reckoning (as in the case with my discovery of the six days on the zodiac which I called, the Eastern Portals); the year hence according to both books consists of 364 days. This is a major evidence of the tampered narrative of the Bible which has implanted ancient Egyptian system of theology according to the ancient Egyptian calendar which I was able to decipher from the zodiac of Dendera. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1422:The linear zodiac of Dendera is different from the circular one in that it emphasizes the cosmic role that Mars plays in ancient Egyptian theology and hence calendrically incorporates Mars' behavior into the zodiac. The face of Hathor with the birth of the Sun signal the arrival of the Summer Solstice - hence the lineal cut on the circular zodiac. This theological implication confirms Laird Scranton's work that something must have happened which led civilizations to change their calendars by applying additional epagomenal days, but it differs in the chronology since I provided new evidence based on my work that the zodiacs of Dendera are not from the Ptolemaic period (as claimed by academia) but rather much older than that. Therefore, this does not go against Scranton's thesis but puts it in the context of an anticipated Prophecy that eventually took place in history. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1423:I believe in God. But I do not believe the same things about Him that I did years ago, when I was growing up or when I was a theological student. I recognize His limitations. He is limited in what He can do by laws of nature and by the evolution of human nature and human moral freedom. I no longer hold God responsible for illnesses, accidents, and natural disasters, because I realize that I gain little and I lose so much when I blame God for those things. I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die, for whatever exalted reason.
Some years ago, when the "death of God" theology was a fad, I remember seeing a bumper sticker that read "My God is not dead; sorry about yours." I guess my bumper sticker reads "My God is not cruel; sorry about yours. ~ Harold S Kushner,#NFDB
1424:Mrs. Reilly looked at her son slyly and asked, “Ignatius, you sure you not a communiss?” “Oh, my God!” Ignatius bellowed. “Every day I am subjected to a McCarthyite witch-hunt in this crumbling building. No! I told you before. I am not a fellow traveler. What in the world has put that into your head?” “I read someplace in the paper where they got plenty communiss at college.” “Well, fortunately I didn’t meet them. Had they crossed my path, they would have been beaten to within an inch of their lives. Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
1425:Baker, Sharon L. Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010. *Batto, Bernard. Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1992. Bell, Rob. Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2011. Brettler, Marc Zvi, Peter Enns, and Daniel Harrington, SJ. The Bible and the Believer: Reading the Bible Critically and Religiously. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. *Brown, Raymond E., and Francis J. Moloney S.D.B. An Introduction to the Gospel of John. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Brueggemann, Walter. An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. *———. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1426:Pakistan’s efforts to consolidate itself by popularizing theology as national or even national-security policy have unleashed violent forces that Pakistan is now contending with. Instead of strengthening the country and raising the morale of its people in permanently confronting India, the ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ type of thinking has resulted in terrorist attacks within Pakistan and set the stage for divisions among jihadis that are hurting Pakistan’s security instead of enhancing it. The theologically rooted view of what threatens Pakistan— as opposed to what might really threaten Pakistan—undermines the prospect of a realistic foreign policy. Conspiracy theories and contending interpretations of religious prophecies cast Don Quixotes tilting at windmills as ‘national security experts’ rather than producing hard-thinking analysts anticipating actual policies of other governments. ~ Husain Haqqani, #NFDB
1427:Apart from hypocrites, there are two categories of the deceived in the church: the superficial and the involved. The superficial are the ones who call themselves Christians because, when they were little, they went to church or Sunday school, they got confirmed, or they “made a decision” for Christ. You may have heard someone, when he is getting baptized, say, “I received Christ when I was twelve, but my life was a mess after that, and now I want to get back to the faith.” The truth probably is that he never received Christ at all when he was twelve. He went through some superficial religious activity and was deceived into thinking he was saved as a result. The involved who are deceived are a much more subtle and serious group. They’re immersed in the activities of the church, up to their necks. They know the gospel and biblical theology, but they don’t obey the Word of God. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1428:I saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves; and this is naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology. And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to produce. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1429:The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, shameful events, instruments of punishment reserved for the most despised people in society. Any genuine theology and any genuine preaching of the Christian gospel must be measured against the test of the scandal of the cross and the lynching tree. 'Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock....Rather, he died like a [lynched black victim] or a common [black] criminal in torment, on the tree of shame.' The crowd's shout 'Crucify him!' (Mk 15:14) anticipated the white mob's shout 'Lynch him!' Jesus' agonizing final cry of abandonment from the cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Mk 15:34), was similar to the lynched victim Sam Hose's awful scream as he drew his last breath, 'Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus.' In each case it was a cruel, agonizing, and contemptible death. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
1430:The church has lost its ability to lament!” This heartfelt cry came from a seminary student as she prayed with other graduate students, faculty and staff who gathered together to seek God for racial justice and reconciliation throughout our nation. As we cried and prayed together we realized that our theology and spiritual formation hadn’t given us sufficient permission, language or tools to adequately sit with the despair and sadness of recent racial injustices, senseless acts of gun violence and social unrest taking place in the world around us. We even saw this on social media where people also seemed paralyzed and helpless to know what to do and how to respond. Sincere, well-meaning Christian people asked, “What should we do?” while people who were fed up with the seeming indifference of those around them expressed their outrage through a hashtag that proclaimed “Silence is Violence! ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB
1431:This passage, by the way, doesn't just give us the comparative negative of hell, but it translates well into a theology of suffering. With these words of Jesus in mind, I can now know that it is better never to hold my children, it is better never to run my fingers through my wife's hair, it is better not to be able to brush my own teeth, it is better never to be able to drive a car, it is better to be paralyzed and never feel anything from the neck down, and it is better to have stage III anaplastic oligondendroglioma than to find myself outside the kingdom of God.
It is better never to see the sunset or the sunrise, never see the stars in the sky, never to see my daughter in her little dress-up clothes, never to see my son throw a ball - it is better never to have seen those things than to have seen those things and yet end up outside the kingdom of God. How horrible hell must be. ~ Matt Chandler,#NFDB
1432:Biblical theology itself can be understood as a narrative. The story line has three fundamental turning points—creation, fall, and redemption (leading to a final glorification). The account begins with creation, which means that even today, the world continues to bear signs of the beauty and wonder of its original creation. But its perfection was shattered by the tragedy of the fall into sin, erupting into war, injustice, and oppression. Throughout history, the forces of good and evil have engaged in cosmic battle—until, finally, history reached its climax in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christ, God himself entered the space/time world to share the human condition. By suffering injustice and death himself, he broke their power over us. Ever since that great turning point, God has been applying the effects of salvation to liberate captives and regain territory. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
1433:My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell.
Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry.
...The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life.
It wasn't comforting. ~ Arthur Nersesian,#NFDB
1434:That feeling stayed with me for months. In fact, I had grown so accustomed to that floating feeling that I started to panic at the prospect of losing it. So I began to ask friends, theologians, historians, pastors I knew, nuns I liked, *What am I going to do when it's gone?* And they knew exactly what I meant because they had either felt it themselves or read about it in great works of Christian theology. St. Augustine called it "the sweetness." Thomas Aquinas called it something mystical like "the prophetic light." But all said yes, it will go. The feelings will go. The sense of God's presence will go. There will be no lasting proof that God exists. There will be no formula for how to get it back.
But they offered me this small bit of certainty, and I clung to it. When the feelings recede like the tides, they said, they will leave an imprint. I would somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God. ~ Kate Bowler,#NFDB
1435:Let me once more assert that Mr Malison was not a bad man. The misfortune was, that his notion of right fell in with his natural fierceness; and that, in aggravation of the too common feeling with which he had commenced his relations with his pupils, namely, that they were not only the natural enemies of the master, but therefore of all law, theology had come in and taught him that they were in their own nature bad — with a badness for which the only set-off he knew or could introduce was blows. Independently of any remedial quality that might be in them, these blows were an embodiment of justice; for "every sin," as the catechism teaches, "deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to come." The master therefore was only a co-worker with God in every pandy he inflicted on his pupils. I do not mean that he reasoned thus, but that such-like were the principles he had to act upon. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1436:Sex for Sara was at first incredibly painful, and for Tim incredibly frustrating. They both felt inadequate, angry, and confused, alternately blaming themselves and then each other. They had been told that if they followed the rules, they would have more satisfying and exciting sex than couples who'd had sex before marriage. The kind of sex that was better because it was pure. But when they got married, they found out that all of that was bullshit. The whole experience was crushingly disappointing.
...
The church taught Tim and Sara that God was watching their every move, ready with a head shake. Like a controlling asshole with a killer surveillance system. And for a while that theology worked on Tim and Sara, as I know it has worked on so many. They buried their innate sexual development in order to please the master. And they entered marriage expecting their sex lives to be blessed accordingly. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber,#NFDB
1437:2 tn The call of Abram begins with an imperative לֶךְ־לְךָ (lekh-lekha, “go out”) followed by three cohortatives (v. 2a) indicating purpose or consequence (“that I may” or “then I will”). If Abram leaves, then God will do these three things. The second imperative (v. 2b, literally “and be a blessing”) is subordinated to the preceding cohortatives and indicates God’s ultimate purpose in calling and blessing Abram. On the syntactical structure of vv. 1-2 see R. B. Chisholm, “Evidence from Genesis,” A Case for Premillennialism, 37. For a similar sequence of volitive forms see Gen 45:18. sn It would be hard to overestimate the value of this call and this divine plan for the theology of the Bible. Here begins God’s plan to bring redemption to the world. The promises to Abram will be turned into a covenant in Gen 15 and 22 (here it is a call with conditional promises) and will then lead through the Bible to the work of the Messiah. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1438:When I talk on the phone with my brother Ivo, who is a theology instructor at Baylor, he invariably wants to talk politics, and I hear clicking in the background, and I say, Why talk politics, just remember where we are! I used to have that experience with my older brother Vlado in Yugoslavia: I would want to expound my political views, but he would point to the phone, and say, Why talk politics, remember where we are. This is not America. How things have changed! Now I tell my brother Ivo, Remember where we are. This is not Croatia! Now I am tempted to say, Remember where we are. This is not America. We as Americans are being exiled from our country of liberty through the general paranoia being injected into our asses. The total spying which we suspected in Yugoslavia, Hungary, and East Germany, is only now possible, in the States, through credit cards, computers, EZ passes, surveillance cameras, and well-meaning neighbors. ~ Josip Novakovich, #NFDB
1439:[O]ne of the fatal errors of conceptual theology has been the separation of the acts of religious existence from the statements about it. Ideas of faith must not be studied in total separation from the moments of faith. If a plant is uprooted from its soil, removed from its native winds, sun-rays and terrestrial environment, and kept in a hothouse— will observations made of such a plant disclose its primordial nature? The growing inwardness of man that reaches and curves toward the light of God can hardly be transplanted into the shallowness of mere reflection. Torn out of its medium in human life, it wilts like a rose pressed between the pages of a book. Religion is, indeed, little more than a desiccated remnant of a once living reality when reduced to terms and definitions, to codes and catechisms. It can only be studied in its natural habitat of faith and piety, in a soul where the divine is within reach of all thoughts. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
1440:With the advent of medieval Scholasticism, … we find a clear distinction between theologia and philosophia. Theology became conscious of its autonomy qua supreme science, which philosophy was emptied of its spiritual exercises, which, from now on, were relegated to Christian mysticism and ethics. Reduced to the rank of a “handmaid of theology,” philosophy’s role was henceforth to furnish theology with conceptual—and hence purely theoretical—material. When, in the modern age, philosophy regained its autonomy, it still retained many features inherited from this medieval conception. In particular, it maintained its purely theoretical character, which even evolved in the direction of a more and more thorough systemization. Not until Nietzsche, Bergson, and existentialism does philosophy consciously return to being a concrete attitude, a way of life and of seeing the world. ~ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 107., #NFDB
1441:The paradox of creation, the coming of the forms of time out of eternity, is the germinal secret of the father. It can never be quite explained. Therefore, in every system of theology, there is an umbilical point, an Schillies tendon, which the finger of mother life has touched, and where the possibility of perfect knolwege has been imparted. The problem of the hero is to pierce himself (and therewith his world) precisely through that point; to shatter and annhilate the key knot of his limited existence.
The problem of the hero going to meet the father is open to his soul beyon terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and rutheless comsmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands - and the two are atoned. ~ Joseph Campbell,#NFDB
1442:A Pleasant Theology One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? —from Mere Christianity ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1443:A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly’s supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person’s lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one’s soul. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
1444:When he sent a manuscript of The Irony of American History to his historian friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Schlesinger called Niebuhr’s attention to the glaring omission of the Negro: One irony deserving comment somewhere perhaps is the relationship between our democratic and equalitarian pretensions and our treatment of the Negro. This remains, John Quincy Adams called it in 1820, “the great and foul stain upon the North American Union”; and I think you might consider mentioning it.[46] But Niebuhr did not mention it, finding it apparently not a substantial concern. This was a serious failure by an American religious leader often called this nation’s greatest theologian. How could anyone be a great theologian and not engage America’s greatest moral issue? Unfortunately, white theologians, then and since, have typically ignored the problem of race, or written and spoken about it without urgency, not regarding it as critical for theology or ethics. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
1445:I need wonder. I know that death is coming. I smell it in the wind, read it in the paper, watch it on television, and see it on the faces of the old. I need wonder to explain what is going to happen to me, what is going to happen to us when this thing is done, when our shift is over and our kids' kids are still on the earth listening to their crazy rap music. I need something mysterious to happen after I die. I need to be somewhere else after I die, somewhere with God, somewhere that wouldn't make any sense if it were explained to me right now. At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
1446:Yet al-Afghani rarely spoke of Islam in religious terms. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Islamic political thought was his insistence that Islam, detached from its purely religious associations, could be used as a sociopolitical ideology to unite the whole of the Muslim world in solidarity against imperialism. Islam was for al-Afghani far more than law and theology; it was civilization. Indeed, it was a superior civilization because, as he argued, the intellectual foundations upon which the West was built had in fact been borrowed from Islam. Ideals such as social egalitarianism, popular sovereignty, and the pursuit and preservation of knowledge had their origins not in Christian Europe, but in the Ummah. It was Muhammad’s revolutionary community that had introduced the concept of popular sanction over the ruling government while dissolving all ethnic boundaries between individuals and giving women and children unprecedented rights and privileges. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1447:The notion that evil is non-rational is a more significant claim for Eagleton than at first appears, because he is (in this book [On Evil] as in others of his recent 'late period' prolific burst) anxious to rewrite theology: God (whom he elsewhere tells us is nonexistent, but this is no barrier to his being lots of other things for Eagleton too, among them Important) is not to be regarded as rational: with reference to the Book of Job Eagleton says, 'To ask after God's reasons for allowing evil, so [some theologians] claim, is to imagine him as some kind of rational or moral being, which is the last thing he is.' This is priceless: with one bound God is free of responsibility for 'natural evil'—childhood cancers, tsunamis that kill tens of thousands—and for moral evil also even though 'he' is CEO of the company that purposely manufactured its perpetrators; and 'he' is incidentally exculpated from blame for the hideous treatment meted out to Job. ~ A C Grayling, #NFDB
1448:In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
1449:Religious warriors are not an anomaly. It is a mistake to classify believers of particular religious and dogmatic religionlike ideologies into two groups, moderate versus extremist. The true cause of hatred and violence is faith versus faith, an outward expression of the ancient instinct of tribalism. Faith is the one thing that makes otherwise good people do bad things. Nowhere do people tolerate attacks on their person, their family, their country—or their creation myth. In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality—including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth—the faith—of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else’s sacred creation myth is “religious bigotry.” It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat. ~ Edward O Wilson, #NFDB
1450:There’s a kind of theology at work here. The bombs are a kind of god. As his power grows, our fear naturally increases. I get as apprehensive as anyone else, maybe more so. We have too many bombs. They have too many bombs. There’s a kind of theology of fear that comes out of this. We begin to capitulate to the overwhelming presence. It’s so powerful. It dwarfs us so much. We say let the god have his way. He’s so much more powerful than we are. Let it happen, whatever he ordains. It used to be that the gods punished men by using the forces of nature against them or by arousing them to take up their weapons and destroy each other. Now god is the force of nature itself, the fusion of tritium and deuterium. Now he’s the weapon. So maybe this time we went too far in creating a being of omnipotent power. All this hardware. Fantastic stockpiles of hardware. The big danger is that we’ll surrender to the sense of inevitability and start flinging mud all over the planet. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
1451:The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.
By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other.
A man who disbelieved the Christian story as fact but continually fed on it as myth would, perhaps, be more spiritually alive than one who assented and did not think much about it . . .
We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about 'parallels' and 'Pagan Christs': they ought to be there - it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not in false spirituality withhold our imaginative welcome. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
1452:Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, ”What is God like?” and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind. The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him - and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1453:…Or he could choose life. At that pivotal moment, it occurred to him that with all his
schooling in theology he had, perhaps, missed the entire point of his studies, the very
crux of the gospel he had professed to believe. That the measure of a person’s heart, the
barometer of good or evil, was nothing more than the extent of their willingness to
choose life over death. That the path of God was, simply, the path of life, abundant and
eternal. And this is where he failed, for to choose life is to choose sorrow as well as joy,
pain as well as pleasure. When Hunter had buried Rachel, he buried along with her his
heart, lest it might heal and feel and grow again. And in so doing he had chosen more
than death, he had chosen damnation itself, for damnation is nothing more than to stop
a thing in its eternal progression. In that first flight from West Chester he had run not
only from the horror and pain of death but from life itself.
~ Richard Paul Evans,#NFDB
1454:The Reformation was an attempt to put the Bible at the heart of the Church again--not to give it into the hands of private readers. The Bible was to be seen as a public document, the charter of the Church's life; all believers should have access to it because all would need to know the common language of the Church and the standards by which the Church argued about theology and behaviour. The huge Bibles that were chained up in English churches in the sixteenth century were there as a sign of this. It was only as the rapid development of cheap printing advanced that the Bible as a single affordable volume came to be within everyone's reach as something for individuals to possess and study in private. The leaders of the Reformation would have been surprised to be associated with any move to encourage anyone and everyone to form their own conclusions about the Bible. For them, it was once again a text to be struggled with in the context of prayer and shared reflection. ~ Rowan Williams, #NFDB
1455:When it is once admitted that a body of facts lies at the basis of the Christian religion, the efforts which past generations have made toward the classification of the facts will have to be treated with respect. In no branch of science would there be any real advance if every generation started fresh with no dependence upon what past generations have achieved. Yet in theology, vituperation of the past seems to be thought essential to progress. And upon what base slanders the vituperation is based! After listening to modern tirades against the great creeds of the Church, one receives rather a shock when one turns to the Westminster Confession, for example, or to that tenderest and most theological of books, the "Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan, and discovers that in doing so one has turned from shallow modern phrases to a "dead orthodoxy" that is pulsating with life in every word. In such orthodoxy there is life enough to set the whole world aglow with Christian love. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
1456:The book in your hands is a small window on a large subject. Set at a private liberal arts college in the foothills of the Appalachians, it is the story of a Christian minister who lost her way in the church and found a new home in the classroom, where the course she taught most often was not Introduction to the New Testament, Church History, or Christian Theology, but Religions of the World. As soon as she recovered from the shock of meeting God in so many new hats, she fell for every religion she taught. When she taught Judaism, she wanted to be a rabbi. When she taught Buddhism, she wanted to be a monk. It was only when she taught Christianity that the fire sputtered, because her religion looked so different once she saw it lined up with the others. She always promised her students that studying other faiths would not make them lose their own. Then she lost hers, or at least the one she started out with. This is the story of how that happened and what happened next. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, #NFDB
1457:Job’s friends say many things about God that are true in the abstract. They say, “In the end all evil will be judged” and “God is pleased with the righteous” and “God is not unjust or unfair” and “We can’t understand God’s ways—they are beyond our puny minds.” Yes—all true statements. And yet Job calls them “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2), and in the end, God condemns the friends for how they respond to Job. Why? They gave true statements but applied these truths inappropriately. Biblical scholar Don Carson writes about Job’s friends: There is a way of using theology and theological arguments that wounds rather than heals. This is not the fault of theology and theological arguments; it is the fault of the “miserable comforter” who fastens on an inappropriate fragment of truth, or whose timing is off, or whose attitude is condescending, or whose application is insensitive, or whose true theology is couched in such culture-laden clichés that they grate rather than comfort.329 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1458:The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths — so strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern theology with the "Secret doctrines" of the ancient universal religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and profit by both. It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the abstruse systems of old India, that can alone afford us this middle ground. ~ H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, Vol. I, Before the Veil, xii, (1877), #NFDB
1459:The word courage is very interesting. It comes from a Latin root cor, which means “heart.” So to be courageous means to live with the heart. And weaklings, only weaklings, live with the head; afraid, they create a security of logic around themselves. Fearful, they close every window and door—with theology, concepts, words, theories—and inside those closed doors and windows, they hide. The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown. It is leaving the past and allowing the future to be. Courage is to move on dangerous paths. Life is dangerous, and only cowards can avoid the danger—but then, they are already dead. A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown. There is danger there, but he will take the risk. The heart is always ready to the the risk, the heart is a gambler. The head is a businessman. The head always calculates—it is cunning. The heart is noncalculating. This ~ Osho, #NFDB
1460:I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand. After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words "my" and "mine" never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, "Abraham is rich," but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1461:Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?" And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is? ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
1462:In his book Peace, Walter Brueggemann writes about this contrast between a theology of the “have-nots” versus a theology of the “haves.” The “have-nots” develop a theology of suffering and survival. The “haves” develop a theology of celebration. Those who live under suffering live “their lives aware of the acute precariousness of their situation.” Worship that arises out of suffering cries out for deliverance. “Their notion of themselves is that of a dependent people crying out for a vision of survival and salvation.” Lament is the language of suffering.6 Those who live in celebration “are concerned with questions of proper management and joyous celebration.” Instead of deliverance, they seek constancy and sustainability. “The well-off do not expect their faith to begin in a cry, but rather, in a song. They do not expect or need intrusion, but they rejoice in stability [and the] durability of a world and social order that have been beneficial to them.” Praise is the language of celebration.7 ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB
1463:There are forty-eight physicians and surgeons, but not all are lecturers. Including yourself, there are twenty-seven students of medicine. Each clerk is apprenticed to a series of different physicians. The apprenticeships vary in length for different individuals, and so does the entire clerkship. You become a candidate for oral examination whenever the bastardly faculty decides you are ready. If you pass, they address you as Hakim. If you fail, you remain a student and must work toward another chance.” “How long have you been here?” Karim glowered, and Rob knew he had asked the wrong question. “Seven years. I’ve taken examinations twice. Last year, I failed the section on philosophy. My second attempt was three weeks ago, when I made a poor thing of questions on jurisprudence. What should I care about the history of logic or the precedents of the law? I’m already a good physician.” He sighed bitterly. “In addition to classes in medicine you must attend lectures in law, theology, and philosophy. ~ Noah Gordon, #NFDB
1464:The promises in baptism indicate a very different theology of the family, which recognizes that ‘families work well when we do not expect them to give us all we need.’”14 But whether we baptize our infants or not, the principle is the same: our active participation in the church—and our willingness to see it as home—relieves some of the onerous burdens of childrearing, often made heaviest by our sense of limitation. We can’t parent alone. And we aren’t meant to. We have friends—better, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles—to help carry some of the worry and weight of the family housekeeping. And as I’ve learned from recent research, the most important predictor of whether children from Christian families keep their faith into adulthood is the number of multigenerational connections they enjoy at church. Teenagers may not need a youth group populated by hundreds of peers, but they do need other Christian adults in their church to take an interest in them and communicate that they belong. ~ Jen Pollock Michel, #NFDB
1465:With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the pains of life too hard to bear, I have nothing to do; and, so far as it may be possible, I shall avoid the expression of any opinion as to the objective truth or falsehood of the systems of theological speculation of which I may find occasion to speak. From my present point of view, theology is regarded as a natural product of the operations of the human mind, under the conditions of its existence, just as any other branch of science, or the arts of architecture, or music, or painting are such products. Like them, theology has a history. Like them also, it is to be met with in certain simple and rudimentary forms; and these can be connected by a multitude of gradations, which exist or have existed, among people of various ages and races, with the most highly developed theologies of past and present times. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
1466:the five points of Calvinism were not formulated in that way by Calvin himself. Certainly we can see the five points in his theology, but he never came explicitly with five points. Calvin was not really a Calvinist, as we today often define that term.222 Where do the five points come from? They come from the followers of Arminius. We have five points of Calvinism because the Arminians had five points that needed a response. But it would be anachronistic to speak of five points in Calvin’s theology per se. That is something which develops later as a response to a particular challenge. There are continuities: the theology of the Canons of Dort definitely falls in line with the predestinarian, Augustinian, anti-Pelagian teachings of Calvin. But there are “discontinuities” as well: for example, Calvin never explicitly spoke in terms of five points relating to predestination or election. But rather than see that as a discontinuity, it’s better to describe it as a development. It’s not really a break with Calvin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1467:There was not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not hold to this doctrine of metempsychosis, as taught by the Brahmans, Buddhists, and later by the Pythagoreans, in its esoteric sense, whether he expressed it more or less intelligibly. Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, Synesius and Chalcidius, all believed in it; and the Gnostics, who are unhesitatingly proclaimed by history as a body of the most refined, learned, and enlightened men, were all believers in metempsychosis. Socrates entertained opinions identical with those of Pythagoras; and both, as the penalty of their divine philosophy, were put to a violent death. The rabble has been the same in all ages. Materialism has been, and will ever be blind to spiritual truths. These philosophers held, with the Hindus, that God had infused into matter a portion of his own Divine Spirit, which animates and moves every particle. ~ H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, Vol. I, The veil of Isis, p.12, (1877), #NFDB
1468:In the Middle Ages, this conflict between the Platonic and Aristotelian views of the relationship between mathematics and the world began to re-emerge after the sleep of centuries. The question became intricately entwined with the labyrinthine syntheses of Aristotelian and Platonic ideas within early Christian theology. Influential thinkers like Augustine and Boethius implicitly supported the Platonic emphasis upon the primary character of mathematics. Both of them pointed to the fact that things were created in the beginning 'according to measure, number, and weight' or 'according to the pattern of numbers'. This they took to exhibit an intrinsic feature of the mind of God and thus mathematics took its place as an essential part of the medieval quadrivum without which the search for all knowledge was impaired. Yet Boethius later veered towards the Aristotelian viewpoint that some act of mental abstraction occurs en route from physics to mathematics which renders these two subjects qualitatively distinct. ~ John D Barrow, #NFDB
1469:One of the problems with understanding what is meant by hell is that this tiny word has been forced to carry so much freight. Over the centuries it has picked up meanings often far removed from what was originally intended in the Bible. Hell has become a catchall word for however we imagine eternal punishment in the afterlife. But the Bible doesn’t talk near as much about the afterlife as we have imagined. A surprising thing about the Old Testament is its almost total disinterest in the afterlife. We think of heaven and hell as being the stock-in-trade of religion, but this was not the case with the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures. While the pagan religions of the Gentiles made elaborate speculations about the nature of the afterlife (this was a specialty with the Egyptians and Babylonians), the Hebrews were conspicuous in having almost no afterlife theology. For the Hebrews, death was Sheol, the grave, the underworld, the abode of the dead. The Hebrew Scriptures are fundamentally concerned with this life. ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1470:Theology God is triune, and the church is plural. Philosophy Groups are foundational for transformation. Practice We offer groups that , move people to groups by , etc. Theology Christ is the Word incarnate, and the Scripture is His special revelation to us. Philosophy The text must be heralded in all teaching environments. Practice We teach the Word to adults, students, and kids by . Theology God became Man (incarnation) to rescue us. Philosophy We must step into our local context and serve. Practice We serve our local community by . Theology Christ redeemed us for His own glory. Corporate worship must celebrate what Christ has done. Philosophy We sing songs that focus on His character and work, not ours. Practice We structure singing in our services by . Theology Christ has made all believers priests. Philosophy All believers are qualified by God to serve the body of believers. Practice We challenge our people to serve in the following ways: . ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
1471:In the third century, and in the centuries after the barbarian invasion, western civilization came near to total destruction. It was fortunate that, while theology was almost the sole surviving mental activity, the system that was accepted was not purely superstitious, but preserved, though sometimes deeply buried, doctrines which embodied much of the work of Greek intellect and much of the moral devotion that is common to the Stoics and the Neoplatonists. This made possible the rise of the scholastic philosophy, and later, with the Renaissance, the stimulus derived from the renewed study of Plato, and thence of the other ancients. On the other hand, the philosophy of Plotinus has the defect of encouraging men to look within rather than to look without: when we look within we see nous, which is divine, while when we look without we see the imperfections of the sensible world. This kind of subjectivity was a gradual growth; it is to be found in the doctrines of Protagoras, Socrates, and Plato, as well as ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1472:The percentage of leading scientists who profess not to believe in a personal God tells us little unless we also know on what they base their profession. How much do they know about metaphysics, Christian theology, and intellectual history in relationship to their particular areas of scientific expertise? The intellectual relationship between religion and science is a two-way street. Just as one ought not to place much stock in geological views of a religious believer who has never studied geology, so one ought not to give much credence to the religious views of a scientist who has never studied intellectual history, the philosophy of religion, and theology. The highly specialized character of contemporary academic life makes it perfectly possible to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry or physics, for example, while knowing nothing about the theology of creation, metaphysical univocity, and why they matter for questions pertaining to the reality of God and the character of God's relationship to the natural world. ~ Brad S Gregory, #NFDB
1473:I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence. ~ Freeman Dyson, in "Progress In Religion : A Talk By Freeman Dyson", his acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize, Washington National Cathedral (9 May 2000), #NFDB
1474:An inseparable complement to the exoticism in his stories is the erudition, the bits of specialized knowledge, usually literary, but also philological, historical, philosophical, or theological. This knowledge, which borders on but never oversteps the bounds of pedantry, is quite freely flaunted. But the point is not to show off Borges's wide acquaintance with different cultures. Rather, it is a key element in his creative strategy, the aim of which was to imbue his stories with a certain colorfulness, to endow them with an atmosphere all their own. In other words Borges's learning by his use of exotic settings and characters fulfills an exclusively literary function, which, in twisting the erudition around and making it sometimes decorative, sometimes symbolic, subordinates it to the task at hand. In this way Borges's theology, philosophy, linguistics and so forth, lose their original character, take on the quality of fiction, and, becoming part and parcel of a literary fantasy, are turned into literature. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa, #NFDB
1475:Other centuries sought safety in the union of reason and religion, research and asceticism. In their Universitas Litterarum, theology ruled. Among us we use meditation, the fine gradations of yoga technique, in our efforts to exorcise the beast within us and the diabolus dwelling in every branch of knowledge. Now you know as well as I that the Glass Bead Game also has its hidden diabolus, that it can lead to empty virtuosity, to artistic vanity, to self-advancement, to the seeking of power over others and then to the abuse of that power. This is why we need another kind of education beside the intellectual and submit ourselves to the morality of the Order, not in order to reshape our mentally active life into a psychically vegetative dream-life, but on the contrary to make ourselves fit for the summit of intellectual achievement. We do not intend to flee from the vita activa to the vita contemplativa, nor vice versa, but to keep moving forward while alternating between the two, being at home in both, partaking of both. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1476:Doubtless questions will arise on various points inquiring for solution according to the plan herein presented. Careful, thoughtful Bible study will settle many of these at once; and to all we can confidently say, No question which you can raise need go without a sufficient answer, fully in harmony with the views herein presented. Succeeding volumes elaborate the various branches of this one plan, disclosing at every step that matchless harmony of which the truth alone can boast. And be it known that no other system of theology even claim, or has ever attempted, to harmonize in itself every statement of the Bible, yet nothing short of this can we claim for these views. This harmony not only with the Bible, but with the divine character and with sanctified common sense, must have arrested the attention of the conscientious reader already, and filled him with awe, as well as with hope and confidence. It is marvelous indeed, yet just what we should expect of the TRUTH, and of God's infinitely wise and beneficent plan. ~ Charles Taze Russell, #NFDB
1477:Theists of course are deeply critical of those aspects of Marxism that issue in Marxist atheism. And theists of different standpoints have leveled a variety of particular criticisms against particular Marxist theses. Nonetheless they have had to recognize that Marxism is a theory or a set of theories with the same scope as their own and that in responding to it they are responding
to a theoretical atheism that is in some ways intellectually more congenial than the practical atheism of contemporary American universities. For by either eliminating mention of God from the curriculum altogether (departments of religious studies concern themselves with various types of belief in God, not with God), or by restricting reference to God to departments of theology, such universities render their secular curriculum Godless. And this Godlessness is, as I already noted, not just a matter of the subtraction of God from the range of objects studied, but also and quite as much the absence of any integrated and overall view of things. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre,#NFDB
1478:The intellectual climate of the 1970s, for which the 1950s had already paved the way, contributed to this. A theory was even finally developed at that time that pedophilia should be viewed as something positive. Above all, however, the thesis was advocated-and this even infiltrated Catholic moral theology-that there was no such thing as something that is bad in itself. There were only things that were "relatively" bad. What was good or bad depended on the consequences.
In such a context, where everything is relative and nothing intrinsically evil exists, but only relative good and relative evil, people who have an inclination to such behavior are left without no solid footing. Of course pedophilia is first rather a sickness of individuals, but the fact that it could become so active and so widespread was linked also to an intellectual climate through which the foundations of moral theology, good and evil, became open to question in the Church. Good and evil became interchangeable; they were no longer absolutely clear opposites. ~ Benedict XVI,#NFDB
1479:Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that the nous, spirit, or rational soul of man, being “ generated by the Divine Father,” possessed a nature kindred, or even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was capable of beholding the eternal realities. This faculty of contemplating reality in a direct and immediate manner belongs to God alone j the aspiration for this knowledge constitutes what is really meant by philosophy—the love of wisdom. The love of truth is inherently the love of good ; and so predominating over every desire of the soul, purifying it and assimilating it to the divine, thus governing every act of the individual, it raises man to a participation and communion with Divinity, and restores him to the likeness of God.“ This flight,” says Plato in the Theeetetus, “ consists in becoming like God, and this assimilation is the becoming just and holy with wisdom.” ~ H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, Vol. I, Before the Veil, xv, (1877), #NFDB
1480:For Paley, a watch is purposeful and thus must have been created by a being with a purpose. A watch needs a watchmaker, just as a world needs a world-maker—God. Yet both Wallace and Paley might have heeded the lesson from Voltaire's Candide (1759), in which Dr. Pangloss, a professor of "metaphysico-theology-cosmolonigology," through reason, logic, and analogy "proved" that this is the best of all possible worlds: '"Tis demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches" (1985, p. 238). The absurdity of this argument was intended on the part of the author, for Voltaire firmly rejected the Panglossian paradigm that all is best in the best of all possible worlds. Nature is not perfectly designed, nor is this the best of all possible worlds. It is simply the world we have, quirky, contingent, and flawed as it may be. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
1481:Long enshrined traditions around communion aside, there are always folks who fancy themselves bouncers to the heavenly banquet, charged with keeping the wrong people away from the table and out of the church. Evangelicalism in particular has seen a resurgence in border patrol Christianity in recent years, as alliances and coalitions formed around shared theological distinctives elevate secondary issues to primary ones and declare anyone who fails to conform to their strict set of beliefs and behaviors unfit for Christian fellowship. Committed to purifying the church of every errant thought, difference of opinion, or variation in practice, these self-appointed gatekeepers tie up heavy loads of legalistic rules and place them on weary people’s shoulders. They strain out the gnats in everyone else’s theology while swallowing their own camel-sized inconsistencies. They slam the door of the kingdom in people’s faces and tell them to come back when they are sober, back on their feet, Republican, Reformed, doubtless, submissive, straight. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1482:Not for years and years had Janet been to church; she had long been unable to walk so far; and having no book but the best, and no help to understand it but the highest, her faith was simple, strong, real, all-pervading. Day by day she pored over the great gospel -- I mean just the good news according to Matthew and Mark and Luke and John -- until she had grown to be one of the noble ladies of the kingdom of heaven -- one of those who inherit the earth, and are ripening to see God. For the Master, and his mind in hers, was her teacher. She had little or no theology save what he taught her, or rather, what he is. And of any other than that, the less the better; for no theology, except the Theou logos, is worth the learning, no other being true. To know him is to know God. And he only who obeys him, does or can know him; he who obeys him cannot fail to know him. To Janet, Jesus Christ was no object of so-called theological speculation, but a living man, who somehow or other heard her when she called to him, and sent her the help she needed. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1483:Like the traditional confessions, the new religion preaches that people when born into the world are corrupted and need the protection of a salutary institution—the church of medicine. According to the theology of medicine, newborn humans are weak and exposed to the impact of new devils: viruses, bacteria and microbes. For this reason, just after delivery, which takes place in the new religion’s new churches, individuals are subjected to new purification rituals (Gajewska 2012; Domańska 2005; Nowakowska 2010). As medical demonology stresses that the world is ruled by omnipresent demonic viruses, bacteria and genes that spell doom for people, the role of modern priests is to lead humanity toward salvation and eternal health. Thus, vaccinations substitute for baptism and introduce the newborns into the community of the medical church and protect them from the primal evil of infection. And as medicine accompanies individuals till the end of their lives, it constructs a feeling of absolute dependence (Otto 2004 [1999]) similar to that preached by religion ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1484:To see Ramses, at fourteen months, wrinkling his brows over a sentence like 'The theology of the Egyptians was a compound of fetishism, totem-ism and syncretism' was a sight as terrifying as it was comical. Even more terrifying was the occasional thoughtful nod the child would give.
...the room was dark except for one lamp, by whose light Emerson was reading. Ramses, in his crib, contemplated the ceiling with rapt attention. It made a pretty little family scene, until one heard what was being said. '...the anatomical details of the wounds, which included a large gash in the frontal bone, a broken malar bone and orbit, and a spear thrust which smashed off the mastoid process and struck the atlas vertebra, allow us to reconstruct the death scene of the king.' ... From the small figure in the cot came a reflective voice. 'It appeaws to me that he was muwduwed.'...' a domestic cwime.'...'One of the ladies of the hawem did it, I think.' I seized Emerson by the arm and pushed him toward the door, before he could pursue this interesting suggestion. ~ Elizabeth Peters,#NFDB
1485:But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or does it volatilize itself in the simulacra that, alone, deploy their power and pomp of fascination - the visible machinery of icons substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God? This is precisely what was feared by Iconoclasts, whose millennial quarrel is still with us today. This is precisely because they predicted this omnipotence of simulacra, the faculty simulacra have of effacing God from the conscience of man, and the destructive, annihilating truth that they allow to appear - that deep down God never existed, even God himself was never anything but his own simulacra - from this came their urge to destroy the images. If they could have believed that these images only obfuscated or masked the Platonic Idea of God, there would have been no reason to destroy them. One can live with the idea of distorted truth. But their metaphysical despair came from the idea that the image didn't conceal anything at all. ~ Jean Baudrillard, #NFDB
1486:Silently evolving here was the attitude before God that Paul explored in his theology of justification: These are people who do not flaunt their achievements before God. They do not stride into God’s presence as if they were partners able to engage with him on an equal footing; they do not lay claim to a reward for what they have done. These are people who know that their poverty also has an interior dimension; they are lovers who simply want to let God bestow his gifts upon them and thereby to live in inner harmony with God’s nature and word. The saying of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux about one day standing before God with empty hands, and holding them open to him, describes the spirit of these poor ones of God: They come with empty hands; not with hands that grasp and clutch, but with hands that open and give and thus are ready to receive from God’s bountiful goodness. Because this is the case, there is no opposition between Matthew, who speaks of the poor in spirit, and Luke, in whose Gospel the Lord addresses the “poor” without further qualification. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1487:Each practical moral virtue has two opposed vices, a “too much” and a “too little” (e.g., cowardice and foolhardiness, or insensitivity and self-indulgence). Theoretical truth also usually contrasts with two opposite errors, e.g., angelism vs. animalism regarding human nature, or deism vs. pantheism in theology, or the denial of free will vs. the denial of predestination. And so too here, with the sacraments. On the one hand, superstition ascribes supernatural powers to the natural things themselves, not as instruments; and on the other hand, in the typically Muslim Ash’arite theology, God does everything Himself and acts not by using natural things as active instruments but only as accidental occasions. Thus the technical term “occasionalism”. In Catholic theology, grace is, on the one hand, absolutely sovereign and also, on the other hand, it uses, perfects, and respects nature. Thus divine grace comes to us through the sacraments in a way which perfects their natural matter in giving it the power to actually cause the increase of grace in souls. It ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
1488:The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible. ~ Dan Barker, #NFDB
1489:I don't know which is worse—to have a bad teacher or no teacher at all. In any case, I believe the teacher's work should be largely negative. He can't put the gift into you, but if he finds it there, he can try to keep it from going in an obviously wrong direction. We can learn how not to write, but this is a discipline that does not simply concern writing itself but concerns the whole intellectual life. A mind cleared of false emotion and false sentiment and egocentricity is going to have at least those roadblocks removed from its path. If you don't think cheaply, then there at least won't be the quality of cheapness in your writing, even though you may not be able to write well. The teacher can try to weed out what is positively bad, and this should be the aim of the whole college. Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that doesn't require his attention. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1490:An interesting contrast between the geology of the present day and that of half a century ago, is presented by the complete emancipation of the modern geologist from the controlling and perverting influence of theology, all-powerful at the earlier date. As the geologist of my young days wrote, he had one eye upon fact, and the other on Genesis; at present, he wisely keeps both eyes on fact, and ignores the pentateuchal mythology altogether. The publication of the 'Principles of Geology' brought upon its illustrious author a period of social ostracism; the instruction given to our children is based upon those principles. Whewell had the courage to attack Lyell's fundamental assumption (which surely is a dictate of common sense) that we ought to exhaust known causes before seeking for the explanation of geological phenomena in causes of which we have no experience. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
1491:A conception of the law which identifies what is right with the notion of what is good for – for the individual, or the family, or the people, or the largest number – becomes inevitable once the absolute and transcendent measurements of religion or the law of nature have lost their authority. And this predicament is by no means solved if the unit to which the "good for" applies is as large as mankind itself. For it is quite conceivable, and even within the realm of practical political possibilities, that one fine day a highly organized and mechanized humanity will conclude quite democratically – namely by majority decision – that for humanity as a whole it would be better to liquidate certain parts thereof. Here, in the problems of factual reality, we are confronted with one of the oldest perplexities of political philosophy, which could remain undetected only so long as stable Christian theology provided the framework for all political and philosophical problems, but which long ago caused Plato to say: "Not man, but a god, must be the measure of all things. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1492:He pauses. “Maybe that letter was left for you.”
“No, she was pretty pissed that I wrote back.”
Now he hesitates. “I don’t mean that she left the letter for you.”
It takes me a second to figure out his tone. “Rev, if you start preaching at me, I’m going in the house.”
“I’m not preaching.”
No, he’s not. Yet.
He still has that old Bible I found him clutching in my closet. It was his mother’s. He’s read it about twenty times. He’ll debate theology with anyone who’s interested—and I’m not on that list. Geoff and Kristin used to take him to church, but he said he didn’t like that he couldn’t live by his own interpretation.
What he didn’t say was that looking up at a man in a pulpit reminded him too much of his father.
Rev doesn’t walk around quoting Bible verses or anything—usually—but his faith is rock solid. I once asked him how he can believe in a providential god when he barely survived living with his father.
He looked at me and said, “Because I did survive.”
And there’s no arguing that. ~ Brigid Kemmerer,#NFDB
1493:Consider how textbooks treat Native religions as a unitary whole. ... "These Native Americans ... believed that nature was filled with spirits. Each form of life, such as plants and animals, had a spirit. Earth and air held spirits too. People were never alone. They shared their lives with the spirits of nature." ... Stated flatly like this, the beliefs seem like make-believe, not the sophisticated theology of a higher civilization. Let us try a similarly succinct summary of the beliefs of many Christians today: "These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died."
Textbooks never describe Christianity this way. It's offensive. Believers would immediately argue that such a depiction fails to convey the symbolic meaning or the spiritual satisfaction of communion. ~ James W Loewen,#NFDB
1494:History proves beyond any possibility of doubt that no religion has ever given a stimulus to scientific progress comparable to that of Islam. The encouragement which learning and scientific research received from Islamic theology resulted in the splendid cultural achievements in the days of the Umayyads and Abbasids and the Arab rule in Sicily and Spain. I do not mention this in order that we might boast of those glorious memories at a time when the Islamic world has forsaken its own traditions and reverted to spiritual blindness and intellectual poverty. We have no right, in our present misery, to boast of past glories. But we must realize that it was the negligence of the Muslims and not any deficiency in the teachings of Islam that caused our present decay.
Islam has never been a barrier to progress and science. It appreciates the intellectual activities of man to such a degree as to place him above the angels. No other religion ever went so far in asserting the dominance of reason and, consequently, of learning, above all other manifestations of human life. ~ Muhammad Asad,#NFDB
1495:Private property begins, not as Prodhoun thought with robbery, but with the treatment of all common property as the private possession of the king, whose life and welfare were identified with that of the community. Property was an extension and enlargement of his own personality, as the unique representative of the collective whole. But once this claim was accepted, property could for the first time be alienated, that is, removed from the community by the individual gift of the king.
This conception of the royal possessions remained in its original form well past the time of Louis XIV. That Sun King, a little uneasy over the heavy taxes he desired to impose, called together the learned Doctors of Paris to decide if his exactions were morally justifiable. Their theology was equal to the occassion. They explained that the entire realm was his by divine right: hence in laying on these new taxes he was only taxing himself. This prerogative was passed on, undefiled, to the 'sovereign state, ' which in emergencies falls back, without scruple, on ancient magic and myth. ~ Lewis Mumford,#NFDB
1496:It is extraordinarily difficult to be clear in one’s mind as to just what Rodd and many others who make the same move (at least Rodd is candid!) think they are doing. The difficulty does not arise out of their refusal to accept the Bible’s normativity: they are perfectly frank about that. But the overt appeal to think of God in line with what appears acceptable to the contemporary spirit is a strange one—as if God changes with the cultural mood. If this is the approach, how on earth can one avoid domesticating God? Anything each generation does not like, it dismisses as uncivilized, or unenlightened, or unacceptable, and reshapes God to a more pleasing fancy. It soon becomes difficult to see how this differs very much from Kaufman’s postmodernist insistence that theology does not describe or expound some being called “God” but is a “construct of the imagination which helps to tie together, unify and interpret the totality of experience.”72 In any case, the result here is a God not clearly personal, and, if absolute, sufficiently remote to be of little threat and of little use. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1497:Growing up in church, we were taught that Jesus was the answer to all our problems. We were taught that there was a circle-shaped hole in our heart and that we had tried to fill it with the square pegs of sex, drugs, and rock and roll; but only the circle peg of Jesus could fill our hole. I became a Christian based, in part, on this promise, but the hole never really went away. To be sure, I like Jesus, and I still follow him, but the idea that Jesus will make everything better is a lie. It's basically biblical theology translated into the language of infomercials. The truth is, the apostles never really promise Jesus is going to make everything better here on earth. Can you imagine an informercial with Paul, testifying to the amazing product of Jesus, saying that he once had power and authority, and since he tried Jesus he's been moved from prison to prison, beaten, and routinely bitten by snakes? I don't think many people would be buying that product. [...] It's hard to imagine how a religion steeped in so much pain and sacrifice turned into a promise for earthly euphoria. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
1498:The sun, as supreme among the celestial bodies visible to the astronomers of antiquity, was assigned to the highest of the gods and became symbolic of the supreme authority of the Creator Himself. From a deep philosophic consideration of the powers and principles of the sun has come the concept of the Trinity as it is understood in the world today. The tenet of a Triune Divinity is not peculiar to Christian or Mosaic theology, but forms a conspicuous part of the dogma of the greatest religions of both ancient and modern times. The Persians, Hindus, Babylonians, and Egyptians had their Trinities. In every instance these represented the threefold form of one Supreme Intelligence. In modern Masonry, the Deity is symbolized by an equilateral triangle, its three sides representing the primary manifestations of the Eternal One who is Himself represented as a tiny flame, called by the Hebrews Yod (י). Jakob Böhme, the Teutonic mystic, calls the Trinity The Three Witnesses, by means of which the Invisible is made known to the visible, tangible universe. ~ Manly P Hall, The Secret Teachings of all Ages, #NFDB
1499:Luther’s theology of the cross begins with a realistic view of mankind as fallen and dead in sin. Good works are not an option for climbing one’s way up to heaven. Thesis 1 states, “The law of God, the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance humans on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them.” Thesis 23 states, “The law works the wrath of God, kills, curses, accuses, judges and damns everything that is not in Christ.” So the question is: how we do become objects of God’s love? How do we move from being under the law, and therefore under wrath, to being under God’s grace and love? That way is through the cross. Sinners must be crucified with Christ and raised with him. To be right with God, they must believe in the crucified Saviour. Thesis 25 says, “He is not righteous who works much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.” Salvation is in Christ alone, not in human effort and certainly not in human law-keeping. Thesis 26 says, “The law says ‘do this’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this’ and everything is already done.” It is all done in Christ! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1500:Quantum uncertainty and chaos theory have had deplorable effects upon popular culture, much to the annoyance of genuine aficionados. Both are regularly exploited by obscurantists, ranging from professional quacks to daffy New Agers. In America, the self-help ‘healing’ industry coins millions, and it has not been slow to cash in on quantum theory’s formidable talent to bewilder. This has been documented by the American physicist Victor Stenger. One well-heeled healer wrote a string of best-selling books on what he calls ‘Quantum Healing’. Another book in my possession has sections on quantum psychology, quantum responsibility, quantum morality, quantum aesthetics, quantum immortality and quantum theology. Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for ‘chaos’ implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions. Undoubtedly it is mathematically interesting. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
27 Philosophy
22 Occultism
12 Integral Yoga
12 Christianity
10 Psychology
9 Poetry
4 Science
2 Fiction
1 Yoga
1 Theosophy
1 Thelema
1 Sufism
1 Integral Theory
1 Alchemy
14 Aldous Huxley
11 Carl Jung
10 Aleister Crowley
8 Sri Aurobindo
6 Plato
6 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
5 Nolini Kanta Gupta
4 Saint Augustine of Hippo
4 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Walt Whitman
3 Jorge Luis Borges
3 James George Frazer
2 The Mother
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Saint John of Climacus
2 Robert Browning
2 Jordan Peterson
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 H P Lovecraft
14 The Perennial Philosophy
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Mysterium Coniunctionis
5 Magick Without Tears
5 Liber ABA
4 City of God
3 Whitman - Poems
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 The Golden Bough
3 The Future of Man
3 Labyrinths
3 Aion
2 The Life Divine
2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Faust
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 Browning - Poems
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Son of Christian Theology. In the midst is the Father, expressed
as Father-and-Mother. I-H (Yod and He), Eta ({Eta}) being used
--
of the Cosmos in terms of Gnostic Theology.
The reader should consult La Messe et ses Mysteres, par Jean
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
abundance than before. The Saint here postulates a principle of dogmatic Theology
that by himself, and with the ordinary aid of grace, man cannot attain to that
--
sublimest passages, this intermingling of philosophy with mystical Theology makes
him seem particularly so. These treatises are a wonderful illustration of the
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The heart and its urges, the vital and its surges, the physical impulsesit is these of which the poets sang in their infinite variations. But the mind proper, that is to say, the higher reflective ideative mind, was not given the right of citizenship in the domain of poetry. I am not forgetting the so-called Metaphysicals. The element of metaphysics among the Metaphysicals has already been called into question. There is here, no doubt, some Theology, a good dose of mental cleverness or conceit, but a modern intellectual or rather rational intelligence is something other, something more than that. Even the metaphysics that was commandeered here had more or less a decorative value, it could not be taken into the pith and substance of poetic truth and beauty. It was a decoration, but not unoften a drag. I referred to the Upanishads, but these strike quite a different, almost an opposite line in this connection. They are in a sense truly metaphysical: they bypass the mind and the mental powers, get hold of a higher mode of consciousness, make a direct contact with truth and beauty and reality. It was Buddha's credit to have forged this missing link in man's spiritual consciousness, to have brought into play the power of the rational intellect and used it in support of the spiritual experience. That is not to say that he was the very first person, the originator who initiated the movement; but at least this seems to be true that in him and his au thentic followers the movement came to the forefront of human consciousness and attained the proportions of a major member of man's psychological constitution. We may remember here that Socrates, who started a similar movement of rationalisation in his own way in Europe, was almost a contemporary of the Buddha.
Poetry as an expression of thought-power, poetry weighted with intelligence and rationalised knowledge that seems to me to be the end and drive, the secret sense of all the mystery of modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly"introvert", a modern mind would term it that is to say, something a priori, standing in its own au thenticity and self-sufficiency. A modern intelligence would be more scientific, let us use the word, more matter-of-fact and sense-based: the mental light should not be confined in its ivory tower, however high that may be, but brought down and placed at the service of our perception and appreciation and explanation of things human and terrestrial; made immanent in the mundane and the ephemeral, as they are commonly called. This is not an impossibility. Sri Aurobindo seems to have done the thing. In him we find the three terms of human consciousness arriving at an absolute fusion and his poetry is a wonderful example of that fusion. The three terms are the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical and the physical or sensational. The intellectual, or more generally, the mental, is the intermediary, the Paraclete, as he himself will call it later on in a poem9 magnificently exemplifying the point we are trying to make out the agent who negotiates, bridges and harmonises the two other firmaments usually supposed to be antagonistic and incompatible.
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The zeal for the Lord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. The fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement for the vehicle, the material instrument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already a broken man, being struck with paralysis and neuras thenia; he died at the comparatively early age of 39, emulating, as it were, the life career of his Lord the Christ who died at 33. The Fire martyrised the body, but kindled and brought forth experiences and realisations that save and truths that abide. It was the Divine Fire whose vision and experience he had on the famous night of 23 November 1654 which brought about his final and definitive conversion. It was the same fire that had blazed up in his brain, while yet a boy, and made him a precocious genius, a marvel of intellectual power in the exact sciences. At 12 this prodigy discovered by himself the 32nd proposition of Euclid, Book I. At sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections. At nineteen he invented a calculating machine which, without the help of any mathematical rule or process, gave absolutely accurate results. At twenty-three he published his experiments with vacuum. At twenty-five he conducted the well-known experiment from the tower of St. Jacques, proving the existence of atmospheric pressure. His studies in infinitesimal calculus were remarkably creative and original. And it might be said he was a pioneer in quite a new branch of mathematics, viz., the mathematical theory of probability. We shall see presently how his preoccupation with the mathematics of chance and probability coloured and reinforced his metaphysics and Theology.
But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of distraction and dissipation; but this did not last long nor was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the world had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the portals of Morning Glory.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The whole world, in fact, was more or less religious in the early stages of its evolution; for it is characteristic of the primitive nature of man to be god-fearing and addicted to religious rite and ceremony. And Europe too, when she entered on a new cycle of life and began to reconstruct herself after the ruin of the Grco-Latin culture, started with the religion of the Christ and experimented with it during a long period of time. But that is what wasTroja fuit. Europe has outgrown her nonage and for a century and a half, since the mighty upheaval of the French Revolution, she has been rapidly shaking off the last vestiges of her mediaevalism. Today she stands clean shorn of all superstition, which she only euphemistically calls religion or spirituality. Not Theology but Science, not Revelation but Reason, not Magic but Logic, not Fiction but Fact, governs her thoughts and guides her activities. Only India, in part under the stress of her own conservative nature, in part under compelling circumstances, still clings to her things of the past, darknesses that have been discarded by the modern illumination. Indian spirituality is nothing but consolidated mediaevalism; it has its companion shibboleth in the cry, "Back to the village" or "Back to the bullock-cart"! One of the main reasons, if not the one reason why India has today no place in the comity of nations, why she is not in the vanguard of civilisation, is precisely this obstinate atavism, this persistent survival of a spirit subversive of all that is modern and progressive.
It is not my purpose here to take up the cause of spirituality and defend it against materialism. Taking it for granted that real spirituality embodies a truth and power by far higher and mightier than anything materialism can offer, and that man's supreme ideal lies there, let us throw a comparing glance on the two types of spirituality,the one that India knows and the other that Europe knew in the Middle Ages.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Every name is a number: and "Every number is infinite; there is no difference." (AL I, 4). But one Name, or system of Names, may be more convenient either (a) to you personally or (b) to the work you are at. E.g. I have very little sympathy with Jewish Theology or ritual; but the Qabalah is so handy and congenial that I use it more than almost any or all the others together for daily use and work. The Egyptian Theogony is the noblest, the most truly magical, the most bound to me (or rather I to it) by some inmost instinct, and by the memory of my incarnation as Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, that I use it (with its Grco-Phoenician child) for all work of supreme import. Why stamp my vitals, madam! The Abramelin Operation itself turned into this form before I could so much as set to work on it! Like the Duchess' baby (excuse this enthusiasm; but you have aroused the British Lion-Serpent.)
Note, please, that the equivalents given in 777 are not always exact. Tahuti is not quite Thoth, still less Hermes; Mercury is a very much more comprehensive idea, but not nearly so exalted: Hanuman hardly at all. Nor is Tetragrammaton IAO, though even etymology asserts the identity.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
empirical Theology. But in spite of the subtlety and intellectual power of such writers
as Sorley, Oman and Tennant, the effort has met with only a partial success. Even in
the hands of its ablest exponents empirical Theology is not particularly convincing.
The reason, it seems to me, must be sought in the fact that the empirical theologians
--
carry so little conviction. This kind of empirical Theology is on precisely the same
footing as an empirical astronomy, based upon the experience of naked-eye
1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
"Ghazzali," says Tholuck, "if ever any man have deserved the name, was truly a divine, and he may justly he placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skillful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, noble and sublime, which his great soul had compassed, he bestowed upon Mohammedanism; and he adorned the doctrines of the Koran with so much piety and learning, that, in the form given them by him, they seem in my opinion worthy the assent of Christians. Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy of Aristotle or in the Soofi mysticism, he discreetly adapted to the Mohammedan Theology. From every school, he sought the [8] means of shedding light and honor upon religion; while his sincere piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all his writings a sacred majesty. He was the first of Mohammedan divines." (Bibliotheca Sacra, vi, 233).
Sale, in the preliminary discourse to his translation of the Koran, shows that he had discovered the peculiar traits of Ghazzali's mind; for wherever he gives an explanation of the Mussulman creed, peculiarly consonant to universal reason and opposed to superstition, it will be found that he quotes from him.1
1.00 - INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The fire of Spirit finally, when blended with the two other fires (which blending commences in man at the first initiation), forms a basis of spiritual life or existence. As evolution proceeds in the fifth or spiritual kingdom, these three fires blaze forth simultaneously, producing perfected consciousness. This blaze results in the final [52] purification of matter and its consequent adequacy; at the close of manifestation it brings about eventually the destruction of the form and its dissolution, and the termination of existence as understood on the lower planes. In terms of Buddhistic Theology it produces annihilation; this involves, not loss of identity, but the cessation of objectivity and the escape of Spirit, plus mind, to its cosmic centre. It has its analogy in the initiation at which the adept stands free from the limitations of matter in the three worlds.
The internal fires of the system, of the planet, and of man are threefold:
1.01 - NIGHT, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
And even, alas! Theology,
From end to end, with labor keen;
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The doctrine of the Inner Light achieved a clearer formulation in the writings of the second generation of Quakers. There is, wrote William Penn, something nearer to us than Scriptures, to wit, the Word in the heart from which all Scriptures come. And a little later Robert Barclay sought to explain the direct experience of tat tvam asi in terms of an Augustinian Theology that had, of course, to be considerably stretched and trimmed before it could fit the facts. Man, he declared in his famous theses, is a fallen being, incapable of good, unless united to the Divine Light. This Divine Light is Christ within the human soul, and is as universal as the seed of sin. All men, hea then as well as Christian, are endowed with the Inward Light, even though they may know nothing of the outward history of Christs life. Justification is for those who do not resist the Inner Light and so permit of a new birth of holiness within them.
Goodness needeth not to enter into the soul, for it is there already, only it is unperceived.
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to Theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all-important, the dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma, the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has largely lost hold not of the structure of that dharma, but of its living reality.
For the religion of India is nothing if it is not lived. It has to be applied not only to life, but to the whole of life; its spirit has to enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science, our individual character, affections and aspirations.
1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
In the beginning God. So runs the first word of all our occidental Theology, using the formulas of the traditional conception which it has borrowed from the Hebrew Genesis.
And by God when it emerges at all from its puerile anthropomorphic notions, that Theology understands the first Unity, the pure Essence which is preexistent of all multiplicity. But by this conception it erects before it, in its very first affirmation, the most insoluble of problems. For out of absolute unity nothing at all can issue.
One can conceive such a unity, it is true, as an existence without cause, but it is only by totally ignoring the conditions of thought and the fundamental demands of Reason that one can see in it the cause of existences. Mere unity is by its very definition entire sterility; it is multiplicity alone that can produce multiplicity. The notion of cause is exclusive of the notion of unity; for the essence of unity is an indivisible, indiscernable, immobile identity.
--
This is why certain systems of Theology, in order to escape from the contradictory postulate of unity as a cause, have sought in a less unproductive dualism the explanation of the beginning of things. And although they have by a misdirected mysticism, falsified the term and distorted the idea, it is in them that we recover the tendencies most in harmony with the very data on which the belief in a divine Creator is founded.
Let us take, for example, the Bereshit.
--
And wherever Philosophy has made itself, according to the ecclesiastical formula, the handmaid of Theology, it has ended by arriving at the entire negation of the Principle which Religion has abased.
Thus the rigid cult of the male Principle, formulated in the adoration of a masculine and celibate God, has given birth to an exaggerated dogma of spirituality which translates its contempt for nature and for life into an ascetic mysticism.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
creation of living beings, etc. are variously presented. According to the solar Theology of Heliopolis, a
city situated at the apex of the Delta, the god Re-Atum-Khepri [three forms of the sun, noontime,
--
gods to life.255 This idea echoes through ancient Egyptian Theology, as described below. Marduk is
Namshub, as well, the bright god who brightens our way256 which once again assimilates him to the sun
--
compared with the Christian Theology of the Logos [or Word].265
The Egyptians realized that consciousness and linguistic ability were vital to the existence of things
--
in the central myth of Osiris, which served as an alternate basis for Egyptian Theology. The story of
Osiris, and his son Horus, is much more complex, in some ways, than the Mesopotamian creation myth, or
--
brilliant and original contri bution of Egyptian Theology.
ORDER
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Coming as it does from a devout Catholic of the Counter-Reformation, this statement may seem somewhat startling. But we must remember that Olier (who was a man of saintly life and one of the most influential religious teachers of the seventeenth century) is speaking here about a state of consciousness, to which few people ever come. To those on the ordinary levels of being he recommends other modes of knowledge. One of his penitents, for example, was advised to read, as a corrective to St. John of the Cross and other exponents of pure mystical Theology, St. Gertrudes revelations of the incarnate and even physiological aspects of the deity. In Oliers opinion, as in that of most directors of souls, whether Catholic or Indian, it was mere folly to recommend the worship of God-without-form to persons who are in a condition to understand only the personal and the incarnate aspects of the divine Ground. This is a perfectly sensible attitude, and we are justified in adopting a policy in accordance with itprovided always that we clearly remember that its adoption may be attended by certain spiritual dangers and disadvantages. The nature of these dangers and disadvantages will be illustrated and discussed in another section. For the present it will suffice to quote the warning words of Philo: He who thinks that God has any quality and is not the One, injures not God, but himself.
Thou must love God as not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not-image, but as He is, a sheer, pure absolute One, sundered from all two-ness, and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness.
--
The extract which follows next is of great historical significance, since it was mainly through the Mystical Theology and the Divine Names of the fifth-century author who wrote under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite that mediaeval Christendom established contact with Neoplatonism and thus, at several removes, with the metaphysical thought and discipline of India. In the ninth century Scotus Erigena translated the two books into Latin and from that time forth their influence upon the philosophical speculations and the religious life of the West was wide, deep and beneficent. It was to the authority of the Areopagite that the Christian exponents of the Perennial Philosophy appealed, whenever they were menaced (and they were always being menaced) by those whose primary interest was in ritual, legalism and ecclesiastical organization. And because Dionysius was mistakenly identified with St. Pauls first Athenian convert, his authority was regarded as all but apostolic; therefore, according to the rules of the Catholic game, the appeal to it could not lightly be dismissed, even by those to whom the books meant less than nothing. In spite of their maddening eccentricity, the men and women who followed the Dionysian path had to be tolerated. And once left free to produce the fruits of the spirit, a number of them arrived at such a conspicuous degree of sanctity that it became impossible even for the heads of the Spanish Inquisition to condemn the tree from which such fruits had sprung.
The simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of divine Truth are hidden in the super-luminous darkness of that silence which revealeth in secret. For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear; and, though beyond touch and sight, it more than fills our unseeing minds with splendours of transcendent beauty. We long exceedingly to dwell in this translucent darkness and, through not seeing and not knowing, to see Him who is beyond both vision and knowledgeby the very fact of neither seeing Him nor knowing Him. For this is truly to see and to know and, through the abandonment of all things, to praise Him who is beyond and above all things. For this is not unlike the art of those who carve a life-like image from stone; removing from around it all that impedes clear vision of the latent form, revealing its hidden beauty solely by taking away. For it is, as I believe, more fitting to praise Him by taking away than by ascription; for we ascribe attri butes to Him, when we start from universals and come down through the intermediate to the particulars. But here we take away all things from Him going up from particulars to universals, that we may know openly the unknowable, which is hidden in and under all things that may be known. And we behold that darkness beyond being, concealed under all natural light.
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
And this occurred in the wake of Petrus Hispanus (PetrusLucitanus), the later Pope John XXI (d. 1277), who had authored the first comprehensive European textbook on psychology (De anima), introducing via Islam and Spain the Aristotelian theory of the soul. Shortly thereafter, Duns Scotus (d. 1308) freed Theology from the hieratic rigors of scholasticism by teaching the primacy of volition and emotion. And the blindness of antiquity to time inherent in its unperspectival, psychically-stressed world (which amounted to a virtual timelessness) gave way to the visualization of and openness to time with a quantifiable, spatial character. This was exemplified by the erection of the first public clock in the courtyard of Westminister Palace in 1283,an event anticipated by Pope Sabinus, who in 604ordered the ringing of bells to announce the passing of the hours.
We shall examine the question of time in detail later in our discussion; here we wish to point out that there is a forgotten but essential interconnection between time and the psyche. The closed horizons of antiquity's celestial cave-like vault express a soul not yet awakened to spatial time-consciousness and temporal quantification. The "heaven of the heart" mentioned by Origen was likewise a self-contained inner heaven first exteriorized into the heavenly landscapes of the frescoes by the brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti in the church of St. Francesco in Assisi (ca. 1327-28). One should note that these early renderings of landscape and sky, which include a realistic rather than symbolic astral-mythical moon, are not merely accidental pictures with nocturnal themes. In contrast to the earlier vaulted sky, the heaven of these frescoes is no longer an enclosure; it is now rendered from the vantage point of the artist and expresses the incipient perspectivity of a confrontation with space, rather than an unperspectival immersion or inherence in it. Man is henceforth not just in the world but begins to possess it; no longer possessed by heaven, he becomes a conscious possessor if not of the heavens, at least of the earth. This shift is, of course, a gain as well as a loss.
--
Petrarch's letter is in the nature of a confession; it is addressed to the Augustinian professor of Theology who had taught him to treasure and emulate Augustine's Confessions. Now, a person makes a confession or an admission only if he believes he has transgressed against something; and it is this vision of space, as extended before him from the mountain top, this vision of space as a reality, and its overwhelming impression, together with his shock and dismay, his bewilderment at his perception and acceptance of the panorama, that are reflected in his letter. It marks him as the first European to step out of the transcendental gilt ground of the Siena masters, the first to emerge from a space dormant in time and soul, into "real" space where he discovers landscape.
When Petrarch's glance spatially isolated a part of "nature" from the whole, the allencompassing attachment to sky and earth and the unquestioned, closed unperspectival ties are severed. The isolated part becomes a piece of land created by his perception. It may well be that with this event a part of the spiritual, divine formative principle of heaven and earth (and nature in its all-encompassing sense) was conveyed to man. If this is indeed so, then from that day of Petrarch's discovery onward man's responsibility was increased. Yet regarded from our vantage point, it is doubtful whether man has been adequate to this responsibility. Be that as it may, the consequences of Petrarch's discovery remain unaltered; we are still able to sense his uneasiness about his discovery, and the grave responsibility arising from it as documented in his letter.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
St. Bernards doctrine of the carnal love of Christ has been admirably summed up by Professor tienne Gilson in his book, The Mystical Theology of St Bernard. Knowledge of self already expanded into social carnal love of the neighbour, so like oneself in misery, is now a second time expanded into a carnal love of Christ, the model of compassion, since for our salvation He has become the Man of Sorrows. Here then is the place occupied in Cistercian mysticism by the meditation on the visible Humanity of Christ. It is but a beginning, but an absolutely necessary beginning Charity, of course, is essentially spiritual, and a love of this kind can be no more than its first moment. It is too much bound up with the senses, unless we know how to make use of it with prudence, and to lean on it only as something to be surpassed. In expressing himself thus, Bernard merely codified the teachings of his own experience; for we have it from him that he was much given to the practice of this sensitive love at the outset of his conversion; later on he was to consider it an advance to have passed beyond it; not, that is to say, to have forgotten it, but to have added another, which outweighs it as the rational and spiritual outweigh the carnal. Nevertheless, this beginning is already a summit.
This sensitive affection for Christ was always presented by St. Bernard as love of a relatively inferior order. It is so precisely on account of its sensitive character, for charity is of a purely spiritual essence. In right the soul should be able to enter directly into union, in virtue of its spiritual powers, with a God Who is pure spirit. The Incarnation, moreover, should be regarded as one of the consequences of mans transgression, so that love for the Person of Christ is, as a matter of fact, bound up with the history of a fall which need not, and should not, have happened. St. Bernard furthermore, and in several places, notes-that this affection cannot stand safely alone, but needs to be supported by what he calls science. He had examples before him of the deviations into which even the most ardent devotion can fall, when it is not allied with, and ruled by, a sane Theology.
Can the many fantastic and mutually incompatible theories of expiation and atonement, which have been grafted onto the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation, be regarded as indispensable elements in a sane Theology? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone who has looked into a history of these notions, as expounded, for example, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Athanasius and Augustine, by Anselm and Luther, by Calvin and Grotius, can plausibly answer this question in the affirmative. In the present context, it will be enough to call attention to one of the bitterest of all the bitter ironies of history. For the Christ of the Gospels, lawyers seemed further from the Kingdom of Heaven, more hopelessly impervious to Reality, than almost any other class of human beings except the rich. But Christian Theology, especially that of the Western churches, was the product of minds imbued with Jewish and Roman legalism. In all too many instances the immediate insights of the Avatar and the theocentric saint were rationalized into a system, not by philosophers, but by speculative barristers and metaphysical jurists. Why should what Abbot John Chapman calls the problem of reconciling (not merely uniting) Mysticism and Christianity be so extremely difficult? Simply because so much Roman and Protestant thinking was done by those very lawyers whom Christ regarded as being peculiarly incapable of understanding the true Nature of Things. The Abbot (Chapman is apparently referring to Abbot Marmion) says St John of the Cross is like a sponge full of Christianity. You can squeeze it all out, and the full mystical theory (in other words, the pure Perennial Philosophy) remains. Consequently for fifteen years or so I hated St John of the Cross and called him a Buddhist. I loved St Teresa and read her over and over again. She is first a Christian, only secondarily a mystic. Then I found I had wasted fifteen years, so far as prayer was concerned.
Now see the meaning of these two sayings of Christs. The one, No man cometh unto the Father but by me, that is through my life. The other saying, No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him; that is, he does not take my life upon him and follow after me, except he is moved and drawn of my Father, that is, of the Simple and Perfect Good, of which St. Paul saith, When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.
1.03 - .REASON. IN PHILOSOPHY, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
metaphysics, Theology, psychology, epistemology, or formal science, or
a doctrine of symbols, like logic and its applied form mathematics.
1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The long stretch of silence ceased only with the arrival of his first and principal meal of the day. Still we hardly ever heard him express that his "stomach was getting unsteady". The day's second meal, supper, had to be quite light. Let me stress one thing at the very outset: in his whole tenor of life, he followed the rule laid down by the Gita, moderation in everything. This was his teaching as well as his practice. To look at the outward commonplaceness of his life, eating, sleeping, joking, etc., and to make a leaping statement that here was another man like oneself, would be logical, but not true. Similarly in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, even a high experience must not disturb the normal rhythm of life. Naturally, I was extremely curious, and so were the others, I believe, to see what kind of food he took; had he any preference for a particular dish and how much had he in common with our taste? We had to wait a long time before he regained his health, and could sit up and "enjoy" a proper meal. As soon as people learnt about it, dishes from various sadhikas began to pour in as for the Deity in the temple. And just as the Deity does, so did he, or rather the Mother did on his behalf: only a little from a dish was offered to him and all the rest was sent back as prasd. For his regular meal, there were a few devotees like Amiya, Nolina and Mridu selected by the Mother for their good cooking, which Sri Aurobindo specially liked. Mridu was a simple Bengali village widow. She, like other ladies here, called Sri Aurobindo her father, and took great pride in cooking for him. Her "father" liked her luchis very much, she would boast, and these creations of hers have been immortalised by him in one of his letters to her. She was given to maniacal fits of threatening suicide, and Sri Aurobindo would console her with, "If you commit suicide, who will cook luchis for me?" Her cooking got such wide publicity that the house she lived in was named Prasd. Food from the devotees, though tasty, was sometimes too greasy or spicy, and once it did not agree with him. So a separate kitchen, known as the Mother's Kitchen, was started for preparing only the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's food. It was done under the most perfect hygienic conditions following the Mother's own special instructions. Her insistence is always on cleanliness. (She said in a recent message: Cleanliness is the first indispensable step towards the supramental manifestation...) I questioned Sri Aurobindo about this: "I wonder why the Divine is so particular about contagion, infection, etc. Is he vulnerable to the virus and the microbe?" He replied, "And why on earth should you expect the Divine to feed himself on germs and bacilli and poisons of all kinds? Singular Theology, yours!"
At the beginning all of us would make it a point to be present during his meal and watch the function as well as the Mother's part in it. When the time was announced, water was brought for Sri Aurobindo to wash his hands, then he started eating with a spoon and rarely with knife and fork. He would take off his ring, place it in Champaklal's hand and wash. Champakal would put it back on his finger afterwards. Sometimes when he forgot to take off the ring, Champaklal caught hold of the hand before it was dipped in the water. Then the Mother would come, prepare and lay the table, push it herself up to Sri Aurobindo and arrange the various foods in bowls or glass tumblers, in the order of savouries, sweets and fruit juices everything having an atmosphere of cleanliness, purity and beauty. Then she would offer, one by one, the dishes to the silent Deity who would take them slowly and silently as if the eating was not for the satisfaction of the palate but an act of self-offering. Steadiness and silence were the characteristic stamps of Sri Aurobindo. Dhra, according to him, was the ideal of Aryan culture. Hurry and hustle were words not found in his dictionary. Be it eating, drinking, walking or talking he did it always in a slow and measured rhythm, giving the impression that every movement was conscious and consecrated. The Mother would punctuate the silence with queries like, "How do you like that dish?" or such remarks as, "This mushroom is grown here, this is special brinjal sent from Benares, this is butterfruit." To all, Sri Aurobindo's reply would be, "Oh, I see! Quite good!" Typically English in manner and tone! His silence or laconic praise made us wonder if he had not lost all distinction in taste! Did rasagolla, bread and brinjal have the same taste in the Divine sense-experience? Making this vital point clear, he wrote in a letter: "Distinction is never lost, bread cannot be as tasty as a luchi, but a yogi can enjoy bread with as much rasa as a luchi which is quite a different thing." He had a liking for sweets, particularly for rasagolla, sandesh and pantua. We could see that clearly: after the Mother had banned all sweets from his menu for medical reasons, one day some pantuas found their way in by chance. The Mother could not send them back from the table. She asked him if he would take some. He replied, "If it is pantua, I can try." Since then this became a spicy joke with all of us. He enjoyed, as a matter of fact, all kinds of good dishes, European or Indian. But whatever was not to his taste, he would just touch and put away. The pungent preparations of the South could not, however, receive his blessings, except the rasam[1]. When on his arrival in Pondicherry he was given rasam, he enjoyed it very much and said in our talks, "It has a celestial taste!" He was neither a puritan god nor an epicure; only, he had no hankering or attachment for anything. His meal ended with a big tumbler of orange juice which he sipped slowly, looking after each sip to see how much was left, and keeping a small quantity as prasd. Once the entire juice had slightly fermented and after one or two sips he left it at the Mother's prompting. We conspired to make good use of it as prasd, but Sri Aurobindo got the scent of our secret design and forewarned us! We had to check our temptation.
1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[29] Thus the changefulness of the moon is paralleled by the transformation of the pre-existent Christ from a divine into a human figure through the emptying, that passage in Philippians (2 : 6) which has aroused so much comment: . . . who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be clung to, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (RSV / DV).195 Even the most tortuous explanations of Theology have never improved on the lapidary paradox of St. Hilary: Deus homo, immortalis mortuus, aeternus sepultus (God-man, immortaldead, eternal-buried).196 According to Ephraem Syrus, the kenosis had the reverse effect of unburdening Creation: Because the creatures were weary of bearing the prefigurations of his glory, he disburdened them of those prefigurations, even as he had disburdened the womb that bore him.197
[30] St. Ambroses reference to the kenosis makes the changing of the moon causally dependent on the transformation of the bridegroom. The darkening of Luna then depends on the sponsus, Sol, and here the alchemists could refer to the darkening of the beloveds countenance in Song of Songs 1 : 45. The sun, too, is equipped with darts and arrows. Indeed, the secret poisoning that otherwise emanates from the coldness and moisture of the moon is occasionally attributed to the cold dragon, who contains a volatile fiery spirit and spits flames. Thus in Emblem L of the Scrutinium198 he is given a masculine role: he wraps the woman in the grave in a deadly embrace. The same thought occurs again in Emblem V, where a toad is laid on the breast of the woman so that she, suckling it, may die as it grows.199 The toad is a cold and damp animal like the dragon. It empties the woman as though the moon were pouring herself into the sun.200
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality. For ordinary, nice, unregenerate people to accept this truth by hearsay, and to act upon it in practice, is merely to court disaster. All the dismal story of antinomianism is there to warn us of what happens when men and women make practical applications of a merely intellectual and unrealized theory that all is God and God is all. And hardly less depressing than the spectacle of antinomianism is that of the earnestly respectable well-rounded life of good citizens who do their best to live sacramentally, but dont in fact have any direct acquaintance with that for which the sacramental activity really stands. Dr. Oman, in his The Natural and the Supernatural, writes at length on the theme that reconciliation to the evanescent is revelation of the eternal; and in a recent volume, Science, Religion and the Future, Canon Raven applauds Dr. Oman for having stated the principles of a Theology, in which there could be no ultimate antithesis between nature and grace, science and religion, in which, indeed, the worlds of the scientist and the theologian are seen to be one and the same. All this is in full accord with Taoism and Zen Buddhism and with such Christian teachings as St. Augustines Ama et fac quod vis and Father Lallemants advice to theocentric contemplatives to go out and act in the world, since their actions are the only ones capable of doing any real good to the world. But what neither Dr. Oman nor Canon Raven makes sufficiently clear is that nature and grace, Samsara and Nirvana, perpetual perishing and eternity, are really and experientially one only to persons who have fulfilled certain conditions. Fac quod vis in the temporal world but only when you have learnt the infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart and your neighbor as yourself. If you havent learnt this lesson, you will either be an antinomian eccentric or criminal or else a respectable well-rounded-lifer, who has left himself no time to understand either nature or grace. The Gospels are perfectly clear about the process by which, and by which alone, a man may gain the right to live in the world as though he were at home in it: he must make a total denial of selfhood, submit to a complete and absolute mortification. At one period of his career, Jesus himself seems to have undertaken austerities, not merely of the mind, but of the body. There is the record of his forty days fast and his statement, evidently drawn from personal experience, that some demons cannot be cast out except by those who have fasted much as well as prayed. (The Cur dArs, whose knowledge of miracles and corporal penance was based on personal experience, insists on the close correlation between severe bodily austerities and the power to get petitionary prayer answered in ways that are sometimes supernormal.) The Pharisees reproached Jesus because he came eating and drinking, and associated with publicans and sinners; they ignored, or were unaware of, the fact that this apparently worldly prophet had at one time rivalled the physical austerities of John the Baptist and was practising the spiritual mortifications which he consistently preached. The pattern of Jesus life is essentially similar to that of the ideal sage, whose career is traced in the Oxherding Pictures, so popular among Zen Buddhists. The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white. Regeneration goes so far that for a time the ox is completely lost, so that nothing remains to be pictured but the full-orbed moon, symbolizing Mind, Suchness, the Ground. But this is not the final stage. In the end, the herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox. Because he now loves, loves to the extent of being identified with the divine object of his love, he can do what he likes; for what he likes is what the Nature of Things likes. He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas. For him, there is complete reconciliation to the evanescent and, through that reconciliation, revelation of the eternal. But for nice ordinary unregenerate people the only reconciliation to the evanescent is that of indulged passions, of distractions submitted to and enjoyed. To tell such persons that evanescence and eternity are the same, and not immediately to qualify the statement, is positively fatalfor, in practice, they are not the same except to the saint; and there is no record that anybody ever came to sanctity, who did not, at the outset of his or her career, behave as if evanescence and eternity, nature and grace, were profoundly different and in many respects incompatible. As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On one side is the danger of mere rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things which should only be used as instruments or symbols. The versified caption which accompanies the last of the Oxherding Pictures runs as follows.
Even beyond the ultimate limits there extends a passageway,
1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a Theology;
in the language of St. James, "faith, if it hath not works, is dead,
1.04 - THE STUDY (The Compact), #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
I've almost for Theology decided.
MEPHISTOPHELES
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
This remark seems, at first sight, to be incompatible with what precedes it. But in reality St. Thomas is merely distinguishing between the various forms of love and knowledge. It is better to love-know God than just to know about God, without love, through the reading of a treatise on Theology. Gold, on the other hand, should never be known with the misers love, or rather concupiscence, but either abstractly, as the scientific investigator knows it, or else with the disinterested love-knowledge of the artist in metal, or of the spectator, who love-knows the goldsmiths work, not for its cash value, not for the sake of possessing it, but just because it is beautiful. And the same applies to all created things, lives and minds. It is bad to love-know them with self-centred attachment and cupidity; it is somewhat better to know them with scientific dispassion; it is best to supplement abstract knowledge-without-cupidity with true disinterested love-knowledge, having the quality of aesthetic delight, or of charity, or of both combined.
We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
thinks that Islam is far superior to this Theology. Yahweh and Allah are un-
reflected God-images, whereas in the Clementine Homilies there is a psychological
--
good. There is no denying that Clement's Theology helps us to
get over this contradiction in a way that fits the psychological
--
therefore universal and eternal. 77 Now if Theology describes
Christ as simply "good" and "spiritual," something "evil" and
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Zarathustras Theology is not dualistic in the strict sense of the term, since Ahura Mazda is not
confronted by an anti-God; in the beginning, the opposition breaks out between the two Spirits. On the
--
Jaeger, W. (1968). The Theology of the early Greek philosophers: The Gifford lectures 1936. London:
Oxford University Press.
1.05 - THE NEW SPIRIT, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
sphere of the supernatural. Theology, in short, did not seem to re-
alize that every kind of Universe might not be "compossible" with
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This too, is very convenient, because it lends itself so readily to orthodox Theology; so we have Ormuzd and Ahriman, the Devas and the Asuras, Osiris and Set, et cetera and da capo, personifications of "Good" and "Evil." The foes may be fairly matched; but more often the tale tells of a revolt in heaven. In this case, "Evil" is temporary; soon, especially with the financial help of the devout, the "devil" will be "cast into the Bottomless Pit" and "the Saints will reign with Christ in glory for ever and ever, Amen!" Often a "redeemer," a "dying God," is needed to secure victory to Omnipotence; and this is usually what little vulgar boys might call a "touching story!"
J. The Monist (or Advaitist) school, is at once subtler and more refined; it seems to approach the ultimate reality (as opposed to the superficial examination of the Dualists) more closely.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
What is true of aesthetics is also true of Theology. Theological speculation is valuable insofar as it enables those who have had immediate experience of various aspects of God to form intelligible ideas about the nature of the divine Ground, and of their own experience of the Ground in relation to other experiences. And when a coherent system of Theology has been worked out, it is useful insofar as it convinces those who study it that there is nothing inherently self-contradictory about the postulate of the divine Ground and that, for those who are ready to fulfill certain conditions, the postulate may become a realized Fact. In no circumstances, however, can the study of Theology or the minds assent to theological propositions take the place of what Law calls the birth of God within. For theory is not practice, and words are not the things for which they stand.
Theology as we know it has been formed by the great mystics, especially St Augustine and St Thomas. Plenty of other great theologiansespecially St Gregory and St Bernard, even down to Suarezwould not have had such insight without mystic super-knowledge.
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Against this we must set Dr. Tennants viewnamely, that religious experience is something real and unique, but does not add anything to the experiencers knowledge of ultimate Reality and must always be interpreted in terms of an idea of God derived from other sources. A study of the facts would suggest that both these opinions are to some degree correct. The facts of mystical insight (together with the facts of what is taken to be historic revelation) are rationalized in terms of general knowledge and become the basis of a Theology. And, reciprocally, an existing Theology in terms of general knowledge exercises a profound influence upon those who have undertaken the spiritual life, causing them, if it is low, to be content with a low form of experience, if it is high, to reject as inadequate the experience of any form of reality having characteristics incompatible with those of the God described in the books. Thus mystics make Theology, and Theology makes mystics.
A person who gives assent to untrue dogma, or who pays all his attention and allegiance to one true dogma in a comprehensive system, while neglecting the others (as many Christians concentrate exclusively on the humanity of the Second Person of the Trinity and ignore the Father and the Holy Ghost), runs the risk of limiting in advance his direct apprehension of Reality. In religion as in natural science, experience is determined only by experience. It is fatal to prejudge it, to compel it to fit the mould imposed by a theory which either does not correspond to the facts at all, or corresponds to only some of the facts. Do not strive to seek after the true, writes a Zen master, only cease to cherish opinions. There is only one way to cure the results of belief in a false or incomplete Theology and it is the same as the only known way of passing from belief in even the truest Theology to knowledge or primordial Factselflessness, docility, openness to the datum of Eternity. Opinions are things which we make and can therefore understand, formulate and argue about. But to rest in the consideration of objects perceptible to the sense or comprehended by the understanding is to be content, in the words of St. John of the Cross, with what is less than God. Unitive knowledge of God is possible only to those who have ceased to cherish opinionseven opinions that are as true as it is possible for verbalized abstractions to be.
Up then, noble soul! Put on thy jumping shoes which are intellect and love, and overleap the worship of thy mental powers, overleap thine understanding and spring into the heart of God, into his hiddenness where thou art hidden from all creatures.
--
The word intellect is used by Eckhart in the scholastic sense of immediate intuition. Intellect and reason, says Aquinas, are not two powers, but distinct as the perfect from the imperfect. The intellect means, an intimate penetration of truth; the reason, enquiry and discourse. It is by following, and then abandoning, the rational and emotional path of word and discrimination that one is enabled to enter upon the intellectual or intuitive path of realization. And yet, in spite of the warnings pronounced by those who, through selflessness, have passed from letter to spirit and from theory to immediate knowledge, the organized Christian churches have persisted in the fatal habit of mistaking means for ends. The verbal statements of Theologys more or less adequate rationalizations of experience have been taken too seriously and treated with the reverence that is due only to the Fact they are intended to describe. It has been fancied that souls are saved if assent is given to what is locally regarded as the correct formula, lost if it is withheld. The two words, filioque, may not have been the sole cause of the schism between the Eastern and Western churches; but they were unquestionably the pretext and casus belli.
The overvaluation of words and formulae may be regarded as a special case of that overvaluation of the things of time, which is so fatally characteristic of historic Christianity. To know Truth-as-Fact and to know it unitively, in spirit and in truth-as-immediate-apprehensionthis is deliverance, in this standeth our eternal life. To be familiar with the verbalized truths, which symbolically correspond to Truth-as-Fact insofar as it can be known in, or inferred from, truth-as-immediate-apprehension, or truth-as-historic-revelationthis is not salvation, but merely the study of a special branch of philosophy. Even the most ordinary experience of a thing or event in time can never be fully or adequately described in words. The experience of seeing the sky or having neuralgia is incommunicable; the best we can do is to say blue or pain, in the hope that those who hear us may have had experiences similar to our own and so be able to supply their own version of the meaning. God, however, is not a thing or event in time, and the time-bound words which cannot do justice even to temporal matters are even more inadequate to the intrinsic nature and our own unitive experience of that which belongs to an incommensurably different order. To suppose that people can be saved by studying and giving assent to formulae is like supposing that one can get to Timbuctoo by poring over a map of Africa. Maps are symbols, and even the best of them are inaccurate and imperfect symbols. But to anyone who really wants to reach a given destination, a map is indispensably useful as indicating the direction in which the traveller should set out and the roads which he must take.
1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Within the general population, as we have seen, variation is continuous, and in most people the three components are fairly evenly mixed. Those exhibiting extreme predominance of any one component are relatively rare. And yet, in spite of their rarity, it is by the thought-patterns characteristic of these extreme individuals that Theology and ethics, at any rate on the theoretical side, have been mainly dominated. The reason for this is simple. Any extreme position is more uncompromisingly clear and therefore more easily recognized and understood than the intermediate positions, which are the natural thought-pattern of the person in whom the constituent components of personality are evenly balanced. These intermediate positions, it should be noted, do not in any sense contain or reconcile the extreme positions; they are merely other thought-patterns added to the list of possible systems. The construction of an all-embracing system of metaphysics, ethics and psychology is a task that can never be accomplished by any single individual, for the sufficient reason that he is an individual with one particular kind of constitution and temperament and therefore capable of knowing only according to the mode of his own being. Hence the advantages inherent in what may be called the anthological approach to truth.
The Sanskrit dharmaone of the key words in Indian formulations of the Perennial Philosophyhas two principal meanings. The dharma of an individual is, first of all, his essential nature, the intrinsic law of his being and development. But dharma also signifies the law of righteousness and piety. The implications of this double meaning are clear: a mans duty, how he ought to live, what he ought to believe and what he ought to do about his beliefs these things are conditioned by his essential nature, his constitution and temperament. Going a good deal further than do the Catholics, with their doctrine of vocations, the Indians admit the right of individuals with different dharmas to worship different aspects or conceptions of the divine. Hence the almost total absence, among Hindus and Buddhists, of bloody persecutions, religious wars and proselytizing imperialism.
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The way of knowledge comes most naturally to persons whose temperament is predominantly cerebrotonic. By this I do not mean that the following of this way is easy for the cerebrotonic. His specially besetting sins are just as difficult to overcome as are the sins which beset the power-loving somatotonic and the extreme viscerotonic with his gluttony for food and comfort and social approval. Rather I mean that the idea that such a way exists and can be followed (either by discrimination, or through non-attached work and one-pointed devotion) is one which spontaneously occurs to the cerebrotonic. At all levels of culture he is the natural monotheist; and this natural monotheist, as Dr. Radins examples of primitive Theology clearly show, is often a monotheist of the tat tvam asi, inner-light school. Persons committed by their temperament to one or other of the two kinds of extraversion are natural polytheists. But natural polytheists can, without much difficulty, be convinced of the theoretical superiority of monotheism. The nature of human reason is such that there is an intrinsic plausibility about any hypothesis which seeks to explain the manifold in terms of unity, to reduce apparent multiplicity to essential identity. And from this theoretical monotheism the half-converted polytheist can, if he chooses, go on (through practices suitable to his own particular temperament) to the actual realization of the divine Ground of his own and all other beings. He can, I repeat, and sometimes he actually does. But very often he does not. There are many theoretical monotheists whose whole life and every action prove that in reality they are still what their temperament inclines them to bepoly theists, worshippers not of the one God they sometimes talk about, but of the many gods, nationalistic and technological, financial and familial, to whom in practice they pay all their allegiance.
In Christian art the Saviour has almost invariably been represented as slender, small-boned, unemphatically muscled. Large, powerful Christs are a rather shocking exception to a very ancient rule. Of Rubens crucifixions William Blake contemptuously wrote:
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Like technological progress, with which it is so closely associated in so many ways, modern war is at once a cause and a result of the somatotonic revolution. Nazi education, which was specifically education for war, had two principal aims: to encourage the manifestation of somatotonia in those most richly endowed with that component of personality, and to make the rest of the population feel ashamed of its relaxed amiability or its inward-looking sensitiveness and tendency towards self-restraint and tender-mindedness. During the war the enemies of Nazism have been compelled, of course, to borrow from the Nazis educational philosophy. All over the world millions of young men and even of young women are being systematically educated to be tough and to value toughness beyond every other moral quality. With this system of somatotonic ethics is associated the idolatrous and polytheistic Theology of nationalisma pseudo-religion far stronger at the present time for evil and division than is Christianity, or any other monotheistic religion, for unification and good. In the past most societies tried systematically to discourage somatotonia. This was a measure of self-defense; they did not want to be physically destroyed by the power-loving aggressiveness of their most active minority, and they did not want to be spiritually blinded by an excess of extraversion. During the last few years all this has been changed. What, we may apprehensively wonder, will be the result of the current world-wide reversal of an immemorial social policy? Time alone will show.
next chapter: 1.09 - SELF-KNOWLEDGE
1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
certain ideas in late Jewish Theology, could have suggested to us
that the Christian answer to the problem of Job omits to men-
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
in any trifling emancipation from Theology, must retrieve his honour
in the most terrifying manner by becoming a moral fanatic. That is how
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
St. Paul drew a very useful and illuminating distinction between the psyche and the pneuma. But the latter word never achieved any degree of popularity, and the hopelessly ambiguous term, psyche, came to be used indifferently for either the personal consciousness or the spirit. And why, in the Western church, did devotional writers choose to speak of mans anima (which for the Romans signified the lower, animal soul) instead of using the word traditionally reserved for the rational soul, namely animus? The answer, I suspect, is that they were anxious to stress by every means in their power the essential femininity of the human spirit in its relations with God. Pneuma, being grammatically neuter, and animus, being masculine, were felt to be less suitable than anima and psyche. Consider this concrete example; given the structure of Greek and Latin, it would have been very difficult for the speakers of these languages to identify anything but a grammatically feminine soul with the heroine of the Song of Songsan allegorical figure who, for long centuries, played the same part in Christian thought and sentiment as the Gopi Maidens played in the Theology and devotion of the Hindus.
Take note of this fundamental truth. Everything that works in nature and creature, except sin, is the working of God in nature and creature. The creature has nothing else in its power but the free use of its will, and its free will hath no other power but that of concurring with, or resisting, the working of God in nature. The creature with its free will can bring nothing into being, nor make any alteration in the working of nature; it can only change its own state or place in the working of nature, and so feel or find something in its state that it did not feel or find before.
1.10 - THE FORMATION OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
ology merges into Theology, and that the Word made Flesh
is to be regarded, not as a postulate of science which
1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
enormous confusion in all subsequent philosophy and Theology refer-
ring to the great Greek.220
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Passing now from theory to historical fact, we find that the religions, whose Theology has been least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and the most humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all of them obsessed with time), Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism, which has gone hand in hand with the political and economic oppression c the coloured peoples. For four hundred years, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, most of the Christian nations of Europe have spent a good part of their time and energy in attacking, conquering and exploiting their non-Christian neighbours in other continents. In the course of these centuries many individual churchmen did their best to mitigate the consequences of such iniquities; but none of the major Christian churches officially condemned them. The first collective protest against the slave system, introduced by the English and the Spaniards into the New World, was made in 1688 by the Quaker Meeting of Germantown. This fact is highly significant. Of all Christian sects in the seventeenth century, the Quakers were the least obsessed with history, the least addicted to the idolatry of things in time. They believed that the inner light was in all human beings and that salvation came to those who lived in conformity with that light and was not dependent on the profession of belief in historical or pseudo-historical events, nor on the performance of certain rites, nor on the support of a particular ecclesiastical organization. Moreover their eternity-philosophy preserved them from the materialistic apocalypticism of that progress-worship which in recent times has justified every kind of iniquity from war and revolution to sweated labour, slavery and the exploitation of savages and childrenhas justified them on the ground that the supreme good is in future time and that any temporal means, however intrinsically horrible, may be used to achieve that good. Because Quaker Theology was a form of eternity-philosophy, Quaker political theory rejected war and persecution as means to ideal ends, denounced slavery and proclaimed racial equality. Members of other denominations had done good work for the African victims of the white mans rapacity. One thinks, for example, of St. Peter Claver at Cartagena. But this heroically charitable slave of the slaves never raised his voice against the institution of slavery or the criminal trade by which it was sustained; nor, so far as the extant documents reveal, did he ever, like John Woolman, attempt to persuade the slave-owners to free their human chattels. The reason, presumably, was that Claver was a Jesuit, vowed to perfect obedience and constrained by his Theology to regard a certain political and ecclesiastical organization as being the mystical body of Christ. The heads of this organization had not pronounced against slavery or the slave trade. Who was he, Pedro Claver, to express a thought not officially approved by his superiors?
Another practical corollary of the great historical eternity-philosophies, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, is a morality inculcating kindness to animals. Judaism and orthodox Christianity taught that animals might be used as things, for the realization of mans temporal ends. Even St. Francis attitude towards the brute creation was not entirely unequivocal. True, he converted a wolf and preached sermons to birds; but when Brother Juniper hacked the feet off a living pig in order to satisfy a sick mans craving for fried trotters, the saint merely blamed his disciples intemperate zeal in damaging a valuable piece of private property. It was not until the nineteenth century, when orthodox Christianity had lost much of its power over European minds, that the idea that it might be a good thing to behave humanely towards animals began to make headway. This new morality was correlated with the new interest in Nature, which had been stimulated by the romantic poets and the men of science. Because it was not founded upon an eternity-philosophy, a doctrine of divinity dwelling in all living creatures, the modern movement in favour of kindness to animals was and is perfectly compatible with intolerance, persecution and systematic cruelty towards human beings. Young Nazis are taught to be gentle with dogs and cats, ruthless with Jews. That is because Nazism is a typical time-philosophy, which regards the ultimate good as existing, not in eternity, but in the future. Jews are, ex hypothesi, obstacles in the way of the realization of the supreme good; dogs and cats are not. The rest follows logically.
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
3 01 Meister Eckhart's Theology knows a "Godhead" of which no
qualities, except unity and being, 26 can be predicated; 27 it "is
1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Reason has indeed a part to play in relation to this highest field of our religious being and experience, but that part is quite secondary and subordinate. It cannot lay down the law for the religious life, it cannot determine in its own right the system of divine knowledge; it cannot school and lesson the divine love and delight; it cannot set bounds to spiritual experience or lay its yoke upon the action of the spiritual man. Its sole legitimate sphere is to explain as best it can, in its own language and to the rational and intellectual parts of man, the truths, the experiences, the laws of our suprarational and spiritual existence. That has been the work of spiritual philosophy in the East andmuch more crudely and imperfectly doneof Theology in the West, a work of great importance at moments like the present when the intellect of mankind after a long wandering is again turning towards the search for the Divine. Here there must inevitably enter a part of those operations proper to the intellect, logical reasoning, inferences from the data given by rational experience, analogies drawn from our knowledge of the apparent facts of existence, appeals even to the physical truths of science, all the apparatus of the intelligent mind in its ordinary workings. But this is the weakest part of spiritual philosophy. It convinces the rational mind only where the intellect is already predisposed to belief, and even if it convinces, it cannot give the true knowledge. Reason is safest when it is content to take the profound truths and experiences of the spiritual being and the spiritual life, just as they are given to it, and throw them into such form, order and language as will make them the most intelligible or the least unintelligible to the reasoning mind. Even then it is not quite safe, for it is apt to harden the order into an intellectual system and to present the form as if it were the essence. And, at best, it has to use a language which is not the very tongue of the suprarational truth but its inadequate translation and, since it is not the ordinary tongue either of the rational intelligence, it is open to non-understanding or misunderstanding by the ordinary reason of mankind. It is well-known to the experience of the spiritual seeker that even the highest philosophising cannot give a true inner knowledge, is not the spiritual light, does not open the gates of experience. All it can do is to address the consciousness of man through his intellect and, when it has done, to say, I have tried to give you the truth in a form and system which will make it intelligible and possible to you; if you are intellectually convinced or attracted, you can now seek the real knowledge, but you must seek it by other means which are beyond my province.
But there is another level of the religious life in which reason might seem justified in interfering more independently and entitled to assume a superior role. For as there is the suprarational life in which religious aspiration finds entirely what it seeks, so too there is also the infrarational life of the instincts, impulses, sensations, crude emotions, vital activities from which all human aspiration takes its beginning. These too feel the touch of the religious sense in man, share its needs and experience, desire its satisfactions. Religion includes this satisfaction also in its scope, and in what is usually called religion it seems even to be the greater part, sometimes to an external view almost the whole; for the supreme purity of spiritual experience does not appear or is glimpsed only through this mixed and turbid current. Much impurity, ignorance, superstition, many doubtful elements must form as the result of this contact and union of our highest tendencies with our lower ignorant nature. Here it would seem that reason has its legitimate part; here surely it can intervene to enlighten, purify, rationalise the play of the instincts and impulses. It would seem that a religious reformation, a movement to substitute a pure and rational religion for one that is largely infrarational and impure, would be a distinct advance in the religious development of humanity. To a certain extent this may be, but, owing to the peculiar nature of the religious being, its entire urge towards the suprarational, not without serious qualifications, nor can the rational mind do anything here that is of a high positive value.
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the theologies of the various religions, salvation is also regarded as a deliverance out of folly, evil and misery into happiness, goodness and wisdom. But political and economic means are held to be subsidiary to the cultivation of personal holiness, to the acquiring of personal merit and to the maintenance of personal faith in some divine principle or person having power, in one way or another, to forgive and sanctify the individual soul. Moreover the end to be achieved is not regarded as existing in some Utopian future period, beginning, say, in the twenty-second century or perhaps even a little earlier, if our favourite politicians remain in power and make the right laws; the end exists in heaven. This last phrase has two very different meanings. For what is probably the majority of those who profess the great historical religions, it signifies and has always signified a happy posthumous condition of indefinite personal survival, conceived of as a reward for good behaviour and correct belief and a compensation for the miseries inseparable from life in a body. But for those who, within the various religious traditions, have accepted the Perennial Philosophy as a theory and have done their best to live it out in practice, heaven is something else. They aspire to be delivered out of separate selfhood in time and into eternity as realized in the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Since the Ground can and ought to be unitively known in the present life (whose ultimate end and purpose is nothing but this knowledge), heaven is not an exclusively posthumous condition. He only is completely saved who is delivered here and now. As to the means to salvation, these are simultaneously ethical, intellectual and spiritual and have been summed up with admirable clarity and economy in the Buddhas Eightfold Path. Complete deliverance is conditional on the following: first, Right Belief in the all too obvious truth that the cause of pain and evil is craving for separative, ego-centred existence, with its corollary that there can be no deliverance from evil, whether personal or collective, except by getting rid of such craving and the obsession of I, me, mine"; second, Right Will, the will to deliver oneself and others; third, Right Speech, directed by compassion and charity towards all sentient beings; fourth, Right Action, with the aim of creating and maintaining peace and good will; fifth, Right Means of Livelihood, or the choice only of such professions as are not harmful, in their exercise, to any human being or, if possible, any living creature; sixth, Right Effort towards Self-control; seventh, Right Attention or Recollectedness, to be practised in all the circumstances of life, so that we may never do evil by mere thoughtlessness, because we know not what we do"; and, eighth, Right Contemplation, the unitive knowledge of the Ground, to which recollectedness and the ethical self-naughting prescribed in the first six branches of the Path give access. Such then are the means which it is within the power of the human being to employ in order to achieve mans final end and be saved. Of the means which are employed by the divine Ground for helping human beings to reach their goal, the Buddha of the Pali scriptures (a teacher whose dislike of footless questions is no less intense than that of the severest experimental physicist of the twentieth century) declines to speak. All he is prepared to talk about is sorrow and the ending of sorrow the huge brute fact of pain and evil and the other, no less empirical fact that there is a method, by which the individual can free himself from evil and do something to diminish the sum of evil in the world around him. It is only in Mahayana Buddhism that the mysteries of grace are discussed with anything like the fulness of treatment accorded to the subject in the speculations of Hindu and especially Christian Theology. The primitive, Hinayana teaching on deliverance is simply an elaboration of the Buddhas last recorded words: Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your own salvation with diligence. As in the well-known passage quoted below, all the stress is upon personal effort.
Therefore, Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, shall not look for refuge to anyone beside themselves it is they who shall reach the very topmost Height. But they must be anxious to learn.
1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
and Theology of those days, began to give way to a Cosmogenesis:
a transformation that was no doubt less heavily loaded with prac-
1.20 - TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Choosing Luther and Calvin instead of the spiritual reformers who were their contemporaries, Protestant Europe got the kind of Theology it liked. But it also got, along with other unanticipated by-products, the Thirty Years War, capitalism and the first rudiments of modern Germany. If we wish, Dean Inge has recently written, to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay the miseries which Germany has brought upon the world I am more and more convinced that the worst evil genius of that country is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but Martin Luther It (Lutheranism) worships a God who is neither just nor merciful The Law of Nature, which ought to be the court of appeal against unjust authority, is identified (by Luther) with the existing order of society, to which absolute obe thence is due. And so on. Right belief is the first branch of the Eightfold Path leading to deliverance; the root and primal cause of bondage is wrong belief, or ignorancean ignorance, let us remember, which is never completely invincible, but always, in the last analysis, a matter of will. If we dont know, it is because we find it more convenient not to know. Original ignorance is the same thing as original sin.
next chapter: 1.21 - IDOLATRY
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Because of this indwelling of the Logos, writes Mr. Kenneth Saunders in his valuable study of the Fourth Gospel, the Gita and the Lotus Sutra, all things have a reality. They are sacraments, not illusions like the phenomenal word of the Vedanta. That the Logos is in things, lives and conscious minds, and they in the Logos, was taught much more emphatically and explicitly by the Vedantists than by the author of the Fourth Gospel; and the same idea is, of course, basic in the Theology of Taoism. But though all things in fact exist at the intersection between a divine manifestation and a ray of the unmanifest Godhead, it by no means follows that everyone always knows that this is so. On the contrary, the vast majority of human beings believe that their own selfness and the objects around them possess a reality in themselves, wholly independent of the Logos. This belief leads them to identify their being with their sensations, cravings and private notions and in its turn this self-identification with what they are not effectively walls them off from divine influence and the very possibility of deliverance. To most of us on most occasions things are not symbols and actions are not sacramental; and we have to teach ourselves, consciously and deliberately, to remember that they are.
The world is imprisoned in its own activity, except when actions are performed as worship of God. Therefore you must perform every action sacramentally (as if it were yajna, the sacrifice that, in its divine Logos-essence, is identical with the Godhead to whom it is offered), and be free from all attachment to results.
1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
11. It is not safe to swim in ones clothes, nor should a slave of passion touch Theology.
12. The cell of the solitary is the confines of his body; he has within a shrine of knowledge.
1.30 - Concerning the linking together of the supreme trinity among the virtues., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
4 Lit. Theology.
5 Cf. James i, 21. Another reading is: the consubstantial Word.
1.36 - Treats of these words in the Paternoster Dimitte nobis debita nostra., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
anyone, for example, who has got as far as reading Theology must not descend and read philosophy-
that is their kind of honour, according to which you must always be going up and never going down.
1.41 - Isis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Church as well as to the pale abstractions of her Theology.
Certainly in art the figure of Isis suckling the infant Horus is so
1.55 - The Transference of Evil, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
metaphysics and the subtleties of Theology.
The devices to which the cunning and selfish savage resorts for the
1.68 - The God-Letters, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
As to Magick, the Gnostics were chili con carne plus molten platinum plus a few girls I have known on the vowels. Their incantations con- sist almost entirely of combinations of these.[132] Seven at a time is very frequent; in fact it seems sometimes as if their theurgy depended on variations of these combinations. Their Theology, too. Never mind that just now!
But the consonants? That is a harder nut to crack.
1.70 - Morality 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But the theological conception has steered a very wrong course, even for Theology; brought in Divine Injunction, and Conscience, and a whole host of bogeys. (Candles in hollow turnips deceive nobody out- side a churchyard!)
So we find ourselves discussing a "palely wandering" phantom idea whose connotations or extensions depend on the time, the place, and the victim. We know "the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban," and the difference between Old and New Testament morality in such matters as polygamy and diet; while the fur flies when two learned professors go down with a smart attack of Odium Theologicum, and are ready to destroy a civilization on the question of whether it is right or wrong for a priest (or presbyter? or minister?) to wear a white nightie or a black in the pulpit.
1.74 - Obstacles on the Path, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The one passage in his snivelling Apologia which impressed me was a tale of his childhood before the real poet, lover and mystic had been buried beneath the dung-heap of Theology. He tells us that he read the Arabian Nights in a heavily Bowdlerized edition, bet you a tosser! and was enchanted, like the rest of us, so that he sighed "I wish these tales were true!" The same thing happened to me; but I set my teeth, and muttered: "I will make these tales true!"
Well, I have, haven't I? You said it yourself!
1958-06-18 - Philosophy, religion, occultism, spirituality, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being,religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation and experience: the three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue of entry. All these four powers have worked by a simultaneous action, more or less connected, sometimes in a variable collaboration, sometimes in dispute with each other, sometimes in a separate independence. Religion has admitted an occult element in its ritual, ceremony, sacraments; it has leaned upon spiritual thinking, deriving from it sometimes a creed or Theology, sometimes its supporting spiritual philosophy,the former, ordinarily, is the occidental method, the latter the oriental: but spiritual experience is the final aim and achievement of religion, its sky and summit. But also religion has sometimes banned occultism or reduced its own occult element to a minimum; it has pushed away the philosophic mind as a dry intellectual alien, leaned with all its weight on creed and dogma, pietistic emotion and fervour and moral conduct; it has reduced to a minimum or dispensed with spiritual realisation and experience. Occultism has sometimes put forward a spiritual aim as its goal, and followed occult knowledge and experience as an approach to it, formulated some kind of mystic philosophy: but more often it has confined itself to occult knowledge and practice without any spiritual vistas; it has turned to thaumaturgy or mere magic or even deviated into diabolism. Spiritual philosophy has very usually leaned on religion as its support or its way to experience; it has been the outcome of realisation and experience or built its structures as an approach to it: but it has also rejected all aid,or all impediment,of religion and proceeded in its own strength, either satisfied with mental knowledge or confident to discover its own path of experience and effective discipline. Spiritual experience has used all the three means as a starting-point, but it has also dispensed with them all, relying on its own pure strength: discouraging occult knowledge and powers as dangerous lures and entangling obstacles, it has sought only the pure truth of the spirit; dispensing with philosophy, it has arrived instead through the hearts fervour or a mystic inward spiritualisation; putting behind it all religious creed, worship and practice and regarding them as an inferior stage or first approach, it has passed on, leaving behind it all these supports, nude of all these trappings, to the sheer contact of the spiritual Reality. All these variations were necessary; the evolutionary endeavour of Nature has experimented on all lines in order to find her true way and her whole way towards the supreme consciousness and the integral knowledge.
For each of these means or approaches corresponds to something in our total being and therefore to something necessary to the total aim of her evolution. There are four necessities of mans self-expansion if he is not to remain this being of the surface ignorance seeking obscurely after the truth of things and collecting and systematising fragments and sections of knowledge, the small limited and half-competent creature of the cosmic Force which he now is in his phenomenal nature. He must know himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities: but to know himself and the world completely he must go behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind the material front of the universe: that is the field of occultism, if we take the word in its widest significance. He must know also the hidden Power or Powers that control the world: if there is a Cosmic Self or Spirit or a Creator, he must be able to enter into relation with It or Him and be able to remain in whatever contact or communion is possible, get into some kind of tune with the master Beings of the universe or with the universal Being and its universal will or a supreme Being and His supreme will, follow the law It gives him and the assigned or revealed aim of his life and conduct, raise himself towards the highest height that It demands of him in his life now or in his existence hereafter; if there is no such universal or supreme Spirit or Being, he must know what there is and how to lift himself to it out of his present imperfection and impotence. This approach is the aim of religion: its purpose is to link the human with the Divine and in so doing sublimate the thought and life and flesh so that they may admit the rule of the soul and spirit. But this knowledge must be something more than a creed or a mystic revelation; his thinking mind must be able to accept it, to correlate it with the principle of things and the observed truth of the universe: this is the work of philosophy, and in the field of the truth of the spirit it can only be done by a spiritual philosophy, whether intellectual in its method or intuitive. But all knowledge and endeavour can reach its fruition only if it is turned into experience and has become a part of the consciousness and its established operations; in the spiritual field all this religious, occult or philosophical knowledge and endeavour must, to bear fruition, end in an opening up of the spiritual consciousness, in experiences that found and continually heighten, expand and enrich that consciousness and in the building of a life and action that is in conformity with the truth of the spirit: this is the work of spiritual realisation and experience.
1958-09-24 - Living the truth - Words and experience, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The means by which this need [of intellectual understanding] can be satisfied and with which our nature of mind has provided us is philosophy, and in this field it must be a spiritual philosophy. Such systems have arisen in numbers in the East; for almost always, wherever there has been a considerable spiritual development, there has arisen from it a philosophy justifying it to the intellect. The method was at first an intuitive seeing and an intuitive expression, as in the fathomless thought and profound language of the Upanishads, but afterwards there was developed a critical method, a firm system of dialectics, a logical organisation. The later philosophies were an intellectual account1 or a logical justification of what had been found by inner realisation; or they provided themselves with a mental ground or a systematised method for realisation and experience.2 In the West where the syncretic tendency of the consciousness was replaced by the analytic and separative, the spiritual urge and the intellectual reason parted company almost at the outset; philosophy took from the first a turn towards a purely intellectual and ratiocinative explanation of things. Nevertheless, there were systems like the Pythagorean, Stoic, and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its dynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical idea can impress on life and action by an abstract and secondary influence. Religion has supported itself in the West not by philosophy but by a credal Theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer force of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary adjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour. It is true that a philosophic development of spiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can be reached more directly and completely by intuition and by a concrete inner contact. It must also be said that the critical control of the intellect over spiritual experience can be hampering and unreliable, for it is an inferior light turned upon a field of higher illumination; the true controlling power is an inner discrimination, a psychic sense and tact, a superior intervention of guidance from above or an innate and luminous inner guidance. But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.
The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 878-80
1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
legitimated as religious, moral, true, just, etc., and an appeal to heart and feeling either means nothing or means something bad. This should hardly need enforcing. Can any experience be more trite than that feelings and hearts are also bad, evil, godless, mean, etc.? That the heart is the source only of such feelings is stated in the words: 'From the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, blasphemy, etc.' In such times when 'scientific' Theology and philosophy make the heart and feeling the criterion of what is good, moral, and religious, it is necessary to remind them of these trite experiences; just as it is nowadays necessary to repeat that thinking is the characteristic property by which man is distinguished from the beasts, and that he has feeling in common with them.
401 What the sentient soul finds within it is, on one hand, the naturally immediate, as 'ideally' in it and made its own. On the other hand and conversely, what originally belongs to the central individuality (which as further deepened and enlarged is the conscious ego and free mind) gets the features of the natural corporeity, and is so felt. In this way we have two spheres of feeling. One, where what at first is a corporeal affection (e.g. of the eye or of any bodily part whatever) is made feeling
1f.lovecraft - In the Walls of Eryx, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
have no use for the crystals except to pray to. Barring Theology, they
would let us take all we wantand even if they learned to tap them for
1f.lovecraft - The Unnamable, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Theologypreferably those of the Congregationalists, with whatever
modifications tradition and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may supply.
1.jk - Endymion - Book IV, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
(line 885-86): A curious importation from Hebrew Theology into a subject from Greek mythology. Compare St. Matthew, X, 29: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father." Or, as made familiar to our childhood by the popular hymn-wright,---
'A little sparrow cannot fall,
1.rb - Bishop Blougram's Apology, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
First, therefore, overhaul Theology!
Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
1.rb - Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
object:1.rb - Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island
author class:Robert Browning
--
"revealed Theology"\; natural Theology being that system
of thought about God which man arrives at through the
--
all Theology was "natural Theology"--that is, man-made.
Their favourite theory was that all religion was a projection
--
to Browning is true Theology: the Theology of a God of Love.
This comes to man (as to David in Saul) by revelation.
--
also noteworthy that Browning includes in Caliban's Theology
not merely most of the doctrines of primitive religions, but also
1.whitman - Song of Myself, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Sermons, creeds, Theology but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?
1.whitman - Song Of Myself- XLII, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Sermons, creeds, Theologybut the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?
1.whitman - Song Of The Broad-Axe, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
What are your Theology, tuition, society, traditions, statute-books,
now?
2.00 - BIBLIOGRAPHY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE. On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology. Translated with an introduction by C. E. Rolt (London, 1920).
ECKHART, MEISTER. Works, translated by C. B. Evans (London, 1924).
--
TENNANT, F. R. Philosophical Theology (Cambridge, 1923).
Theologia Germanica. Winkworths translation (new edition, London, 1937).
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
If, as Sankhya and Christian Theology say, there are millions of
different Purushas, if the real man in me is different and separate
--
her ablest exponents to support the absurdity. Christian Theology
was inconsistent enough when it degraded man to the dust as
--
Christian Theology, not merely of the same kind and nature as
in the Sankhya teaching, but absolutely identical. The sense of
2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
affirmed an omnipresent Divinity and Reality pure, perfect and blissful, without whom, apart from whom nothing could exist, since all exists only by him and in his being. All thinking on the subject that is not atheistic or materialistic or else primitive and anthropomorphic, has to start from this admission or to arrive at this fundamental concept. It is true that certain religions seem to suppose an extracosmic Deity who has created a world outside and apart from his own existence; but when they come to construct a Theology or spiritual philosophy, these too admit omnipresence or immanence, - for this omnipresence imposes itself, is a necessity of spiritual thinking. If there is such a Divinity, Self or Reality, it must be everywhere, one and indivisible, nothing can possibly exist apart from its existence; nothing can be born from another than That; there can be nothing unsupported by That, independent of It, unfilled by the breath and power of Its being. It has been held indeed that the ignorance, the imperfection, the suffering of this world are not supported by the Divine Existence; but we have then to suppose two Gods, an Ormuzd of the good and an Ahriman of the evil or, perhaps, a perfect supracosmic and immanent Being and an imperfect cosmic Demiurge or separate undivine Nature. This is a possible conception but improbable to our highest intelligence, - it can only be at most a subordinate aspect, not the original truth or the whole truth of things; nor can we suppose that the one Self and Spirit in all and the one Power creator of all are different, contrary in the character of their being, separate in their will and purpose. Our reason tells us, our intuitive consciousness feels, and their witness is confirmed by spiritual experience, that the one pure and absolute Existence exists in all things and beings even as all things and beings exist in It and by It, and nothing can be or happen without this indwelling and all-supporting
Presence.
2.04 - The Living Church and Christ-Omega, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
centre, determined by Theology, and the universal cosmic
centre postulated by anthropogenesis: these two focal points
2.07 - The Cup, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
69:Mediaeval philosophers when hopelessly astray because their Theology necessitated the reference of all things to the standard of men's welfare.
70:They even became stupid: Bernardin de St. Pierre (was it not?) said that the goodness of God was such that wherever men had built a great city, He had placed a river to assist them in conveying merchandise. But the truth is that in no way can we imagine the Universe as devised. If horses were made for men to ride, were not men made for worms to eat?
2.08 - The Sword, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Bible has been mistranslated by perfectly competent scholars because they had to consider the current Theology. The most glaring example is the "Song of Solomon," a typical piece of Oriental erotic1 By interpreting thus doggishly, the bark of a dog will remind you, for the next week or two, of this.
ism. But since to admit that it was this would never do for a canonical book, they had to pretend that it was symbolical.
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
German philosophy really is at bottom, Theology _in disguise_.... The
Swabians are the best liars in Germany, they lie innocently.... Whence
2.2.02 - Consciousness and the Inconscient, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And again in this reading of the universe, more baffling than any unbelievable belief - credo quia incredibile, - with which ever dogmatic Theology or mystic philosophy has challenged us, man loses all his cosmic value. An infinitesimal little creature on a tiny speck of matter lost amidst a whirling multitude of stupendous universes most or all of them perhaps vacant of life and thought and made for no other end but simply to whirl, he is (justifying Scripture) even as the worm is - only an edition de luxe, with copious developments and commentaries, of the same laborious but useless text, the same minute, careful, well-arranged, painstaking but insignificant script that we see already in the ant and the termite. Individual man lasts for a few years which are in the aimless vastness of the universe of no more matter than the few days or weeks or months of the insect. The race indeed has endured for millions of years and may endure for some centuries, some thousands, myriads or millions of years longer; but what are these millions in the incalculable aeons of the cosmos? The termite perhaps was before man and may be there when he has
Consciousness and the Inconscient
2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. picked up another book, Munger's New Theology. Dr. Sarkar noticed it.
Dr. Sarkar on faith
2.22 - 1941-1943, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: There is no objection to their doing that but it should not be compulsory. It should not be called a course in metaphysics and Theology. The Life Divine is not Theology!
Religious instructions should not be made compulsory. It does not necessarily develop spirituality; many people come to spiritual life through atheism. Religious instruction makes people narrow and sectarian. My objection to this scheme is that it is academic. It would lose all its life and become dry.
2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In considering the achieved course of the evolution of the spiritual being, we have to regard it from two sides, - a consideration of the means, the lines of development utilised by Nature and a view of the actual results achieved by it in the human individual. There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being, - religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an inner spiritual realisation and experience: the three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue of entry. All these four powers have worked by a simultaneous action, more or less connected, sometimes in a variable collaboration, sometimes in dispute with each other, sometimes in a separate independence. Religion has admitted an occult element in its ritual, ceremony, sacraments; it has leaned upon spiritual thinking, deriving from it sometimes a creed or Theology, sometimes its supporting spiritual philosophy, - the former, ordinarily, is the occidental method, the latter the oriental: but spiritual experience is the final aim and achievement of religion, its sky and summit. But also religion has sometimes banned occultism or reduced its own occult element to a minimum; it has pushed away the philosophic mind as a dry intellectual alien, leaned with all its weight on creed and dogma, pietistic emotion and fervour and moral conduct; it has reduced to a minimum or dispensed with spiritual realisation and experience. Occultism has sometimes put forward a spiritual aim as its goal, and followed occult knowledge and experience as an approach to it, formulated some kind of mystic philosophy: but more often it has confined itself to occult knowledge and practice without any spiritual vistas; it has turned to thaumaturgy or mere magic or even deviated into diabolism. Spiritual philosophy has very usually leaned on religion as its support or its way to experience; it has been the outcome of realisation and experience or built its structures as an approach to it: but it has also rejected all aid - or all impediment - of religion and proceeded in its own strength, either satisfied with mental knowledge or confident to discover its own path of experience and effective discipline. Spiritual experience has used all the three means as a starting-point, but it has also dispensed with them all, relying on its own pure strength: discouraging occult knowledge and powers as dangerous lures and entangling obstacles, it has sought only the pure truth of the spirit; dispensing with philosophy, it has arrived instead through the heart's fervour or a mystic inward spiritualisation; putting behind it all religious creed, worship and practice and regarding them as an inferior stage or first approach, it has passed on, leaving behind it all these supports, nude of all these trappings, to the sheer contact of the spiritual Reality. All these variations were necessary; the evolutionary endeavour of Nature has experimented on all lines in order to find her true way and her whole way towards the supreme consciousness and the integral knowledge.
For each of these means or approaches corresponds to something in our total being and therefore to something necessary to the total aim of her evolution. There are four necessities of man's self-expansion if he is not to remain this being of the surface ignorance seeking obscurely after the truth of things and collecting and systematising fragments and sections of knowledge, the small limited and half-competent creature of the cosmic Force which he now is in his phenomenal nature. He must know himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities: but to know himself and the world completely he must go behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and psychic being and its powers and movements and the universal laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind the material front of the universe: that is the field of occultism, if we take the word in its widest significance. He must know also the hidden Power or Powers that control the world: if there is a Cosmic Self or Spirit or a Creator, he must be able to enter into relation with It or Him and be able to remain in whatever contact or communion is possible, get into some kind of tune with the master Beings of the universe or with the universal Being and its universal will or a supreme Being and His supreme will, follow the law It gives him and the assigned or revealed aim of his life and conduct, raise himself towards the highest height that It demands of him in his life now or in his existence hereafter; if there is no such universal or supreme Spirit or Being, he must know what there is and how to lift himself to it out of his present imperfection and impotence. This approach is the aim of religion: its purpose is to link the human with the Divine and in so doing sublimate the thought and life and flesh so that they may admit the rule of the soul and spirit. But this knowledge must be something more than a creed or a mystic revelation; his thinking mind must be able to accept it, to correlate it with the principle of things and the observed truth of the universe: this is the work of philosophy, and in the field of the truth of the spirit it can only be done by a spiritual philosophy, whether intellectual in its method or intuitive. But all knowledge and endeavour can reach its fruition only if it is turned into experience and has become a part of the consciousness and its established operations; in the spiritual field all this religious, occult or philosophical knowledge and endeavour must, to bear fruition, end in an opening up of the spiritual consciousness, in experiences that found and continually heighten, expand and enrich that consciousness and in the building of a life and action that is in conformity with the truth of the spirit: this is the work of spiritual realisation and experience.
--
Stoic and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its dynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical idea can impress on life and action by an abstract and secondary influence. Religion has supported itself in the West not by philosophy but by a credal Theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer force of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary adjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour. It is true that a philosophic development of spiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can be reached more directly and completely by intuition and by a concrete inner contact. It must also be said that the critical control of the intellect over spiritual experience can be hampering and unreliable, for it is an inferior light turned upon a field of higher illumination; the true controlling power is an inner discrimination, a psychic sense and tact, a superior intervention of guidance from above or an innate and luminous inner guidance. But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.
But none of these three lines of approach can by themselves entirely fulfil the greater and ulterior intention of Nature; they cannot create in mental man the spiritual being, unless and until they open the door to spiritual experience. It is only by an inner realisation of what these approaches are seeking after, by an overwhelming experience or by many experiences building up an inner change, by a transmutation of the consciousness, by a liberation of the spirit from its present veil of mind, life and body that there can emerge the spiritual being. That is the final line of the soul's progress towards which the others are pointing and, when it is ready to disengage itself from the preliminary approaches, then the real work has begun and the turning-point of the change is no longer distant. Till then all that the human mental being has reached is a familiarity with the idea of things beyond him, with the possibility of an other-worldly movement, with the ideal of some ethical perfection; he may have made too some contact with greater Powers or Realities which help his mind or heart or life. A change there may be, but not the transmutation of the mental into the spiritual being. Religion and its thought and ethics and occult mysticism in ancient times produced the priest and the mage, the man of piety, the just man, the man of wisdom, many high points of mental manhood; but it is only after spiritual experience through the heart and mind began that we see arise the saint, the prophet, the Rishi, the Yogi, the seer, the spiritual sage and the mystic, and it is the religions in which these types of spiritual manhood came into being that have endured, covered the globe and given mankind all its spiritual aspiration and culture.
24.05 - Vision of Dante, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Dante is known as a great poet and also as a great seer: Sri Aurobindo mentions him as one of the very greatest. He names three as the supreme poets of Europe, of the very first rank: Homer of ancient Greece, Dante in the Middle Ages, and nearer to us, Shakespeare. Along with these Sri Aurobindo mentions also Valmiki of India. However I shall speak of Dante not so much as a poet but as a seer: as such he was a Traveller of the Worlds in the path of the life Divine in his own way; His poem is his autobiography. He speaks of his long journey, even like King Aswapathy in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri,as a traveller of the worlds. Dante describes his journey through the three worlds well-known in Christian Theology. He begins in this way his great poem:
I was in the middle of my life's journey, suddenly one day unexpectedly I found myself in the very heart of a mighty forest. It is a wild, grim, frightful placeselva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.
3.00 - The Magical Theory of the Universe, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
3. The basis of this Theology is given in Liber CCXX, AL vel Legis which forms
Part IV of this Book 4. Here I can only outline the matter in a very crude way; it
3.16 - THE SEVEN SEALS OR THE YES AND AMEN SONG, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
while the conscientious in spirit develops a new Theology
-and suggests that Zarathustra himself is pretty close to
3.19 - Of Dramatic Rituals, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
On the point of Theology, I doubt whether Dom Gorenflot successfully avoided
eating meat in Lent by baptising the pullet a carp. For as the sacramentby its
3.2.10 - Christianity and Theosophy, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The gospel of suffering, the obsessing sense of sin and the dramatic vital turn which goes with these things are certainly the most prominent defects of the Christian attitude, and they keep the religion even in its esoteric movements too much tied to a half-spiritualised vital movement. Christianity seems to me to have never clarified its intelligence by the spiritual light in the higher reaches of the mind; it is lacking in a spiritual philosophy and never really went beyond Theologyin spite of one or two large thinkers who were the exception rather than the rule. One has to pass beyond even the higher mind, but not to have developed the spiritual light in it leaves the instrument defective and, instead of going above the mind, one is then apt to be content to remain below receiving whatever flashes and upliftings one can from a high and far-off and very much veiled Divine. And in such a state it is easier to mistake partial deities or even, if one is not careful, undivine Powers for the Supreme.
***
3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Unified Science is a profound revision of most peoples' idea of nature; and it is stated in terms precisely of process, of becoming. The insight which Jonas then shows us is prophetic: "From the immanent direction of its total evolution there may be elicited a destination of man by whose terms the person, in the act of fulfilling himself, would at the same time realize a concern of universal substance." Unified Science proclaims this immanent direction to be increasing organization; and its destination, ectropy's highest region, to be . "Hence," Jonas continues, "would result a principle of ethics which is ultimately grounded neither in the autonomy of the self nor in the needs of the community, but in an objective assignment by the nature of things (what Theology used to call the ordo creationis) such as could still be kept faith with by the last of a dying mankind in his solitude." p. 283.2 Some call this principle Omega, others call it God.
In writing his book, Jonas was moving toward the kind of structure which Walter Lippmann has called the Public Philosophy,9 the structure which is shared by all great religions and ideologies. This structure has remained constant through all of the public philosophy's changes, from the animism of Lower Hunters, Period 1 ; through the Great Religions of the Literates, Period 5; to the emergence of the Higher Industrialists, Period 7, which the unification of sciences into a public philosophy permits and requires. In Figure IV-11 we have diagrammed this permanent ideocratic structure.
37.05 - Narada - Sanatkumara (Chhandogya Upanishad), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
RISHI Sanatkumara was once approached by Narada (evidently not yet become a Rishi), who said, "Lord, I desire to be taught by you. Please teach me." The Rishi replied, "Very well, but first tell me how much you know; then I shall tell you if you need more." Narada thereupon made out an inventory of his learning; it was a formidable list. "My Lord, this is what I have learnt: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, Atharvaveda, the Fifth Veda comprising History and Mythology; next, Grammar, Mathematics, Logic and Politics, the Science of Computing Time, Theology, Fine Arts and the Ritual Lore; Demonology, Astrology, and the Art of Predicting Fate; the Knowledge of Ancestors and of Serpents. I know all this, my Lord, and very well. This has made me master of the Word, but has not given me knowledge of the Self. I have heard that only by the knowledge of the Self can one pass beyond sorrow and pain. I am immersed in sorrow and pain, please reach me to the other shore."
Sanatkumara said, "All that you have studied and learnt is nothing but 'Name', no more than words. You have reached as far as 'Name' can take you, giving you as fruit the power to roam at will, that is, you can go unimpeded where you will. But that is about all." Then Narada asked, "Is there anything superior to Name?" "Of course, there is," replied Sanatkumara. "Then tell me about it." "Superior to Name is Speech, that is, Name with form and meaning." Thus he went on replying to the series of Narada's questions.
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Christian Theology, I am not at liberty to interpret freely the
constantly recurring word grace sometimes as the influx of the
4.01 - INTRODUCTION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[350] The Theology of kingship best known to us, and probably the most richly developed, is that of ancient Egypt, and it is these conceptions which, handed down by the Greeks, have permeated the spiritual history of the West. Pharaoh was an incarnation of God1 and a son of God.2 In him dwelt the divine life-force and procreative power, the ka: God reproduced himself in a human mother of God and was born from her as a God-man.3 As such he guaranteed the growth and prosperity of the land and the people,4 also taking it upon himself to be killed when his time was fulfilled, that is to say when his procreative power was exhausted.5
[351] Father and son were consubstantial,6 and after his death Pharaoh became the father-god again,7 because his ka was consubstantial with the father.8 The ka consisted, as it were, of Pharaohs ancestral souls, fourteen of which were regularly worshipped by him,9 corresponding to the fourteen kas of the creator-god.10 Just as Pharaoh corresponded on the human plane to the divine son, so his ka corresponded to the divine Procreator, the ka-mutef,11 the bull of his mother, and his mother corresponded to the mother of the gods (e.g., Isis).
4.01 - Sweetness in Prayer, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
2.: As these mansions are nearer the King's dwelling they are very beautiful, and so subtle are the things seen and heard in them, that, as those tell us who have tried to do so, the mind There are two kinds of contemplation: acquired or natural, and infused or supernatural. In their widest sense, including many remarkable phenomena of Natural religion, and, of course, the most wonderful manifestations recorded in the Old Testament, they form the system called Mysticism and are the proper object of Mystical Theology. Natural or acquired contemplation is based upon an idealistic turn of mind which enables the soul to gaze upon the Godhead (simple gaze, as St. Teresa calls it) without approaching Him by the laborious process of reasoning, and in so doing embraces Him with its affective powers; like a person who, devoid of technical skill, takes in and is enamoured by, the beauty of a painting. Infused contemplation is the highest act of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost of Knowledge and Wisdom. It is often impossible, nor is it always essential, to determine where acquired contemplation ends and infused contemplation begins. But it should be borne in mind that both the one and the other are operations and not merely a passive state or mere fruition. Even the highest form of contemplation, the Beatific Vision, is a supernatural act of the soul, an operation of unending duration. A ship moved by a gentle breeze is rightly said to be actually sailing though the rowers are at rest. cannot give a lucid idea of them to those inexperienced in the matter. People who have enjoyed these favours, especially if it was to any great extent, will easily comprehend me.
3.: Apparently a person must have dwelt for a long time in the former mansions before entering these; although in ordinary cases the soul must have been in the last one spoken of, yet, as you must often have heard, there is no fixed rule, for God gives when, how, and to whom He wills5-the goods are His own, and His choice wrongs no one.6' The poisonous reptiles rarely come into these rooms, and, if they enter, do more good than harm. I think it is far better for them to get in and make war on the soul in this state of prayer; were it not tempted, the devil might sometimes deceive it about divine consolations, thus injuring it far more. Besides, the soul would benefit less, because all occasions of gaining merit would be withdrawn, were it left continually absorbed in God. I am not confident that this absorption is genuine when it always remains in the same state, nor does it appear to me possible for the Holy Ghost to dwell constantly within us, to the same extent, during our earthly exile.
4.01 - The Presence of God in the World, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
most firmly established Theology of the Incarnation
there is no real independence or discordance but
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[375] It will not have escaped the reader how primitive the idea of Gods ageing and need of renewal is. It does in fact derive from ancient Egypt, though one is at a loss to imagine from what sources, other than the Bible, a Canon of Bridlington in the fifteenth century could have borrowed such a Theology. His writings at any rate allow no conjectures in this respect. There is something of a clue, however, in the alchemical tradition itself, in the idea of a corrupt arcane substance whose corruption is due to original sin. A similar idea appears in the Grail tradition of the sick king, which has close connections with the transformation mystery of the Mass. The king is the forbear of Parsifal, whom one could describe as a redeemer figure, just as in alchemy the old king has a redeemer son or becomes a redeemer himself (the lapis is the same at the beginning and at the end). Further, we must consider certain medieval speculations concerning Gods need of improvement and the transformation of the wrathful God of the Old Testament into the God of Love in the New: for, like the unicorn, he was softened by love in the lap of a virgin. Ideas of this kind are found as early as Bonaventure, the Franciscan saint, who died in 1274.82 We should also remember that, in the figurative language of the Church, God the Father was represented as an old man and his birth as a rejuvenation in the Son. In a hymn to the Church as an analogy of the Mother of God Paulinus of Nola says:
Sister and wife at once; for without the use of the body
--
[377] The contrast between senex and puer touches at more than one point on the archetype of Gods renewal in Egyptian Theology, especially when the underlying homoousia comes out as clearly as in the verses of Ephraem Syrus: The Ancient of Days, in his sublimity, dwelt as a babe in the womb.84 Thy Babe, O Virgin, is an old man; he is the Ancient of Days and precedes all time.85
[378] Nowhere in this material, however, do we find the very specific motif of Gods senescence, and the source Ripley could have used remains obscure. Even so, there is always the possibility of an autochthonous revival of the mythologem from the collective unconscious. Nelken has published a case of this kind. His patient was a primary-school teacher who suffered from paranoia. He developed a theory about a Father-God with immense procreative powers. Originally he had 550 membra virilia, but in the course of time they were reduced to three. He also possessed two scrota with three testicles each. His colossal sperm production weakened him in the end, and finally he shrank to a five-ton lump and was found chained up in a ravine. This psychologem contains the motif of ageing and loss of procreative power. The patient was the rejuvenated Father-God or his avatar.86 The embellishment of the archetypal theme is in this case completely original, so that we can safely take it as an autochthonous product.
--
. The uroboros is a very ancient pagan symbol, and we have no reason to suppose that the idea of a self-generating and self-devouring being was borrowed from Christianity, e.g., from Tertullian, although the analogy with Christ, who as the one God begets himself and voluntarily offers himself for sacrifice, and then in the rite of the Eucharist, through the words of the consecration, performs his own immolation, is very striking. The concept of the uroboros must be much older, and may ultimately go back to ancient Egyptian Theology, to the doctrine of the homoousia of the Father-God with the divine son, Pharaoh.
[424] In the Cantilena, the mythologem of the uroboros is unexpectedly, and most unusually, translated into feminine form: it is not the father and son who merge into one another, but the mother who merges with her own substance, eating her own tail or impregnating herself, as the king in the Allegoria Merlini drank his own water.223 The queen is in a condition of psychic pregnancy: the anima has become activated and sends her contents into consciousness. These correspond to the peacocks flesh and the lions blood. If the products of the anima (dreams, fantasies, visions, symptoms, chance ideas, etc.) are assimilated, digested, and integrated, this has a beneficial effect on the growth and development (nourishment) of the psyche. At the same time the cibatio and imbibitio of the anima-mother indicate the integration and completion of the entire personality. The anima becomes creative when the old king renews himself in her. Psychologically the king stands first of all for Sol, whom we have interpreted as consciousness. But over and above that he represents a dominant of consciousness, such as a generally accepted principle or a collective conviction or a traditional view. These systems and ruling ideas age and thereby forcibly bring about a metamorphosis of the gods as described in Spittelers Olympian Spring. It seldom occurs as a definite collective phenomenon. Mostly it is a change in the individual which may, under certain conditions, affect society when the time is fulfilled. In the individual it only means that the ruling idea is in need of renewal and alteration if it is to deal adequately with the changed outer or inner conditions.
5.01 - EPILOGUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
characters been able to unite in its Theology ?
For reasons of practical convenience and perhaps also of
5.04 - THE POLARITY OF ADAM, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[595] Among the pagan sources we must distinguish an Egyptian one, concerned with the very ancient tradition of the God-man Osiris and the Theology of kingship; a Persian one, derived from Gayomart; and an Indian one, derived from Purusha.206 The Christian source for alchemical ideas is the aforementioned Pauline doctrine of the first and second Adam.
5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[651] It is naturally not the task of an empirical science to evaluate such spiritual developments from the standpoint of transcendental truth. It must content itself with establishing the existence of these processes and comparing them with parallel observations in modern man. It also has the right to attempt to map out the logical structure of such psychologems. The fact that it must push forward into regions where belief and doubt argue the question of truth does not prove that it has any intention of intervening or presuming to decide what the truth is. Its truth consists solely in establishing the facts and in explaining them without prejudice within the framework of empirical psychology. Under no circumstances is it entitled to say whether the facts are valid or not, or to try to ascertain their moral or religious value. I must emphasize this so emphatically because my method is constantly suspected of being Theology or metaphysics in disguise. The difficulty for my critics seems to be that they are unable to accept the concept of psychic reality. A psychic process is something that really exists, and a psychic content is as real as a plant or an animal. In spite of the fact that the duckbilled platypus, for example, cannot be logically derived from the general premises of zoology, it nevertheless indubitably exists, improbable as this may appear to prejudiced minds. It is not a fantasy and not just somebodys opinion but an immovable fact. It is perfectly true that one can play metaphysics with psychic facts, and particularly with ideas that have always been counted as metaphysical. But the ideas themselves are not metaphysical; they are empirically verifiable phenomena that are the proper subject of the scientific method.
[652] With the statements of the Cabala, which as we have seen found their way into alchemy, our interpretation of Adam attains a scope and a depth that can hardly be surpassed. This interpretation includes Eve as the feminine principle itself. She appears chiefly as the lower, as Malchuth (kingdom), Shekinah (the Indwelling of God), or as Atarah (Crown), the equivalent below of Kether, the upper crown. She is also present in the hermaphroditic Sefiroth system, the right half of which is masculine and the left half feminine. Hence Adam Kadmon, as a personification of the whole inverted tree, is androgynous, but the system itself is a highly differentiated coniunctio symbol, and, as such, divided into three parts (three columns of three Sefiroth each). According to Hippolytus, the Naassenes divided the hermaphroditic Adam into three parts, just as they did Geryon.356 Geryon was triple-bodied357 and the possessor of the splendid cattle on the island of Erythia. Heracles slew him with an arrow, on which occasion Hera was wounded in the breast. On the same journey Heracles had threatened to shoot the sun because his rays were too hot. So the slaying of Geryon was the last in a series of three sacrileges.
5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Patristic Theology." On the other hand the raven is closely connected with Apollo
236
6.02 - STAGES OF THE CONJUNCTION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[669] The coniunctio affords another example of the gradual development of an idea in the course of the millennia. Its history flows in two main streams which are largely independent of one another: Theology and alchemy. While alchemy has, except for a few traces, been extinct for some two hundred years, Theology has put forth a new blossom in the dogma of the Assumption, from which it is evident that the stream of development has by no means come to a standstill. But the differentiation of the two streams has not yet passed beyond the framework of the archetypal hierosgamos, for the coniunctio is still represented as a union of mother and son or of a brother-sister pair. Already in the sixteenth century, however, Gerard Dorn had recognized the psychological aspect of the chymical marriage and clearly understood it as what we today would call the individuation process. This is a step beyond the bounds which were set to the coniunctio, both in ecclesiastical doctrine and in alchemy, by its archetypal symbolism. It seems to me that Dorns view represents a logical understanding of it in two respects: first because the discrepancy between the chemical operation and the psychic events associated with it could not remain permanently hidden from an attentive and critical observer, and secondly because the marriage symbolism obviously never quite satisfied the alchemical thinkers themselves, since they constantly felt obliged to make use of other uniting symbols, besides the numerous variants of the hierosgamos, to express the all but incomprehensible nature of the mystery. Thus the coniunctio is represented by the dragon embracing the woman in the grave,57 or by two animals fighting,58 or by the king dissolving in water,59 and so on. Similarly, in Chinese philosophy the meaning of yang is far from exhausted with its masculine connotation. It also means dry, bright, and the south side of the mountain, just as the feminine yin means damp, dark, and the north side of the mountain.
[670] Although the esoteric symbolism of the coniunctio occupies a prominent position, it does not cover all aspects of the mysterium. In addition we have to consider the symbolism of death and the grave, and the motif of conflict. Obviously, very different if not contradictory symbolisms were needed to give an adequate description of the paradoxical nature of the conjunction. In such a situation one can conclude with certainty that none of the symbols employed suffices to express the whole. One therefore feels compelled to seek a formula in which the various aspects can be brought together without contradiction. Dorn attempted to do this with the means that were then at his disposal. He could do so the more easily as the current idea of correspondentia came to his aid. For a man of those times there was no intellectual difficulty in postulating a truth which was the same in God, in man, and in matter. With the help of this idea he could see at once that the reconciliation of hostile elements and the union of alchemical opposites formed a correspondence to the unio mentalis which took place simultaneously in the mind of man, and not only in man but in God (that He may be one in All). Dorn correctly recognized that the entity in which the union took place is the psychological authority which I have called the self. The unio mentalis, the interior oneness which today we call individuation, he conceived as a psychic equilibration of opposites in the overcoming of the body, a state of equanimity transcending the bodys affectivity and instinctuality.60 The spirit (animus), which is to unite with the soul, he called a spiracle [spiraculum] of eternal life, a sort of window into eternity (Leibniz), whereas the soul is an organ of the spirit and the body an instrument of the soul. The soul stands between good and evil and has the option of both. It animates the body by a natural union, just as, by a supernatural union, it is endowed with life by the spirit.61
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
The snake, like the devil in Christian Theology, represents the
shadow, and one which goes far beyond anything personal and
--
Names and the Mystical Theology. Translated by C. E. Rolt.
London, 1920.
--
. "Earth Spirit aud Divine Spirit in Patristic Theology." In:
Spirit and Nature. (Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, 1.) Trans-
APPENDIX I - Curriculum of A. A., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Sword of Song. ::: A study of Christian Theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. ::: A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Averroes Search, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
but he noted that Theology was a subject totally inaccessible to Abulcasim.
149Others who had also noticed this urged Abulcasim to relate some
BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
acknowledged standards of Theology and modern science, that no proof which tends to show that these
standards often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
the shackles of Theology, Science has embraced the opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret
Nature on purely materialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ages -- the
--
and Theology. And now our
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 795 OLD MASONIC SYMBOLISM.
--
could the writer do except what is being done? Namely, since Theology places the Deluge 2448 B.C.,
and the World's Creation only 5890 years ago; and since the accurate researches by the methods of
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
which are embodied in Vol. 1, on Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to be questioned here, as
Science will be in the Addenda (Part III.). Since our doctrines differ so widely from the current ideas
of both Materialism and Theology, the Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the attacks of either
or of both.
--
or false. And as Theology and materialism have combined together to destroy the old gods of antiquity
and seek to disfigure every old philosophical conception, it is but just that the lovers of old wisdom
--
OUR present quarrel is exclusively with Theology. The Church enforces belief in a personal god and a
personal devil, while Occultism shows the fallacy of such a belief. And though for the Pantheists and
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transformation of the divine alter ego into the grotesque Satan of their Theology.
As the whole philosophy of the problem of evil hangs upon the correct comprehension of the
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during Vedic times, nor yet far later in China. But Christian Theology had to be protected and saved.
This was only natural. But why should truth be sacrificed in order to protect from destruction the
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however, is again referred to the DEVIL in Theology, the mythical father of Evil being said to "fall like
lightning." Unfortunately for this interpretation, the "Son of Man," or Christ, is expected, on the
--
Behemoth* is the principle of Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of
him that "Behemoth is the chief (principle) of the ways of God" (xl. 19) -- "Principium viarum Domini
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Christian Theology.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-2-04.htm (11 von 17) [06.05.2003 03:36:37]
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not entirely forgotten in Theology. Nevertheless, the spirituality of those much abused "Sons of Light"
which is Darkness, must be evidently as great in comparison with that of the Angels next in order, as
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decline nowadays as they did ten years ago. Science and Theology are against us: therefore we question
both, and have to do so in self-defence. On the strength of hazy metaphors scattered throughout the
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insecure grounds Christian Theology built its dogmatic Epos of the War in Heaven. It did more: it used
the symbolical visions, intelligible only to the Initiates, as pillars upon which to support the whole
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In this, Christian Theology, although following slavishly in the steps of Paganism, was only true to its
own time-honoured policy. It had to isolate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do
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the one God chosen out of the many, and Satan, were both anthropomorphised. But Theology seems to
have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating and finally analysing all that is artificially
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had the significance given to it by Theology; if that
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
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the earth -- hence everything living on it -- we will put another question. We are told by Theology, as
by Science, that the animal was on earth far earlier than man? We ask the former: How did it
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evil, but Theology cannot admit this philosophical truth. Teaching the dogma of the Fallen Angels in
its dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner-stone and pillar of the dogma of
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Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The Aryans had Brahma (in later Theology)
precipitated by Siva into the Abyss of Darkness, etc., etc. But the fall of all these Logoi and Demiurgi
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Pythagoras and Plato -- got the elements of their Theology from those hieroglyphics, he is right in one
sense, and wrong in another; for he errs in accuracy. The Secret Doctrine teaches us that the arts,
sciences, Theology, and especially the philosophy of every nation which preceded the last universally
known, but not universal Deluge, had been recorded ideographically from the primitive oral records of
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
comparative Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the clever forgery (on leaves inserted in
old Puranic MSS.), in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard
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by the word God, not the crude anthropomorphism which is still the backbone of our current Theology,
but the symbolic conception of that which is Life and Motion of the Universe, to know which in
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* Called by Christian Theology: Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc.
** "Pilgrim" is the appellation given to our Monad (the two in one) during its cycle of incarnations. It
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beginning or end in time." It is only daring Theology -- never Science or philosophy -- which seeks to
gauge the Infinite and unveil the Fathomless and Unknowable.
--
Christian Theology, has no meaning to the Asiatic ear, except in its application to the ONE existence;
nor is
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Latin Theology to watch over all the promontories and gulfs, in the Esoteric System, the Dhyanis
watch successively over one of the Rounds and the great Root-races of our planetary chain. They are,
--
its liberation from anthropomorphic Theology. Science, it is true, contents itself with tracing or
postulating the signs of universal life, and has not yet been bold enough even to whisper "Anima
--
converted Hindu. The esoteric Christos in the gnosis is, of course, sexless, but in exoteric Theology he
is male and female.
--
by side with an Archangel -- as described in Theology -- a fiend. Hence a certain reason to depreciate a
lower "double," immersed far deeper in matter than its original. But there is still as little cause to
--
Powers, as stated from the very beginning. Christian Theology admits and even enforces belief in
such, but makes an arbitrary division and refers to them as "Angels" and "Devils." Science denies the
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Besides which, even the Roman Catholic Theology speaks of "seventy planets that preside over the
destinies of the nations of this globe"; and, save the erroneous application, there is more truth in this
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and Spheres" have been transformed by sectarian Theology into the rebellious angels of the Christians,
who took them from the Seven Devs of the Magi, without understanding the significance of the
--
of the Circle, that made a reconciliation between philosophy and Theology possible -- on condition that
the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because it has so unwisely rejected
the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that Christian Theology has evolved its self-created
human and personal God, the monstrous Head from whence flow in two streams the dogmas of
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indeed, that which made the Scientists win the day over Theology in the Great "Conflict between
Religion and Science," was precisely the argument that neither the identity of that substance, nor the
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precisely in the same way as Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Theology do.
In a work by Mr. S. Laing, considered a standard book on Science, "Modern Science and Modern
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Biblical Theology.
Nor ought the Esoteric Chronology to frighten any one; for, with regard to figures, the greatest
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
by exact science, rejecting as it does tradition; while for Theology, which, under the guidance of the
crafty Popes, has put a brand on every fragment of literature that does not bear the imprimatur of the
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and was made out later by Christian Theology to be the serpent and the Devil. She-He (Yah-hovah) is
the supernal (Heh, and Eve). This Yah-hovah then or Jehovah, is identical with our Chaos -- Father,
--
traced, and figure in the Christian Theology; defended by Papists, they are stoutly denied by the
Protestants only at their own risk and peril. Two instances may be given.
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Jehovah and Cain ONE -- that Cain who is referred to in Theology as the "murderer" and the LIAR to
God! Jehovah tempts the King of Israel to number the people, and Satan tempts him to do the same in
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echoes -- distorted out of recognition by exotericism and Theology -- of the universal and
philosophical dogmas in nature, so well understood by the primitive Sages. We find the same
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Testament, Christian Theology and the ancient Gentile attitude of thought -- those who would learn
more of it are referred to Vol. II. of ISIS UNVEILED, chap. x. See also several sections in Book II.,
--
pearl of Christ's religion degraded into Christian Theology, may indeed be said to have chosen a strange
and unfitting shell to be born in and evolved from.
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mundane god, who is made to swallow all others in the latest Theology -- by the arbitrary decision of
his special ministers.
BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
AUGUSTINE COMES NOW TO THE THIRD KIND OF Theology, THAT IS, THE NATURAL, AND TAKES UP THE QUESTION, WHETHER THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS OF THE NATURAL Theology IS OF ANY AVAIL TOWARDS SECURING BLESSEDNESS IN THE LIFE TO COME. THIS QUESTION HE PREFERS TO DISCUSS WITH THE PLATONISTS, BECAUSE THE PLATONIC SYSTEM IS "FACILE PRINCEPS" AMONG PHILOSOPHIES, AND MAKES THE NEAREST APPROXIMATION TO CHRISTIAN TRUTH. IN PURSUING THIS ARGUMENT, HE FIRST REFUTES APULEIUS, AND ALL WHO MAINTAIN THAT THE DEMONS SHOULD BE WORSHIPPED AS MESSENGERS AND MEDIATORS BETWEEN GODS AND MEN; DEMONSTRATING THAT BY NO POSSIBILITY CAN MEN BE RECONCILED TO GOOD GODS BY DEMONS, WHO ARE THE SLAVES OF VICE, AND WHO DELIGHT IN AND PATRONIZE WHAT GOOD AND WISE MEN ABHOR AND CONDEMN,THE BLASPHEMOUS FICTIONS OF POETS, THEATRICAL EXHIBITIONS, AND MAGICAL ARTS.
1. That the question of natural Theology is to be discussed with those philosophers who sought a more excellent wisdom.
We shall require to apply our mind with far greater intensity to the present question than was requisite in the solution and unfolding of the questions handled in the preceding books; for it is not with ordinary men, but with philosophers that we must confer concerning the Theology which they call natural. For it is not like the fabulous, that is, the theatrical; nor the civil, that is, the urban Theology: the one of which displays the crimes of the gods, whilst the other manifests their criminal desires, which demonstrate them to be rather malign demons than gods. It is, we say, with philosophers we have to confer with respect to this Theology,men whose very name, if rendered into Latin, signifies those who profess the love of wisdom. Now, if wisdom is God, who made all things, as is attested by the divine authority and truth,[291] then the philosopher is a lover of God. But since the thing itself, which is called by this name, exists not in all who glory in the name,for it does not follow, of course, that[Pg 306] all who are called philosophers are lovers of true wisdom,we must needs select from the number of those with whose opinions we have been able to acquaint ourselves by reading, some with whom we may not unworthily engage in the treatment of this question. For I have not in this work undertaken to refute all the vain opinions of the philosophers, but only such as pertain to Theology, which Greek word we understand to mean an account or explanation of the divine nature. Nor, again, have I undertaken to refute all the vain theological opinions of all the philosophers, but only of such of them as, agreeing in the belief that there is a divine nature, and that this divine nature is concerned about human affairs, do nevertheless deny that the worship of the one unchangeable God is sufficient for the obtaining of a blessed life after death, as well as at the present time; and hold that, in order to obtain that life, many gods, created, indeed, and appointed to their several spheres by that one God, are to be worshipped. These approach nearer to the truth than even Varro; for, whilst he saw no difficulty in extending natural Theology in its entirety even to the world and the soul of the world, these acknowledge God as existing above all that is of the nature of soul, and as the Creator not only of this visible world, which is often called heaven and earth, but also of every soul whatsoever, and as Him who gives blessedness to the rational soul,of which kind is the human soul,by participation in His own unchangeable and incorporeal light. There is no one, who has even a slender knowledge of these things, who does not know of the Platonic philosophers, who derive their name from their master Plato. Concerning this Plato, then, I will briefly state such things as I deem necessary to the present question, mentioning beforeh and those who preceded him in time in the same department of literature.
2. Concerning the two schools of philosophers, that is, the Italic and Ionic, and their founders.
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5. That it is especially with the Platonists that we must carry on our disputations on matters of Theology, their opinions being preferable to those of all other philosophers.
If, then, Plato defined the wise man as one who imitates, knows, loves this God, and who is rendered blessed through fellowship with Him in His own blessedness, why discuss with the other philosophers? It is evident that none come nearer to us than the Platonists. To them, therefore, let that fabulous Theology give place which delights the minds of men with the crimes of the gods; and that civil Theology also, in which impure demons, under the name of gods, have seduced the peoples of the earth given up to earthly pleasures, desiring to be honoured by the errors of men, and, by filling the minds of their worshippers with impure desires, exciting them to make the representation of their crimes one of the rites of their worship, whilst they themselves found in the spectators of these exhibitions a most pleasing spectacle,a Theology in which, whatever was honourable in the temple, was defiled by its mixture with the obscenity of the theatre, and whatever was base in the theatre was vindicated by the abominations of the temples. To these philosophers also the interpretations of Varro must give place, in which he explains the sacred rites as having reference to heaven and earth, and to the seeds and operations of perishable things; for, in the first place, those rites have not the signification which he would have men believe is attached to them, and therefore truth does not follow him in his attempt so to interpret them; and even if they had this signification, still those things ought not to be worshipped by the rational soul as its god which are placed below it in the scale of nature, nor ought the soul to prefer to itself as gods things to which the true God has given it the preference. The same must be said of those writings pertaining to the sacred rites, which Numa Pompilius took care to conceal by causing them to be buried along with himself, and which,[Pg 313] when they were afterwards turned up by the plough, were burned by order of the senate. And, to treat Numa with all honour, let us mention as belonging to the same rank as these writings that which Alexander of Macedon wrote to his mother as communicated to him by Leo, an Egyptian high priest. In this letter not only Picus and Faunus, and neas and Romulus, or even Hercules and sculapius and Liber, born of Semele, and the twin sons of Tyndareus, or any other mortals who have been deified, but even the principal gods themselves,[294] to whom Cicero, in his Tusculan questions,[295] alludes without mentioning their names, Jupiter, Juno, Saturn, Vulcan, Vesta, and many others whom Varro attempts to identify with the parts or the elements of the world, are shown to have been men. There is, as we have said, a similarity between this case and that of Numa; for, the priest being afraid because he had revealed a mystery, earnestly begged of Alexander to comm and his mother to burn the letter which conveyed these communications to her. Let these two theologies, then, the fabulous and the civil, give place to the Platonic philosophers, who have recognised the true God as the author of all things, the source of the light of truth, and the bountiful bestower of all blessedness. And not these only, but to these great acknowledgers of so great a God, those philosophers must yield who, having their mind enslaved to their body, supposed the principles of all things to be material; as Thales, who held that the first principle of all things was water; Anaximenes, that it was air; the Stoics, that it was fire; Epicurus, who affirmed that it consisted of atoms, that is to say, of minute corpuscules; and many others whom it is needless to enumerate, but who believed that bodies, simple or compound, animate or inanimate, but nevertheless bodies, were the cause and principle of all things. For some of themas, for instance, the Epicureansbelieved that living things could originate from things without life; others held that all things living or without life spring from a living principle, but that, nevertheless, all things, being material, spring from a material principle. For the Stoics thought that fire, that is, one of the four material elements of which this visible[Pg 314] world is composed, was both living and intelligent, the maker of the world and of all things contained in it,that it was in fact God. These and others like them have only been able to suppose that which their hearts enslaved to sense have vainly suggested to them. And yet they have within themselves something which they could not see: they represented to themselves inwardly things which they had seen without, even when they were not seeing them, but only thinking of them. But this representation in thought is no longer a body, but only the similitude of a body; and that faculty of the mind by which this similitude of a body is seen is neither a body nor the similitude of a body; and the faculty which judges whether the representation is beautiful or ugly is without doubt superior to the object judged of. This principle is the understanding of man, the rational soul; and it is certainly not a body, since that similitude of a body which it beholds and judges of is itself not a body. The soul is neither earth, nor water, nor air, nor fire, of which four bodies, called the four elements, we see that this world is composed. And if the soul is not a body, how should God, its Creator, be a body? Let all those philosophers, then, give place, as we have said, to the Platonists, and those also who have been ashamed to say that God is a body, but yet have thought that our souls are of the same nature as God. They have not been staggered by the great changeableness of the soul,an attri bute which it would be impious to ascribe to the divine nature,but they say it is the body which changes the soul, for in itself it is unchangeable. As well might they say, "Flesh is wounded by some body, for in itself it is invulnerable." In a word, that which is unchangeable can be changed by nothing, so that that which can be changed by the body cannot properly be said to be immutable.
6. Concerning the meaning of the Platonists in that part of philosophy called physical.
These philosophers, then, whom we see not undeservedly exalted above the rest in fame and glory, have seen that no material body is God, and therefore they have transcended all bodies in seeking for God. They have seen that whatever is changeable is not the most high God, and therefore they[Pg 315] have transcended every soul and all changeable spirits in seeking the supreme. They have seen also that, in every changeable thing, the form which makes it that which it is, whatever be its mode or nature, can only be through Him who truly is, because He is unchangeable. And therefore, whether we consider the whole body of the world, its figure, qualities, and orderly movement, and also all the bodies which are in it; or whether we consider all life, either that which nourishes and maintains, as the life of trees, or that which, besides this, has also sensation, as the life of beasts; or that which adds to all these intelligence, as the life of man; or that which does not need the support of nutriment, but only maintains, feels, understands, as the life of angels,all can only be through Him who absolutely is. For to Him it is not one thing to be, and another to live, as though He could be, not living; nor is it to Him one thing to live, and another thing to understand, as though He could live, not understanding; nor is it to Him one thing to understand, another thing to be blessed, as though He could understand and not be blessed. But to Him to live, to understand, to be blessed, are to be. They have understood, from this unchangeableness and this simplicity, that all things must have been made by Him, and that He could Himself have been made by none. For they have considered that whatever is is either body or life, and that life is something better than body, and that the nature of body is sensible, and that of life intelligible. Therefore they have preferred the intelligible nature to the sensible. We mean by sensible things such things as can be perceived by the sight and touch of the body; by intelligible things, such as can be understood by the sight of the mind. For there is no corporeal beauty, whether in the condition of a body, as figure, or in its movement, as in music, of which it is not the mind that judges. But this could never have been, had there not existed in the mind itself a superior form of these things, without bulk, without noise of voice, without space and time. But even in respect of these things, had the mind not been mutable, it would not have been possible for one to judge better than another with regard to sensible forms. He who is clever judges better[Pg 316] than he who is slow, he who is skilled than he who is unskilful, he who is practised than he who is unpractised; and the same person judges better after he has gained experience than he did before. But that which is capable of more and less is mutable; whence able men, who have thought deeply on these things, have gathered that the first form is not to be found in those things whose form is changeable. Since, therefore, they saw that body and mind might be more or less beautiful in form, and that, if they wanted form, they could have no existence, they saw that there is some existence in which is the first form, unchangeable, and therefore not admitting of degrees of comparison, and in that they most rightly believed was the first principle of things, which was not made, and by which all things were made. Therefore that which is known of God He manifested to them when His invisible things were seen by them, being understood by those things which have been made; also His eternal power and Godhead by whom all visible and temporal things have been created.[296] We have said enough upon that part of Theology which they call physical, that is, natural.
7. How much the Platonists are to be held as excelling other philosophers in logic, i.e. rational philosophy.
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But we need not determine from what source he learned these things,whether it was from the books of the ancients who preceded him, or, as is more likely, from the words of the apostle: "Because that which is known of God has been manifested among them, for God hath manifested it to them. For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by those things which have been made, also His eternal power and Godhead."[306] From whatever source he may have derived this knowledge, then, I think I have made it sufficiently plain that I have not chosen the Platonic philosophers undeservedly as the parties with whom to discuss; because the question we have just taken up concerns the natural Theology,the question, namely, whether sacred rites are to be performed to one God, or to many, for the sake of the happiness which is to be after death. I have specially chosen them because their juster thoughts concerning the one God who made heaven and earth, have made them illustrious among philosophers. This has given them such superiority to all others in the judgment of posterity, that, though Aristotle, the disciple of Plato, a man of eminent abilities, inferior in eloquence to Plato, yet far superior to many in that respect, had founded the Peripatetic sect,so called because they were in the habit of walking about during their disputations, and though he had, through the greatness of his fame, gathered very many disciples into his school, even during the life of his master; and though Plato at his death[Pg 324] was succeeded in his school, which was called the Academy, by Speusippus, his sister's son, and Xenocrates, his beloved disciple, who, together with their successors, were called from this name of the school, Academics; nevertheless the most illustrious recent philosophers, who have chosen to follow Plato, have been unwilling to be called Peripatetics, or Academics, but have preferred the name of Platonists. Among these were the renowned Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Porphyry, who were Greeks, and the African Apuleius, who was learned both in the Greek and Latin tongues. All these, however, and the rest who were of the same school, and also Plato himself, thought that sacred rites ought to be performed in honour of many gods.
13. Concerning the opinion of Plato, according to which he defined the gods as beings entirely good and the friends of virtue.
BOOK VII. - Of the select gods of the civil theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
object:BOOK VII. - Of the select gods of the civil Theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them
author class:Saint Augustine of Hippo
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IN THIS BOOK IT IS SHOWN THAT ETERNAL LIFE IS NOT OBTAINED BY THE WORSHIP OF JANUS, JUPITER, SATURN, AND THE OTHER "SELECT GODS" OF THE CIVIL Theology.
PREFACE.
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1. Whether, since it is evident that Deity is not to be found in the civil Theology, we are to believe that it is to be found in the select gods.
If there is any one whom the sixth book, which I have last finished, has not persuaded that this divinity, or, so to speak, deity for this word also our authors do not hesitate to use, in order to translate more accurately that which the Greeks call ;if there is any one, I say, whom the sixth book has not persuaded that this divinity or deity is not to be[Pg 259] found in that Theology which they call civil, and which Marcus Varro has explained in sixteen books,that is, that the happiness of eternal life is not attainable through the worship of gods such as states have established to be worshipped, and that in such a form,perhaps, when he has read this book, he will not have anything further to desire in order to the clearing up of this question. For it is possible that some one may think that at least the select and chief gods, whom Varro comprised in his last book, and of whom we have not spoken sufficiently, are to be worshipped on account of the blessed life, which is none other than eternal. In respect to which matter I do not say what Tertullian said, perhaps more wittily than truly, "If gods are selected like onions, certainly the rest are rejected as bad."[245] I do not say this, for I see that even from among the select, some are selected for some greater and more excellent office: as in warfare, when recruits have been elected, there are some again elected from among those for the performance of some greater military service; and in the church, when persons are elected to be overseers, certainly the rest are not rejected, since all good Christians are deservedly called elect; in the erection of a building corner stones are elected, though the other stones, which are destined for other parts of the structure, are not rejected; grapes are elected for eating, whilst the others, which we leave for drinking, are not rejected. There is no need of adducing many illustrations, since the thing is evident. Wherefore the selection of certain gods from among many affords no proper reason why either he who wrote on this subject, or the worshippers of the gods, or the gods themselves, should be spurned. We ought rather to seek to know what gods these are, and for what purpose they may appear to have been selected.
2. Who are the select gods, and whether they are held to be exempt from the offices of the commoner gods.
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But the things which follow in this book will show what is the nature of these mysteries, and what value is to be set upon them. Meanwhile, this most learned man confesses as his opinion that the soul of the world and its parts are the true gods, from which we perceive that his Theology (to wit, that same natural Theology to which he pays great regard) has been able, in its completeness, to extend itself even to the nature of the rational soul. For in this book (concerning the select gods) he says a very few things by anticipation concerning the natural Theology; and we shall see whether he has been able in that book, by means of physical interpretations, to refer to this natural Theology that civil Theology, concerning which he wrote last when treating of the select gods. Now, if he has been able to do this, the whole is natural; and in that case, what need was there for distinguishing so carefully the civil from the natural? But if it has been distinguished by a veritable distinction, then, since not even this natural Theology with which he is so much pleased is true (for though it has reached as far as the soul, it has not reached to the true God who made the soul), how much more contemptible and false is that civil Theology which is chiefly occupied about what is corporeal, as will be shown by its very interpretations, which they have with such diligence sought out and enucleated, some of which I must necessarily mention!
6. Concerning the opinion of Varro, that God is the soul of the world, which nevertheless, in its various parts, has many souls whose nature is divine.
The same Varro, then, still speaking by anticipation, says that he thinks that God is the soul of the world (which the Greeks call ), and that this world itself is God; but as a wise man, though he consists of body and mind, is nevertheless called wise on account of his mind, so the world is called God on account of mind, although it consists of mind and body. Here he seems, in some fashion at least, to acknowledge one God; but that he may introduce more, he adds that the world is divided into two parts, heaven and earth, which are[Pg 268] again divided each into two parts, heaven into ether and air, earth into water and land, of all which the ether is the highest, the air second, the water third, and the earth the lowest. All these four parts, he says, are full of souls; those which are in the ether and air being immortal, and those which are in the water and on the earth mortal. From the highest part of the heavens to the orbit of the moon there are souls, namely, the stars and planets; and these are not only understood to be gods, but are seen to be such. And between the orbit of the moon and the commencement of the region of clouds and winds there are aerial souls; but these are seen with the mind, not with the eyes, and are called Heroes, and Lares, and Genii. This is the natural Theology which is briefly set forth in these anticipatory statements, and which satisfied not Varro only, but many philosophers besides. This I must discuss more carefully, when, with the help of God, I shall have completed what I have yet to say concerning the civil Theology, as far as it concerns the select gods.
7. Whether it is reasonable to separate Janus and Terminus as two distinct deities.
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What, then, ought the wise man to think of this Theology, in which the king of the gods receives the name of that thing "which no wise man has desired?"[270] For had there been anything wholesomely taught by this philosophy concerning eternal life, how much more appropriately would that god who is the ruler of the world have been called by them, not money, but wisdom, the love of which purges from the filth of avarice, that is, of the love of money!
13. That when it is expounded what Saturn is, what Genius is, it comes to this, that both of them are shown to be Jupiter.
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And the same is true with respect to all the rest, as is true with respect to those things which I have mentioned for the sake of example. They do not explain them, but rather involve them. They rush hither and thither, to this side or to that, according as they are driven by the impulse of erratic opinion; so that even Varro himself has chosen rather to doubt concerning all things, than to affirm anything. For, having written the first of the three last books concerning the certain gods, and having commenced in the second of these to speak of the uncertain gods, he says: "I ought not to be censured for having stated in this book the doubtful opinions concerning the gods. For he who, when he has read them, shall think that they both ought to be, and can be, conclusively judged of, will do so himself. For my own part, I can be more easily led to doubt the things which I have written in the first book, than to attempt to reduce all the things I shall write in this one to any orderly system." Thus he makes uncertain not only that book, concerning the uncertain gods, but also that other concerning the certain gods. Moreover, in that third book concerning the select gods, after having exhibited by anticipation as much of the natural Theology as he deemed necessary, and when about to commence[Pg 281] to speak of the vanities and lying insanities of the civil Theology, where he was not only without the guidance of the truth of things, but was also pressed by the authority of tradition, he says: "I will write in this book concerning the public gods of the Roman people, to whom they have dedicated temples, and whom they have conspicuously distinguished by many adornments; but, as Xenophon of Colophon writes, I will state what I think, not what I am prepared to maintain: it is for man to think those things, for God to know them."
It is not, then, an account of things comprehended and most certainly believed which he promised, when about to write those things which were instituted by men. He only timidly promises an account of things which are but the subject of doubtful opinion. Nor, indeed, was it possible for him to affirm with the same certainty that Janus was the world, and such like things; or to discover with the same certainty such things as how Jupiter was the son of Saturn, while Saturn was made subject to him as king:he could, I say, neither affirm nor discover such things with the same certainty with which he knew such things as that the world existed, that the heavens and earth existed, the heavens bright with stars, and the earth fertile through seeds; or with the same perfect conviction with which he believed that this universal mass of nature is governed and administered by a certain invisible and mighty force.
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Now Neptune had Salacia to wife, who they say is the nether waters of the sea. Wherefore was Venilia also joined to him? Was it not simply through the lust of the soul desiring a greater number of demons to whom to prostitute itself, and not because this goddess was necessary to the perfection of their sacred rites? But let the interpretation of this illustrious Theology be brought forward to restrain us from this censuring by rendering a satisfactory reason. Venilia, says this Theology, is the wave which comes to the shore, Salacia the wave which returns into the sea. Why, then, are there two goddesses, when it is one wave which comes and returns? Certainly it is mad lust itself, which in its eagerness for many deities resembles the waves which break on the shore. For though the water which goes is not different from that which returns, still the soul which goes and returns not is defiled by two demons, whom it has taken occasion by this false pretext to invite. I ask thee, O Varro, and you who have read such works of learned men, and think ye have learned something great,I ask you to interpret this, I do not say in a manner consistent with the eternal and unchangeable nature which alone is God, but only in a manner consistent with the doctrine concerning the soul of the world and its[Pg 286] parts, which ye think to be the true gods. It is a somewhat more tolerable thing that ye have made that part of the soul of the world which pervades the sea your god Neptune. Is the wave, then, which comes to the shore and returns to the main, two parts of the world, or two parts of the soul of the world? Who of you is so silly as to think so? Why, then, have they made to you two goddesses? The only reason seems to be, that your wise ancestors have provided, not that many gods should rule you, but that many of such demons as are delighted with those vanities and falsehoods should possess you. But why has that Salacia, according to this interpretation, lost the lower part of the sea, seeing that she was represented as subject to her husband? For in saying that she is the receding wave, ye have put her on the surface. Was she enraged at her husb and for taking Venilia as a concubine, and thus drove him from the upper part of the sea?
23. Concerning the earth, which Varro affirms to be a goddess, because that soul of the world which he thinks to be God pervades also this lowest part of his body, and imparts to it a divine force.
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Let him return from this, which he thinks to be natural Theology, back to that from which he went out, in order to rest from the fatigue occasioned by the many turnings and windings of his path. Let him return, I say, let him return to the civil Theology. I wish to detain him there a while. I have somewhat to say which has to do with that Theology. I am not yet saying, that if the earth and stones are similar to our bones and nails, they are in like manner devoid of intelligence, as they are devoid of sensation. Nor am I saying that, if our bones and nails are said to have intelligence, because they are in a man who has intelligence, he who says that the things analogous to these in the world are gods, is as stupid as he is who says that our bones and nails are men. We shall perhaps have occasion to dispute these things with the philosophers. At present, however, I wish to deal with Varro as a political theologian. For it is possible that, though he may seem to have wished to lift up his head, as it were, into the liberty of natural Theology, the consciousness that the book with which he was occupied was one concerning a subject belonging to civil Theology, may have caused him to relapse into the point of view of that Theology, and to[Pg 288] say this in order that the ancestors of his nation, and other states, might not be believed to have bestowed on Neptune an irrational worship. What I am to say is this: Since the earth is one, why has not that part of the soul of the world which permeates the earth made it that one goddess which he calls Tellus? But had it done so, what then had become of Orcus, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis?[277] And where, in that case, had been his wife Proserpine, who, according to another opinion given in the same book, is called, not the fecundity of the earth, but its lower part?[278] But if they say that part of the soul of the world, when it permeates the upper part of the earth, makes the god Father Dis, but when it pervades the nether part of the same the goddess Proserpine; what, in that case, will that Tellus be? For all that which she was has been divided into these two parts, and these two gods; so that it is impossible to find what to make or where to place her as a third goddess, except it be said that those divinities Orcus and Proserpine are the one goddess Tellus, and that they are not three gods, but one or two, whilst notwithstanding they are called three, held to be three, worshipped as three, having their own several altars, their own shrines, rites, images, priests, whilst their own false demons also through these things defile the prostituted soul. Let this further question be answered: What part of the earth does a part of the soul of the world permeate in order to make the god Tellumo? No, says he; but the earth being one and the same, has a double life,the masculine, which produces seed, and the feminine, which receives and nourishes the seed. Hence it has been called Tellus from the feminine principle, and Tellumo from the masculine. Why, then, do the priests, as he indicates, perform divine service to four gods, two others being added,namely, to Tellus, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor? We have already spoken concerning Tellus and Tellumo. But why do they worship Altor?[279] Because, says he, all that springs of the earth is nourished by the earth. Wherefore do they worship Rusor?[280] Because all things return back again to the place whence they proceeded.
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and what follows with reference to this affair, is fully related by the historian Euhemerus, and has been translated into Latin by Ennius. And as they who have written before us in the Greek or in the Latin tongue against such errors as these have said much concerning this matter, I have thought it unnecessary to dwell upon it. When I consider those physical reasons, then, by which learned and acute men attempt to turn human things into divine things, all I see is that they have been able to refer these things only to temporal works and to that which has a corporeal nature, and even though invisible still mutable; and this is by no means the true God. But if this worship had been performed as the symbolism of ideas at least congruous with religion, though it would indeed have been cause of grief that the true God was not announced and proclaimed by its symbolism, nevertheless it could have been in some degree borne with, when it did not occasion and comm and the performance of such foul and abominable things. But since it is impiety to worship the body or the soul for the true God, by whose indwelling alone the soul is happy, how much more impious is it to worship those things through which neither soul nor body can obtain either salvation or human honour? Wherefore if with temple, priest, and sacrifice, which are due to the true God, any element of the world be worshipped, or any created spirit, even though not impure and evil, that worship is still evil, not because the things are evil by which the worship is performed, but because those things ought only to be used in the worship of Him to whom alone such worship and service are due. But if any one insist that he worships the one true God,that is, the Creator of every soul and of every body,with stupid and[Pg 295] monstrous idols, with human victims, with putting a wreath on the male organ, with the wages of unchastity, with the cutting of limbs, with emasculation, with the consecration of effeminates, with impure and obscene plays, such a one does not sin because he worships One who ought not to be worshipped, but because he worships Him who ought to be worshipped in a way in which He ought not to be worshipped. But he who worships with such things,that is, foul and obscene things, and that not the true God, namely, the maker of soul and body, but a creature, even though not a wicked creature, whether it be soul or body, or soul and body together, twice sins against God, because he both worships for God what is not God, and also worships with such things as neither God nor what is not God ought to be worshipped with. It is, indeed, manifest how these pagans worship,that is, how shamefully and criminally they worship; but what or whom they worship would have been left in obscurity, had not their history testified that those same confessedly base and foul rites were rendered in obedience to the demands of the gods, who exacted them with terrible severity. Wherefore it is evident beyond doubt that this whole civil Theology is occupied in inventing means for attracting wicked and most impure spirits, inviting them to visit senseless images, and through these to take possession of stupid hearts.
28. That the doctrine of Varro concerning Theology is in no part consistent with itself.
To what purpose, then, is it that this most learned and most acute man Varro attempts, as it were, with subtle disputation, to reduce and refer all these gods to heaven and earth? He cannot do it. They go out of his hands like water; they shrink back; they slip down and fall. For when about to speak of the females, that is, the goddesses, he says, "Since, as I observed in the first book concerning places, heaven and earth are the two origins of the gods, on which account they are called celestials and terrestrials, and as I began in the former books with heaven, speaking of Janus, whom some have said to be heaven, and others the earth, so I now commence with Tellus in speaking concerning the goddesses." I can understand what embarrassment so great a mind was experiencing.[Pg 296] For he is influenced by the perception of a certain plausible resemblance, when he says that the heaven is that which does, and the earth that which suffers, and therefore attri butes the masculine principle to the one, and the feminine to the other,not considering that it is rather He who made both heaven and earth who is the maker of both activity and passivity. On this principle he interprets the celebrated mysteries of the Samothracians, and promises, with an air of great devoutness, that he will by writing expound these mysteries, which have not been so much as known to his countrymen, and will send them his exposition. Then he says that he had from many proofs gathered that, in those mysteries, among the images one signifies heaven, another the earth, another the patterns of things, which Plato calls ideas. He makes Jupiter to signify heaven, Juno the earth, Minerva the ideas. Heaven, by which anything is made; the earth, from which it is made; and the pattern, according to which it is made. But, with respect to the last, I am forgetting to say that Plato attri buted so great an importance to these ideas as to say, not that anything was made by heaven according to them, but that according to them heaven itself was made.[287] To return, however,it is to be observed that Varro has, in the book on the select gods, lost that theory of these gods, in whom he has, as it were, embraced all things. For he assigns the male gods to heaven, the females to earth; among which latter he has placed Minerva, whom he had before placed above heaven itself. Then the male god Neptune is in the sea, which pertains rather to earth than to heaven. Last of all, father Dis, who is called in Greek , another male god, brother of both (Jupiter and Neptune), is also held to be a god of the earth, holding the upper region of the earth himself, and allotting the nether region to his wife Proserpine. How, then, do they attempt to refer the gods to heaven, and the goddesses to earth? What solidity, what consistency, what sobriety has this disputation? But that Tellus is the origin of the goddesses,the great mother, to wit, beside whom there is continually the noise of the mad and abominable revelry of effeminates and mutilated men, and men who cut[Pg 297] themselves, and indulge in frantic gesticulations,how is it, then, that Janus is called the head of the gods, and Tellus the head of the goddesses? In the one case error does not make one head, and in the other frenzy does not make a sane one. Why do they vainly attempt to refer these to the world? Even if they could do so, no pious person worships the world for the true God. Nevertheless, plain truth makes it evident that they are not able even to do this. Let them rather identify them with dead men and most wicked demons, and no further question will remain.
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For Numa himself also, to whom no prophet of God, no holy angel was sent, was driven to have recourse to hydromancy, that he might see the images of the gods in the water (or, rather, appearances whereby the demons made sport of him), and might learn from them what he ought to ordain and observe in the sacred rites. This kind of divination, says Varro, was introduced from the Persians, and was used by Numa himself, and at an after time by the philosopher Pythagoras. In this divination, he says, they also inquire at the inhabitants of the nether world, and make use of blood; and this the Greeks call . But whether it be called necromancy or hydromancy it is the same thing, for in either case the dead are supposed to foretell future things. But by what artifices these things are done, let themselves consider; for I am unwilling to say that these artifices were wont to be prohibited by the laws, and to be very severely punished even in the Gentile states, before the advent of our Saviour. I am unwilling, I say, to affirm this, for perhaps[Pg 303] even such things were then allowed. However, it was by these arts that Pompilius learned those sacred rites which he gave forth as facts, whilst he concealed their causes; for even he himself was afraid of that which he had learned. The senate also caused the books in which those causes were recorded to be burned. What is it, then, to me, that Varro attempts to adduce all sorts of fanciful physical interpretations, which if these books had contained, they would certainly not have been burned? For otherwise the conscript fathers would also have burned those books which Varro published and dedicated to the high priest Csar.[289] Now Numa is said to have married the nymph Egeria, because (as Varro explains it in the forementioned book) he carried forth[290] water wherewith to perform his hydromancy. Thus facts are wont to be converted into fables through false colourings. It was by that hydromancy, then, that that over-curious Roman king learned both the sacred rites which were to be written in the books of the priests, and also the causes of those rites,which latter, however, he was unwilling that any one besides himself should know. Wherefore he made these causes, as it were, to die along with himself, taking care to have them written by themselves, and removed from the knowledge of men by being buried in the earth. Wherefore the things which are written in those books were either abominations of demons, so foul and noxious as to render that whole civil Theology execrable even in the eyes of such men as those senators, who had accepted so many shameful things in the sacred rites themselves, or they were nothing else than the accounts of dead men, whom, through the lapse of ages, almost all the Gentile nations had come to believe to be immortal gods; whilst those same demons were delighted even with such rites, having presented themselves to receive worship under pretence of being those very dead men whom they had caused to be thought immortal gods by certain fallacious miracles, performed in order to establish that belief. But, by the hidden providence of the true God, these demons were permitted to confess these things to their friend Numa, having been gained by those arts through which necromancy could be performed, and yet[Pg 304] were not constrained to admonish him rather at his death to burn than to bury the books in which they were written. But, in order that these books might be unknown, the demons could not resist the plough by which they were thrown up, or the pen of Varro, through which the things which were done in reference to this matter have come down even to our knowledge. For they are not able to effect anything which they are not allowed; but they are permitted to influence those whom God, in His deep and just judgment, according to their deserts, gives over either to be simply afflicted by them, or to be also subdued and deceived. But how pernicious these writings were judged to be, or how alien from the worship of the true Divinity, may be understood from the fact that the senate preferred to burn what Pompilius had hid, rather than to fear what he feared, so that he could not dare to do that. Wherefore let him who does not desire to live a pious life even now, seek eternal life by means of such rites. But let him who does not wish to have fellowship with malign demons have no fear for the noxious superstition wherewith they are worshipped, but let him recognise the true religion by which they are unmasked and vanquished.
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BOOK VI. - Of Varros threefold division of theology, and of the inability of the gods to contri bute anything to the happiness of the future life, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
object:BOOK VI. - Of Varros threefold division of Theology, and of the inability of the gods to contri bute anything to the happiness of the future life
author class:Saint Augustine of Hippo
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HITHERTO THE ARGUMENT HAS BEEN CONDUCTED AGAINST THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT THE GODS ARE TO BE WORSHIPPED FOR THE SAKE OF TEMPORAL ADVANTAGES, NOW IT IS DIRECTED AGAINST THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE TO BE WORSHIPPED FOR THE SAKE OF ETERNAL LIFE. AUGUSTINE DEVOTES THE FIVE FOLLOWING BOOKS TO THE CONFUTATION OF THIS LATTER BELIEF, AND FIRST OF ALL SHOWS HOW MEAN AN OPINION OF THE GODS WAS HELD BY VARRO HIMSELF, THE MOST ESTEEMED WRITER ON HEATHEN Theology. OF THIS Theology AUGUSTINE ADOPTS VARRO'S DIVISION INTO THREE KINDS, MYTHICAL, NATURAL, AND CIVIL; AND AT ONCE DEMONSTRATES THAT NEITHER THE MYTHICAL NOR THE CIVIL CAN CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING TO THE HAPPINESS OF THE FUTURE LIFE.
PREFACE.
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5. Concerning the three kinds of Theology according to Varro, namely, one fabulous, the other natural, the third civil.
Now what are we to say of this proposition of his, namely, that there are three kinds of Theology, that is, of the account which is given of the gods; and of these, the one is called mythical, the other physical, and the third civil? Did the Latin usage permit, we should call the kind which he has placed first in order fabular,[235] but let us call it fabulous,[236] for mythical is derived from the Greek , a fable; but that the second should be called natural, the usage of speech now admits; the third he himself has designated in Latin, calling it civil.[237] Then he says, "they call that kind mythical which the poets chiefly use; physical, that which the philosophers use; civil, that which the people use. As to the first I have mentioned," says he, "in it are many fictions, which are contrary to the dignity and nature of the immortals. For we find in it that one god has been born from the head, another from the thigh, another from drops of blood; also, in this we find that gods have stolen, committed adultery, served men; in a word, in this all manner of things are attributed to the gods, such as may befall, not merely any man, but even the most contemptible man." He certainly, where he could, where he dared, where he thought he could do it with impunity, has manifested, without any of the haziness of ambiguity, how great injury was done to the nature of the gods by lying fables; for he was speaking, not concerning natural Theology, not concerning civil, but concerning[Pg 239] fabulous Theology, which he thought he could freely find fault with.
Let us see, now, what he says concerning the second kind. "The second kind which I have explained," he says, "is that concerning which philosophers have left many books, in which they treat such questions as these: what gods there are, where they are, of what kind and character they are, since what time they have existed, or if they have existed from eternity; whether they are of fire, as Heraclitus believes; or of number, as Pythagoras; or of atoms, as Epicurus says; and other such things, which men's ears can more easily hear inside the walls of a school than outside in the Forum." He finds fault with nothing in this kind of Theology which they call physical, and which belongs to philosophers, except that he has related their controversies among themselves, through which there has arisen a multitude of dissentient sects. Nevertheless he has removed this kind from the Forum, that is, from the populace, but he has shut it up in schools. But that first kind, most false and most base, he has not removed from the citizens. Oh, the religious ears of the people, and among them even those of the Romans, that are not able to bear what the philosophers dispute concerning the gods! But when the poets sing and stage-players act such things as are derogatory to the dignity and the nature of the immortals, such as may befall not a man merely, but the most contemptible man, they not only bear, but willingly listen to. Nor is this all, but they even consider that these things please the gods, and that they are propitiated by them.
But some one may say, Let us distinguish these two kinds of Theology, the mythical and the physical,that is, the fabulous and the natural,from this civil kind about which we are now speaking. Anticipating this, he himself has distinguished them. Let us see now how he explains the civil Theology itself. I see, indeed, why it should be distinguished as fabulous, even because it is false, because it is base, because it is unworthy. But to wish to distinguish the natural from the civil, what else is that but to confess that the civil itself is false? For if that be natural, what fault has it that it should be excluded? And if this which is called civil be not[Pg 240] natural, what merit has it that it should be admitted? This, in truth, is the cause why he wrote first concerning human things, and afterwards concerning divine things; since in divine things he did not follow nature, but the institution of men. Let us look at this civil Theology of his. "The third kind," says he, "is that which citizens in cities, and especially the priests, ought to know and to administer. From it is to be known what god each one may suitably worship, what sacred rites and sacrifices each one may suitably perform." Let us still attend to what follows. "The first Theology," he says, "is especially adapted to the theatre, the second to the world, the third to the city." Who does not see to which he gives the palm? Certainly to the second, which he said above is that of the philosophers. For he testifies that this pertains to the world, than which they think there is nothing better. But those two theologies, the first and the third,to wit, those of the theatre and of the city,has he distinguished them or united them? For although we see that the city is in the world, we do not see that it follows that any things belonging to the city pertain to the world. For it is possible that such things may be worshipped and believed in the city, according to false opinions, as have no existence either in the world or out of it. But where is the theatre but in the city? Who instituted the theatre but the state? For what purpose did it constitute it but for scenic plays? And to what class of things do scenic plays belong but to those divine things concerning which these books of Varro's are written with so much ability?
6. Concerning the mythic, that is, the fabulous, Theology, and the civil, against Varro.
O Marcus Varro! thou art the most acute, and without doubt the most learned, but still a man, not God,now lifted up by the Spirit of God to see and to announce divine things, thou seest, indeed, that divine things are to be separated from human trifles and lies, but thou fearest to offend those most corrupt opinions of the populace, and their customs in public superstitions, which thou thyself, when thou considerest them on all sides, perceivest, and all your literature loudly pronounces to be abhorrent from the nature of the gods, even[Pg 241] of such gods as the frailty of the human mind supposes to exist in the elements of this world. What can the most excellent human talent do here? What can human learning, though manifold, avail thee in this perplexity? Thou desirest to worship the natural gods; thou art compelled to worship the civil. Thou hast found some of the gods to be fabulous, on whom thou vomitest forth very freely what thou thinkest, and, whether thou willest or not, thou wettest therewith even the civil gods. Thou sayest, forsooth, that the fabulous are adapted to the theatre, the natural to the world, and the civil to the city; though the world is a divine work, but cities and theatres are the works of men, and though the gods who are laughed at in the theatre are not other than those who are adored in the temples; and ye do not exhibit games in honour of other gods than those to whom ye immolate victims. How much more freely and more subtly wouldst thou have decided these hadst thou said that some gods are natural, others established by men; and concerning those who have been so established, the literature of the poets gives one account, and that of the priests another,both of which are, nevertheless, so friendly the one to the other, through fellowship in falsehood, that they are both pleasing to the demons, to whom the doctrine of the truth is hostile.
That Theology, therefore, which they call natural, being put aside for a moment, as it is afterwards to be discussed, we ask if any one is really content to seek a hope for eternal life from poetical, theatrical, scenic gods? Perish the thought! The true God avert so wild and sacrilegious a madness! What, is eternal life to be asked from those gods whom these things pleased, and whom these things propitiate, in which their own crimes are represented? No one, as I think, has arrived at such a pitch of headlong and furious impiety. So then, neither by the fabulous nor by the civil Theology does any one obtain eternal life. For the one sows base things concerning the gods by feigning them, the other reaps by cherishing them; the one scatters lies, the other gathers them together; the one pursues divine things with false crimes, the other incorporates among divine things the plays which are made up of these crimes; the one sounds[Pg 242] abroad in human songs impious fictions concerning the gods, the other consecrates these for the festivities of the gods themselves; the one sings the misdeeds and crimes of the gods, the other loves them; the one gives forth or feigns, the other either attests the true or delights in the false. Both are base; both are damnable. But the one which is theatrical teaches public abomination, and that one which is of the city adorns itself with that abomination. Shall eternal life be hoped for from these, by which this short and temporal life is polluted? Does the society of wicked men pollute our life if they insinuate themselves into our affections, and win our assent? and does not the society of demons pollute the life, who are worshipped with their own crimes?if with true crimes, how wicked the demons! if with false, how wicked the worship!
When we say these things, it may perchance seem to some one who is very ignorant of these matters that only those things concerning the gods which are sung in the songs of the poets and acted on the stage are unworthy of the divine majesty, and ridiculous, and too detestable to be celebrated, whilst those sacred things which not stage-players but priests perform are pure and free from all unseemliness. Had this been so, never would any one have thought that these theatrical abominations should be celebrated in their honour, never would the gods themselves have ordered them to be performed to them. But men are in nowise ashamed to perform these things in the theatres, because similar things are carried on in the temples. In short, when the fore-mentioned author attempted to distinguish the civil Theology from the fabulous and natural, as a sort of third and distinct kind, he wished it to be understood to be rather tempered by both than separated from either. For he says that those things which the poets write are less than the people ought to follow, whilst what the philosophers say is more than it is expedient for the people to pry into. "Which," says he, "differ in such a way, that nevertheless not a few things from both of them have been taken to the account of the civil Theology; wherefore we will indicate what the civil Theology has in common with that of the poet, though it ought to be more closely connected with[Pg 243] the Theology of philosophers." Civil Theology is therefore not quite disconnected from that of the poets. Nevertheless, in another place, concerning the generations of the gods, he says that the people are more inclined toward the poets than toward the physical theologists. For in this place he said what ought to be done; in that other place, what was really done. He said that the latter had written for the sake of utility, but the poets for the sake of amusement. And hence the things from the poets' writings, which the people ought not to follow, are the crimes of the gods; which, nevertheless, amuse both the people and the gods. For, for amusement's sake, he says, the poets write, and not for that of utility; nevertheless they write such things as the gods will desire, and the people perform.
7. Concerning the likeness and agreement of the fabulous and civil theologies.
That Theology, therefore, which is fabulous, theatrical, scenic, and full of all baseness and unseemliness, is taken up into the civil Theology; and part of that Theology, which in its totality is deservedly judged to be worthy of reprobation and rejection, is pronounced worthy to be cultivated and observed;not at all an incongruous part, as I have undertaken to show, and one which, being alien to the whole body, was unsuitably attached to and suspended from it, but a part entirely congruous with, and most harmoniously fitted to the rest, as a member of the same body. For what else do those images, forms, ages, sexes, characteristics of the gods show? If the poets have Jupiter with a beard, and Mercury beardless, have not the priests the same? Is the Priapus of the priests less obscene than the Priapus of the players? Does he receive the adoration of worshippers in a different form from that in which he moves about the stage for the amusement of spectators? Is not Saturn old and Apollo young in the shrines where their images stand, as well as when represented by actor's masks? Why are Forculus, who presides over doors, and Limentinus, who presides over thresholds and lintels, male gods, and Cardea between them feminine, who presides over hinges? Are not those things found in books on divine things, which grave poets have deemed unworthy of their verses? Does the Diana of the[Pg 244] theatre carry arms, whilst the Diana of the city is simply a virgin? Is the stage Apollo a lyrist, but the Delphic Apollo ignorant of this art? But these things are decent compared with the more shameful things. What was thought of Jupiter himself by those who placed his wet nurse in the Capitol? Did they not bear witness to Euhemerus, who, not with the garrulity of a fable-teller, but with the gravity of an historian who had diligently investigated the matter, wrote that all such gods had been men and mortals? And they who appointed the Epulones as parasites at the table of Jupiter, what else did they wish for but mimic sacred rites? For if any mimic had said that parasites of Jupiter were made use of at his table, he would assuredly have appeared to be seeking to call forth laughter. Varro said it,not when he was mocking, but when he was commending the gods did he say it. His books on divine, not on human, things testify that he wrote this,not where he set forth the scenic games, but where he explained the Capitoline laws. In a word, he is conquered, and confesses that, as they made the gods with a human form, so they believed that they are delighted with human pleasures.
For also malign spirits were not so wanting to their own business as not to confirm noxious opinions in the minds of men by converting them into sport. Whence also is that story about the sacristan of Hercules, which says that, having nothing to do, he took to playing at dice as a pastime, throwing them alternately with the one hand for Hercules, with the other for himself, with this understanding, that if he should win, he should from the funds of the temple prepare himself a supper, and hire a mistress; but if Hercules should win the game, he himself should, at his own expense, provide the same for the pleasure of Hercules. Then, when he had been beaten by himself, as though by Hercules, he gave to the god Hercules the supper he owed him, and also the most noble harlot Larentina. But she, having fallen asleep in the temple, dreamed that Hercules had had intercourse with her, and had said to her that she would find her payment with the youth whom she should first meet on leaving the temple, and that she was to believe this to be paid to her by Hercules. And so the first youth that met her on going out was the wealthy[Pg 245] Tarutius, who kept her a long time, and when he died left her his heir. She, having obtained a most ample fortune, that she should not seem ungrateful for the divine hire, in her turn made the Roman people her heir, which she thought to be most acceptable to the deities; and, having disappeared, the will was found. By which meritorious conduct they say that she gained divine honours.
Now had these things been feigned by the poets and acted by the mimics, they would without any doubt have been said to pertain to the fabulous Theology, and would have been judged worthy to be separated from the dignity of the civil Theology. But when these shameful things,not of the poets, but of the people; not of the mimics, but of the sacred things; not of the theatres, but of the temples, that is, not of the fabulous, but of the civil Theology,are reported by so great an author, not in vain do the actors represent with theatrical art the baseness of the gods, which is so great; but surely in vain do the priests attempt, by rites called sacred, to represent their nobleness of character, which has no existence. There are sacred rites of Juno; and these are celebrated in her beloved island, Samos, where she was given in marriage to Jupiter. There are sacred rites of Ceres, in which Proserpine is sought for, having been carried off by Pluto. There are sacred rites Venus, in which, her beloved Adonis being slain by a boar's tooth, the lovely youth is lamented. There are sacred rites of the mother of the gods, in which the beautiful youth Atys, loved by her, and castrated by her through a woman's jealousy, is deplored by men who have suffered the like calamity, whom they call Galli. Since, then, these things are more unseemly than all scenic abomination, why is it that they strive to separate, as it were, the fabulous fictions of the poet concerning the gods, as, forsooth, pertaining to the theatre, from the civil Theology which they wish to belong to the city, as though they were separating from noble and worthy things, things unworthy and base? Wherefore there is more reason to thank the stage-actors, who have spared the eyes of men, and have not laid bare by theatrical exhibition all the things which are hid by the walls of the temples. What good is to be thought of their sacred rites which are concealed in darkness, when[Pg 246] those which are brought forth into the light are so detestable? And certainly they themselves have seen what they transact in secret through the agency of mutilated and effeminate men. Yet they have not been able to conceal those same men miserably and vilely enervated and corrupted. Let them persuade whom they can that they transact anything holy through such men, who, they cannot deny, are numbered, and live among their sacred things. We know not what they transact, but we know through whom they transact; for we know what things are transacted on the stage, where never, even in a chorus of harlots, hath one who is mutilated or an effeminate appeared. And, nevertheless, even these things are acted by vile and infamous characters; for, indeed, they ought not to be acted by men of good character. What, then, are those sacred rites, for the performance of which holiness has chosen such men as not even the obscenity of the stage has admitted?
8. Concerning the interpretations, consisting of natural explanations, which the pagan teachers attempt to show for their gods.
But all these things, they say, have certain physical, that is, natural interpretations, showing their natural meaning; as though in this disputation we were seeking physics and not Theology, which is the account, not of nature, but of God. For although He who is the true God is God, not by opinion, but by nature, nevertheless all nature is not God; for there is certainly a nature of man, of a beast, of a tree, of a stone,none of which is God. For if, when the question is concerning the mother of the gods, that from which the whole system of interpretation starts certainly is, that the mother of the gods is the earth, why do we make further inquiry? why do we carry our investigation through all the rest of it? What can more manifestly favour them who say that all those gods were men? For they are earth-born in the sense that the earth is their mother. But in the true Theology the earth is the work, not the mother, of God. But in whatever way their sacred rites may be interpreted, and, whatever reference they may have to the nature of things, it is not according to nature, but contrary to nature, that men should be effeminates. This disease, this crime, this abomination, has a recognised place among those sacred things, though even depraved men[Pg 247] will scarcely be compelled by torments to confess they are guilty of it. Again, if these sacred rites, which are proved to be fouler than scenic abominations, are excused and justified on the ground that they have their own interpretations, by which they are shown to symbolize the nature of things, why are not the poetical things in like manner excused and justified? For many have interpreted even these in like fashion, to such a degree that even that which they say is the most monstrous and most horrible,namely, that Saturn devoured his own children,has been interpreted by some of them to mean that length of time, which is signified by the name of Saturn, consumes whatever it begets; or that, as the same Varro thinks, Saturn belongs to seeds which fall back again into the earth from whence they spring. And so one interprets it in one way, and one in another. And the same is to be said of all the rest of this Theology.
And, nevertheless, it is called the fabulous Theology, and is censured, cast off, rejected, together with all such interpretations belonging to it. And not only by the natural Theology, which is that of the philosophers, but also by this civil Theology, concerning which we are speaking, which is asserted to pertain to cities and peoples, it is judged worthy of repudiation, because it has invented unworthy things concerning the gods. Of which, I wot, this is the secret: that those most acute and learned men, by whom those things were written, understood that both theologies ought to be rejected,to wit, both that fabulous and this civil one,but the former they dared to reject, the latter they dared not; the former they set forth to be censured, the latter they showed to be very like it; not that it might be chosen to be held in preference to the other, but that it might be understood to be worthy of being rejected together with it. And thus, without danger to those who feared to censure the civil Theology, both of them being brought into contempt, that Theology which they call natural might find a place in better disposed minds; for the civil and the fabulous are both fabulous and both civil. He who shall wisely inspect the vanities and obscenities of both will find that they are both fabulous; and he who shall direct his attention to the scenic plays pertaining to the fabulous Theology[Pg 248] in the festivals of the civil gods, and in the divine rites of the cities, will find they are both civil. How, then, can the power of giving eternal life be attri buted to any of those gods whose own images and sacred rites convict them of being most like to the fabulous gods, which are most openly reprobated, in forms, ages, sex, characteristics, marriages, generations, rites; in all which things they are understood either to have been men, and to have had their sacred rites and solemnities instituted in their honour according to the life or death of each of them, the demons suggesting and confirming this error, or certainly most foul spirits, who, taking advantage of some occasion or other, have stolen into the minds of men to deceive them?
9. Concerning the special offices of the gods.
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Let them go on, and let them attempt with all the subtlety they can to distinguish the civil Theology from the fabulous, the cities from the theatres, the temples from the stages, the sacred things of the priests from the songs of the poets, as honourable things from base things, truthful things from fallacious, grave from light, serious from ludicrous, desirable things from things to be rejected, we understand what they do. They are aware that that theatrical and fabulous Theology hangs by the civil, and is reflected back upon it from the songs of the poets as from a mirror; and thus, that Theology having been exposed to view which they do not dare to condemn, they more freely assail and censure that picture of it, in order that those who perceive what they mean may detest this very face itself of which that is the picture,which, however, the gods themselves, as though seeing themselves in the same mirror, love so much, that it is better seen in both of them who and what they are. Whence, also, they have compelled their worshippers, with terrible commands, to dedicate to them the uncleanness of the fabulous Theology, to put them among their solemnities, and reckon them among divine things; and thus they have both shown themselves more manifestly to be most impure spirits, and have made that rejected and reprobated theatrical Theology a member and a part of this, as it were, chosen and approved Theology of the city, so that, though the whole is disgraceful and false, and contains in it fictitious gods, one part of it is in the literature of the priests, the other in the songs of the poets. Whether it may have other parts is another question. At present, I think, I have sufficiently shown, on account of the division of Varro, that the Theology of the city and that of the theatre belong to one civil Theology. Wherefore, because they are both equally disgraceful, absurd, shameful, false, far be it from religious men to hope for eternal life from either the one or the other.
In fine, even Varro himself, in his account and enumeration of the gods, starts from the moment of a man's conception. He commences the series of those gods who take charge of man with Janus, carries it on to the death of the man decrepit[Pg 252] with age, and terminates it with the goddess Nnia, who is sung at the funerals of the aged. After that, he begins to give an account of the other gods, whose province is not man himself, but man's belongings, as food, clothing, and all that is necessary for this life; and, in the case of all these, he explains what is the special office of each, and for what each ought to be supplicated. But with all this scrupulous and comprehensive diligence, he has neither proved the existence, nor so much as mentioned the name, of any god from whom eternal life is to be sought,the one object for which we are Christians. Who, then, is so stupid as not to perceive that this man, by setting forth and opening up so diligently the civil Theology, and by exhibiting its likeness to that fabulous, shameful, and disgraceful Theology, and also by teaching that that fabulous sort is also a part of this other, was labouring to obtain a place in the minds of men for none but that natural Theology which he says pertains to philosophers, with such subtlety that he censures the fabulous, and, not daring openly to censure the civil, shows its censurable character by simply exhibiting it; and thus, both being reprobated by the judgment of men of right understanding, the natural alone remains to be chosen? But concerning this in its own place, by the help of the true God, we have to discuss more diligently.
10. Concerning the liberty of Seneca, who more vehemently censured the civil Theology than Varro did the fabulous.
That liberty, in truth, which this man wanted, so that he did not dare to censure that Theology of the city, which is very similar to the theatrical, so openly as he did the theatrical itself, was, though not fully, yet in part possessed by Annus Seneca, whom we have some evidence to show to have flourished in the times of our apostles. It was in part possessed by him, I say, for he possessed it in writing, but not in living. For in that book which he wrote against superstition,[243] he more copiously and vehemently censured that civil and urban Theology than Varro the theatrical and fabulous. For, when speaking concerning images, he says, "They dedicate images of the sacred and inviolable immortals in most worthless and motionless matter. They give them[Pg 253] the appearance of man, beasts, and fishes, and some make them of mixed sex, and heterogeneous bodies. They call them deities, when they are such that if they should get breath and should suddenly meet them, they would be held to be monsters." Then, a while afterwards, when extolling the natural Theology, he had expounded the sentiments of certain philosophers, he opposes to himself a question, and says, "Here some one says, Shall I believe that the heavens and the earth are gods, and that some are above the moon and some below it? Shall I bring forward either Plato or the peripatetic Strato, one of whom made God to be without a body, the other without a mind?" In answer to which he says, "And, really, what truer do the dreams of Titus Tatius, or Romulus, or Tullus Hostilius appear to thee? Tatius declared the divinity of the goddess Cloacina; Romulus that of Picus and Tiberinus; Tullus Hostilius that of Pavor and Pallor, the most disagreeable affections of men, the one of which is the agitation of the mind under fright, the other that of the body, not a disease, indeed, but a change of colour." Wilt thou rather believe that these are deities, and receive them into heaven? But with what freedom he has written concerning the rites themselves, cruel and shameful! "One," he says, "castrates himself, another cuts his arms. Where will they find room for the fear of these gods when angry, who use such means of gaining their favour when propitious? But gods who wish to be worshipped in this fashion should be worshipped in none. So great is the frenzy of the mind when perturbed and driven from its seat, that the gods are propitiated by men in a manner in which not even men of the greatest ferocity and fable-renowned cruelty vent their rage. Tyrants have lacerated the limbs of some; they never ordered any one to lacerate his own. For the gratification of royal lust, some have been castrated; but no one ever, by the comm and of his lord, laid violent hands on himself to emasculate himself. They kill themselves in the temples. They supplicate with their wounds and with their blood. If any one has time to see the things they do and the things they suffer, he will find so many things unseemly for men of respectability, so unworthy of freemen, so unlike the doings[Pg 254] of sane men, that no one would doubt that they are mad, had they been mad with the minority; but now the multitude of the insane is the defence of their sanity."
He next relates those things which are wont to be done in the Capitol, and with the utmost intrepidity insists that they are such things as one could only believe to be done by men making sport, or by madmen. For, having spoken with derision of this, that in the Egyptian sacred rites Osiris, being lost, is lamented for, but straightway, when found, is the occasion of great joy by his reappearance, because both the losing and the finding of him are feigned; and yet that grief and that joy which are elicited thereby from those who have lost nothing and found nothing are real;having, I say, so spoken of this, he says, "Still there is a fixed time for this frenzy. It is tolerable to go mad once in the year. Go into the Capitol. One is suggesting divine commands[244] to a god; another is telling the hours to Jupiter; one is a lictor; another is an anointer, who with the mere movement of his arms imitates one anointing. There are women who arrange the hair of Juno and Minerva, standing far away not only from her image, but even from her temple. These move their fingers in the manner of hair-dressers. There are some women who hold a mirror. There are some who are calling the gods to assist them in court. There are some who are holding up documents to them, and are explaining to them their cases. A learned and distinguished comedian, now old and decrepit, was daily playing the mimic in the Capitol, as though the gods would gladly be spectators of that which men had ceased to care about. Every kind of artificers working for the immortal gods is dwelling there in idleness." And a little after he says, "Nevertheless these, though they give themselves up to the gods for purposes superfluous enough, do not do so for any abominable or infamous purpose. There sit certain women in the Capitol who think they are beloved by Jupiter; nor are they frightened even by the look of the, if you will believe the poets, most wrathful Juno."
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This liberty Varro did not enjoy. It was only the poetical Theology he seemed to censure. The civil, which this man cuts to pieces, he was not bold enough to impugn. But if we attend to the truth, the temples where these things are performed are far worse than the theatres where they are represented. Whence, with respect to these sacred rites of the civil Theology, Seneca preferred, as the best course to be followed by a wise man, to feign respect for them in act, but to have no real regard for them at heart. "All which things," he says, "a wise man will observe as being commanded by the laws, but not as being pleasing to the gods." And a little after he says, "And what of this, that we unite the gods in marriage, and that not even naturally, for we join brothers and sisters? We marry Bellona to Mars, Venus to Vulcan, Salacia to Neptune. Some of them we leave unmarried, as though there were no match for them, which is surely needless, especially when there are certain unmarried goddesses, as Populonia, or Fulgora, or the goddess Rumina, for whom I am not astonished that suitors have been awanting. All this ignoble crowd of gods, which the superstition of ages has amassed, we ought," he says, "to adore in such a way as to remember all the while that its worship belongs rather to custom than to reality." Wherefore, neither those laws nor customs instituted in the civil Theology that which was pleasing to the gods, or which pertained to reality. But this man, whom philosophy had made, as it were, free, nevertheless, because he was an illustrious senator of the Roman people, worshipped what he censured, did what he condemned, adored what he reproached, because, forsooth, philosophy had taught him something great,namely, not to be superstitious in the world, but, on account of the laws of cities and the customs of men, to be an actor, not on the stage, but in the temples,conduct the more to be condemned, that those things which he was deceitfully acting he so acted that the people thought he was acting sincerely. But a stage-actor would rather delight people by acting plays than take them in by false pretences.
11. What Seneca thought concerning the Jews.
Seneca, among the other superstitions of civil Theology,[Pg 256] also found fault with the sacred things of the Jews, and especially the sabbaths, affirming that they act uselessly in keeping those seventh days, whereby they lose through idleness about the seventh part of their life, and also many things which demand immediate attention are damaged. The Christians, however, who were already most hostile to the Jews, he did not dare to mention, either for praise or blame, lest, if he praised them, he should do so against the ancient custom of his country, or, perhaps, if he should blame them, he should do so against his own will.
When he was speaking concerning those Jews, he said, "When, meanwhile, the customs of that most accursed nation have gained such strength that they have been now received in all lands, the conquered have given laws to the conquerors." By these words he expresses his astonishment; and, not knowing what the providence of God was leading him to say, subjoins in plain words an opinion by which he showed what he thought about the meaning of those sacred institutions: "For," he says, "those, however, know the cause of their rites, whilst the greater part of the people know not why they perform theirs." But concerning the solemnities of the Jews, either why or how far they were instituted by divine authority, and afterwards, in due time, by the same authority taken away from the people of God, to whom the mystery of eternal life was revealed, we have both spoken elsewhere, especially when we were treating against the Manichans, and also intend to speak in this work in a more suitable place.
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For to what but to felicity should men consecrate themselves, were felicity a goddess? However, as it is not a goddess, but a gift of God, to what God but the giver of happiness ought we to consecrate ourselves, who piously love eternal life, in which there is true and full felicity? But I think, from what has been said, no one ought to doubt that none of those gods is the giver of happiness, who are worshipped with such shame, and who, if they are not so worshipped, are more shamefully enraged, and thus confess that they are most foul spirits. Moreover, how can he give eternal life who cannot give happiness? For we mean by eternal life that life where there is endless happiness. For if the soul live in eternal punishments, by which also those unclean spirits shall be tormented, that is rather eternal death than eternal life. For there is no greater or worse death than when death never dies. But because the soul from its very nature, being created immortal, cannot be without some kind of life, its utmost death is alienation from the life of God in an eternity of punishment. So, then, He only who gives true happiness gives eternal life, that is, an endlessly happy life. And since those gods whom this civil Theology worships have been proved to be unable to give this happiness, they ought not to be worshipped on account of those temporal and terrestrial things, as we showed in the five former books, much less on account of eternal life, which is to be after death, as we have sought to show in this one book especially, whilst the other books also lend it their co-operation. But since the strength of inveterate habit has its roots very deep, if any one thinks that I have not disputed sufficiently to show that this civil Theology ought to be rejected and shunned, let him attend to another book which, with God's help, is to be joined to this one.
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BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Schmid's New Testament Theology. 1 vol.
Delitzsch's Commentary on Epistle to the Hebrews. Vol. ii.
Deutsches Requiem, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
interested in Theology, but from this fantastic discipline (and from the
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ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
When we try to study the periods in Plotinos's thought, as shown in his books, we are met with great1278 difficulties, which are chiefly due to Porphyry. Exactly following the contemporary methods of the compilers of the Bible, he undiscerningly confused the writings of the various periods, so as to make up an anthology, grouped by six groups of nine books each, according to subjects, consisting first of ethical disquisitions; second, of physical questions; third, of cosmic considerations; fourth, of psychological discussions; fifth, of transcendental lucubrations; and sixth, of metaphysics and Theology.440 As the reader might guess from the oversymmetrical grouping, and this pretty classification, the apparent order is only illusory, as he may have concluded from the fact that the discussions of matter analyzed above are scattered throughout the whole range of this anthology. The result of this Procrustean arrangement was the same as with the Bible: a confusion of mosaic, out of which pretty nearly anything could be proved, and into which almost everything has been read. Compare the outlines of the doctrines of Plotinos by Ritter, Zeller, Ueberweg, Chaignet, Mead, Guthrie, and Drews, and it will be seen that there is very little agreement between them, while none of them allow for the difference between the various parts of the Enneads.
How fearful the confusion is, will best be realized from the following two tables, made up from the indications given in Porphyry's Life of Plotinos.
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The successors of Plotinos could not remain on this purely philosophic standpoint. Instead of practising the ecstasy, they followed the Gnostics in theorizing about practical religious reality in their cosmology and Theology, which took on, more or less, the shape of magic, not inconsiderably aided by Stoic allegoric interpretations of myths, as in Porphyry's "Cave of the Nymphs."
What Plato did for early Greek philosophy, what Numenius did for post-Platonic thought, that Proclus Diadochus, the "Successor," did for Plotinos and his followers. For the first time since Numenius we find again a comparative method. By this time religion and philosophy have fused in magic, and so, instead of a comparative religion, we have a comparative philosophy. Proclus was the first genuine commentator, quoting authorities on all sides. He was sufficient of a philosopher to grasp Neoplatonism as a school of thought; and far from paying any attention to Ammonius, as recent philosophy has done, as source of Neoplatonism, he traces the movement as far as Plutarch, calling him the "father of us all," inasmuch as he introduced the conception of "hypostasis." Evidently, Proclus looked upon this as the centre of Neoplatonic development, and therefore we shall be justified in a closer study of this conception; and we may even say that its historic destiny was a continuation of the main stream of creative Greek philosophy; or, if you prefer, of Platonism, or Noumenianism, or even Plotinian thought.
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In order to understand the attitude of Plotinos on the subject, we must try to put ourselves in his position. In the first place, on Porphyry's own admission, he had added to Platonism Peripatetic and Stoic views. From Aristotle his chief borrowings were the categories of form and matter, and the distinction between potentiality and actuality,488 as well as the Aristotelian psychology of various souls. To the Stoics he was drawn by their monism, which led him to drop the traditional Academico-Stoic feud, or rather to take the side of the Stoics against Numenius the Platonist dualist and the dualistic successors, the Gnostics. But there was a difference between the Stoics and Plotinos. The Stoics assimilated spirit to matter, while Plotinos, reminiscent of Plato, preferred to assimilate matter to spirit. Still, he used their terminology, and categories, including the conception of a hypostasis, or form of existence. With this equipment, he held to the traditional Platonic trinity of the "Letters," the King, the intellect, and the soul. Philosophically, however, he had received from Numenius the inheritance of a double name of the Divinity, Being and Essence. As a thinker, he was therefore forced to accommodate Numenius to Plato, and by adding to Numenius's name of the divinity, to complete Numenius's Theology by Numenius's own1303 cosmology. This then he did by adding as third hypostasis the Aristotelian dynamic energy.
But as Intellect is permanent, how can Energy arise therefrom? Here this eternal puzzle is solved by distinguishing energy into indwelling and out-flowing. As indwelling, Energy constitutes Intellect; but its energetic nature could not be demonstrated except by out-flowing, which produces a distinction.
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Now Plotinos, as we remember, found fault with the Gnostics in that they taught distinctions within the divinity.506 He would therefore be disposed to remove from within the divinity those distinctions of Plotinic, Plutarchian, Numenian, or Gnostic Theology; although he himself in early times did not scruple to speak of a hypostasis of wisdom, or of Eros, or other matter he might be considering. Such terms of Numenius or Amelius as he seems to ignore are the various Demiurges; the three Plutarchian Providences he himself still uses. Still, all these terms he would be disposed to eradicate from within the divinity.
As a constructive metaphysician, however, he could not well get along without some titles for the different phases of the divinity; and even if he dispensed with the old names, there would still remain as their underlying1305 support the reality or substance of the distinction. So he removed the offensive, aggressive, historically known and recognized terms, while leaving their underlying substances, or supports. Now "substance" had become "substances," and to differentiate these it was necessary to interpret them as differing forms of existence. The change was most definitely made by Athanasius, who at a synod in Alexandria, in A.D. 362,507 fastened on the church, as synonymous with hypostasis the popular term "prosopon" or "face." That this was an innovation appears from the fact that the Nicene Council had stated that it was heretical to say that Christ was of a hypostasis different from that of the Father, in which case the word evidently meant still the original underlying (singular) substance. With this official definition in vogue, the original (singular) substance became forgotten, and it became possible to speak in the plural, of three faces, as indeed Plotinos had done.
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Plotinos's date being about A.D. 262, he stands midway between the Christian writings of the New Testament, and the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325. As a philosopher dealing with the kindred topics the soul and its salvation, and deriving terminology and inspiration from the same sources, Platonism and Stoicism, we would expect extensive parallelism and correspondence. Though Plotinos does not mention any contemporaneous writings, we will surely be able to detect indirect references to Old and New Testaments. But what will be of most vital interest will be his anticipations of Nicene formulations, or reflection of current expressions of Christian philosophic comment. While we cannot positively assert this Christian development was exclusively Plotinian, we are justified in saying that the development of Christian philosophy was not due exclusively to the Alexandrian catechetical school; that what later appears as Christian Theology was only earlier current Neoplatonic metaphysics, without any exclusive dogmatic connection with the distinctively Christian biography. This avoids the flat assertion of Drews that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was dependent on Plotinos, although it admits Bouillet's more cautious statement that Plotinos was the rationalizer of the doctrine of the Trinity.509 This much is certain, that no other contemporaneous discussion of the trinity has survived, if any ever existed; and we must remember that it was not until the1308 council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, that the Nicene Creed, by the addition of the Filioque clause, became trinitarian in a thoroughgoing way; and not until fifty years later that Augustine, again in the West, fully expressed a philosophy and psychology of the trinity.
To Plotinos therefore is due the historical position of protagonist of trinitarian philosophy.
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Platonic traces, there would naturally be; but it will be noticed that they are far less numerous than the Pythagorean. To begin with, we find the reverent spirit towards the divinities, which prays for their blessing at the inception of all tasks.710 To us who live in these latter days, such a prayer seems out of place in philosophy; but that is only because we have divorced philosophy from Theology; in other words, because our Theology has left the realm of living thought, and, being fixed once for all, we are allowed to pursue any theory of existence we please as if it had nothing whatever to do with any reality; in other words, we are deceiving ourselves. On the contrary, in those days,1323 every philosophical speculation was a genuine adventure in the spiritual world, a magical operation that might unexpectedly lead to the threshold of the cosmic sanctuary. Wise, indeed, therefore, was he who began it by prayer.
Of other technical Platonic terms there are quite a few. The lower is always the image of the higher.711 So the world might be considered the statue of the Divinity.712 The ideas are in a realm above the world.713 The soul here below is as in a prison.714 There is a divinity higher than the one generally known.715 The divinity is in a stability resultant of firmness and perfect motion.716 The perfect movement, therefore, is circular.717 This inter-communion of the universe therefore results in matter appearing in the intelligible world as "intelligible matter."718 By dialectics, also called "bastard reasoning,"719 we abstract everything720 till we reach the thing-in-itself,721 or, in other words, matter as a substrate of the world.722 Thus we metaphysically reach ineffable solitude.723
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1328 It is, of course, among mystics that Plotinos has been accorded the greater honor. His practical influence descended through the visions and ecstasies of the saints down to Swedenborg, who attempted to write the Theology of the ecstasy; and the relation between these two, Swedenborg and Plotinos should prove a fertile field for investigation.
CULTURAL IMPORTANCE.
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151 Proclus, Theology of Plato, vi. 23.
152 As the generation of the world, in Plato's Timaeus, p. 28, 29, Cary, 9; and the erecting into separate Gods various powers of the same divinity, as Proclus said, in his commentary thereon, in Parm. i. 30.
Gorgias, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The Greek in the age of Plato admitted praise to be one of the chief incentives to moral virtue, and to most men the opinion of their fellows is a leading principle of action. Hence a certain element of seeming enters into all things; all or almost all desire to appear better than they are, that they may win the esteem or admiration of others. A man of ability can easily feign the language of piety or virtue; and there is an unconscious as well as a conscious hypocrisy which, according to Socrates, is the worst of the two. Again, there is the sophistry of classes and professions. There are the different opinions about themselves and one another which prevail in different ranks of society. There is the bias given to the mind by the study of one department of human knowledge to the exclusion of the rest; and stronger far the prejudice engendered by a pecuniary or party interest in certain tenets. There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of Theology. All of these disguises wear the appearance of the truth; some of them are very ancient, and we do not easily disengage ourselves from them; for we have inherited them, and they have become a part of us. The sophistry of an ancient Greek sophist is nothing compared with the sophistry of a religious order, or of a church in which during many ages falsehood has been accumulating, and everything has been said on one side, and nothing on the other. The conventions and customs which we observe in conversation, and the opposition of our interests when we have dealings with one another ('the buyer saith, it is noughtit is nought,' etc.), are always obscuring our sense of truth and right. The sophistry of human nature is far more subtle than the deceit of any one man. Few persons speak freely from their own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think for himself: most of us imperceptibly fall into the opinions of those around us, which we partly help to make. A man who would shake himself loose from them, requires great force of mind; he hardly knows where to begin in the search after truth. On every side he is met by the world, which is not an abstraction of theologians, but the most real of all things, being another name for ourselves when regarded collectively and subjected to the influences of society.
Then comes Socrates, impressed as no other man ever was, with the unreality and untruthfulness of popular opinion, and tells mankind that they must be and not seem. How are they to be? At any rate they must have the spirit and desire to be. If they are ignorant, they must acknowledge their ignorance to themselves; if they are conscious of doing evil, they must learn to do well; if they are weak, and have nothing in them which they can call themselves, they must acquire firmness and consistency; if they are indifferent, they must begin to take an interest in the great questions which surround them. They must try to be what they would fain appear in the eyes of their fellow-men. A single individual cannot easily change public opinion; but he can be true and innocent, simple and independent; he can know what he does, and what he does not know; and though not without an effort, he can form a judgment of his own, at least in common matters. In his most secret actions he can show the same high principle (compare Republic) which he shows when supported and watched by public opinion. And on some fitting occasion, on some question of humanity or truth or right, even an ordinary man, from the natural rectitude of his disposition, may be found to take up arms against a whole tribe of politicians and lawyers, and be too much for them.
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There is a further paradox of ethics, in which pleasure and pain are held to be indifferent, and virtue at the time of action and without regard to consequences is happiness. From this elevation or exaggeration of feeling Plato seems to shrink: he leaves it to the Stoics in a later generation to maintain that when impaled or on the rack the philosopher may be happy (compare Republic). It is observable that in the Republic he raises this question, but it is not really discussed; the veil of the ideal state, the shadow of another life, are allowed to descend upon it and it passes out of sight. The martyr or sufferer in the cause of right or truth is often supposed to die in raptures, having his eye fixed on a city which is in heaven. But if there were no future, might he not still be happy in the performance of an action which was attended only by a painful death? He himself may be ready to thank God that he was thought worthy to do Him the least service, without looking for a reward; the joys of another life may not have been present to his mind at all. Do we suppose that the mediaeval saint, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Catharine of Sienna, or the Catholic priest who lately devoted himself to death by a lingering disease that he might solace and help others, was thinking of the 'sweets' of heaven? No; the work was already heaven to him and enough. Much less will the dying patriot be dreaming of the praises of man or of an immortality of fame: the sense of duty, of right, and trust in God will be sufficient, and as far as the mind can reach, in that hour. If he were certain that there were no life to come, he would not have wished to speak or act otherwise than he did in the cause of truth or of humanity. Neither, on the other hand, will he suppose that God has forsaken him or that the future is to be a mere blank to him. The greatest act of faith, the only faith which cannot pass away, is his who has not known, but yet has believed. A very few among the sons of men have made themselves independent of circumstances, past, present, or to come. He who has attained to such a temper of mind has already present with him eternal life; he needs no arguments to convince him of immortality; he has in him already a principle stronger than death. He who serves man without the thought of reward is deemed to be a more faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not the service of God, which is the more disinterested, be in like manner the higher? And although only a very few in the course of the world's historyChrist himself being one of themhave attained to such a noble conception of God and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may be present to us, and the remembrance of them be an example to us, and their lives may shed a light on many dark places both of philosophy and Theology.
THE MYTHS OF PLATO.
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Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths of Plato, nor perhaps any allegory or parable relating to the unseen world, is consistent with itself. The language of philosophy mingles with that of mythology; abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of speech into realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan, in which discussions of Theology are mixed up with the incidents of travel, and mythological personages are associated with human beings: they are also garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer, and with other fragments of Greek tradition.
The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes in their choice of life than those who have had more experience of the world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that we constantly blame others when we have only ourselves to blame; and the philosopher must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in human life with which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical description of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only desired rest. We should like to know what became of the infants 'dying almost as soon as they were born,' but Plato only raises, without satisfying, our curiosity. The two companies of souls, ascending and descending at either chasm of heaven and earth, and conversing when they come out into the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges sitting in heaven, the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the great allegory which have an indescribable grandeur and power. The remark already made respecting the inconsistency of the two other myths must be extended also to this: it is at once an orrery, or model of the heavens, and a picture of the Day of Judgment.
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It is characteristic of Plato and of his age to pass from the abstract to the concrete, from poetry to reality. Language is the expression of the seen, and also of the unseen, and moves in a region between them. A great writer knows how to strike both these chords, sometimes remaining within the sphere of the visible, and then again comprehending a wider range and soaring to the abstract and universal. Even in the same sentence he may employ both modes of speech not improperly or inharmoniously. It is useless to criticise the broken metaphors of Plato, if the effect of the whole is to create a picture not such as can be painted on canvas, but which is full of life and meaning to the reader. A poem may be contained in a word or two, which may call up not one but many latent images; or half reveal to us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often the rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked out too much at length, becomes prosy and monotonous. In Theology and philosophy we necessarily include both 'the moral law within and the starry heaven above,' and pass from one to the other (compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of language is puerile or noble depends upon the genius of the writer or speaker, and the familiarity of the associations employed.
In the myths and parables of Plato the ease and grace of conversation is not forgotten: they are spoken, not written words, stories which are told to a living audience, and so well told that we are more than half-inclined to believe them (compare Phaedrus). As in conversation too, the striking image or figure of speech is not forgotten, but is quickly caught up, and alluded to again and again; as it would still be in our own day in a genial and sympathetic society. The descriptions of Plato have a greater life and reality than is to be found in any modern writing. This is due to their homeliness and simplicity. Plato can do with words just as he pleases; to him they are indeed 'more plastic than wax' (Republic). We are in the habit of opposing speech and writing, poetry and prose. But he has discovered a use of language in which they are united; which gives a fitting expression to the highest truths; and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities of daily life are not overlooked.
Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
the Art of the Mystics, but without Lumber of Theology. Allan Bennett
bestowed upon me the right Art of Magic, and Our Holy Qabalah, with a
Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
SKETCH OF THE PROPHETIC Theology
OF NUMBERS
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Theology. The others are the keys of Nature; we shall return to them in
the third part of this work.
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"A doctor of Theology said to me: "In everything I should submit
myself to the Council; everything would then be good and lawful for
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SKETCH OF THE PROPHETIC Theology OF NUMBERS . . . 14
ARTICLE II . . . . . . . . 72
Meno, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
So various, and if regarded on the surface only, inconsistent, are the statements of Plato respecting the doctrine of ideas. If we attempted to harmonize or to combine them, we should make out of them, not a system, but the caricature of a system. They are the ever-varying expression of Plato's Idealism. The terms used in them are in their substance and general meaning the same, although they seem to be different. They pass from the subject to the object, from earth (diesseits) to heaven (jenseits) without regard to the gulf which later Theology and philosophy have made between them. They are also intended to supplement or explain each other. They relate to a subject of which Plato himself would have said that 'he was not confident of the precise form of his own statements, but was strong in the belief that something of the kind was true.' It is the spirit, not the letter, in which they agreethe spirit which places the divine above the human, the spiritual above the material, the one above the many, the mind before the body.
The stream of ancient philosophy in the Alexandrian and Roman times widens into a lake or sea, and then disappears underground to reappear after many ages in a distant land. It begins to flow again under new conditions, at first confined between high and narrow banks, but finally spreading over the continent of Europe. It is and is not the same with ancient philosophy. There is a great deal in modern philosophy which is inspired by ancient. There is much in ancient philosophy which was 'born out of due time; and before men were capable of understanding it. To the fathers of modern philosophy, their own thoughts appeared to be new and original, but they carried with them an echo or shadow of the past, coming back by recollection from an elder world. Of this the enquirers of the seventeenth century, who to themselves appeared to be working out independently the enquiry into all truth, were unconscious. They stood in a new relation to Theology and natural philosophy, and for a time maintained towards both an attitude of reserve and separation. Yet the similarities between modern and ancient thought are greater far than the differences. All philosophy, even that part of it which is said to be based upon experience, is really ideal; and ideas are not only derived from facts, but they are also prior to them and extend far beyond them, just as the mind is prior to the senses.
Early Greek speculation culminates in the ideas of Plato, or rather in the single idea of good. His followers, and perhaps he himself, having arrived at this elevation, instead of going forwards went backwards from philosophy to psychology, from ideas to numbers. But what we perceive to be the real meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin of knowledge, will always continue to be one of the first problems of philosophy.
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The question which Plato has raised respecting the origin and nature of ideas belongs to the infancy of philosophy; in modern times it would no longer be asked. Their origin is only their history, so far as we know it; there can be no other. We may trace them in language, in philosophy, in mythology, in poetry, but we cannot argue a priori about them. We may attempt to shake them off, but they are always returning, and in every sphere of science and human action are tending to go beyond facts. They are thought to be innate, because they have been familiar to us all our lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from our mind. Many of them express relations of terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at all in rerum natura corresponds. We are not such free agents in the use of them as we sometimes imagine. Fixed ideas have taken the most complete possession of some thinkers who have been most determined to renounce them, and have been vehemently affirmed when they could be least explained and were incapable of proof. The world has often been led away by a word to which no distinct meaning could be attached. Abstractions such as 'authority,' 'equality,' 'utility,' 'liberty,' 'pleasure,' 'experience,' 'consciousness,' 'chance,' 'substance,' 'matter,' 'atom,' and a heap of other metaphysical and theological terms, are the source of quite as much error and illusion and have as little relation to actual facts as the ideas of Plato. Few students of Theology or philosophy have sufficiently reflected how quickly the bloom of a philosophy passes away; or how hard it is for one age to understand the writings of another; or how nice a judgment is required of those who are seeking to express the philosophy of one age in the terms of another. The 'eternal truths' of which metaphysicians speak have hardly ever lasted more than a generation. In our own day schools or systems of philosophy which have once been famous have died before the founders of them. We are still, as in Plato's age, groping about for a new method more comprehensive than any of those which now prevail; and also more permanent. And we seem to see at a distance the promise of such a method, which can hardly be any other than the method of idealized experience, having roots which strike far down into the history of philosophy. It is a method which does not divorce the present from the past, or the part from the whole, or the abstract from the concrete, or theory from fact, or the divine from the human, or one science from another, but labours to connect them. Along such a road we have proceeded a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make us reflect on the want of method which prevails in our own day. In another age, all the branches of knowledge, whether relating to God or man or nature, will become the knowledge of 'the revelation of a single science' (Symp.), and all things, like the stars in heaven, will shed their light upon one another.
MENO
MoM References, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Jaeger, W. (1968). The Theology of the early Greek philosophers: The Gifford lectures 1936. London:
Oxford University Press.
Phaedo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has sunk deep into the heart of the human race; and men are apt to rebel against any examination of the nature or grounds of their belief. They do not like to acknowledge that this, as well as the other 'eternal ideas; of man, has a history in time, which may be traced in Greek poetry or philosophy, and also in the Hebrew Scriptures. They convert feeling into reasoning, and throw a network of dialectics over that which is really a deeply-rooted instinct. In the same temper which Socrates reproves in himself they are disposed to think that even fallacies will do no harm, for they will die with them, and while they live they will gain by the delusion. And when they consider the numberless bad arguments which have been pressed into the service of Theology, they say, like the companions of Socrates, 'What argument can we ever trust again?' But there is a better and higher spirit to be gathered from the Phaedo, as well as from the other writings of Plato, which says that first principles should be most constantly reviewed (Phaedo and Crat.), and that the highest subjects demand of us the greatest accuracy (Republic); also that we must not become misologists because arguments are apt to be deceivers.
2. In former ages there was a customary rather than a reasoned belief in the immortality of the soul. It was based on the authority of the Church, on the necessity of such a belief to morality and the order of society, on the evidence of an historical fact, and also on analogies and figures of speech which filled up the void or gave an expression in words to a cherished instinct. The mass of mankind went on their way busy with the affairs of this life, hardly stopping to think about another. But in our own day the question has been reopened, and it is doubtful whether the belief which in the first ages of Christianity was the strongest motive of action can survive the conflict with a scientific age in which the rules of evidence are stricter and the mind has become more sensitive to criticism. It has faded into the distance by a natural process as it was removed further and further from the historical fact on which it has been supposed to rest. Arguments derived from material things such as the seed and the ear of corn or transitions in the life of animals from one state of being to another (the chrysalis and the butterfly) are not 'in pari materia' with arguments from the visible to the invisible, and are therefore felt to be no longer applicable. The evidence to the historical fact seems to be weaker than was once supposed: it is not consistent with itself, and is based upon documents which are of unknown origin. The immortality of man must be proved by other arguments than these if it is again to become a living belief. We must ask ourselves afresh why we still maintain it, and seek to discover a foundation for it in the nature of God and in the first principles of morality.
Sophist, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The Hegelian dialectic may be also described as a movement from the simple to the complex. Beginning with the generalizations of sense, (1) passing through ideas of quality, quantity, measure, number, and the like, (2) ascending from presentations, that is pictorial forms of sense, to representations in which the picture vanishes and the essence is detached in thought from the outward form, (3) combining the I and the not-I, or the subject and object, the natural order of thought is at last found to include the leading ideas of the sciences and to arrange them in relation to one another. Abstractions grow together and again become concrete in a new and higher sense. They also admit of development from within their own spheres. Everywhere there is a movement of attraction and repulsion going onan attraction or repulsion of ideas of which the physical phenomenon described under a similar name is a figure. Freedom and necessity, mind and matter, the continuous and the discrete, cause and effect, are perpetually being severed from one another in thought, only to be perpetually reunited. The finite and infinite, the absolute and relative are not really opposed; the finite and the negation of the finite are alike lost in a higher or positive infinity, and the absolute is the sum or correlation of all relatives. When this reconciliation of opposites is finally completed in all its stages, the mind may come back again and review the things of sense, the opinions of philosophers, the strife of Theology and politics, without being disturbed by them. Whatever is, if not the very bestand what is the best, who can tell?is, at any rate, historical and rational, suitable to its own age, unsuitable to any other. Nor can any efforts of speculative thinkers or of soldiers and statesmen materially quicken the 'process of the suns.'
Hegel was quite sensible how great would be the difficulty of presenting philosophy to mankind under the form of opposites. Most of us live in the one-sided truth which the understanding offers to us, and if occasionally we come across difficulties like the time-honoured controversy of necessity and free-will, or the Eleatic puzzle of Achilles and the tortoise, we relegate some of them to the sphere of mystery, others to the book of riddles, and go on our way rejoicing. Most men (like Aristotle) have been accustomed to regard a contradiction in terms as the end of strife; to be told that contradiction is the life and mainspring of the intellectual world is indeed a paradox to them. Every abstraction is at first the enemy of every other, yet they are linked together, each with all, in the chain of Being. The struggle for existence is not confined to the animals, but appears in the kingdom of thought. The divisions which arise in thought between the physical and moral and between the moral and intellectual, and the like, are deepened and widened by the formal logic which elevates the defects of the human faculties into Laws of Thought; they become a part of the mind which makes them and is also made up of them. Such distinctions become so familiar to us that we regard the thing signified by them as absolutely fixed and defined. These are some of the illusions from which Hegel delivers us by placing us above ourselves, by teaching us to analyze the growth of 'what we are pleased to call our minds,' by reverting to a time when our present distinctions of thought and language had no existence.
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3. Many of those who are least disposed to become the votaries of Hegelianism nevertheless recognize in his system a new logic supplying a variety of instruments and methods hitherto unemployed. We may not be able to agree with him in assimilating the natural order of human thought with the history of philosophy, and still less in identifying both with the divine idea or nature. But we may acknowledge that the great thinker has thrown a light on many parts of human knowledge, and has solved many difficulties. We cannot receive his doctrine of opposites as the last word of philosophy, but still we may regard it as a very important contri bution to logic. We cannot affirm that words have no meaning when taken out of their connexion in the history of thought. But we recognize that their meaning is to a great extent due to association, and to their correlation with one another. We see the advantage of viewing in the concrete what mankind regard only in the abstract. There is much to be said for his faith or conviction, that God is immanent in the world,within the sphere of the human mind, and not beyond it. It was natural that he himself, like a prophet of old, should regard the philosophy which he had invented as the voice of God in man. But this by no means implies that he conceived himself as creating God in thought. He was the servant of his own ideas and not the master of them. The philosophy of history and the history of philosophy may be almost said to have been discovered by him. He has done more to explain Greek thought than all other writers put together. Many ideas of development, evolution, reciprocity, which have become the symbols of another school of thinkers may be traced to his speculations. In the Theology and philosophy of England as well as of Germany, and also in the lighter literature of both countries, there are always appearing 'fragments of the great banquet' of Hegel.
SOPHIST
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Within a few generations this
'faulty synthesis' was to create a new orthodoxy, which led to another
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married to Theology when Aristotle's 'first mover' became identified
with God, and his star-spinning spirits with the hierarchy of angels.
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astronomy had to embrace Theology, Soviet biology was wedded to a
crude form of Lamarckism. The development of science cannot be
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Christian Theology, the ways of God become less arbitrary, but more
inscrutable; man proposes, God disposes; original sin chokes his
Theaetetus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
III. The theory of Protagoras is connected by Aristotle as well as Plato with the flux of Heracleitus. But Aristotle is only following Plato, and Plato, as we have already seen, did not mean to imply that such a connexion was admitted by Protagoras himself. His metaphysical genius saw or seemed to see a common tendency in them, just as the modern historian of ancient philosophy might perceive a parallelism between two thinkers of which they were probably unconscious themselves. We must remember throughout that Plato is not speaking of Heracleitus, but of the Heracliteans, who succeeded him; nor of the great original ideas of the master, but of the Eristic into which they had degenerated a hundred years later. There is nothing in the fragments of Heracleitus which at all justifies Plato's account of him. His philosophy may be resolved into two elementsfirst, change, secondly, law or measure pervading the change: these he saw everywhere, and often expressed in strange mythological symbols. But he has no analysis of sensible perception such as Plato attri butes to him; nor is there any reason to suppose that he pushed his philosophy into that absolute negation in which Heracliteanism was sunk in the age of Plato. He never said that 'change means every sort of change;' and he expressly distinguished between 'the general and particular understanding.' Like a poet, he surveyed the elements of mythology, nature, thought, which lay before him, and sometimes by the light of genius he saw or seemed to see a mysterious principle working behind them. But as has been the case with other great philosophers, and with Plato and Aristotle themselves, what was really permanent and original could not be understood by the next generation, while a perverted logic carried out his chance expressions with an illogical consistency. His simple and noble thoughts, like those of the great Eleatic, soon degenerated into a mere strife of words. And when thus reduced to mere words, they seem to have exercised a far wider influence in the cities of Ionia (where the people 'were mad about them') than in the life-time of Heracleitusa phenomenon which, though at first sight singular, is not without a parallel in the history of philosophy and Theology.
It is this perverted form of the Heraclitean philosophy which is supposed to effect the final overthrow of Protagorean sensationalism. For if all things are changing at every moment, in all sorts of ways, then there is nothing fixed or defined at all, and therefore no sensible perception, nor any true word by which that or anything else can be described. Of course Protagoras would not have admitted the justice of this argument any more than Heracleitus would have acknowledged the 'uneducated fanatics' who appealed to his writings. He might have said, 'The excellent Socrates has first confused me with Heracleitus, and Heracleitus with his Ephesian successors, and has then disproved the existence both of knowledge and sensation. But I am not responsible for what I never said, nor will I admit that my common-sense account of knowledge can be overthrown by unintelligible Heraclitean paradoxes.'
The Divine Names Text (Dionysis), #The Divine Names, #unset, #Zen
But, let the rule of the Oracles be here also prescribed for us, viz., that we shall establish the truth of the things spoken concerning God, not in the persuasive words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit-moved power of the Theologians, by aid of which we are brought into contact with things unutterable and unknown, in a manner unutterable and unknown, in proportion to the superior union of the reasoning and intuitive faculty and operation within us. By no means then is it permitted to speak, or even to think, anything, concerning the superessential and hidden Deity, beyond those things divinely revealed to us in the sacred Oracles 2. For Agnosia, |2 (supra-knowledge) of its superessentiality above reason and mind and essence----to, it must we attribute the super-essential science, so far aspiring to the Highest, as the ray of the supremely Divine Oracles imparts itself, whilst we restrain ourselves in our approach to the higher glories by prudence and piety as regards things Divine. For, if we must place any confidence in the All Wise and most trustworthy Theology, things Divine are revealed and contemplated in proportion to the capacity of each of the minds, since the supremely Divine Goodness distributes Divinely its immeasurableness (as that which cannot be contained) with a justice which preserves those whose capacity is limited. For, as things intelligible cannot be comprehended and contemplated by things of sense, and things uncompounded and unformed by things compounded and formed; and the intangible and unshaped formlessness of things without body, by those formed according to the shapes of bodies; in accordance with the self-same analogy of the truth, the superessential Illimitability is placed above things essential, and the Unity above mind above the Minds; and the One above conception is inconceivable to all conceptions; and the Good above word is unutterable by word----Unit making one every unit, and superessential essence and mind inconceivable, and Word unutterable, speechlessness3 and inconception4, and namelessness----being after the manner of no existing being, and Cause of being to all, but Itself not being, |3 as beyond every essence, and as It may manifest Itself properly and scientifically concerning Itself.
SECTION II.
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Further also, the Theologians do not honour alone the Names of God which are given from universal or particular Providences, or objects of His forethought; but also from certain occasional Divine Visions, in the sacred temples or elsewhere, which enlightened the initiated or the Prophets, they name the surpassing bright Goodness which is above Name, after one or other causes and powers, and clothe It in forms and shapes of man, or fire, or electron, and celebrate Its eyes and ears, and locks of hair, and countenance, and hands, and back, and wings, and arms, and hinder parts and feet. Also they assign to It crowns 5 and seats, and drinking vessels and bowls, and certain other things mystical, concerning which, in our Symbolic Theology, we will speak as best we can. But |12 now, collecting from the Oracles so much as serves the purpose of our present treatise, and using the things aforesaid, as a kind of Canon, and keeping our eyes upon them, let us advance to the unfolding of the Names of God, which fall within the range of our understanding, and, what the hierarchical rule always teaches us throughout every phase of Theology, let us become initiated (to speak authoritatively) in the godlike contemplations with a god-enlightened conception. And let us bring religious ears to the unfoldings of the Holy Names of God, implanting the Holy in the Holy, according to the Divine tradition, and removing it from the laughter and jeers of the uninitiated; yea, rather, if certain men really are such, purifying them from their fighting against God in this matter. Be it thine, then, to guard these things, O excellent Timothy, according to the most holy leading, and to make the things Divine neither spoken nor known to the uninitiated. For myself, may Almighty God give me to celebrate, in a manner worthy of God, the numerous beneficent Names of the uncalled and unnamed Deity; and may He not take away a word of truth from my mouth.
CAPUT II.
SECTION I. Concerning common and distinctive Theology, and what is the Divine Union and distinction.
LET then the self-existent Goodness be sung from the Oracles as defining and manifesting the whole |13 supremely-Divine-Subsistence in its essential nature. For, what else is there to learn from the sacred Theology, when it affirms that the Godhead Itself, leading the way, says, "Why dost thou ask me concerning the Good?----None is Good except God alone." Now, this, we have thoroughly demonstrated elsewhere, that always, all the God-becoming Names of God, are celebrated by the Oracles, not partitively, but as applied to the whole and entire and complete and full Godhead, and that all of them are referred impartitively, absolutely, unreservedly, entirely, to all the Entirety of the entirely complete and every Deity. And verily as we have mentioned in the Theological Outlines, if any one should say that this is not spoken concerning the whole Deity, he blasphemes, and dares, without right, to cleave asunder the super-unified Unity.
We must affirm, then, that this is to be received respecting the whole Deity. For even the essentially Good Word Himself said, "I am Good 6." And a certain one of the God-rapt Prophets celebrates the Spirit as "the Good 7." And again this, "I am He, Who is 8." If they shall say that this is said, not of the whole Deity, but should violently limit it to one part, how will they understand this? "These things, saith He, Who is, Who was, Who is to come, the Almighty 9," and "Thou art the same 10," and this, "Spirit of truth, which is, which proceedeth from the Father 11." And if they say that the supremely Divine Life is not coextensive with the |14 whole, how is the sacred Word true which said, "As the Father raiseth the dead and maketh alive, so also the Son maketh alive whom He will 12," and that "the Spirit is He, Who maketh alive 13?" But, that the whole Deity holds the Lordship over the whole, one can scarcely say, as I think how many times, in reference to the Paternal Deity, or the Filial, the word "Lord "is repeated in the Word of God, as applied to Father and Son 14. But the Spirit also is Lord 15. And "the beautiful and the wise" are also sung respecting the whole Deity. And the light, and the deifying, and the cause, and whatever pertains to the whole Godhead, the Oracles introduce into all the supremely Divine hymnody----collectively, when they say "all things are from Almighty God; "but, specifically, as when they say, "all things were made through Him and to Him," and "all things in Him consist," and "Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be made." And, that one may speak summarily, the supremely Divine Word Himself said, "I and the Father are One," and "all that the Father hath are Mine," and, "All Mine are Thine, and Thine, Mine." And again, whatever pertains to the Father and Himself, He attributes. to the supremely Divine Spirit, collectively and in common----the works of God----the homage, the fontal and ceaseless cause and the distribution of the goodly gifts. And I think, none of those, who have been nourished in the Divine Oracles with unprejudiced conceptions, |15 will oppose this, that all things befitting God belong to the whole Godhead, according to the divinely perfect Word. Since, then, we have demonstrated and defined these things from the Oracles,----here indeed partially, but elsewhere sufficiently----we will undertake to unfold every Divine Name whatsoever, which is to be received as referring to the whole Deity.
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But if any one should say that we introduce in so doing a confusion, in disparagement of the distinction which befits God, we do not think that such a statement as this is itself sufficient to convince that it is true. For, if there is any one who has placed himself entirely in opposition to the Oracles, he will be also entirely apart from our. philosophy; and, if he has no care for the divine Wisdom of the Oracles, how shall we care for his guidance to the theological science? But, if he regards the truth of the Oracles, we also, using this canon and illumination, will advance unwaveringly to the answer, as best we can, by affirming that Theology transmits some things as common, but others as distinctive; and neither is it meet to divide the common, nor to confuse the distinctive; but that following It according to our ability, we ought to rise to the Divine splendours; for, by taking thence the Divine revelations, as a most excellent canon of truth, we strive to guard the things lying there, in their native simplicity and integrity and identity----being ourselves guarded in our guard of |16 the Oracles, and from these receiving strength to guard those who guard them.
SECTION III.
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Further also, the most conspicuous fact of all Theology----the God-formation of Jesus amongst us----is both unutterable by every expression and unknown to every mind, even to the very foremost of the most reverend angels. The fact indeed that. He took |23 substance as man, we have received as a mystery, but we do not know in what manner, from virginal bloods, by a different law, beyond nature, He was formed, and how, with dry feet, having a bodily bulk and weight of matter, He marched upon the liquid and unstable substance 17; and so, with regard to all the other features of the super-physical physiology of Jesus. Now, we have elsewhere sufficiently spoken of these things, and they have been celebrated by our illustrious leader, in his Theological Elements, in a manner far beyond natural ability----things which that illustrious man acquired, either from the sacred theologians, or comprehended from the scientific, search of the Oracles, from manifold struggles and investigations respecting the same, or was instructed from a sort of more Divine Inspiration, not only having learnt, but having felt the pangs of things Divine, and from his sympathy with them, if I may so speak, having been perfected to their untaught and mystic union and acceptance. And that we may display, in fewest words, the many and blessed visions of his most excellent intelligence, the following are the things he says, concerning the Lord Jesus, in the Theological Elements compiled by him.
SECTION X. From the Theological Elements of the most holy Hierotheus.
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FIRST, with your permission, let us examine the all-perfect Name of Goodness, which is indicative of the whole progressions of Almighty God, having invoked the supremely good, and super-good Triad----the Name which indicates Its whole best Providences. For, we must first be raised up to It, as Source of good, by our prayers; and by a nearer approach to It, be initiated as to the all good gifts which are established around It. For It is indeed present to all, but all are not present to It. But then, when we have invoked It, by all pure prayers and unpolluted mind, and by our aptitude towards Divine Union, we also are present to It. For, It is not in a place, so that It should be absent from a particular place, or should pass from one to another. But even the statement that It is in all existing beings, falls short of Its infinitude (which is) above all, and embracing all. Let us then elevate our very selves by our prayers to the higher ascent of the Divine and good rays,----as if a luminous chain being suspended from the celestial heights, |28 and reaching down hither, we, by ever clutching this upwards, first with one hand, and then with the other, seem indeed to draw it down, but in reality we do not draw it down, it being both above and below, but ourselves are carried upwards to the higher splendours of the luminous rays. Or, as if, after we have embarked on a ship, and are holding on to the cables reaching from some rock, such as are given out, as it were, for us to seize, we do not draw the rock to us, but ourselves, in fact, and the ship, to the rock. Or to take another example, if any one standing on the ship pushes away the rock by the sea shore, he will do nothing to the stationary and unmoved rock, but he separates himself from it, and in proportion as he pushes that away, he is so far hurled from it. Wherefore, before everything, and especially Theology, we must begin with prayer, not as though we ourselves were drawing the power, which is everywhere and nowhere present, but as, by our godly reminiscences and invocations, conducting ourselves to, and making ourselves one with, it.
SECTION II.
Perhaps also, this is worthy of apology, that whilst our illustrious leader, Hierotheus, is compiling his Theological Elements, in a manner above natural capacity, we, as if those were not sufficient, have composed others, and this present theological treatise. And yet, if that man had deigned to treat systematically all the theological treatises, and had gone |29 through the sum of all Theology, by detailed expositions, we should not have gone to such a height of folly, or stupidity, as to have attempted alone theological questions, either more lucidly or divinely than he, or to indulge in vain talk by saying superfluously the same things twice over, and in addition to do injustice to one, both teacher and friend, and that we, who have been instructed from his discourses, after Paul the Divine, should filch for our own glorification his most illustrious contemplation and elucidation. But, since in fact, he, whilst teaching things divine, in a manner suitable to presbyters, set forth comprehensive definitions, and such as embraced many things in one, as were suitable to us, and to as many as with us were teachers of the newly-initiated souls, commanding us to unfold and disentangle, by language commensurate with our ability, the comprehensive and uniform compositions of the most intellectual capacity of that illustrious man; and you, yourself, have oftentimes urged us to this, and sent back the very book, as being of transcendent value; for this reason, then, we too distinguish him as a teacher of perfect and presbyterial conceptions for those who are above the common people, even as certain second Oracles, and next to the Anointed of God. But for people, such as we are, we will transmit things Divine, according to our capacity. For, if strong meat belongs to the perfect, how great perfection is required that the same should feed others. Correctly, then, we have affirmed this, that |30 the self-perceptive vision of the intelligible Oracles, and their comprehensive teaching, needs presbyterial power; but the science and the thorough teaching of the reasons which lead to this, fittingly belong to those purified and hallowed persons placed in a subordinate position. And yet, we have insisted upon this with the utmost care, that, as regards the things that have been thoroughly investigated by him, our divine leader, with an accurate elucidation, we should not, in any way, handle the same tautologically, for the same elucidation of the Divine text expounded by him. For, amongst our inspired hierarchs (when both we, as you know, and yourself, and many of our holy brethren, were gathered together to the depositing of the Life-springing and God-receptive body, and when there were present also James, the brother of God, and Peter, the foremost and most honoured pinnacle of the Theologians, when it was determined after the depositing, that every one of the hierarchs should celebrate, as each was capable, the Omnipotent Goodness of the supremely Divine Weakness), he, after the Theologians, surpassed, as you know, all the other divine instructors, being wholly entranced, wholly raised from himself, and experiencing the pain of his fellowship with the things celebrated, and was regarded as an inspired and divine Psalmist by all, by whom he was heard and seen and known, and not known. And why should I say anything to thee concerning the things there divinely spoken? For, |31 if I do not forget myself, many a time do I remember to have heard from thee certain portions of those inspired songs of praise; such was thy zeal, not cursorily, to pursue things Divine.
SECTION III.
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But we have spoken of these things in our Symbolical Theology. Let us now then celebrate the spiritual Name of Light, under Which we contemplate the Good, and declare that He, the Good, is called spiritual 22 Light, on the ground that He fills every supercelestial mind with spiritual light, and expels all ignorance a.nd error from all souls in which they may be, and imparts to them all sacred light, and cleanses their mental vision from the mist which envelops them, from ignorance, and stirs up and unfolds those enclosed by the great weight of darkness, and imparts, at first, a measured radiance; then, whilst they taste, as it were, the light, and |39 desire it more, more fully gives Itself, and more abundantly enlightens them, because "they have loved much," and ever elevates them to things in advance, as befits the analogy of each for aspiration.
SECTION VI.
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And from the same Cause of all, are the higher and lower intellectual 35 essences of the godlike angels; and those of the souls; and the natures of the whole Cosmos; all things whatsoever said to be either in others, or by reflection. Yea, even the all holy and most honoured Powers veritably being, and established, as it were, in the vestibule of the superessential Triad, are from It, and in It; and have the being and the godlike being; and after them, as regards Angels, the subordinate, sub-ordinately, and the remotest, most remotely, but as regards ourselves, supermundanely. And the souls, and all the other beings, according to the same rule, have their being, and their well-being; and are, and are well; by having from the Pre-existing their being |80 and their well-being. And in It are both being and well-being; and from It, beginning; and in It, guarded; and to It, terminated. And the prerogatives of being he distributes to the superior beings, which the Oracles call even eternal. But being itself never at any time fails all existing beings. And even self-existent being is from the Pre-existent, and of Him is being, and He is not of being;----and in Him is being, and He is not in being; and being possesses Him, and not He possesses being; and He is both age and beginning, and measure of being; being essentiating Source, and Middle and End, of pre-essence, and being and age and all things. And for this reason, by the Oracles, the veritably Pre-existing is represented under many forms, according to every conception of beings, and the "Was" and the "Is," and the "Will be," and the "Became," and the "Becomes," and the "Will become," are properly sung respecting Him. For all these, to those who think worthily of God, signify by every conception His being superessenlially, and Cause in every way of things existing. For He is not this, but not that; nor is He in some way, but not in some other; but He is all things, as Cause of all, and containing and pre-holding in Himself all governments, all controls, of all existing things. And He is above all, as superessentially super-being before all. Wherefore, also, all things are predicated of Him and together, and He is none of them all; of every shape, of every kind, without form, without beauty, anticipating in Himself, beginnings and middles, |81 and ends of things existing, irresistibly and preeminently; and shedding forth without flaw, (the light of) being to all, as beseems a One and super-united Cause. For, if our sun, at the same time that he is one and sheds a uniform light, renews the essences and qualities of sensible creatures, although they are many and various, and nourishes and guards, and perfects and distinguishes, and unites, and fosters, and makes to be productive, and increases, and transforms, and establishes, and makes to grow, and awakens, and gives life to all; and each of the whole, in a manner appropriate to itself, participates in the same and one sun; and the one sun anticipated in himself, uniformly, the causes of the many participants; much more with regard to the Cause of it and of all things, ought we to concede that It first presides over, as beseems One superessential Oneness, all the exemplars, of things existing; since He produces even essences, as beseems the egression from essence. But, we affirm that the exemplars are the methods in God, giving essence to things that be, and pre-existing uniformly, which Theology calls predeterminations, and Divine and good wills, which define and produce things existing; according to which (predeterminations) the Superessential both predetermined and brought into existence everything that exists.
SECTION IX.
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This Divine Justice, then, is celebrated also even as preservation of the whole, as preserving and guarding the essence and order of each, distinct and pure from the rest; and as being genuine cause of each minding its own business in the whole. But, if any one should also celebrate this preservation, as rescuing savingly the whole from the worse, we will entirely accept this as the cantique of the manifold preservation, and we will deem him worthy to define this even as the principal preservation of the whole, which preserves all things in themselves, without change, undisturbed and unswaying to the worse; and guards all things without strife and without war, each being regulated by their own methods; and excludes all inequality and minding others' business, from the whole; and maintains the relations of each from falling to things contrary, and from migrating. And since, without missing the mark of the sacred Theology, one might celebrate this preservation as redeeming all things existing, by the goodness which is preservative of all, from falling away from their own proper goods, so far |101 as the nature of each of those who are being preserved admits; wherefore also the Theologians name it redemption, both so far as it does not permit things really being to fall away to non-existence, and so far as, if anything should have been led astray to discord and disorder, and should suffer any diminution of the perfection of its own proper goods, even this it redeems from passion and listlessness and loss; supplying what is deficient, and paternally overlooking the slackness, and raising up from evil; yea, rather, establishing in the good, and filling -up the leaking good, and arranging and adorning its disorder and deformity, and making it complete, and liberating it from all its blemishes. But let this suffice concerning these matters, and concerning Justice, in accordance with which the equality of all is measured and defined, and every inequality, which arises from deprivation of the equality, in each thing severally, is excluded. For, if any one should interpret inequality as distinctions in the whole, of the whole, in relation to the whole, Justice guards even this, not permitting the whole, when they have become mingled throughout, to be thrown into confusion, but keeping all existing things within each particular kind, in which each was intended by nature, to be. |102
CAPUT IX.
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But the different, since Almighty God is present to all providentially, and becomes all in all, for the sake of the preservation of all, resting upon Himself, and His own identity within Himself, standing, as beseems an energy, one and ceaseless, and imparting Himself with an unbending power, for deification of those turned to Him. And we must suppose that the difference of the manifold shapes of Almighty God, during the multiform visions, signifies that certain things are different from the phenomena |105 under which they appear. For, as when language depicts the soul itself, under a bodily form, and fashions bodily members around the memberless, we think differently of the members attributed to it, as befits the soul's memberless condition; and we call the mind head, and opinion neck,----as intermediate between rational and irrational----and anger, breast; and lust, belly; and the constitution, legs and feet; using the names of the members as symbols of the powers. Much more then, as respects Him, Who is beyond all, is it necessary to make clear the difference of forms and shapes by reverent and God-becoming, and mystic explanations. And if you wish to apply the threefold shapes of bodies to the impalpable and shapeless God, you must say, that the Progression of Almighty God, which spreads out to all things, is a Diyine extension; and length, the power extending itself over the whole; and depth, the hiddenness and imperceptiond incomprehensible to all creatures. But, that we may not forget ourselves, in our explanation, of the different shapes and forms, by confounding the incorporeal Divine Names with those giyen through symbols of objects of sense, we have for this reason spoken concerning these things in the Symbolic Theology. But now, let us suppose the Divine difference, as really not a sort of change from the superimmovable identity, but as the single multiplication of itself, and the uniform progressions of its fecundity to all. |106
SECTION VI.
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We then, having collected these intelligible Divine Names, have unfolded them to the best of our ability, falling short not only of the precision which belongs to them, (for this truly, even Angels might say) nor only of their praises as sung by Angels (and the chief of our Theologians come behind the lowest of them), nor indeed of the Theologians themselves, nor of their followers or companions, but even of those who are of the same rank as ourselves, last and subordinate to them; so that, if the things spoken should be correct, and, if we, as far as in us lies, have really reached the perception of the unfolding of the Divine Names, let the fact be ascribed to the Author of all good things, Who, Himself, bestows first the power to speak, then to speak well. And if any one of the Names of the same force has been passed over, that also you must understand according to the same methods. But, if these things are either incorrect or imperfect, and we have wandered from the truth, either wholly or partially, may it be of thy brotherly kindness to correct him, who unwillingly is ignorant, and to impart a word to him, who wishes to learn, |127 and to vouchsafe assistance to him, who has not power in himself; and to heal him, who, not willingly, is sick; and having found out some things from thyself, and others from others, and receiving all from the good to transfer them also to us. By no means grow weary in doing good to a man thy friend, for thou perceivest, that we also have kept to ourselves none of the hierarchical communications transmitted to us, but have transmitted them without flaw, both to you and to other holy men, yea, and will continue to transmit them, as we may be sufficient to speak, and those to whom we speak, ta hear, doing injury in no respect to the tradition, if at least we do not fail in the conception and expression thereof. But, let these things be held and spoken in such way, as is well pleasing to Almighty God; and let this indeed be our conclusion to the intelligible Divine Names. But I will now pass to the Symbolic Theology 48, with God for my Guide.
27 October, 1896.
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1. a Cap. 3. Mystic Theology.
2. b Ib. c. I. s. 3.
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21. c See Dulac, Theology anticipates Science.
22. d The Greek word is nohto_n, which in connection with fw~j is rendered here "spiritual light."
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
degenerate man", says Voltaire himself, "is the foundation of the Theology of all ancient
nations".
The Gospel According to Mark, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
Nearly half of Mark's account of the public ministry of Jesus (Chapters 1-10) describes Miracles. Jesus performs miracles by driving out demons, healing the sick, and calming storms, but first meets a major obstacle: unbelief, and in his home town of Nazareth in Chapter 6. And even his own disciples misunderstand who He is or his Mission. The experience prompts him to say - "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." Mark 6:3 is key to Marian Theology, for it indicates that Jesus was an only child. Mark 6:7-13 records the de but of the mission of the Twelve - it is no longer Jesus but also his Apostles who bring healing, freedom, and blessings. 6:13 is part of the biblical basis for the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. The chapter notes the beginning of the Bread Discourse (6:33-8:26) in which the word bread - is recorded seventeen times. Only three miracles are found in all four Gospels: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Healing the blind, and the Multiplication of the loaves in the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:35-44), which serves as a prefigurement of Communion or the Eucharist.
In Mark 6:50, during the miracle of walking on water, Jesus invokes the divine name of God revealed at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14): - I am, an expression repeated seven times in the Gospel of John. The Transfiguration of Jesus also reveals his divinity (Mark 9:2-9).
The Logomachy of Zos, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
a complete Theology in itself- is now defunct, sans priests and followers.
It maintained the most rigid of conventions and limits and, throughout,
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Learned only of our solitude is a sound personal Theology.
All things realize sensationally: noting comes out of anything except by
The Theologians, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
in questions of Theology there is no novelty without risk; then he reflected
that the thesis of a circular time was too different, too astounding, for the
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post kept him from the intimate delights of speculative Theology. His
secretarya former collaborator of John of Pannonia, now hostile to him
Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The influence with the Timaeus has exercised upon posterity is due partly to a misunderstanding. In the supposed depths of this dialogue the Neo-Platonists found hidden meanings and connections with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and out of them they elicited doctrines quite at variance with the spirit of Plato. Believing that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost, or had received his wisdom from Moses, they seemed to find in his writings the Christian Trinity, the Word, the Church, the creation of the world in a Jewish sense, as they really found the personality of God or of mind, and the immortality of the soul. All religions and philosophies met and mingled in the schools of Alexandria, and the Neo-Platonists had a method of interpretation which could elicit any meaning out of any words. They were really incapable of distinguishing between the opinions of one philosopher and another between Aristotle and Plato, or between the serious thoughts of Plato and his passing fancies. They were absorbed in his Theology and were under the dominion of his name, while that which was truly great and truly characteristic in him, his effort to realize and connect abstractions, was not understood by them at all. Yet the genius of Plato and Greek philosophy reacted upon the East, and a Greek element of thought and language overlaid and partly reduced to order the chaos of Orientalism. And kindred spirits, like St. Augustine, even though they were acquainted with his writings only through the medium of a Latin translation, were profoundly affected by them, seeming to find 'God and his word everywhere insinuated' in them (August. Confess.)
There is no danger of the modern commentators on the Timaeus falling into the absurdities of the Neo-Platonists. In the present day we are well aware that an ancient philosopher is to be interpreted from himself and by the contemporary history of thought. We know that mysticism is not criticism. The fancies of the Neo-Platonists are only interesting to us because they exhibit a phase of the human mind which prevailed widely in the first centuries of the Christian era, and is not wholly extinct in our own day. But they have nothing to do with the interpretation of Plato, and in spirit they are opposed to him. They are the feeble expression of an age which has lost the power not only of creating great works, but of understanding them. They are the spurious birth of a marriage between philosophy and tradition, between Hellas and the East(Greek) (Rep.). Whereas the so-called mysticism of Plato is purely Greek, arising out of his imperfect knowledge and high aspirations, and is the growth of an age in which philosophy is not wholly separated from poetry and mythology.
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To the same cause we may attri bute the want of plan. Plato had not the comm and of his materials which would have enabled him to produce a perfect work of art. Hence there are several new beginnings and resumptions and formal or artificial connections; we miss the 'callida junctura' of the earlier dialogues. His speculations about the Eternal, his theories of creation, his mathematical anticipations, are supplemented by desultory remarks on the one immortal and the two mortal souls of man, on the functions of the bodily organs in health and disease, on sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. He soars into the heavens, and then, as if his wings were suddenly clipped, he walks ungracefully and with difficulty upon the earth. The greatest things in the world, and the least things in man, are brought within the compass of a short treatise. But the intermediate links are missing, and we cannot be surprised that there should be a want of unity in a work which embraces astronomy, Theology, physiology, and natural philosophy in a few pages.
It is not easy to determine how Plato's cosmos may be presented to the reader in a clearer and shorter form; or how we may supply a thread of connexion to his ideas without giving greater consistency to them than they possessed in his mind, or adding on consequences which would never have occurred to him. For he has glimpses of the truth, but no comprehensive or perfect vision. There are isolated expressions about the nature of God which have a wonderful depth and power; but we are not justified in assuming that these had any greater significance to the mind of Plato than language of a neutral and impersonal character... With a view to the illustration of the Timaeus I propose to divide this Introduction into sections, of which the first will contain an outline of the dialogue: (2) I shall consider the aspects of nature which presented themselves to Plato and his age, and the elements of philosophy which entered into the conception of them: (3) the Theology and physics of the Timaeus, including the soul of the world, the conception of time and space, and the composition of the elements: (4) in the fourth section I shall consider the Platonic astronomy, and the position of the earth. There will remain, (5) the psychology, (6) the physiology of Plato, and (7) his analysis of the senses to be briefly commented upon: (8) lastly, we may examine in what points Plato approaches or anticipates the discoveries of modern science.
Section 1.
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There is a further difficulty in explaining this part of the Timaeusthe natural order of thought is inverted. We begin with the most abstract, and proceed from the abstract to the concrete. We are searching into things which are upon the utmost limit of human intelligence, and then of a sudden we fall rather heavily to the earth. There are no intermediate steps which lead from one to the other. But the abstract is a vacant form to us until brought into relation with man and nature. God and the world are mere names, like the Being of the Eleatics, unless some human qualities are added on to them. Yet the negation has a kind of unknown meaning to us. The priority of God and of the world, which he is imagined to have created, to all other existences, gives a solemn awe to them. And as in other systems of Theology and philosophy, that of which we know least has the greatest interest to us.
There is no use in attempting to define or explain the first God in the Platonic system, who has sometimes been thought to answer to God the Father; or the world, in whom the Fathers of the Church seemed to recognize 'the firstborn of every creature.' Nor need we discuss at length how far Plato agrees in the later Jewish idea of creation, according to which God made the world out of nothing. For his original conception of matter as something which has no qualities is really a negation. Moreover in the Hebrew Scriptures the creation of the world is described, even more explicitly than in the Timaeus, not as a single act, but as a work or process which occupied six days. There is a chaos in both, and it would be untrue to say that the Greek, any more than the Hebrew, had any definite belief in the eternal existence of matter. The beginning of things vanished into the distance. The real creation began, not with matter, but with ideas. According to Plato in the Timaeus, God took of the same and the other, of the divided and undivided, of the finite and infinite, and made essence, and out of the three combined created the soul of the world. To the soul he added a body formed out of the four elements. The general meaning of these words is that God imparted determinations of thought, or, as we might say, gave law and variety to the material universe. The elements are moving in a disorderly manner before the work of creation begins; and there is an eternal pattern of the world, which, like the 'idea of good,' is not the Creator himself, but not separable from him. The pattern too, though eternal, is a creation, a world of thought prior to the world of sense, which may be compared to the wisdom of God in the book of Ecclesiasticus, or to the 'God in the form of a globe' of the old Eleatic philosophers. The visible, which already exists, is fashioned in the likeness of this eternal pattern. On the other hand, there is no truth of which Plato is more firmly convinced than of the priority of the soul to the body, both in the universe and in man. So inconsistent are the forms in which he describes the works which no tongue can utterhis language, as he himself says, partaking of his own uncertainty about the things of which he is speaking.
--
There are several other questions which we might ask and which can receive no answer, or at least only an answer of the same kind as the preceding. How can matter be conceived to exist without form? Or, how can the essences or forms of things be distinguished from the eternal ideas, or essence itself from the soul? Or, how could there have been motion in the chaos when as yet time was not? Or, how did chaos come into existence, if not by the will of the Creator? Or, how could there have been a time when the world was not, if time was not? Or, how could the Creator have taken portions of an indivisible same? Or, how could space or anything else have been eternal when time is only created? Or, how could the surfaces of geometrical figures have formed solids? We must reply again that we cannot follow Plato in all his inconsistencies, but that the gaps of thought are probably more apparent to us than to him. He would, perhaps, have said that 'the first things are known only to God and to him of men whom God loves.' How often have the gaps in Theology been concealed from the eye of faith! And we may say that only by an effort of metaphysical imagination can we hope to understand Plato from his own point of view; we must not ask for consistency. Everywhere we find traces of the Platonic theory of knowledge expressed in an objective form, which by us has to be translated into the subjective, before we can attach any meaning to it. And this theory is exhibited in so many different points of view, that we cannot with any certainty interpret one dialogue by another; e.g. the Timaeus by the Parmenides or Phaedrus or Philebus.
The soul of the world may also be conceived as the personification of the numbers and figures in which the heavenly bodies move. Imagine these as in a Pythagorean dream, stripped of qualitative difference and reduced to mathematical abstractions. They too conform to the principle of the same, and may be compared with the modern conception of laws of nature. They are in space, but not in time, and they are the makers of time. They are represented as constantly thinking of the same; for thought in the view of Plato is equivalent to truth or law, and need not imply a human consciousness, a conception which is familiar enough to us, but has no place, hardly even a name, in ancient Greek philosophy. To this principle of the same is opposed the principle of the otherthe principle of irregularity and disorder, of necessity and chance, which is only partially impressed by mathematical laws and figures. (We may observe by the way, that the principle of the other, which is the principle of plurality and variation in the Timaeus, has nothing in common with the 'other' of the Sophist, which is the principle of determination.) The element of the same dominates to a certain extent over the otherthe fixed stars keep the 'wanderers' of the inner circle in their courses, and a similar principle of fixedness or order appears to regulate the bodily constitution of man. But there still remains a rebellious seed of evil derived from the original chaos, which is the source of disorder in the world, and of vice and disease in man.
--
Such reflections, although this is not the place in which to dwell upon them at length, lead us to take a favourable view of the speculations of the Timaeus. We should consider not how much Plato actually knew, but how far he has contri buted to the general ideas of physics, or supplied the notions which, whether true or false, have stimulated the minds of later generations in the path of discovery. Some of them may seem old-fashioned, but may nevertheless have had a great influence in promoting system and assisting enquiry, while in others we hear the latest word of physical or metaphysical philosophy. There is also an intermediate class, in which Plato falls short of the truths of modern science, though he is not wholly unacquainted with them. (1) To the first class belongs the teleological theory of creation. Whether all things in the world can be explained as the result of natural laws, or whether we must not admit of tendencies and marks of design also, has been a question much disputed of late years. Even if all phenomena are the result of natural forces, we must admit that there are many things in heaven and earth which are as well expressed under the image of mind or design as under any other. At any rate, the language of Plato has been the language of natural Theology down to our own time, nor can any description of the world wholly dispense with it. The notion of first and second or co-operative causes, which originally appears in the Timaeus, has likewise survived to our own day, and has been a great peace-maker between Theology and science. Plato also approaches very near to our doctrine of the primary and secondary qualities of matter. (2) Another popular notion which is found in the Timaeus, is the feebleness of the human intellect'God knows the original qualities of things; man can only hope to attain to probability.' We speak in almost the same words of human intelligence, but not in the same manner of the uncertainty of our knowledge of nature. The reason is that the latter is assured to us by experiment, and is not contrasted with the certainty of ideal or mathematical knowledge. But the ancient philosopher never experimented: in the Timaeus Plato seems to have thought that there would be impiety in making the attempt; he, for example, who tried experiments in colours would 'forget the difference of the human and divine natures.' Their indefiniteness is probably the reason why he singles them out, as especially incapable of being tested by experiment. (Compare the saying of AnaxagorasSext. Pyrrh.that since snow is made of water and water is black, snow ought to be black.)
The greatest 'divination' of the ancients was the supremacy which they assigned to mathematics in all the realms of nature; for in all of them there is a foundation of mechanics. Even physiology partakes of figure and number; and Plato is not wrong in attri buting them to the human frame, but in the omission to observe how little could be explained by them. Thus we may remark in passing that the most fanciful of ancient philosophies is also the most nearly verified in fact. The fortunate guess that the world is a sum of numbers and figures has been the most fruitful of anticipations. The 'diatonic' scale of the Pythagoreans and Plato suggested to Kepler that the secret of the distances of the planets from one another was to be found in mathematical proportions. The doctrine that the heavenly bodies all move in a circle is known by us to be erroneous; but without such an error how could the human mind have comprehended the heavens? Astronomy, even in modern times, has made far greater progress by the high a priori road than could have been attained by any other. Yet, strictly speakingand the remark applies to ancient physics generallythis high a priori road was based upon a posteriori grounds. For there were no facts of which the ancients were so well assured by experience as facts of number. Having observed that they held good in a few instances, they applied them everywhere; and in the complexity, of which they were capable, found the explanation of the equally complex phenomena of the universe. They seemed to see them in the least things as well as in the greatest; in atoms, as well as in suns and stars; in the human body as well as in external nature. And now a favourite speculation of modern chemistry is the explanation of qualitative difference by quantitative, which is at present verified to a certain extent and may hereafter be of far more universal application. What is this but the atoms of Democritus and the triangles of Plato? The ancients should not be wholly deprived of the credit of their guesses because they were unable to prove them. May they not have had, like the animals, an instinct of something more than they knew?
--
The commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus is a wonderful monument of the silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian Age. It extends to about thirty pages of the book, and is thirty times the length of the original. It is surprising that this voluminous work should have found a translator (Thomas Taylor, a kindred spirit, who was himself a Neo-Platonist, after the fashion, not of the fifth or sixteenth, but of the nineteenth century A.D.). The commentary is of little or no value, either in a philosophical or philological point of view. The writer is unable to explain particular passages in any precise manner, and he is equally incapable of grasping the whole. He does not take words in their simple meaning or sentences in their natural connexion. He is thinking, not of the context in Plato, but of the contemporary Pythagorean philosophers and their wordy strife. He finds nothing in the text which he does not bring to it. He is full of Porphyry, Iamblichus and Plotinus, of misapplied logic, of misunderstood grammar, and of the Orphic Theology.
Although such a work can contri bute little or nothing to the understanding of Plato, it throws an interesting light on the Alexandrian times; it realizes how a philosophy made up of words only may create a deep and widespread enthusiasm, how the forms of logic and rhetoric may usurp the place of reason and truth, how all philosophies grow faded and discoloured, and are patched and made up again like worn-out garments, and retain only a second-hand existence. He who would study this degeneracy of philosophy and of the Greek mind in the original cannot do better than devote a few of his days and nights to the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus.
--- Overview of noun theology
The noun theology has 3 senses (first 3 from tagged texts)
1. (11) theology, divinity ::: (the rational and systematic study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truth)
2. (6) theology, theological system ::: (a particular system or school of religious beliefs and teachings; "Jewish theology"; "Roman Catholic theology")
3. (1) theology ::: (the learned profession acquired by specialized courses in religion (usually taught at a college or seminary); "he studied theology at Oxford")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun theology
3 senses of theology
Sense 1
theology, divinity
=> discipline, subject, subject area, subject field, field, field of study, study, bailiwick
=> knowledge domain, knowledge base, domain
=> content, cognitive content, mental object
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
theology, theological system
=> system, system of rules
=> method
=> know-how
=> ability, power
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
theology
=> learned profession
=> profession
=> occupation, business, job, line of work, line
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun theology
2 of 3 senses of theology
Sense 1
theology, divinity
=> angelology
=> apologetics
=> ecclesiology
=> eschatology
=> hermeneutics
=> homiletics
=> liturgics, liturgiology
=> theodicy
Sense 2
theology, theological system
=> Christian theology
=> liberation theology
=> natural theology
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun theology
3 senses of theology
Sense 1
theology, divinity
=> discipline, subject, subject area, subject field, field, field of study, study, bailiwick
Sense 2
theology, theological system
=> system, system of rules
Sense 3
theology
=> learned profession
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun theology
3 senses of theology
Sense 1
theology, divinity
-> discipline, subject, subject area, subject field, field, field of study, study, bailiwick
=> occultism
=> communications, communication theory
=> major
=> frontier
=> genealogy
=> allometry
=> bibliotics
=> ology
=> science, scientific discipline
=> architecture
=> engineering, engineering science, applied science, technology
=> futurology, futuristics
=> humanistic discipline, humanities, liberal arts, arts
=> theology, divinity
=> military science
=> escapology
=> graphology
=> numerology
=> protology
=> theogony
Sense 2
theology, theological system
-> system, system of rules
=> accounting
=> discipline
=> frame of reference, frame
=> gambling system
=> government
=> honor system
=> logic, logical system, system of logic
=> merit system
=> point system
=> spoils system
=> organon
=> program, programme
=> theosophy
=> anthroposophy
=> logic
=> theology, theological system
=> ethic, ethical code
Sense 3
theology
-> learned profession
=> law, practice of law
=> medicine, practice of medicine
=> theology
--- Grep of noun theology
bachelor of theology
christian theology
doctor of sacred theology
doctor of theology
liberation theology
master of theology
natural theology
theology
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https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Anglican_Eucharistic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Anglicanism#Eucharistic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Application_of_the_neans_in_the_three_degrees_of_Christian_perfection
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Catholic_Encyclopaedia_article
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Dangers_of_the_Ascetical_Life
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Eastern_Orthodox
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Essential_concepts_in_ascetical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#External_links_and_references
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Fathers_and_Doctors_of_the_Church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Further_Catholic_bibliography
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Historical_development_of_asceticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Holy_Bible
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Islam
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Means_for_realizing_the_Christian_ideal
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Medieval-Scholastic_period
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Modern_times
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Nature_of_Christian_perfection
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Other_religious_traditions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Protestant
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Relation_of_ascetics_to_moral_theology_and_mysticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Ascetical_theology#Who_is_Christ.2C_and_what_reason_is_given_for_following
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Sacramental_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#Reformed_or_Covenant_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Biblical_law_in_Christianity#The_New_Covenant_Theology_view
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology#Black_Theology_Books
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology#James_Cone.2C_PhD
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology#Liberation_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology#Reverend_Jeremiah_Wright
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology#Ties_To_Marxism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Anglican_Eucharistic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Calvinist_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Catholic_moral_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Catholic_theology_and_doctrine
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology_by_tradition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology_of_the_Bible
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology_stubs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Eastern_Orthodox_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Feminist_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Hindu_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Islamic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Lutheran_Eucharistic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Lutheran_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:New_Testament_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Old_Testament_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Practical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_Catholic_Eucharistic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christian_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Christian_theology_of_the_Bible
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Theology_journals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:Theology_teachers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Category:University_of_Athens_Theology_School_Graduates
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Catholic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Catholic_theology_of_the_body
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_angelic_hierarchy#Choirs_in_medieval_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Covenantal_Theology_(Roman_Catholic)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Covenant_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Decision_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Divine_grace#Grace_according_to_conservative_and_evangelical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#Apostolic_decree
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#Catholic_criticisms
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#Christian_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#Criticisms_of_Dual-Covenant_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#Evangelical_criticisms
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#Jewish_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_theology#The_Theotokos
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Essenes#Rules.2C_customs.2C_theology_and_beliefs
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eucharistic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Anglicanism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Calvinism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Eastern_Orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#F.E._Mayer.27s_findings
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Footnotes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Lutheranism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Methodism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Roman_Catholicism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology#Zwinglianism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Colossians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Ephesians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Free_Grace_.26_Assurance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Free_Grace_.26_Dispensationalism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Free_Grace_advocacy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Free_Grace_soteriology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Galatians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Gospel_of_John
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Gospel_of_Luke
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Gospel_of_Mark
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Gospel_of_Matthew
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#History
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Opposition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Repentance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Romans
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Saving_faith
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#Scripture_claimed_to_support_Free_Grace
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Free_Grace_theology#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Genesis_creation_narrative#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Historical_roots_of_Catholic_Eucharistic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Anglicanism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Ante-Nicene_fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Arminianism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Before_Scholasticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Before_the_Carolingian_Empire
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Biblical_canon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Byzantine_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Calvinism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Christian_existentialism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Christological_controversy_after_Chalcedon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Christology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Continental_philosophical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Council_of_Chalcedon
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Counter-Reformation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Early_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Early_heresies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Early_scholasticism_and_its_contemporaries
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Ecumenical_councils
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Emergence_of_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Emerging_church
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Excommunication
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#First_Council_of_Nicaea
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#First_Great_Awakening
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Further_resurgence
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Heresies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Hermeneutics_of_religion
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#High_Scholasticism_and_its_contemporaries
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Iconoclasts_and_iconophiles
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Institutional_effects
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Justification_by_faith
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Late_Scholasticism_and_its_contemporaries
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Liberal_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Liberation_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Lutheranism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Mariology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Medieval_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Modern_Catholic_response_to_Protestantism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Modern_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Mystical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Nicene_Creed
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Orthodox_Reformation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Papacy_and_primacy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Patristic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Political_maneuvering
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Postmodern_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Radical_Orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Renaissance_and_Reformation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Response_of_the_papacy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Restorationism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Restoration_Movement
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Results_of_the_Lutheran_reformation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Resurgence
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Revivalism_.281720_.E2.80.93_1906.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Scholasticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Second_Great_Awakening
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#The_Council_of_Trent
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Theologies_of_the_New_Testament
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Theology_in_the_time_of_Charlemagne
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#The_start_of_the_Reformation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Third_Great_Awakening
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Weak_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Welsh_and_Pentecostal_revivals
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Western_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology#Widening_breach
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_Roman_Catholicism_in_Hispano-America#Liberation_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Catholic_Church#Liberation_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Catholic_Church#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Christian_criticisms
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Criticisms
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#David_Weiss_Halivni
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Elie_Wiesel
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Eliezer_Berkovits
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Emil_Fackenheim
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Haredi_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Harold_Kushner.2C_William_Kaufman_and_Milton_Steinberg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Ignaz_Maybaum
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Irving_Greenberg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#J.C3.BCrgen_Moltmann
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Jewish_criticisms
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Jewish_theological_responses:_Background_to_the_diversity_of_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Jewish_views_of_reincarnation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Modern_Orthodox_Jewish_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Notes
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Orthodox_Jewish_responses
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Other_ideas
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Pope_Benedict_XVI
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Richard_Rubenstein
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#The_contributions_of_Kabbalah_to_various_Jewish_philosophical_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#The_hiding_of_God.27s_countenance
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#The_Holocaust_in_historical_context
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#The_immortality_of_the_soul
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#The_many_aspects_of_suffering_as_punishment.2C_atonement_and_spiritual_resolution
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#The_mystical_celebration_of_negativity_as_ultimate_elevation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Works_of_important_Christian_theologians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holocaust_theology#Works_of_important_Jewish_theologians
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Holy_Cross_Greek_Orthodox_School_of_Theology_(Brookline,_Massachusetts)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hyperdispensationalism#General_Theology_of_Hyperdispensationalism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Immutability_(theology)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_Bibliography_(theology)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Anglican
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Arminian.2FMethodist
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Audio
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Biblical_data
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Calvinist
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Comparison_of_traditions
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Early_church_and_justification
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Eastern_Orthodoxy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Ecumenical
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Essays
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#External_links
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Gospels
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Interactions_between_various_doctrines
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Lutheran
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Lutheranism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Lutheran_views
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Methodism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Old_Testament
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Orthodox
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Other
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Other_New_Testament_writers
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Paul
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Reformed
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Roman_Catholic
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Roman_Catholicism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Sola_fide
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#Sources
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Justification_(theology)#The_New_Church_.28Emanuel_Swedenborg.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Kufa#Kufa_in_Islamic_Theology_and_Scholarship
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Late_ancient_history_of_Christianity#Theology_and_heresy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Legalism_(theology)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Manichaeism#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Master_of_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Methodism#Theology_and_liturgy
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Christianity#Modern_trends_in_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Natural_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Negative_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Negative_theology#In_the_Jewish_tradition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Outline_of_Christianity#Unorganized_articles_relating_to_Christianity_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Pentecostalism#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Continental_philosophical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Postmodern_Christianity#Non-dogmatic_theology_.28also_known_as_Weak_theology.29
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Predestination#New_England_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(theology)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Religious_experience#Neurotheology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Scandal_(theology)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Secular_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues#Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Practical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Supersessionism#Covenant_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Ascetical_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Black_liberation_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Dual-covenant_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Formal_and_material_principles_of_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Free_Grace_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Holocaust_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Justification_(theology)
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Talk:Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Christian-theology-stub
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Roman_Catholic_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Christian_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Template:Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Japanese_Convert#Chapter_9._In_Christendom._-_A_Dip_into_Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Analogous_discourses
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Criticism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Definition
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#History_of_the_term
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology_of_Huldrych_Zwingli
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology_of_Pope_Benedict_XVI
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology_of_the_Cross
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#References
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Religions_other_than_Christianity
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#See_also
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Theology_and_ministerial_training
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Theology_and_religious_studies
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Theology_as_an_academic_discipline
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Theology#Theology_as_an_academic_discipline_in_its_own_right
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/The_Ten_Commandments_in_Roman_Catholic_theology
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Worm_theology
Kheper - cosmotheology index -- 44
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/cosmotheology/Kant-cosmotheology.html -- 0
Integral World - Blind Spots of Disenchantment, Science, Psychical Research, and Natural Theology in the Early 20th Century, Egil Asprem
Integral World - The Descent of the Avatar, Confusing Personal Theology with Transcendental Cosmology, David Lane
Integral World - The Natural Theology of Beauty, Truth and Goodness, Steve McIntosh
Integral World - Integral Theology, Giorgio Piacenza
Integral World - Integral Theology: The Maha Trinity, Giorgio Piacenza
Integral World - Ken Wilber's Natural Theology, On Enchanted Evolutionary Perspectives and Mysterious Incalculable Forces, Frank Visser
Integral World - "Of Course it's Transcendent but also Immanent", Ken Wilber's Evolutionary Theology, Frank Visser
selforum - john pauls theology is very much like
selforum - incompleteness provides theology to
selforum - telicity or theology is actually hard
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2015/07/neurotheology-team-proves-god-helmet-is.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2012/11/neurotheology.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-furture-of-neurotheology.html
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-principles-of-neurotheology.html
Dharmapedia - Feminist_theology
Psychology Wiki - Neurotheology
Psychology Wiki - Theology
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - christiantheology-philosophy
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - cosmology-theology
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - natural-theology
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - theology-aristotle
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_Warfare_of_Science_with_Theology_in_Christendom
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Black_theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Liberation_Theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Category:Theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Death_of_God_theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Free_grace_theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isis_Unveiled:_A_Master-Key_to_the_Mysteries_of_Ancient_and_Modern_Science_and_Theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Redemption_(theology)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Regeneration_(theology)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theology
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Traditionalist_theology_(Islam)
https://theology.fandom.com
https://theology.fandom.com/
https://christianity.fandom.com/wiki/Natural_theology
https://christianity.fandom.com/wiki/Negative_theology
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sum_of_Theology
https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/God_(theology)
https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Jesus_Christ_(theology)
https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Saint_Lucy_(theology)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Theology
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Arianism
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Astronism
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Bible
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Blog:Recent_posts
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Created
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Deuteronomy
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Exodus
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Genesis
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Genesis_10-11
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Genesis_1-5
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Genesis_6-9
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Leviticus
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Leviticus_17-20
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Local_Sitemap
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Love_your_neighbor_as_yourself
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Theology_Wiki:About
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Theology_Wiki:Community_Portal
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/Theology_Wiki:Templates
https://theology.fandom.com/wiki/TW:Style
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Abaddon_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Antichrist_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Beelzebub_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Behemoth_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Cain_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Delilah_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Demons_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Goliath_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Herod_the_Great_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Iblis_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Judas_Iscariot_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Legion_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Leviathan_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Lilith_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Mammon_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Samael_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/The_Beast_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/The_Devil_(theology)
https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Whore_of_Babylon_(theology)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_about_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology_by_tradition
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_theology_of_the_Bible
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Controversies_in_Christian_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lutheran_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Moral_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Practical_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Systematic_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14597947680).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14597954870).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14597965600).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14598140637).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14782323514).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14782337784).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14782347544).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14784304482).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geology_and_mineralogy_considered_with_reference_to_natural_theology_(1836)_(14804480523).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_retired_statesman_studying_theology_(4672276).jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Formation_of_Christian_Theology_in_Alexandria.pdf
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Category:Christian_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Christian_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category_talk:Christian_theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Book&bookcmd=book_creator&referer=Category:Christian+theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CreateAccount&returnto=Category:Christian+theology
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UploadWizard&categories=Christian_theology
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theology
Adoption (theology)
Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology
African theology
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
Analytic theology
Anglican eucharistic theology
Anglican Marian theology
Apophatic theology
Aquinas Institute of Theology
Aristotelian theology
Ascetical theology
A Scientific Theology
Assurance (theology)
Australian College of Theology
Bachelor of Sacred Theology
Bachelor of Theology
Baptist Covenant Theology
Beliefs and theology of the Nation of Islam
Biblical theology
Biblical Theology Bulletin
Bibliography of justification (theology)
Bipartite (theology)
Black theology
Book:Process philosophy and theology
Bridal theology
Brisbane College of Theology
Brussels Faculty for Protestant Theology
Canadian Journal of Theology
Cataphatic theology
Catholic dogmatic theology
Catholic moral theology
Catholic theology
Catholic theology of Scripture
Catholic theology of sexuality
Catholic theology on the body
Chin Christian Institute of Theology
Chinese theology
Christian theology
Coconut theology
Commonwealth Theology
OM Faculty of Theology
Constructive theology
Contextual theology
Cosmotheology
Court of Conscience (theology)
Covenantal theology (Catholic Church)
Covenant theology
Currents in Theology and Mission
Death of God theology
Decision theology
Digital theology
Doctor of Pastoral Theology
Doctor of Practical Theology
Doctor of Sacred Theology
Doctor of Theology
Dogmatic theology
Dominion theology
Draft:Theology and socialism
Dual-covenant theology
Eastern Orthodox theology
Ecotheology
Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology
Elements of Theology
Environmental theology
Eucharistic theology
European Journal of Theology
Evangelical Dictionary of Theology
Evangelical Review of Theology and Politics
Evangelical theology
Evangelical Theology Student Council
Exotheology
Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford
Faculty of Theology, Catholic University of Leuven
Faculty of Theology of the Evangelical Baptist Union of Spain
Feminist theology
Feminist Theology (journal)
Fiji College of Theology & Evangelism
Formal and material principles of theology
Free grace theology
Free will in theology
Fundamental theology
H. G. Wood Professor of Theology
Historical theology
History of Christian theology
History of Eastern Orthodox theology
History of Eastern Orthodox theology in the 20th century
History of theology
Holocaust theology
Immutability (theology)
Indian Journal of Theology
Institute of Lutheran Theology
Institute of Theology of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Invincible ignorance (Catholic theology)
James Morris (theology)
Jnana Deepa, Institute of Philosophy and Theology
Journal of Moral Theology
Journal of Pentecostal Theology
Journal of Psychology & Theology
Journal of Reformed Theology
Justification (theology)
Last Generation Theology
Legalism (theology)
Liberation theology
Liberation theology in Canada
Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology
Licentiate of Sacred Theology
Licentiate of Theology
List of angels in theology
List of theology journals
Literature and Theology
Lord's Supper in Reformed theology
Lundensian theology
Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology
Master of Sacred Theology
Master of Theology
Mercersburg theology
Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy
Minjung theology
Modality (theology)
Modern Theology (journal)
Moral Theology (Liguori)
Moral theology of Rowan Williams
Mortification in Catholic theology
Mountain Meadows Massacre and Mormon theology
Mystical theology
Mythical theology
Natural theology
Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity
New Covenant theology
New creation (theology)
New England theology
Old Testament theology
Ontotheology
Open Theology
Outline of theology
Oxford Centre for Ecclesiology and Practical Theology
Pastoral theology
Philosophical theology
Philosophy & Theology & Mysticism Quarterly Book Review
Philosophy and Theology
Philosophy, theology, and fundamental theory of canon law
Platonic theology
Political theology
Political theology in sub-Saharan Africa
Political theology in the Middle East
Postcolonial theology
Postliberal theology
Postmodern theology
Practical charismatic theology
Practical syllogism (theology)
Practical theology
Princeton theology
Process theology
Pro-Nicene theology
Prosperity theology
Public theology
Queer theology
Reconciliation theology
Reconciliation (theology)
Redemption (theology)
Regeneration (theology)
Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology
Religious images in Christian theology
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center
Science & Theology News
Science and Theology
Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology
Scottish Journal of Theology
Secular theology
Seventh-day Adventist theology
Shi'i Reformation in Iran: The Life and Theology of Shari'at Sangelaji
Shut-door theology
Sino-Christian theology
Slavic Native Faith's theology and cosmology
Sonship theology
Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Spiritual Theology
St Augustine's College of Theology
Stewardship (theology)
Systematic theology
Systematic Theology (book)
Ten Commandments in Catholic theology
The Evangelical College of Theology
The New Noise Theology E.P.
Theology
Theology and Science
Theology Digest
Theology from the Womb of Asia
Theology of Anabaptism
Theology of Huldrych Zwingli
Theology of John Calvin
Theology of Martin Luther
Theology of relational care
Theology of religions
Theology of Sren Kierkegaard
Theology of taint
Theology of the Body
Theology of the Cross
Theology of Twelvers
Theology on Tap
Theology proper
Theology Today
Theosis (Eastern Christian theology)
The Theology of Aristotle
Thomistic sacramental theology
Toronto Journal of Theology
Traditionalist theology (Islam)
Transcendental theology
Tripartite (theology)
Two House theology
Typology (theology)
Ubuntu theology
Uniting College for Leadership and Theology
Vidyajyoti College of Theology
Wesleyan theology
Womanist theology
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