50 Theology Quotes For Exploring the Depths of Divine Wisdom

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Theology is the study of the nature of God and religious beliefs. Throughout history, theologians and religious leaders have shared their wisdom and insights. This theology quotes range from discussing the nature of God and the universe to the importance of faith and ethics in daily life. They provide a glimpse into the rich tradition of theology and a way for individuals to reflect on their own beliefs and spiritual journey.

You can also read other quotes such as Parallel Universe Quotes and Cosmology Quotes.

Inspirational Theology Quotes to Guide Your Journey

1. “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

2. “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

3. “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

4. “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

5. “It helps to not confuse theological philosophers with evangelists. There is a difference but objectively neither better than the other: an evangelist’s mission is to convert; a theological philosopher’s mission is to build an understanding of a position.” ― Criss Jami

6. “Truth is, something exists, and everything exists for a reason. Regardless if the reason is known or unknown, knowable or unknowable, the reason exists and can be named.” ― John K. Brown

7. “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

8. “This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.” ― Karl Barth

9. “Learning to think rigorously, so as to act rightly and to serve humanity better.” ― Pope John Paul II

10. “The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology.” ― Ludwig Feuerbach

11. “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” ― John Calvin

12. “Missions are not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn’t.” ― John Piper

13. “Theology starts with a crisis, the very crisis of reality itself. The crisis is the fact that you live, that you have a life to live. … The crisis is the very mystery of our existence and the yearning for there to be some kind of meaning to it.” ― Andrew Root

14. “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

15. “Behold divinity divine enough to abandon divinity. Behold majesty secure enough to proceed un-majestically. Behold strength strong enough to become a weakness, goodness good enough to be unmindful of its reputation. Behold love plenteous enough to give and take not again.” ― Paul Ramsey

16. “A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is a man who finds it.” ― H.L. Mencken

17. “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.” ― Alan Wilson Watts

18. “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him” ― John Piper

19. “Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.” ― Stanley Hauerwas

20. “I cannot encourage any fabrication even for the sake of making people feel good. If I were to fabricate consciously and knowingly, I would not only be ordaining myself their enemy but also ordaining myself God’s enemy.” ― Criss Jami

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

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

23. “The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand, it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations.” ― Criss Jami

24. “Theology isn’t what drove them to their…theology.” the author writes on dealing with the embittering experience of those who protect a wounded place with abstract arguments.” ― Andy Stanley

25. “Trying to figure out God is like trying to catch a fish in the Pacific Ocean with an inch of dental floss.” ― Matt Chandler

Thoughtful Theology Quotes For Divine Wisdom

26. “Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object – we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.” ― C.S. Lewis

27. “Nonviolent action on behalf of justice is no automatic formula with the promise of success: but neither is war. After all, at least half of the people who go to war for some cause deemed worthy of it are defeated.” ― John Howard Yoder

28. “Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.” ― Benjamin Franklin Wade

29. “If you live today, you breathe in nihilism … it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.” ― Flannery O’Connor

30. “Love may, indeed, love the beloved when her beauty is lost: but not because it is lost. Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal. Love is more sensitive than hatred itself to every blemish in the beloved… Of all powers, he forgives most, but he condones least: he is pleased with little, but demands all.” ― C.S. Lewis

31. “The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of the woman, a woman is the heart of man, and she turns man’s head because she turns his heart.” ― Peter Kreeft

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

33. “Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God’s incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.” ― Henri Nouwen

34. “To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us.” ― George MacDonald

35. “Immortal beings have been compared to stars, these are existences that linger on long after the death of the thing itself.” ― Zeena Schreck

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

37. “Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts.” ― Peter Kreeft

38. “If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.” ― Ann Druyan

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

40. “Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God’s grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.” ― Peter Kreeft

41. “Our true wisdom is to embrace with meek docility, and without reservation, whatever the holy scriptures have delivered.” ― John Calvin

42. “I do not think either virginity or old age contemptible, and some of the shrewdest minds I have met inhabited the bodies of old maids.” ― C.S. Lewis

43. “The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.” ― Alistair Begg

44. “Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement! God wills to be displayed and known and loved and cherished and worshiped.” ― John Piper

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

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

47. “And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing – may be 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

48. “Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy’s favor, offering to sell her charms to it.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

49. “Think of a potter taking a misshapen bowl from his wheel and pounding it back into the tub of clay. A soul suffers while it is being pounded in this way, and suffers until it ceases to be. You are pounded down, and that which were you gets into something else. God tries again and tries until the Work is complete. Meanwhile, you, my son, are long gone.” ― K.J. Bishop

50. “It occurs to me that my thinking has been faulty: we do not feel God’s absence. We feel the absence of all that is lost to God, that which has set itself apart and refuses to return, believing itself to be in exile.” ― K.J. Bishop

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