H. L. Mencken Quotes

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

If God is the mystery of the universe, these mysteries, we're tackling these mysteries one by one. If you're going to stay religious at the end of the conversation, God has to mean more to you than just where science has yet to tread.

A mystery, in Christian theology, is what God knows and man cannot, and must instead believe.

Theologian — the only kind of scholar who has no knowledge whatsoever of his supposed object of study.

An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.

Leading Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas were not what today might be called 'strict constructionists.' Rather, they celebrated reason as the means to gain greater insight into divine intentions.

God is best known in not knowing him.

I think it's a wonderful fact about Judaism - at least about the approach to Judaism I most relate to: There are no universal answers. We don't have it all figured out. God is unknowable.

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Godliness, as well as the doctrine of our faith, is a mystery.

The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand. If someone wants to place the word 'God' on those collections of words, it's OK with me.

Clearly, unless the Lord chooses to explain Himself to us, which often He does not, His motivation and purposes are beyond the reach of mortal man. What this means in practical terms is that many of our questions - especially those that begin with the word 'why' - will have to remain unanswered for the time being.

This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything.

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

I think it is impossible to explain faith. It is like trying to explain air, which one cannot do by dividing it into its component parts and labeling them scientifically. It must be breathed to be understood.

Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners do not have a clue about him.

God may not explain Himself, but He will reveal Himself.

A God whom we could understand exhaustively, and whose revelation of Himself confronted us with no mysteries whatsoever, would be a God in man's image, and therefore an imaginary God, not the God of the Bible at all.

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.

A little knowledge OF God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge ABOUT him.

Believe what you want But don't dumb down what Jesus said.

Give thanks for sorrow that teaches you pity; for pain that teaches you courage-and give exceedingly thanks for the mystery which remains a mystery still-the veil that hides you from the infinite, which makes it possible for you to believe in what you cannot see.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.