W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.

It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable.

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.

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.

Early on, you talk about God because you consider Him to be most important. But later, you realize there are means by which God is known and portrayed.

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.

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.

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

Conservatives and liberals understand the Christian faith as a set of ideas because, so understood, Christianity seems to be a set of beliefs assessable to anyone upon reflection.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Theology in general seems to me a substitution of human ingenuity for divine wisdom.

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

Belief contains so many truths pertaining to God's Names and the realities contained in the universe that the most perfect science, knowledge, and virtue is belief and knowledge of God originating in a belief based on argument and investigation.

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

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

Certainly it does make the greatest possible difference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is the very basis of religion.

Every one of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they?

We are dealing with God's thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.

A loving God who has no wrath is no God. He is an idol of our own making as much as if we carved Him out of stone.

God's Wisdom and God's Goodness!--Ah, but fools Mis-define thee, till God knows them no more. Wisdom and goodness they are God!--what schools Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore. This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules: 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.

Whether you think Jesus was God or not, you must admit he was a first-rate political economist.

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

Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.

Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.