Theological Issues Quotes

Religious relativism is not the answer to disagreement between faiths; yet relativism, and a blurring of religious distinctions, all too often result when two deeply believing faith communities engage each other in the public arena on theological issues.

God, we are told, is willing to render himself inconsistent and ridiculous, to confound the curiosity of those whom, we are at the same time informed, he desires to enlighten by his special grace. What must we think of a revelation which, far from teaching us any thing, is calculated to darken and puzzle the clearest ideas?

As a scientist, I can not help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired.The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God.

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.

In terms of applicability to today's world, many people are trying to domesticate Scripture so as to get the PC answer, the politically correct answer on a wide range of subjects, whether it's homosexual marriage, or a certain view of government, or a certain view of eschatology or whatever. At the end of the day we want also to encourage the kind of reverent handling of Scripture that wants to be corrected by Scripture, that is more eager to be mastered by Scripture then to master it.

Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.

The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act.

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.

God is a freaking character, with enough foibles, tantrums, and paradoxical behaviors to supply a thousand screenplays. But who do you cast?

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.

Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as 'Father' at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake.

Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God's person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.

One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological.