Theological Views Quotes

If you ask people in England where does Tom Wright sit on the theological spectrum, they say, "Well he's an evangelical of course," as though, come on, get used to it.

I happen to be a Christian. I was brought up and drenched in that. I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form.

A low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils. A high view of God is the solution to ten thousand temporal problems.

When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic.

I'd rather go to hell than worship a homophobic God.

I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form.

I just don't seem to be capable of believing in evil as some separate, distinct power within itself. I guess I'm just not a Southern Baptist or a Fundamentalist. I just don't seem to be capable of believing in it myself, somehow. I don't . . . I can't conceive from my experience how this force of evil can exist without the force of love being right there.

Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same.

Orthodox theologians insisted that the rest of humankind were only transitory creatures, lost in sin - a view that would support what would become their dominant teaching about salvation, offered only through Christ, and, in particular, through the church they claimed to represent.

To embrace what are called the Calvinistic doctrines was an infallible token of a humble mind.

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.

According to Christian belief, man exists for the sake of God; according to the liberal church, in practice if not in theory, God exists for the sake of man.

I was interested in the question of the power of religious organizations to effect public policy in a negative way. When I was in college, and I found out at that time the Catholic Church was in such control of everything in communities, including in progressive places like New York - that a roommate of mine was not able to obtain an abortion with his girlfriend, even in places like New York. What I learned at that moment was the extraordinary clout that religious organizations can have to impose their theological views on others. And I found it exasperating and dangerous.

In deciding among theological views, one should be something of a consequentialist: the choice of one theological position over another should be, if not actually determined, at least heavily conditioned by the fact that it implies a better ethical outcome than the alternatives.

The notion that inspiration is something that happened thousands of years ago, and was then finished and done with. . . the theory that God retired from business at that period and has not been heard from since, is as silly as it is blasphemous.