Theologian Quotes

Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?

Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.

I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.

You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.

However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.

There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.

Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.

Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.

The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.

A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

The greater the conceptual significance of a literary product, the more it should be assumed that it is based on an idea that determines the whole, and that the deeper consciousness of the time to which it belongs is reflected in it.

It was my study of the two Corinthian letters that first caused me to concentrate my attention more directly on the relation of the apostle Paul to the older apostles.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness.

The sight of nature fascinates, the family tie has a sweet enchantment and patriotism gives the religious spirit a fiery devotion to the powers that it reveres.

His very chains helped to deceive him about the harshness of his service.

But in Christianity, by contrast, the freedom of the children of God was also freedom from all important worldly interests, from all art and science, etc.

Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.

What God chooses for us children of men is always the best.

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.

Faith is never identical with piety.

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do.

Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.

It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.

Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo.

The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.

Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.