Quotes by Theologians - Page 68

The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.
Richard J. Foster
Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot
Augustine of Hippo
Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me.
Martin Luther
I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has of course - or I intended it to have - a moral. But the transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may actually await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.
C.S. Lewis
The creature was there, a curiously shaped creature no doubt, but all loathing had vanished clean out of his mind, so that neither then nor at any other time could he remember it, nor ever understand again why one should quarrel with an animal for having more legs or eyes than oneself.
C.S. Lewis
I did wonder if there really was such a person as Aslan: but then sometimes I wondered if there were really people like you. Yet there you are.
C.S. Lewis
The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.
Charles Williams
The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil’s whole structure away.
C.S. Lewis
Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of "escape." I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, "What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?" and gave the obvious answer: jailers.
C.S. Lewis
As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool—not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others—a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive.
C.S. Lewis
We're free Narnians, Hwin and I, and I suppose, if you're running away to Narnia you want to be one too. In that case Hwin isn't your horse any longer. One might just as well say you're her human.
C.S. Lewis
Do you mean to say," asked Caspian, "that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me! It's really too bad for you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I have always loved them … Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?" Edmund shook his head. "And it isn't like that," he added. "There's nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you're there.
C.S. Lewis
this is a book about something
C.S. Lewis
In the silence of loveyou will find the spark of life
Jalaluddin Rumi
I waitwith silent passionfor one gestureone glancefrom you
Jalaluddin Rumi
My wails of sorroware tormenting my soul
Jalaluddin Rumi
My BelovedKnow that my beloved in hidden from everyoneKnow that she is beyond the belief of all beliefsKnow that in my heart she is as clear as the moonKnow that she is the life in my body and in my soul
Jalaluddin Rumi
You erased my famine, unpicked my angerYour energy charges my voice, it radiates my heart;Now I am alive with the ore of words pouringFrom my lips like molten lava glittering with joy.
Jalaluddin Rumi
I love my friendsneither with my heart nor with my mind. Just in case…Heart might stop. Mind can forget. I love them with my soul. Soul never stops or forgets.
Jalaluddin Rumi
O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.
Augustine of Hippo
As we should not own our duties further than somewhat of Christ is in them, so should we no further our own hearts ; and as we should delight in the creatures no further than they have reference to Christ and eternity, so should we no further approve of our own hearts (483).
Richard Baxter
Sirs, so much as your hearts as is empty of Christ and heaven, let it be filled with shame and sorrow, and not with ease (483).
Richard Baxter
The falseness of your own hearts, if you look not to them, may undo you(15).
Richard Baxter
Every mystery of life has its origin in the heart.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
If metal can be polishedto a mirrorlike finish,what polishing might the mirrorof the heart require?Between the mirror and the heartis this single difference:the heart conceals secrets,while the mirror does not.
Jalaluddin Rumi
The heart was designed to worship, and if it is not being utilized to worship God, it will worship something else.
Jeremy Pierre
It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.
Peter Kreeft
The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.
C.S. Lewis
The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.
John Calvin
It is tragic to see how the religious sentiment of the West has become so individualized that concepts such as "a contrite heart," have come to refer only to the personal experiences of guilt and willingness to do penance for it. The awareness of our impurity in thoughts, words and deeds can indeed put us in a remorseful mood and create in us the hope for a forgiving gesture. But if the catastrophical events of our days, the wars, mass murders, unbridled violence, crowded prisons, torture chambers, the hunger and the illness of millions of people and he unnamable misery of a major part of the human race is safely kept outside the solitude of our hearts, our contrition remains no more than a pious emotion.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Those speak foolishly who ascribe their anger or their impatience to such as offend them or to tribulation. Tribulation does not make people impatient, but proves that they are impatient. So everyone may learn from tribulation how his heart is constituted.
Martin Luther
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.
C.S. Lewis
If Light Is In Your HeartYou Will Find Your Way Home.
Jalaluddin Rumi
The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.
C.S. Lewis
Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
The wealthy, Jesus says, can only get into heaven through the eye of a needle; the same applies to churches wealthy in numbers and programs.
Mark Galli
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
G.K. Chesterton
In the end, therefore, money will be the one thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him his money. Give me money, he will say, and I am saved...He would die with nothing to reproach himself with, and under the impression that if only he had had the money he might really have lived and might even have achieved something great.
Søren Kierkegaard
Get to know two things about a man. How he earns his money and how he spends it. You will then have the clue to his character. You will have a searchlight that shows up the inmost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to know about his standards, his motives, his driving desires, his real religion.
Robert J. McCracken
America does not know the difference between money and sex. It treats sex like money because it treats sex as a medium of exchange, and it treats money like sex because it expects its money to get pregnant and reproduce.
Peter Kreeft
When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.
Basil the Great
Holiness begins in our minds and works out to our actions. This being true, what we allow to enter our minds is critically important. The television programs we watch, the movies we may attend, the books and magazines we read, the music we listen to, and the conversations we have all affect our minds.
Jerry Bridges
Music, that is the science or the sense of proper modulation, is likewise given by God's generosity to mortals having rational souls in order to lead them to higher things.
Augustine of Hippo
Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.
G.K. Chesterton
They were making a riotous noise, but it was much more like music - rather advanced music which you don't quite take in at the first hearing - than birds' songs ever are in our world.
C.S. Lewis
When it happens that I am more moved by the song than the thing which is sung, I confess that I sin in a manner deserving punishment
Augustine of Hippo
Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim the Word of God through Music.
Martin Luther
Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.
Martin Luther
Music. A meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience.
C.S. Lewis
A person who...does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of
Martin Luther
The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices.
Martin Luther
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
G.K. Chesterton
Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.
Albert Schweitzer
Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Over the years I have written many a letter for the wedding of one of the brothers and preached many a wedding sermon. The chief characteristic of such occasions essentially rested in the fact that, in the face of the "last" times (I do not mean this to sound quite so apocalyptic), someone dares to take a step of such affirmation of the earth and its future. It was then always very clear to me that a person could take this step as a Christian truly only from within a very strong faith and on the basis of grace. For here in the midst of the final destruction of all things, one desires to build; in the midst of a life lived from hour to hour and from day to day, one desires a future; in the midst of being driven out from the earth, one desires a bit of space; in the midst of the widespread misery, one desires some happiness. And the overwhelming thing is that God says yes to this strange longing, that here God consents to our will, whereas it usually meant to be just the opposite.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
When she had first crossed the dry and dusty world which his mind inhabited she had been like a spring shower; in opening himself to it he had not been mistaken. He had gone wrong only in assuming that marriage, by itself, gave him either power or title to appropriate that freshness. As he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it.
C.S. Lewis
It is in the perfect union of two hearts that complete and total marriage consists.
Bernard of Clairvaux
[The Devil and his angels] have... persuad[ed]... humans that a curious, and usually short-lived, experience which they call "being in love" is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding. This idea [comes from their] parody of an idea that came from [God]... Things are to be many, yet somehow also one. The good of one self is to be the good of another. This... He calls Love, and this... can be detected under all He does and even all He is... He introduces into matter... the organism, in which the parts are [set at odds with] their natural destiny of competition and made to cooperate... In... humans [God] has... associated affection between the parties with sexual desire. He has also made the offspring dependent on the parents and given the parents an impulse to support it-thus producing the Family, which is like the organism, [but] the members are more distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way... [Heavenly Father] described a married couple as "one flesh." He did not say "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love"...
C.S. Lewis