Category: Contemporary Theologians

Quotes from Theologians of the past few centuries

Progress is gradual and always builds off of a foundation

The dichotomy between tradition and insight breaks down under the weight of history itself. A “leap of progress” is not a standing broad jump, which begins at the line of where we are now; it is a running broad jump through where we have been to where we go next.

…The growth of insight — in science, in the arts, in philosophy, in theology— has not come through progressively sloughing off more and more of tradition, as though insight would be purest and deepest when it has finally freed itself of the dead past. It simply has not worked that way in the history of tradition and it does not work that way now.

Jaroslav Pelikan
The Vindication of Tradition

The nature of the Christian to the Church is that of a child to a parent

We do well to recognize as infantile an attitude toward our parents that regards them as all wise or all powerful and that is blind to their human foibles. But we must recognize no less that it is adolescent, once we have discovered those foibles, to deny our parents the respect and reverence that is their due for having been, under God, the means through which has come the only life we have.

Jaroslav Pelikan
The Vindication of Tradition

Christ was no less the Logos in the womb, the cradle or the cross

Christ is the inner conception ‘in the bosom of His Father;’ and that is properly the Word. And yet the Word is the intention uttered forth, as well as conceived within; for Christ was no less the Word in the womb of the Virgin, or in the cradle of the manger, or on the altar of the cross, than he was in the beginning, ‘in the bosom of his Father.’ For as the intention departs not from the mind when the word is uttered, so Christ, proceeding from the Father by eternal generation, and after here by birth and incarnation, remains still in Him and with Him in essence; as the intention, which is conceived and born in the mind, remains still with it and in it, though the word be spoken. He is therefore rightly called the Word, both by His coming from, and yet remaining still in, the Father.

William Austin
Meditation for Christmas Day

The doors of Hell are locked on the inside

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man wishes to be “happy”; but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved; just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.

C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain

Humanism is irrational

The humanist’s faith is based on his belief that nonrational causes cause rational beings (humans with minds) who are themselves composed entirely of the nonrational, and yet are somehow able to step outside of that nonrationality and reason to the conclusion that everything is material and therefore nonrational. Yet, if the nonrational material universe is “the whole show,” the humanist could never actually know if he is truly rational or only a nonrational material product with the illusion of rationality.

What is more reasonable to believe, that the nonrational produces the rational; or that a rational being (God) created other rational beings (humans) and a world founded on rational principles that can therefore be understood by these rational beings? The humanist must borrow from the theistic, Christian worldview, which can account for rationality. It is ironic that humanists often accuse Christians of possessing blind faith that the nonrational can produce the rational. Christianity gives birth to science, while humanism only gives birth to blindness.

Bob and Gretchen Passantino
Religion, Truth, and Value without God: Contemporary Atheism Speaks Out in Humanist Manifesto 2000 (Part Two)

The Holy Spirit enables man to fulfill his calling as a creature of God

The Christian Church lives by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit alone is the guarantee of God’s Kingdom on earth. He is the sole guarantee that God’s life and truth and love are with men. Only by the Holy Spirit can man and the world fulfill that for which they were created by God. All of God’s actions toward man and the world—in creation, salvation and final glorification—are from the Father through the Son (Word) in the Holy Spirit; and all of man’s capabilities of response to God are in the same Spirit, through the same Son to the same Father.

Thomas Hopko
From the Series: The Orthodox Church
Volume I – Doctrine and Scripture: The Symbol of Faith