Human words

A mere theological tumblelog.

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Being a creature is in danger of becoming a lost art.

Rowan Williams, "On Being Creatures".

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The divine word at the beginning forbids that the Divine be likened to any things known by men, since every concept which comes from some comprehensible image by an approximate understanding and by guessing at the divine nature constitutes an idol of God and does not proclaim God.

Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses.

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A theologian is someone who knows how to pray.

Evagrius Ponticus

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Where the speculative intellect finds answer to its furthest ranging questions is still the same place where the bruised spirit may find consolation from the touch of a man of sorrows.

Donald MacKinnon

[thomuchistakenmuchabides-deacti]

Jesus’ words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" should be sufficient to render all attempts at theodicy jejune.

Stanley Hauerwas, Working With Words (via invisibleforeigner)

[theotumble-blog]

Feminism continues, in a new form, the basic Christian perception that sin, as perversion of good potential into evil, is not simply individual but refers to a fallen state of humanity, historically. Feminism's own claim to stand in judgment on patriarchy as evil means it cannot avoid the question of the capacity of humanity for sin.

Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-talk, 161.

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Hope which divorces itself from suffering or trivializes it becomes false hope and suffering which divorces itself from hope or negates the very possibility of hope becomes meaningless suffering, tragic despair, or bitter cynicism

J. Christiaan Beker, Suffering and Hope, 21-22.

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If we could not weep into your very ears, no shred of hope would be left to us.

Augustine, The Confessions, IV.10.

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Righteousness has a beauty of its own, which we perceive with the eyes of the heart, and love, and kindle to, a beauty which people have dearly loved in the martyrs, even when their limbs were being torn by wild beasts.

Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 64.8.

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“The meaning of our life: to show our recognition that we are not God.”

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Heart of the World, 32.