“There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God.”
“It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way.”
“I know the theological answers, but do my blood and my pulse?”
“Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn t there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.”
“Take the first A out of Abraham and put it at the end. You get Brahama. There’s the ancient connection right there.”
“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”
“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him”
“I agree with yours of the 22d that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. but we cannot always do what is absolutely best. those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. truth advances, & error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step. [Comment on establishing Jefferson s University of Virginia, a secular college, in a letter to Thomas Cooper 7 October 1814]”
“And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?”
“Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.”
“He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.”
“All religions are based on obsolete terminology.”
“I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primogenial chaos? Isn t affirming God s absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?”
“The study of truth requires a considerable effort - which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge - despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for such knowledge in the minds of men.”
“It was not the Fall of Adam, therefore, that set God’s agenda; it was the decision to share the great dance with us through Jesus. Adam’s plunge certainly threatened God’s dreams for us, but that threat had been anticipated and already strategically overcome in the predestination of the incarnation. Jesus Christ did not become human to fix the fall; he became human to accomplish the eternal purpose of our adoption, and in order to bring our adoption to pass, the Fall had to be called to a halt and undone….Jesus is not a footnote to Adam and his Fall; the Fall, and indeed creation itself, is a footnote to the purpose of God in Jesus Christ.”
“In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse. The object was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, the ultimate and inexpressible reality beyond human understanding. The idea was to push language as far as it would go, until participants became aware of the ineffable. The challenger, drawing on his immense erudition, began the process by asking an enigmatic question and his opponents had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced the others to silence. In that moment of silence, the Brahman was present - not in the ingenious verbal declarations but in the stunning realisation of the impotence of speech. Nearly all religious traditions have devised their own versions of this exercise. It was not a frustrating experience; the finale can, perhaps, be compared to the moment at the end of the symphony, when there is a full and pregnant beat of silence in the concert hall before the applause begins. The aim of good theology is to help the audience to live for a while in that silence.”
“I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.”