theologians-from-germany

"Quae rara sub isto Axe videre soles, aliis in partibus horum Copia tanta iacet, quantam vilissima tecum Efficiunt; rursus quaedam quae spreta videntur Forte tibi, magno mercantur ditia regna, Altera ut alterius potiatur foenore tellus, Orbis et in toto per partes una domus sit."

"Haec quia non Tyrio Germania tingitur ostro, Lata nec ardenti se Gallia murice iactat, Lutea purpurei reparat crementa quotannis Ubertim floris, tantum qui protinus omnes Herbarum vicisse comas virtute et odore Dicitur, ut merito florum flos esse feratur. * * * Huic famosa suus opponunt lilia flores, Longius horum etiam spirans odor imbuit auras, Sed si quis nivei candentia germina fructus Triverit, aspersi mirabitur ilicet omnem Nectaris ille fidem celeri periisse meatu. Hoc quia virginitas fama subnixa beata Flore nitet, quam si null us labor exagitarit Sordis et inliciti non fregerit ardor amoris, Flagrat odore suo. Porro si gloria pessum Integritatis eat, foetor mutabit odorem."

"Raef Payne, trans. Hortulus (Pittsburgh, PA: Hunt Botanical Library, 1966)"

"Non patitur cunctas angustia carminis huius Pulei virtutes celeri comprendere versu. Hoc apud Indorum tanti constare peritos Fertur, apud Gallos quanti valet Indica nigri Congeries piperis. Quis iam dubitare sinetur Hac herba plures leniri posse labores, Quam pretiis inhianter emit ditissima tantis Gens hebenoque auroque fluens et mira volenti Quaeque ferens mundo?"

"Richard S. Lambert, trans. Hortulus, or, The Little Garden (Wembley, Middx: The Stanton Press, 1924)"

"O mater virgo, fecundo germine mater, Virga fide intacta, sponsi de nomine sponsa, Sponsa, columba, domus, regina, fidelis amica, Bello carpe rosas, laeta arripe lilia pace. Flos Tibi sceptrigero venit generamine Iesse, Unicus antiquae reparator stirpis et auctor, Lilia qui verbis vitaque dicavit amoena, Morte rosas tinguens, pacemque et proelia membris Liquit in orbe suis, virtutem amplexus utramque, Praemiaque ambobus servans aeterna triumphis."

"Ruris enim quaecunque datur possessio, seu sit Putris harenoso qua torpet glarea tractu, Seu pingui molita graves uligine fetus, Collibus erectis alte sita, sive iacenti Planitie facilis, clivo seu vallibus horrens; Non negat ingenuos holerum progignere fructus, Si modo non tua cura gravi compressa veterno Multi plices holitoris opes contemnere stultis Ausibus assuescit, callosasque aere duro Detrectat fuscare manus et stercora plenis Vitat in arenti disponere pulvere qualis. Haec non sola mihi patefecit opinio famae Vulgaris, quaesita libris nec lectio priscis; Sed labor et studium, quibus otia longa dierum Postposui, expertum rebus docuere probatis."

"Vel qualis manibus quondam suspensa supinis Lucet agens circum lomenti bulla salivam, Ante recens maceretur aquis quam spuma refusis, Dum lentescit adhuc digitis luctantibus et se Alternis vicibus studioque fricantibus uno, Inter utramque manum parvo fit parvus hiatu Exitus, huc stricto lenis meat ore Noti vis, Distenditque cavum vitrea sub imagine pondus Et centrum medio confingit labile fundo, Undique conveniat camuri quo inflexio tecti."

"James Mitchell, trans. On the Cultivation of Gardens (San Francisco, CA: Ithuriel's Spear, 2009)"

"The strongest argument for the truth of Christianity is the true Christian, the man filled with the Spirit of Christ. [...] The best proof of Christ's resurrection is a living Church, which itself is walking in new life, and drawing life from him who has overcome death."

"What Christianity in her antagonism with every form of unbelief most needs is holy living."

"In character he was amiable and virtuous."

"Kuhn was a clear thinker, with remarkable gifts for philosophical and theological speculation."

"A negative precept of natural law which prohibits a thing intrinsically evil can never be lawfully transgressed not even under the influence of the fear of death."

"A man of keen intellectual vision and an unlimited capacity for work, Stattler was ever ready to guard and defend Catholic principles."

"Theologians like F. C. Baur resisted and followed Creuzer, insisting instead on a universal diffusionary history with its roots in the Orient. In his own two-volume Symbolik und Mythologie of 1824-5, Baur argued that world history was at once “‘a revelation of the divine (der Gottheit)” and “the evolution of Consciousness,” and neither of these processes had begun in Europe. Using Creuzer, Genesis, and the Zend Avesta, Baur traced the formation of the first mythologies back to a ‘‘primeval seat” [Ursiz] in “the Edenic highlands of Central Asia” between the Jaxartes and the Oxus, Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Stressing the similarities between religious ideas across cultures, Baur readily admitted Europe’s dependence on the Orient for its population and ‘‘a great portion of its culture.’’ This also allowed him to lay the foundations for what he believed to be a scientific history of religious one philosophy, one which would put the evolution of Christianity into proper perspective — without compromising its unique truth."

"A keen intellect with powers of clear exposition, joined to the spirited delivery which distinguished his lectures, ensured him great success."

"Auf hoher Alp Wohnt auch der liebe Gott, Er färbt den Morgen rot, Die Blümlein weiß und blau, Und labet sie mit Tau. Auf hoher Alp ein lieber Vater wohnt.Auf hoher Alp Der Hirt sein Heerdlein schaut; Sein Herz Gott vertraut; Der Geiß und Lamm ernährt, Ihm auch wohl gern beschert. Auf hoher Alp ein lieber Vater wohnt!"

"Resurrection does not simply spell the survival of the soul but requires the transformation of the world as we know it."

"He was foremost among the German theologians of the eighteenth century as a guide and an inspirer of ecclesiastical youth, and may be considered a model of lifelong devotion to all the sciences that befit an ecclesiastic."

"Gifted and original, a keen observer of human nature, a master of language with every shade of expression at command, he united a broad sense of humour and an effective satire with a deep sincerity of religious feeling, a delicacy in the portrayal of conditions of the soul, and a poetical force and beauty in his descriptions of nature."

"Personally and through the clergy trained by him, Liebermann exerted a wholesome and long-continued influence upon the revival of the ecclesiastical spirit in Mainz and the adjoining dioceses."

"It is difficult for inhabitants of a more humid climate to realize the importance which a country like Palestine attaches to any source of fresh water."

"The prestige of the faculty of Bonn had suffered sadly because of the inroads of Hermesianism, and this learned theologian, who was eminently qualified for the work of academic teaching, set about to restore its fallen glory. His brilliant and zealous activity, especially during the first two decades of his office, placed him in the first rank among the shining lights of the university."

"Pietism produced some beneficial results. In the subjective bias of the whole movement, however, there lay from the beginning the danger of many abuses. It often degenerated into fanaticism, with alleged prophecies, visions, and mystical states."

"Tu septiformis munere, Dexterae Dei tu digitus, Tu rite promissum Patris, Sermone ditans guttura."

"Veni Creator Spiritus, Mentes tuorum visita, Imple superna gratia, Quae tu creasti pectora. Qui Paraclitus diceris, Donum Dei altissimi Fons vivus, ignis, caritas, Et spiritalis unctio."

"Accende lumen sensibus: Infunde amorem cordibus: Infirma nostri corporis Virtute firmans perpeti."

"Gloria Patri Domino, Natoque qui a mortuis Surrexit, ac Paraclito, In saeculorum saecula. Amen."

"Schrader's thorough grasp of scholastic theology is evidenced by the many works that bear his name."

"Lüling sees traces of the Christian controversies over the nature of Christ in the Qur’an’s denunciations of those who associate partners with Allah. Lüling sees the Muslim charge that the pagan Quraysh of Mecca were mushrikun, those who associated others with Allah in worship, as an indication that they had actually converted to orthodox Trinitarian Christianity, thereby reinforcing their rejection of Islam’s hardline monotheism and rejection of Christ’s divinity. As the Islamic faith began to develop as a distinct religion, it decisively rejected this faith in Christ and reinterpreted the Qur’an to fit its developing new theology. The hanifs, who were overwhelmed by the coming of Islam and its success, were the last remnants of those who held to creedally vague monotheism."

"The text of the Koran as transmitted by Muslim Orthodoxy contains, hidden behind it as a ground layer and considerably scattered throughout it (together about one-third of the whole Koran text), an originally pre- Islamic Christian text.” Earlier Qur’anic scholars such as Alois Sprenger and Tor Andrae have also identified a Christian substratum."

"A Son of God, Lord of the World, born of a virgin, and rising again after death, and the son of a small builder with revolutionary notions, are two totally different beings. If one was the historical Jesus, the other certainly was not. The real question of the historicity of Jesus is not merely whether there ever was a Jesus among the numerous claimants of a Messiahship in Judea, but whether we are to recognise the historical character of this Jesus in the Gospels, and whether he is to be regarded as the founder of Christianity.[4]"

"India is our motherland of speculative theology."...."There runs in unbroken chain from the Atman-Brahman mysticism of the Vedic Upanishads to the Vedanata of Sankara on the one side and on the other through the mystical technique of the Yoga system to the Buddhist doctrine of salvation. Another line of development equally continuous leads from the Orphic- Dionysiac mysticism to Plato, Philo and the later Hellenistic mystery cults to the Neoplatonic mysticism of the Infinite of Plotinus which is in turn is the source of the "mystical theology" of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areioagute ..... Perhaps this second chain is only an offshoot from the first, since the Elatic speculations and the cryptic doctrine of redemption have possibly borrowed essential elements from early Indian mysticism."

"These materials are found in India, in more primitive forms not merely as a late period but in the remotest pre-Christian Kausitakt Upanishad."

"The Gītā, as it is present to us today, is a text in which the religion of a strictly personal god and of the faithful surrender to him in [the attitude of] Bhakti are peculiarly mixed and crossed with the theomonism and the ‘Advaita’ of Upanishadic speculation and which is simultaneously combined with the emergent systems of Sānkhya and Yoga. But Garbe has made it highly probable in his introduction to [his edition of] the Gītā that the present Gītā came about when an older, simpler, and more more equivocal work was defaced by insertions from Vedic priestly theology and changes in the text itself."

"The latter standpoint is my own. I am, in truth, earnestly convinced that Christianity, not in respect of its various historical accidental characteristics, which are disputable in manifold ways, but rather, in terms of its specific ideal content, in terms of its highly individual, typically characterized unique spirit [Sondergeiste] is decisively superior to the other particular forms of religion. . . ."

"Science christology suffers from a hitherto incurable evil: psychological conjecture."

"Zeigenbalg’s missionary effort was typical of Christian missionary enterprise in India during the eighteenth century. No doubt the number of converts steadily increased and churches were founded in different parts of India. But it was the remittance from Europe that supplied the cost of building churches and feeding the congregation. Abbe Dubois (1,765-1848) published, at the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century, his Letters on the State of Christianity in India . In these he “asserted his opinion that under existing circumstances there was no human possibility of so overcoming the invincible barrier of Brahminical prejudice as to convert the Hindus as a nation to any sect of Christianity. He acknowledged that low castes and outcastes might be converted in large numbers, but of the higher castes he wrote: ‘Should the intercourse between individuals of both nations, by becoming more intimate and more friendly, produce a change in the religion and usages of the country, it will not be to turn Christians that they will forsake their own religion, but rather to become mere atheists.” (150-1)"

"It was neither the powerful English nor the Dutch, but the Danes who sent the first Protestant mission to India, — to Tranquebar, an insignificant locality which they possessed in India. Zeigenbalg, the first missionary who reached India in 1706, candidly confessed that his mission had little success. He pointed out that the Christians in India were “so much debauched in their manners”, and “so given to gluttony, drunkenness, lewdness, cursing, swearing, cheating and cozening” and “proud and insulting in their conduct”, that many Indians, judging the religion by its effect upon its followers, “could not be induced to embrace Christianity”. Only a few poor or destitute persons were converted, and they had to be fed and maintained by the mission. When Ziegenbalg wanted to convert the upper classes by argument, he failed miserably. “In a notable debate held under the auspices of the Dutch in Negapatam, Ziegenbalg disputed with a Brahmin for five hours, and far from converting the Brahmin, the missionary came away with an excessive admiration for the intellectual gifts of his adversary”.(150)"

"[They] lead a very quiet, honest and virtuous life infinitely outdoing our false Christians and superficial pretenders to a better sort of religion."

"Yet he considered it his duty to destroy idol worship, and wrote how he had destroyed idols in a prominent goddess temple. The Hindus were described as ‘being deeply affected with the sight so foppish a set of Gods’, and he proudly ‘threw some down to the ground, and striking off the heads of others’. He wanted to demonstrate to the ‘deluded’ Hindus that ‘their images were nothing but impotent and still idols, unable to protect themselves and much less their worshippers’. The most remarkable part of this incident was that the Hindus who gathered at the scene of destruction were agitated, but did not allow their agitation to turn violent. One man he described as a ‘pagan school teacher (upadhyayan )’ calmly entered into a theological debate and proceeded to show the missionary the folly of his actions. He concluded the debate by pointing out to the missionary that from the point of view of absolute being, all forms of matter are constructions of Maya, and that the pottery images the missionary broke were merely symbols."

"For the last category of religions, Ziegenbalg used the word ‘heathen’ as equivalent to ‘pagan’ or ‘gentile’. It denoted non-monotheistic people and connoted ‘ignorant’ and ‘uncivilized’. All heathens, Ziegenbalg said, are under the rule of the devil, whom they worship as a god. He leads them into idolatry and superstitious rites. The devil is the father of them all, but they have divided into many sects and in Africa, America, and East India, they differ in their gods and teachings. 7"

"At any rate, Judaism, while insisting upon the unity of God and His government of the world, recognizes alongside of God no principle of evil in creation. God has no counterpart either in the powers of darkness, as the deities of Egypt and Babylon had, or in the power of evil, such as Ahriman in the Zoroastrian religion is, whose demoniacal nature was transferred by the Gnostic and Christian systems to Satan. In the Jewish Scriptures Satan has his place among the angels of heaven, and is bound to execute the will of God, his master."

"A clear and concise definition of Judaism is very difficult to give, for the reason that it is not a religion pure and simple based upon accepted creeds, like Christianity or Buddhism, but is one inseparably connected with the Jewish nation as the depository and guardian of the truths held by it for mankind. Furthermore, it is as a law, or system of laws, given by God on Sinai that Judaism is chiefly represented in Scripture and tradition, the religious doctrines being only implicitly or occasionally stated."

"It may be affirmed without exaggeration that a just and unprejudiced estimate of Judaism is found nowhere in modern Christian writings."

"Judaism, parent of both Christianity and Islam, holds forth the pledge and promise of the unity of the two."

"Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and murderers, have first been torturers of animals. The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization. The Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination; we Germans, not half well enough. Buddhism has done more in this direction than Christianity, and Schopenhauer more than all ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with sentient Nature which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer, is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual, yet often unhealthy and unprofitable philosophy."

"Religion is immediate self-consciousness. It liberates the individual from the determinative forces of society . ... It is effective only in individuals, where "in-dividuals" means whose who are undivided, that is, who are liberated from the psychological, social, and logical consequences of the division of labor in society and who actually live concretely and historically, unfettered by abstract norms."

"God is not a basis for interpreting the world, but the fact which really transforms it."