Best 17 quotes of Helmut Thielicke on MyQuotes

A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub and the toastmasters.

A theological thought can breathe only in the atmosphere of dialogue with God.

I don't believe that God is a fussy faultfinder in dealing with theological ideas. He who provides forgiveness for a sinful life will also surely be a generous judge of theological reflection. Even an orthodox theologian can be spiritually dead, while perhaps a heretic crawls on forbidden bypaths to the sources of life.

It is also possible to say precisely why. Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other man who does not know this and that. I have greater possibilities and also greater temptations. Anyone who deals with truth - as we theologians certainly do - succumbs all too easily to the psychology of the possessor. But love is the opposite of the will to possess. It is self-giving. It boasteth not itself, but humbleth itself.

Tell me how much you know of the sufferings of your fellowmen and I will tell you how much you have loved them.

The Christian stands, not under the dictatorship of a legalistic 'you ought,' but in the magnetic field of Christian Freedom, under the empowering of the 'You may.'

The doubters are always more blessed than the mere fellow travelers in faith. For they are the only ones who fully learn that their Lord is stronger than any doubt and any hell of despair.

The gospel must be preached afresh and told in new ways to each generation, since every generation has its own unique questions. The gospel must constantly be forwarded to a new address, because the recipient is repeatedly changing his place of address.

The Gospel must constantly be forwarded to a new address, because the recipient is repeatedly changing his place of residence.

What is the greatest deficiency among human Chrsitians? They have an inadequate view of human suffering.

When God forgives us for hitting Him with a club we should manage to put up with the pin pricks we get from our fellows.

When the drama of history is over, Jesus Christ will stand alone on the stage. All the great figures of history ... will realize that they have been but actors in a drama produced by another.

And so they easily suppose that this truce, owing to helplessness, is victory and that they have convinced the other man. But in fact, instead of winning him over, they have merely applied a kind of shock therapy — only it was never 'therapy.' They have smothered the first little flame of a man’s own spiritual life and a first shy question with the fire extinguisher of their erudition. By such performances a person can really be smothered and strangled!

Here truth is employed as a means to personal triumph and at the same time as a means to kill. It produces a few years later that sort of minister who operates not to instruct but to destroy his church. And if the elders, the church, and the young people begin to groan, if they protest to the church authorities, and finally stay away from worship, this young man is still Pharisaical enough not to listen one bit.

It is a mistake for anyone who is just in this stage to appear before a church as a teacher. He has outgrown the naivete with which in young people’s work he might by all means have taken this part. He has not yet come to that maturity which would permit him to absorb into his own life and reproduce out of the freshness of his own personal faith the things which he imagines intellectually and which are accessible to him through reflection. We must have patience here and be able to wait. For the reasons I have mentioned I do not tolerate sermons by first-semester young theological students swaddled in their gowns. One ought to be able to keep still. During the period when the voice is changing we do not sing, and during this formative period in the life of the theological student he does not preach.

Man is not valuable because he loves God. Man is valuable because God loves him.

Tell me how much you know of the sufferings of your fellow man and I will tell you how much you have loved them.