19 Quotes by Helmut Thielicke

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

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.

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!

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

The Gospel must be repeatedly forwarded to a new address because the recipient is repeatedly changing places of residence.

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

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.

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

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