Top Ten First Lines of Theological Works

Even a cursory reader of this blog will have been able to seize upon two separate loves of mine, namely, theology and literature. Of the second I have elsewhere written of my particular fancy of a well crafted first line of a story. Therefore, I thought it might be appropriate and interesting - if to no one but myself - to offer for you, in my humble opinion, the ten greatest first lines (or in some cases several) of works of theology. As always, if anyone is still out there, please feel free to critique, criticize, or offer a few of your own.

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10. "Sometime between 1960 and 1980, an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, new world began. We do not mean to be overly dramatic. Although there are many who have not yet heard the news, it is nevertheless true: A tired old world has ended, an exciting new one is waiting recognition." -Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (I had to get some Wesleyans in here, since Wesley's own openings are usually rather bland.)

9. "It's teaching about Jesus Christ lies at the heart of every Christian theology." -Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus-God and Man (Those Germans, as we shall see, know how to write a first line!)

8. "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,' says the Lord. These are Christ's own words by which he exhorts us to imitate his life and his ways, if we truly desire to be enlightened and free of all blindness of heart. Let it then be our main concern to meditate on the life of Jesus Christ." -Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

7. "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace." -Dietrich Boenhoffer, The Cost of Discipleship

6. "The joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted, are the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well." -Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Vatican II (I would be remiss to not have at least one conciliar document in this list.)

5. "The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge." -G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

4. "Dogmatics is a theological discipline. But theology is a function of the church." -Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (With this one sentence, Barth ushered in a new way of doing theology, one which retrieved its home, not as the academy, but as the Church.)

3. "So faith procures this for us, as the elders, the disciples of the apostles have handed down to us: firstly, it exhorts us to remember that we have received baptism for the remission of sins, in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was incarnate, and died, and was raised, and in the Holy Spirit of God." -Irenaeus, On the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching (Of course, the Fathers could not conceive of theology done outside of an ecclesial context, as this fine quotation shows. Plus, would one of my lists be complete without Uncle Irenaeus?)

2. "Beauty is the word that shall be our first." -Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics vol. 1 (I cheated on this one as von Balthasar, like any good German theologian, explains his first word with three hearty paragraphs)

1. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." -John the Theologian