Notable Theologians “B...-”
for classrooms, home schoolers, offices & theme decor.

Mary Baker Eddy
b. 4-16-1821; Bow, NH
d. 12-3-1910

Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of Christian Science.

Mary Baker Eddy quotes ~
• “Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind.”
• “To live and let live, without clamour for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart - this is the sanity and perfection of living.”
• “Reject hatred without hating.”
• “Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal.”

• book- Mary Baker Eddy (Radcliffe Biography Series)

Saint Basil of Caesarea, the Great
b. 329-330 AD; Caesarea, Cappadocia (modern day Turkey)
d. 1-1-397; Caesarea

Theologian Saint Basil of Caesarea is best known for his work with the poor and focus on community life, prayer and labor. He is one of the Cappadocian Fathers with his brother Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus.

Basil, a supporter of the Nicene Creed, is considered a Doctor of the Church and saint by both Eastern Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Church.

St. Basil quotes ~
• “The bread you do not use is the bread of the hungry. The garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of the person who is naked. The shoes you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot. The money you keep locked away is the money of the poor. The acts of charity you do not perform are the injustices you commit.”

Thomas Becket
b. ca. 1118-29; Cheapside, London, England
d. 12-29-1170; Canterbury Cathedral - murdered

Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered at Canterbury Cathedral by the knights of King Henry II. Their conflict could be intrepreted as over the separation of the powers of church and state.

FYI ~ The murder led to the cathedral becoming a place of pilgrimage for Christians worldwide and provided the theme for Geoffery Chaucer's 14th-century literary classic The Canterbury Tales.

Thomas Becket quote ~
• “Remember the sufferings of Christ, the storms that were weathered... the crown that came from those sufferings which gave new radiance to the faith... All saints give testimony to the truth that without real effort, no one ever wins the crown.”

• T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral
• Jean Anouilh's play Becket (movie)

Saint Bede the Venerable
b. ca. 672 or 673; England
d. 5-27-735

Bede, a Benedictine monk at a Northumbrian monastery, is best known as an author and scholar. His most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title “The father of English history”.

Saint Bede the Venerable quote ~
• “Better a stupid and unlettered brother who, working the good things he knows, merits life in Heaven than one who though being distinguished for his learning in the Scriptures, or even holding the place of a doctor, lacks the bread of love.”

• book- The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England: also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Saint Hildegard von Bingen
b. 1098; Bermersheim vor der Höhe, County Palatine of the Rhine, Holy Roman Empire, (Germany)
d. 9-17-1179; Bingen am Rhein

Saint Hildegard von Bingen should be considered a “polymath” (a person with varied knowledge and learning). She was an “abbess, artist, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, teacher, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, activist, visionary, and composer”. Hildegard was also the founder of monasteries at Rupertsberg and Eibingen, communicated with popes, and traveled through Europe.

Hildegard von Bingen quotes ~
• “The earth which sustains humanity must not be injured, it must not be destroyed.”
• “Every element has a sound, an original sound from the order of God; all those sounds unite like the harmony from harps and zithers.”
• “There is the Music of Heaven in all things and we have forgotten how to hear it until we sing.”
• “Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

• book- Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias
• more women posters

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, née von Hahn
b. 7-31-1831; Ukraine
d. 5-8-1891; England

Russian mystic and author Madame Blavatsky was the founder of the theosophical (“divine wisdom”) movement bringing together spiritual aspects of Eastern and Western religious beliefs.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky quotes ~
• “Everything that is, was, and will be, eternally IS, even the countless forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, not in their ideal Form.”
• “The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in nature Spirits is their materialism.”
• “The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute Essence.”
• “The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life.”

• book- The Secret Doctrine: the Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy: Index to Volumes 1 and 2

Jakob Bohme, Giclee Print

Jakob Böhme
b. 1575; Alt Seidenberg, Upper Lusatia, Holy Roman Empire, (Germany)
d. 11-17-1642

Jakob Böhme was a mystic whose visions lead him to the necessity of all original unities to undergo differentiation – as in the knowledge of good and evil – in order for God to achieve a new self-awareness by interacting with a creation that was both part of, and distinct from, Himself, (see Carl Jung's Answer to Job).

Jakob Bohme quotes ~
• “In this light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in and by all creatures, even in herbs and grass it knew God, who he is, and how he is, and what his will is: And suddenly in that light my will was set on by a mighty impulse, to describe the being of God.”
• “I did not climb up into the Godhead, neither can so mean a man as I am do it; but the Godhead climbed up in me, and revealed such to me out of his Love.”

• book- The Wisdom of Jacob Bohme (Great Works of Christian Spirituality Series)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
b. 2-4-1906; Breslau, Germany
d. 4-9-1945; Flossenbürg concentration camp - executed

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred for his participation in the German resistance movement against Nazism. Bonhoeffer's best-known book, The Cost of Discipleship, a study on the Sermon on the Mount in which he attacked “cheap grace” as a cover for ethical laxity and preached “costly grace”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes ~
• “There is no way to peace along the way to safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture.”
• “The followers of Christ have been called to peace. . . . And they must not only have peace but also make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. . . . His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they over-come evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate.”
• “We have learned a bit too late in the day that action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility.”
• “When we come to a clearer and more sober estimate of our own limitations and responsibilities, that makes it possible more genuinely to love our neighbor.”
• “There is not a place to which the Christian can withdraw from the world, whether it be outwardly or in the sphere of the inner life. Any attempt to escape from the world must sooner or later be paid for with a sinful surrender to the world.”
• “Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.”
• “In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give; life can be rich only with such realization.”
• “So long as we eat our bread together, we shall have sufficient even for the least. Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.”
• “There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer ... to look with new eyes on matters great and small.”

Don Bosco
b. 8-16-1815; Piedmont, Italy
d. 1-31-1888

Catholic priest, educator and writer Don Bosco is remember as one who put into practice the convictions of his religion. He dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth and employing teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that is known as the preventive system. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1934 and is popularly known as the Patron Saint of Magicians.

FYI - A dream Bosco had was inspiration for building the planned city of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.

John Bunyan
b. 11-28-1628; Bedfordshire, England
d. 8-31-1688

Writer and preacher John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress (1768), a Christian allegory telling of Christian, an Everyman character, making his way from the “City of Destruction” (Earth) to the “Celestial City” (Heaven).

John Bunyan quotes ~
• “When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart.”
• “Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.”

• book- The Pilgrim's Progress (in Modern English)