“Now if it is possible for covenant members in good standing to continue to have the devil for their father, and Scripture is plain that it is, then what this means is that there has to be some substratum reality going on that is distinct from (not independent of) the sacraments. There is no way to tie this reality to the sacraments without tying yourself up in knots.”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 835

“When God changes the ‘nature’ of a human being, what he is doing is providing a father transplant. When God changes me in regeneration, what He is doing is turning me into a human being. Prior to that moment, I was not a static, spatially bound human being, sitting there like a triangle with three sides. Rather, I was a disintegrating human being. I was created in the image of God, but parts were falling off. This is because of the temporal aspect of who I was. I was by nature an object of wrath, which means that I was in the process of circling the drain of damnation. I was headed somewhere bad, and I was headed there because the devil was my father. So was Cain. So was Belial. That whole bad business was temporal and relational. In effectual call regeneration, that fundamental identity (who my father is) is transformed. This transformation is entirely relational. So I am talking about who’s-your-daddy nature, not triangles-have-three-sides nature.”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 834

“I am fine with the Reformed world having edges and am fine with people living there. But it should follow from this that I am also fine with the Reformed world having a center. And on this issue of regeneration that center is summarized very nicely by our confessions—and if the historic Reformed view of regeneration is Kansas, then I live in Topeka. I don’t live on an island off the state of Maine, but if I did, I would still be an American. But as an American, there on my island, I wouldn’t be saying things like, ‘That’s the way it is, here in the heartland . . .”

The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 833