Theology That Bites Back
The main category for book reviews and cultural interaction.
“Now a person with temporary faith may in some sense sense be ‘saved,’ but scare quotes were intended for just such a circumstance as this. Temporary salvation is something to be terrified of. I should rather have my fingernails pulled out than to be any part of God’s salvation ‘for a time.’”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 844
Letter to the Editor: What is your view concerning the day of creation on which angels were made? Do you think that when Adam and Eve fell into sin, that all of the back story with ...
“When the Federal Vision controversy erupted over a decade ago, there was a great deal of confusion involved in it. More than a few Girardian elbows were thrown, some folks jumped into the fray who couldn’t be troubled to read a book, or pick up a phone, and there was at least one troubled anti-FV prosecutor who was in the process of poping himself. From where I sit the responsibility for the lion’s share of those confusions rested with the accusers. But if that controversy ever heats up again, I am concerned that preliminary sketches and speculations like these recent posts could shift responsibility for the confusion to our side of the aisle.”
Referring to:
patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2014/11/how-to-say-i-am-righteous
patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2014/11/infusion-imputation-and-luther
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 842
I believe God created the world—and everything else—the way He said He did, and when He said He did. I believe that when God spoke the cosmos into being out of absolute nothing, this established two levels of reality—God, the eternal and necessary reality that everlastingly was already, and not-God, which was mutable and contingent, …
“‘Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.’ Scripture frequently tells Christians that they aren’t really. We sometimes speak as though lack of assurance were the only possible problem. But assurance is a problem when someone has it who shouldn’t, and lack of assurance is only a problem when someone doesn’t have assurance who should. We should always care more about the presence of the truth than the presence of assurance.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 840-841
“There are more than a few Protestant preachers who wouldn’t recognize the Westminster Confession if it landed in their front yard in a helicopter.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 839
“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
Bottom Line First: We are three weeks out from the assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life, and I think we are now presented with two reasonable possibilities, two reasonable interpretations ...
“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
