When Most Needed
Dropped From Heaven
“Nor does it mean the kind of confessionalism intended by some, where they don’t believe you can possibly understand the Heidelberg unless you can read it in the original Arabic.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 880
Should Have Done Better
“It is difficult, in the middle of a saloon brawl, to distinguish the motives of loyalty, manly principle, stubbornness, and cussedness. That is correct. It is difficult, but I still should have done a better job. I am responsible for not having done so, and I thought I needed to say so publicly.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 877
An FV Retraction
“I have come to believe that there were also a number of critics of the federal Vision who were truly insightful and saw the implications and trajectories of certain ideas better than I did at the time. I was wrong to treat all critics as though they were all more or less in the same boat. There were insightful critics and there were bigoted ones, and I should have given the insightful critics more of a fair hearing than I did, and I should have used the behavior of the ignorant critics as less representative than I frequently did. I believe I was wrong in this also.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 876
Letters Fall Like Leaves on a Pond in a Japanese Haiku
Letter to the Editor: "Despite the fact that he was the reason Roe was struck down, for which we thank God . . ."But there's the rub: The hard-core abolitionists DON'T thank God for this. ...
No Mas, Part Two
“So the views I hold to are a different kind of thing from what is represented in the common understanding of the Federal Vision, and the differences involved are connected to everything. They are a different kind of thing, not a lesser amount of the same thing. Thus when I speak of the objectivity of the covenant—which I will continue to do—this is not a lite version of what someone else might mean by it. Now I do not say this because I am angry or upset with anybody. I say it because I think I have learned something.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 875-876
Federal Vision No Mas
“Everybody knew (or thought they knew) what that phrase [Federal Vision] represented. Since I certainly owned the phrase, albeit with modifiers, and lots of energetic typing, what happened was that I was thought to be owning what people knew as this. But the more I typed that, the more it made people’s heads hurt. So one of the few things I have been successful at doing is persuading a number of people that I am a sly fellow, and one who bears close watching. Heretics are slippery with words, and since I have spent a lot of time trying to grease this particular piglet, I must be a heretic. So I have finally become convinced that the phrase Federal Vision is a hurdle that I cannot get over, under or around.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 874-875
Clearly Stressful
And My Fence is Protestant
“Protestants can be decidedly Protestant without being bigots. And so I will conclude by citing my very favorite papist, G.K. Chesterton. He once said that you ought never to tear down a fence unless you knew why it had been put up in the first place.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 870
Perseverance Now
“To argue that I have every spiritual blessing in Christ right now, but that perseverance is not among these blessings because perseverance cannot be contained within the present moment is to speak the language of a system, a particular theology, and not the language of the Bible.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 863