“Those who hold that the covenant of works was not gracious must, of necessity, deny the imputation of the active obedience of Christ”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 795
The Halfway Covenant
“What do you do? You have a baptized man and woman, professing faith in Jesus and in the truth of the Christian religion, who are living sober and decent lives, and w ho could join any Calvinist church in Europe. They want to have their child baptized. What do you do? The Halfway Covenant said okay, all right already.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 791
How Visible Is the Heart?
“If it is true that not every member of the visible church will be in glory, and it is true, then there must be a demarcation between those covenant members who are going to Heaven and those who are not. That demarcation is called heart conversion, or regeneration. All genuinely Reformed believers acknowledge the reality of this The practical, pastoral issue concerns whether that true heart conversion is measurable by human beings. Can we detect it in a certain enough way to be confident that we are letting only the regenerate come to the Table (or, in baptistic churches, to baptism), and are successfully keeping the ‘not known to be regenerate’ away from the Table?”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 790
The Limits of Confessional Goodness
“I am bound confessionally to the Westminster Confession, and I think that is one of the coolest things in the world. My attitude is not slavish, for I have taken a few exceptions here and there, which proves that I did not drink the KoolAid. At the same time, I have been accused of ‘striking at the vitals’ of the Reformed faith. Wherefore and hownow? It is because I think there is life outside the confession. It is because I believe there is life in the Bible outside the confession. The fact that Westminster is an accurate summary of the doctrines of our holy faith does not make it an exhaustive summary of everything biblical, soup to nuts. And it doe not mean that the fine theologians behind that document ever thought about some of the modern heresies that rampage through the halls of our seminaries.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 788-789
Reformations Are Messy
“Culturally engaged Calvinism is a world-shaping force. It is potent. It has built more than one civilization and is going to do so again. There is more than one seminary professor who likes to write learned monographs about what this particular giant use to do before it went to sleep, but who is extremely wary about any attempts to wake the giant up. That might make a mess, and the secularists might then revoke our library privileges.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 786
Big Promotion
“When the various controversies came raining down upon our heads eight years ago, along with a few dead cats, Nancy asked me, ‘What is this?’ What I said to her then has only been confirmed by repeated and numerous blessings that could not have come to us in any other way. The last eight years have been a time of unparalleled blessing. I told her that this was my big promotion, and it was.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 786
In Response to the URC Report on FV
“I could multiply such qualifications, but to do so would be tedious. And besides, the people for whom such qualifications are made appear to be steadfastly refusing to read them. They can ignore them faster than I can type . . . I can only conclude that the members of the committee must have spent a good deal of time winding their rear ends and scratching their watches.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 782-783
How Nuance Floats
“I have noticed before that one of the things that the fundamentalist mindset does well is identify the logical trajectory of an idea fifteen minutes after it is first stated. In contrast to this, there is a sophisticated and nuanced academic mindset that likes to fiddle, discuss, analyze, count, and try on different readings of, whatever idea it is in the discussion. The weakness of this latter approach is the the discussion gets frequently wrapped up in everything except what the actual point of the discussion is. It is like a guy who is very concerned to count the reading lights above every seat on the airliner, but who doesn’t know where the plane is going.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 779
Discerning in Name Only
“If there is one thing you can count on a discernment blog to do, it is to show very little discernment. Discernment blogs are often little more than ‘bottom-of-the-monkey-cage’ blogs, which can usually be found at flingpoo.com.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 778
Out-maneuvered in the Backyard
“This situation reveals how much the conservatives have been out-maneuvered as they have been playing Machen-and-the-liberals in their mama’s backyard with little wooden sticks.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 778