Theology That Bites Back
“This does not mean that I cannot have assurance, or that I cannot know that I am decretally elect. Of course I can know that. It wouldn’t be assurance if I didn’t. But my decretal election is what I know; it is not how I know.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 746.
“While a ‘not guilty’ verdict is imputation, so also is ‘I now pronounce you husband and wife’”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 745.
“Some people want to say that this administration of grace is tightly woven in with a covenant of works, like a Scandinavian shield-maiden’s blonde braids, sheer law woven together with free grace, and there you go. What’s so hard to understand about that? And, then, to crown all these discussions, the people who want to intertwine these two covenants, one of grace and the other of works, want to accuse me of coming up with some kind of mutant golawspel. Heh. And, as Paul might say, were he here, again I say heh.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 742.
“The Westminster Confession says that the administration under Moses was gracious, and that it was [an] administration of the covenant of grace. So I take this (since me and the Westminster divines, we’re like that), wrap it around my neck, and go walking down the road like a two-year-old with his chin up and his chest out.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 741-742
“ ‘These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith . . .’ (WCF 16.2). Notice here that good works are the ‘fruits and evidences’ of a ‘true and lively’ faith. Liveliness in faith is not the evidence, but rather is something that needs to be evidenced. Put another way, those who separate liveliness from the essence of saving life, or who in any way make that life merely evidence, are out of accord with the Confession.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 731.
“You know, believe what God said faith. The verb is not the direct object. If God tells one man to hop on his right foot and another man to hop on his left foot, they both obey when they believe Him and do what He says. Same faith, different feet.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 730.
“Traditional Calvinists take Romans. 9 straight up and use their exegetical funny business on John 15. Arminians take John 15 straight up and pull the funny business in Romans 9. FV Calvinists try to take both Romans 9 and John 15 straight up. I was talking to an Arminian gentleman one time (after all this FV business started), and he said something like, ‘Hey! What are you doing messing around with our verses?’”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 728
“This, despite Westminster’s insistence that saving faith is ‘no dead faith,” which sounds like living faith to me.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 725
“When God gives an infant a new heart, the child does not start clamoring for his Berkof. But that heart will always be fundamentally submissive and tractable to the truth as it comes to him. The child doesn’t have to go an ‘do’ notitia in order to be saving faith, but it will always exhibit the fruit of notitia when that is the appropriate response.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 723-724
“But the reason [a man’s mistake regarding justification] does not cause me to question his salvation is because the doctrine of sola fide is true. If it were not true, then we would all have to be good little boys and girls, study our catechisms hard, because justification depends on studying hard and getting it right. But for the life of me I cannot fathom how this kind of ‘working hard’ and ‘free grace’ go together. We are justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ despite our failings. Those failings include, but are not limited to, doctrinal failings . . . Not only is this position unfathomable to me, but we need to keep in mind the fact that that person here who insists that justification is a matter of free grace in Christ plus nothing else, nada, zilch (me) is the one under suspicion of smuggling works into the whole business, and the one who openly declares what work must be performed by adults (that of understanding to an unspecified level of saving smarts( is the guardian of sola fide.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 722
