“An adulterer is really married—that’s in part what makes him an adulterer. A faithful husband is really married too, but there is far more to the story than the two of them being ‘really married.’”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 620
Gray and Rainy
“But those Reformed disputants who could have known better, and who had a duty to know better, and who have persisted in circulating falsehoods anyway, what can I say? It must be rough having a conscience that looks like a rainy Saturday in Pittsburgh.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 619
Recapitulation and Imputation
“If all things are mine, then how could it be possible for the obedience of Christ to not be mine? The fact that the New Testament goes out of its way to show the life of Christ as a recapitulation of the history of Israel, but with this time Israel doing it right, makes this, in my view, undeniable. In all that He is and does, Christ is Christ for us. He does not recapitulate the history of Israel got show off how much He knows. It is not literary doodling. It is clearly redemptive—His entire life is salvific. The fact of it in the Incarnation is salvific, the trajectory of it in His recapitulation of Israel’s history is also, and the culmination of it in His death and resurrection is the capstone of our salvation.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 614
A Decided Hierarchy
“My position is that Scripture is senior to the Confessions, and that the Confessions are senior to (and quite different from) popular American bapterian readings of the Confessions . . . The system is fine. The Confessions are fine. The problem is that Reformed bapterians have as many problem passages in the Confessions as they do in the Scriptures.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 606
Secondary Instruments
“And none of this threatens sola fide in the slightest because to maintain that faith is the sole instrument in justification does not deny that God uses other secondary instruments, always subsidiary to the primary instrument, which is faith alone. Those other subordinate instruments would include, but not be limited to, preaching, Gideon Bibles, tracts in the laundromat, billboards, sermon tapes, baptism, godly mothers, and so on.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 605
At a Loss
“There are times when I walk around in tight little circles, looking helplessly at the horizon.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 605
Surprising, Not Surprising
“The thing that has astonished me in this controversy, again and again, is how the erstwhile defenders of the Westminster Standards can attack the teaching of those standards (and those who actually hold to them) in the name of defending the standards.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 604-605
That’s How Much
“Having said all this, let me now affirm my commitment to the Reformed standards. I love them, teach in accordance with them, teach through the Westminster Confession every other year, thank God for them, and use torn pages from Finney’s systematic theology to light my cigars.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 603
Real Reformations
“Real reformations burst wineskins, even the ones with the official Reformation® tags stitched onto them.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 595
All Wolves, All the Time
“All polemics all the time would be a tiresome business, and not characteristic of a fruitful ministry, and not what Christ calls us to. As I have noted before, a shepherd who doesn’t know how to fight is a loveless shepherd. But a shepherd who does nothing but fight—all wolves, all the time—is probably making up wolves. And he is almost certainly not leading the flock to green pasture. So there is a time and a season for everything.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 591-592