Theology That Bites Back
“Faith as the sole instrument of justification refers to faith as the sole primary instrument. There are plenty of lesser instruments, lesser means—preachers, tracts, sermons, mothers, mission agencies, the Lord’s Supper, soup kitchens, baptism, and bumper stickers.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 471
“This means that Westminster teaches that when someone, baptized in infancy, is converted in college, his baptism is still to be reckoned as one of the means involved. That is what the words say.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 468
[Regarding WSC #91 & WLC #161] “We are talking about the baptized regenerate. The blessing of Christ, and the working of the Spirit, enable someone who receives the sacrament in true evangelical faith to rightly consider those sacraments to be numbered among the effectual means of their salvation.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 466
“Remember that the whole imbroglio started with a Morecraftian heresy trial on the cheap, and a ‘may God have mercy on their souls’ dismissal of us, followed thereafter by a massive internet slander campaign. Someone gave a signal, and one portion of the Reformed world began heaving tin cans, bottles, dead cats, mature vegetables, and old boots at another portion of the Reformed world. ‘Heretics! Deniers of the gospel! False teachers!’ Then halfway through the barrage, another signal was given and in the lull that followed, another argument was thoughtfully advanced. ‘Gee, why are you guys so defensive?’”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 465
“Sometimes I feel like a speaker at a Fourth of July picnic who gets himself accused of being un-American because I mentioned that ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’”
“In conservative American Presbyterianism, the governing doctrine is not the Westminster Confession, but is rather the agreed-upon consensus of what the Westminster Confess must have meant.”
“The cup is described as the cup of blessing, not the cup of blessings and curses. But, because certain Corinthians despised that blessing, many were sick and some had died. Huzzah died because he got too close to the mercy seat”
“My central point here is that if heresy charges can be leveled on the basis of ‘ambiguous’ language, then the bapterians have only succeeded in indicting the Westminster Confession. It is the Westminster Standards that say both sacraments are effectual means of salvation to worthy receivers. It is the Westminster Confession that says one of the things signified by baptism is regeneration. It the Westminster Confession that says the things signified by baptism (among which we include regeneration) are really exhibited and conferred by baptism at the time of the effectual call. So fine. Don’t use the language of baptismal regeneration if you don’t want to. I don’t want to either. That is not a problem. But it is a problem when you reluctance to use that language yourself prevents you from reading a seventeenth century document in its historical setting.”
“I got accused of holding to baptismal regeneration, and a bunch of other unflattering things, but a number of hostile Injuns who had the warpaint on, and who were wearing the Westminster Confession of Faith as a ceremonial headdress, feathers and all. Without me having used this kind of language provocatively (for obvious reasons of prudence), I was accused of holding to the substance of baptismal regeneration by men who did not know the history of their own confessions. Because of their compromises with the American baptistic ethos, they had institutionalized a number of ‘workarounds’ to the language of their own confession and baptismal formulae.”
“The second is to acknowledge that the questions and answers were really good, and that I might actually be descended from A.A. Hodge.”
