“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
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
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
The Unspeakable GIft
“Eternal life is a gift, and it is too big a gift to fit into the present. I can possess eternal life now, which means that my hands have to be able to hold the future—because eternal life encompasses the future as much as it does the present. And I can have it now. ‘And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son’ (1 John 5:11).”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 861
Church Barnacles
“A historic Protestant view of church, of Word and sacrament, is truly liberating. We can see the church of Jesus Christ sailing down through the entire course of church history, and we can recognize it as His beloved ship. We don’t have to count all the barnacles first. Neither do we have to deny the existence of the barnacles.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 860
How Long You Run the Hose
“Evangelicals who do not commune little children can debate whether that is a credible statement of faith, and this is a debate that should happen, but it is an intra-evangelical debate. It is an intra debate because of the shared assumption that regeneration is an absolute necessity. It is not an absolute necessity for membership in the visible church, as all non-baptists would acknowledge, and it is not an absolute necessity for communing in the visible church, as all child communionists would acknowledge, but it is an absolute necessity for anyone who would see the kingdom of Heaven. The covenantal and evangelical approach to child communion is distinguished from the ex opere operato approach in this way. It is a matter of direction. In the ex opere understanding, the grace is going in. In the covenantal and evangelical understanding, the grace is working its way out. A converted person works out what God works in, but an unconverted person is never in a position to do so. If the bucket has no bottom, it does not matter how long you run the hose.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 857