Theology That Bites Back
“So the doctrine of justification by faith alone is as glorious as it ever was. It needs to be confessed, believed, cherished, and preached. But there are some who deny it by wearing it around their necks as a talisman; they are in grave peril because when the gospel is declared to them, they mutter to themselves that they are already children of Abraham and have never been in bondage to anyone.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 658
“Are you children of Calvin? Then do the works of Calvin. Don’t read us the words of Calvin in a monotone; don’t read them off the marble monument you set up in the lobby of the Reformed museum. And if you try to read them in that monotone, and I object, don’t try to make it appear that I have problems with his words. Preach them to the world in the open air; preach them in such a way that people start accusing you of being a madman, or drunk, or evil, or something. Preach them in such a way that people set up anonymous websites to destroy your reputation. Don’t pin his words to a poster board like a row of dead but orthodox butterflies.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 657
“The Westminster Confession of Faith does not need constant fixing; the hearts of Westminsterians do need constant fixing. The problem is not Moses’ seat, but rather the Pharisaical bums ensconced there. I have been regularly surprised at the defenders of the Confession who cannot answer simple questions about what is actually in it. Their loyalty to the confession is loyalty to the idea of having it, and not to what it actually says.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, pp. 656-657
“Thousands of hours of study without meeting with the principals face-to-face is thousands of hours of yelling up the wrong rain spout. Establishing committees that are as stacked as a WWII bomber’s nose is not the way to inspire my confidence. No, I haven’t gotten over the sheer brazenness of that study committee.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 653
“I agree that the fact that we baptize infants does not obligate us to allow them to vote in church elections, or drive the bus to the family retreat. But what we are talking about, with regard to the Table, is food. All children who come into our households should have the privilege of food.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 647
“All pastors and elders should want to protect the Table from corrupt use, but we should do so a posteriori. The approach to church purity taken here is that of hiring big, beefy security guards at the door to check everyone’s IDs three times. The approach taken to church purity by what I take to be a more consistent covenantal approach is to hire big, beefy bouncers.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 644
“Being prosecuted by sentimentalist pietists is like drowning in a cauldron of hot butterscotch”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 634
“The problem with this is that synergism is frequently used by people who want God to do 90 percent, and we do the remaining 10. He carries one end of the heavy object, and we carry the other end. This is not a Calvinistic understanding at all. In Calvinistic synergy, God does one hundred percent, and I do the other one hundred percent. Shakespeare writes one hundred percent of Hamlet’s lines, and Hamlet speaks one hundred percent of Hamlet’s lines. The wrong kind of synergy has Shakespeare writing the plot of Hamlet’s life, with Hamlet ad-libbing his way through it.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 625
“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
“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
