“But let us not honor [Calvin] by building a tomb for the prophet, thereby showing whose sons we really are. Let us not be good little ‘Calvinists,’ running the floor buffer of pat catechetical answers over the marble of theological genius” (From With Calvin in the Theater of God, p. 89).
Errant Inerrancy
“Men with solemn faces and a shaky donor base affirm the inerrancy of the Bible, and they also affirm that this is not inconsistent with the subtle truth that the Bible has mistakes in it. The serpent was craftier than alll the beasts of the field, having completed some post-doctoral work in Europe” (From With …
Had We Never Been Born
“A minister should ascend into the pulpit in order to declare what would have been true had he never been born. He is there to preach what was written in the Word before all ages. He is an ambassador, a herald. He is not up there to preach himself, but rather to be a servant …
Subset Fundamentalism
“There is a truncated kind of fundamentalism that lives in a world mysteriously shaped and governed by modernity, but is in possession of a perfect book, a book in which they find secret coded messages about another world somewhere else, governed on other principles entirely” (From With Calvin in the Theater of God, p. 87).
The Downward Spiral
“The university is a Christian idea — where does the uni come from? Christ is the arche, the integration point of all things (Col. 1:17-18). But we, in our disobedience, have become fragmented thinkers. The universe is a Christian concept, as is the university. But knowledge is now fragmented, like Humpty Dumpty, and our students …
Not Reading Does not Mean Not Written
“Our failure to read [natural] revelation says nothing whatever about whether the revelation was written. Failure to check the book out of the library does not mean it was never published” (From With Calvin in the Theater of God, p.85)
A God Who Stoops
“We come to understand his power and majesty by starting with what he gives, by starting where he invites us to start. We do not start with an a priori God, an infinite Definition in the Sky. We start with a God who stoops to reveal himself, or, as Calvin himself once put it, a …
Not a Syllogism
“Who could dare say that Calvin had low views of God’s greatness and sovereignty? At the same time, for Calvin it was never naked philosophical sovereignty. Our only comfort in life and in death is not a syllogism. God reveals himself in creation, in the Scriptures, and ultimately in the incarnation” (From With Calvin in …
A Declaration of Life
“Ezekiel preached the way a man of God must preach. We are not here to give candies to the healthy or medicine to the sick. We are in the middle of a bleak and desolate graveyard, and we serve a God who raises the dead. He does so by means of his Word, which is …
Function Follows Life
“He gives us eyes, and it is afterward that we can see. He gives us a mouth to praise him, and afterward we sing psalms. He gives life, and then we may walk away from the tomb — and not a moment before. We do not see and then get eyes for a reqard. We …