“The fact that my faith is alive makes it possible to see Christ, the sole basis or reason for anyone’s justification. If my faith were dead, it would be blind also, and incapable of looking to Christ as the sole ground of justification . . . True faith is an eyeball and cannot look to itself. True faith sees Christ alone. But unless it is a living eyeball, it cannot see. Dead eyeballs have no vision. So this life is necessary but it is in no fashion meritorious. God does not give living faith so that it might admire itself in the mirror.”
When Truth-Warriors Fudge
“This is a battle of ecclesiastical politics, and not, as has been ostensibly claimed, a battle for the truth. If it were a battle for truth, then people would be willing to acknowledge plain truth, even if it seems contrary to their current political advantage. But they are not at all willing for this. I have heard, through back channels, that there are leaders in the anti-FV movement who would acknowledge privately what Mr. Gadbois says here about me. But they will not say anything like that publicly because warriors for truth have to fudge the facts a little if they are to keep up the political pressure.”
Process Concerns
“So this is the drill. The last thing in the world that the anti-FV people want is any kind of open forum where questions get to be asked in both directions. They don’t want this in a voluntary set-up, as in a debate. They don’t want it in a judicial setting, as in an open trial. They don’t want it in a box; they don’t want it on the floor. Not in the closet either. We piped but ye would not mourn; we played the bass line from ‘Play that Funky Music White Boy,’ and ye would not dance.”
Election in Two Senses
“After Paul’s rhapsody at the end of Romans 8, a natural question would arise. If all this is true of the elect, then why was the elect nation of Israel trying to kill Paul? And that is why Paul does on to distinguish different kinds of election, distinguishing between the historical, contingent election of Israel, and His sovereign decretal election that reveals itself in a glorious way throughout human history, culminating at the last day . . . All Israel was elect in one sense, while those who were of Israel were elect in another. And I cannot fathom how someone who stumbles over equivocal uses of the same word like this can ever hope to interpret faithfully the teaching of someone like the apostle Paul.”
Don’t Make Me Say It Again
“Not only do I affirm the internal/external distinction between regenerate and unregenerate covenant members, but I have done so repeatedly, in print, and in ways that are pretty hard to miss. I have done so in pieces that Dr. Clark apparently read and in places he ought to have read.”
There Are Layers Here
“For the Hellenistic approach, a true Christian is one who is one inwardly, period, stop. And this is true. But I also want to say that we have inward Christians and outward Christians, faithful Christians and adulterous Christians, temporary Christians and Christians forever, slaves and sons, wheat and tares, sons of Hagar and sons of Sarah, washed pigs and washed lambs, fruitless branches and fruitful branches, Christians who die in the wilderness and Christians who die in Canaan, and so on.”
Courting Defeat
“What does the alternative do, the pessimistic frame of mind? If your worldview could be summed up with ‘where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?’ the end result will necessarily be a certain wariness, an expectation that Murphy’s Law will govern everything. If something can do wrong, it will—in the sacraments, in admitting young children to the table, in teaching Christians from the law, in having a high view of the church, and so on. A hermeneutic of suspicion gets into everything.”
Invisible and Eschatological
“Exactly. The entire company of the elect, the whole number of them, invisible now to everyone but God alone, will be made manifest to everyone at the eschaton, and that church will be without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. And that eschatological church I define as the ‘whole number of the elect.’”
FV Haiku
“Big books full of words,
Blogs earnestly publishing
Their crinkum crankum.”
A Solemn Duty
“As the pressure to expand our ecumenical cooking increases, there needs to be an assistant to the prophet (me), looking over the rim of the kettle in which we are cooking our ecumenical stew, whose job it is to cry out, ‘There is death in the pot!’”