“‘Was eternal life for Adam conditioned upon perfect and personal obedience?’
I wouldn’t put it that way. I would rather say that avoidance of eternal death was conditioned upon not disobeying. The gift that Adam was receiving could be forfeited by disobedience but did not need to earned by continued obedience . Disobedience would wreck it, and did, but obedience wouldn’t earn it.”
Not That Far to Go
“Those who go by the nickname TR are actually curators of the Reformed mausoleum, and not scholars in the Reformed tradition. The way we can tell this is that—in defense of keeping the marble floors of their mausoleum polished and shiny—they deploy Eck’s argument against Luther. Their blood stirs when they hear the story about Athanasius saying that he was contra museum because they really like that kind of thing when it is behind glass in the museum of church history. But when someone actually stands up against the living and breathing ecclesiastical Mitred Ones, they haul this argument out as shamelessly as a theologian who thinks he is supposed to have an infallible magisterium. And they do this against people who they say are trying to ‘lead them down the road to Rome.’ But how can you lead people to Rome when they are already there.”
Self-Referential Steerage
“If this is the kind of reasoning that is going to be the guide for the men at the PCA helm, it will soon become apparent to the world that they are steering by the mast in front of them, and not by the North Star at all.”
As If It Needed to be Stickier
The New Perspective on Paul “is thrown in to add a little stickiness to the doctrinal taffy pull that we have going on here.”
Swimming in Syrup
“I do want to say one thing about how they answered the most glaring problem with the study committee—that being the stacked nature of the committee. To put it in terms that the average layman can follow, that committee was as stacked as a double order of golden-brown buttermilks.”
Not on the Mantle
“Now that a person is converted, can we make distinctions in the text? Certainly we can distinguish imperatives from indicatives, laws from promises, and so on. But now that I saved, everything is contextualized within that grace. That grace surrounds everything, making it lovely. It is in that grace that we now stand. I can tell grammatically when God issues a requirement for His people. This is the vase of demand, on the mantelpiece of law, situated in the middle of the house of grace. And I live in the house, not on the mantle.”
Blunt Force Systematics
“Systematic theology is nothing more or less than remembering what the Bible says everywhere else when you come to study what it is saying here . . . No one systematic theology covers everything, and many of them get key features positively wrong—like a guy putting a jigsaw puzzle of a sailboat together, when he is working from the wrong box top, a picture of a lighthouse. By the end, he will be putting the pieces in with a mallet.”
The Divide Is Elsewhere
“So I affirm the three uses of the law, but I deny that the law should be used as a hermeneutical principle, whether conjoined with the gospel or not. What the text is saying can be determined apart from a law/gospel hermeneutic. What the text means for me cannot be determined apart from law/gospel considerations.”
Best Kept in the History Books
“The curators of the Reformation Museum want everyone to stay behind the velvet ropes, to leave the old books on their shelves, and coo over the wax reproduction of John Knox confronting Mary Queen of Scots. Then everyone is given a brochure reminding everyone to not try this at home.”
In No Way Possible
“Jesus Christ is a federal head, and consequently, it is not possible for anything He said or did to be withheld from His people. All that He did, whether positive obedience or obedient suffering, is imputed to us.”