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.”
To Speak Frankly
“I hold that if any of my good works attempted to contribute to my justification before God, then they should be slathered with bacon grease and thrown into hell.”
Or Even Thicker
“I hold that the covenant of grace can only be broken by those members of it who were not determined by God before the foundation of the world to inherit eternal life. For those who were so determined to that eternal salvation, the covenant of grace is a slab of titanium fifty feet thick.”
The Grace of Covenant Keeping
“The grace of covenant-keeping is not to be confounded with the terms or stipulations of the covenant. A man whose wife dies is free to marry another, and he is to exhibit the same fidelity to each wife. That doesn’t make the two women into one woman.”