“In short, Calvinists know that there is nothing to boast of in man, but some fall into the trap of boasting in that knowledge. They take pride in knowing that there is nothing to take pride in.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 84
No Dead Faith
“For the Reformers, faith was a gift from God, and when God gives faith, He does not give anything other than a living, obedient faith. Being the kind of God He is, this living faith is the only kind of faith He can give.”
The Grease Paint of Orthodoxy
“Many of our staunch Reformed brethren are actually anabaptists in Puritan face paint.”
A Doctrine Can Point to the Savior Without Being the Savior
“Requiring people to affirm justification by faith alone in order to get saved is like requiring a two-year-old to get a degree in electrical engineering before he is allowed to turn on the lights. Allowing men to be ordained who cannot explain justification by faith alone from the Scriptures . . . is like letting your two-year-old install your electrical system.”
Which Is a Sin
“Now if Rome were correct, and we could sin our way out of the grace of God, then the papists are in real trouble. They pray to pictures, man.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 82
Structurally Identical
“In this view [Roman Catholicism], the grace of God is contained in a vast reservoir, and there are seven gold-plated spigots from which that grace is dispensed, and these spigots are manned by ordained priests. Not to be fair, this is structurally identical to how much of pop evangelicalism operates—only they dispense the grace through undecorated tin buckets and green garden hoses—meaning altar calls, signing cards, throwing pine cones in the fire at youth camp, re-dedications, and all the rest of it. The semi-Pelagianism of Rome is more than matched by the semi-Pelagianism of a Billy Graham crusade.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 78
Which Is Why Some Suspect I am Smuggling in Works
“All grace, all the time, in every direction, run it out over the horizon and don’t stop then.”
Like Separating Height and WIdth
“We are living in a time when assenus can be severed from fiducia and the fiducia thrown away like it was a wrapper, and this can be done in the name of a defense of Reformed orthodoxy! Maybe LaHaye and Jenkins are right and it is the last days.”
Can’t Keep What You Throw Away
“What I am arguing for I will say yet again. You can’t have it both ways. You cannot establish a culture that has institutionalized the abandonment of the unique dignity of women, and then, when the culture starts acting on that perverse premise, suddenly find some dignity for them to stand on. You don’t have any of that dignity any more. You threw is away, remember? And you mercilessly mocked those who objected to throwing it away. You laughed at their predictions. They objected to discarding a unique feminine dignity, and you mocked them. When the consequences of having lost that dignity start to manifest themselves—as they will continue to do with increasing regularity—you hate and despise them. You hate them for being right in the prediction, and you hate them because their ‘misogynist’ subcultures are among the few remaining places where women are not treated like that.”
Chestertonian Calvinism, pp. 73-74
The Squirrel and the Tree
“The purveyors of said doctrine (as in, like, me) believe that we are justified by faith, through faith, unto faith, on faith, under faith, and everything else a squirrel can do to a tree. All faith, all the time, all the way down.”