Theology That Bites Back
“New life in Christ is weightier than Calvinism. We can tell this because our gracious God has given that new life to all His true children, and He has not given Calvinism to all His true children. That will have to wait until heaven.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 499
“Fact is, in 1988 I moved to Geneva. Like it here. Bought a house. Plan to stay. But for certain American provincial ecclesiastics, when you glance at a spinning globe, Geneva is near Italy, kinda.
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 498
“C.S. Lewis comments on the nature of the early Puritans and Reformers in the 16th century—their chief characteristics being their exuberance, their liberation from motive-scratching, their joy, their relief, their delight in new life, their acceptance of something that was too good to be true. The gospel, when it breaks out in power, always has that effect. For those watching this particular controversy, trying to make out what it is all about, here is the basic question to ask. Which group is talking about the ordo as something that bursts all our chains—”my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose went forth and followed thee”—and which group has the ordo on an anvil, trying to forge it into a chain, one capable of shackling the wind, so that we can always tell where it is coming from and where it is going.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 487
“When God comes to us in grace and salvation, He brings life with Him, and nothing else. Everything He touches is made alive, and He touches everything. Everything He gives partakes of that life. It is new life from God, and it pervades the whole. Not only so, but it pervades the whole from the first moment of the effectual call, before we do a blessed thing. But one of the blessed things we do is believe, and it is living creatures, alive for the first time, who do this believing. Faith is not an inert substance, but rather an action performed by persons who are now alive.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 487
“I know you can’t put a stopwatch on these things. The ordo is simply making a critical theological point by placing regeneration first for illustrative purposes. So what is that point? It is that life pervades the whole shebang. And that life is sheer, unadulterated, exuberant, overflowing, monergistic grace of God. God speaks, and the dead bones live. The dead bones become a living man. The living man repents and believes, turning away from his old comfortable graveyard, and turning toward his everlasting home. He believes in Christ, and God imputes everything that Jesus did, said, has, or will have to that living man. He receives it all by faith. What faith? The only kind he has, the kind God gave him when He breathed into his nostrils the breath of eternal life. And you want to say this is not ‘really’ Reformed? Wake up, man! I put who whole fistfuls of the black beans of Calvinism into the grinder, and then put five extra tablespoons of the resultant black powder in the coffee filter. I then put a fork in the bottom of the coffee pot. When the fork floats, the coffee is ready. Don’t come around here saying the coffee isn’t strong enough!”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 484
[Regarding Dt. 29:29] “It is revealed to us that Christians can fall away from the covenant. It is not revealed to us who was predestined to do so, and who was predestined to remain—although everyone in the covenant is in one or the other category. The latter is there not to be the basis of our pastoral warnings. The former is.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 477
“When we say that the reality of the decrees should not be allowed to trump the covenant, we are saying that it is right and appropriate and proper and good for a minister to warn a congregation against falling from grace, or trampling underfoot the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, or failing to bear fruit as a branch in the vine. We are talking about how we function, how we warn, how we admonish. The covenant is given to us. The decrees are made concerning us. It is not our job to parse the decrees. It is our job to live in terms of the covenant. We affirm that the decrees are there. We deny that we should preach or admonish someone in particular based on a presumed knowledge of the content of the decrees with regard to that person.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 477
“The FV statement that we issued was motivated in part because of our recognition that we bore some responsibility for the confusion. Consequently, we issued a statement that made very clear what the center of FV agreement was, and the statement also included a number of items where we differ among ourselves.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 475
“Those in the Reformed tradition who have sought to accommodate the anti-magisterial bent of the American system of theology have done this by means of making sacraments the means of secondary graces, instead of secondary means of grace. They got the adjective in the wrong place is all. Fine. Let them do that. But them when they go on a rampage and start accusing those people who still hold to Westminster the way it was written of denying the gospel, denying sola fide, and denying the Three Silmarils, it gets a bit thick and a response is required. As I said earlier, many fine Christians don’t hold to Westminster. Great. Fine. But if you don’t hold to Westminster, it is not possible to still use it as a club.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 472
“Faith as the sole instrument of justification refers to faith as the sole primary instrument. There are plenty of lesser instruments, lesser means—preachers, tracts, sermons, mothers, mission agencies, the Lord’s Supper, soup kitchens, baptism, and bumper stickers.”
The Auburn Avenue Chronicles Vol. 2, p. 471
