Quotes from John Frame

Getting the past wrong is almost as problematic as not getting the past into our minds at all.

The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences.

To cut ourselves off from the past is to rob ourselves from understanding the present.

Grace, too, is not an impersonal, metaphysical substance that trickles down to people through the sacraments, as in much popular Catholicism. Grace is an irreducibly personal category, first, in that it is a personal attitude of favor from God's heart, bringing us into relationship with him as our Savior, Friend, and Father.

We must be both more conservative and more liberal than most students of Christian worship: conservative in holding exclusively to God's commands in Scripture as our rule of worship, and liberal in defending the liberty of those who apply those.

Indeed, the dirty secret of Christian apologetics is this: there is no human argument that is guaranteed to overcome unbelief.

God is not a vague abstract principle or force but a living person who fellowships with His people.

Apologetics is also application of Scripture to unbelief. Unbelief is no respecter of persons. Both Christians and non-Christians wrestle with doubt and suspicion. A biblical apologetic targets unbelief wherever it may be found, strengthening the faith of Christians and calling unbelievers to repentance and faith in Christ.

That is a way of summarizing the main content of the Bible: "God is Lord" is the message of the Old Testament; "Jesus is Lord" is the message of the New Testament.

In the preaching of the kingdom, law and gospel come together. The coming of the kingdom is the coming of a King to enforce his law on a disobedient world, that is, to enforce his covenant against covenant-breakers. But the King who comes is full of love and forgiveness. So his coming is good news, gospel, not only because he judges the wicked, but because he brings redemption, forgiveness, and reward to his redeemed people.

There is a circularity here I do not doubt. I am defending the Bible by the Bible. Circularity of a kind is unavoidable when one seeks to defend an ultimate standard of truth, for one's defense must itself be accountable to that standard.

The sixteenth-century parallel: (1) medieval scholasticism as a synthesis between the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle; (2) the heresy of works-salvation, perhaps with Tetzel as an extreme case; (3) Luther the Reformer, who like Athanasius pushes hard for the fundamental principle of justification by faith alone; and (4) Calvin the consolidator, who rethinks the whole of theology in the light of the knowledge gained in the Reformation.