Quote of the Day: William Tyndale

John Foxe describes an argument with a "learned" but "blasphemous" clergyman, who had asserted to William Tyndale that, "We had better be without God's laws than the Pope's." Swelling with emotion, Tyndale responded: "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!"

From Wikipedia: William Tyndale

Quote of the Day

If the Church grows because you are doing what's been proven to grow organizations, then you have your reward.

Lindsay Brooks, Co-Host of the Apologetics.com Radio Show

Quote of the Day

Gradually, the struggle between the party called Puritan and the repressive Court party became more intense and more bitter during the whole period of the reigns of James I and Charles I. A new element of conflict was introduced in the fact that the despotic Court party naturally abandoned the Calvinism of the founders of the Church, and adopted that Arminianism which has always prevailed among the parasites of arbitrary power and the votaries of a churchly and sacramental religion.

A. A. Hodge, The Confession of Faith, 17

Quote of the Day

When we turn to the relationship between apologetics and evangelism (or "witnessing," as Kuyper termed it), we must again disagree with those who suppose that the unbeliever can intelligibly study and interpret experience while at the same time denying the truth of the Christian worldview. Francis Schaeffer does this by isolating apologetics from evangelism, making apologetics a preliminary or preparatory vestibule for faith—what he calls "pre-evangelism." Schaeffer does not contend that the non-Christian's worldview is philosophically unintelligible, but simply that it is incomplete. It is all right as far as it goes (it has "half the orange"), but it leaves out the supernatural (the "other half of the orange"). In light of this dichotomy between an area of natural understanding (which does not need Christian presuppositions) and an area of supernatural understanding (which calls for the Christian worldview), we can understand how apologetics becomes a first step, with evangelism following as a second. Schaeffer says: "The truth that we let in first is not a dogmatic statement of the truth of Scripture but the truth of the external world and the truth of what man himself is. This is what shows him his need. The Scriptures then show him the nature of his lostness and the answer to it. This, I am convinced, is the true order for our apologetics in the second half of the twentieth century."

This understanding of our procedure assumes that the unbeliever's philosophy can readily interpret both the external world and himself in an intelligible fashion on the basis of its autonomous presuppositions and rejection of biblical authority—understanding them well enough to see his spiritual "need." After this preparatory work of reason has been done, the evangelist can appeal to the unbeliever to repudiate his autonomy and accept the dogmatic truth of the Scriptures, which "answers" his spiritual need. Thus, Schaeffer's outlook suggests that apologetics and evangelism operate intellectually with different standards, goals, and methods—a twofold approach that is true to the traditional Thomistic method.

Greg Bahnsen in Van Til's Apologetic, 52-53.

Quote of the Day

"Remember my dear madam, that it was not anger simply which the Prince of Peace himself condemned, but being 'angry with a brother without a cause'. To be angry where there is a cause is inevitable nature. He, therefore, who affects to be above anger, makes me suspect that his virtue is not supernatural, but hypocritical."

R. L. Dabney in Life & Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney, pg 547.
HT: Bret McAtee

Quote of the Day

"The Lord never rebuked anyone for searching the scriptures too zealously. He rebukes people for:

* Ignoring or Disobeying the Word
* Obeying the Scriptures they like and ignoring the others
* Adding to or taking away from His word
* Substituting their traditions for His commands."

TE Andrew Webb, Providence PCA, Fayetteville, NC

Quote of the Day

"Also, I don't believe it is accurate to say that there are a myriad of 'Reformed' views of the Mosaic [covenant]. Reformed is defined, in the main, by our Reformed confessions, not by the differing views held by individual Reformed theologians."

[Emphasis added]

Elder Mark Van Der Molen, in a comment left at Rev. Wes White's Blog.