Oliver D. Crisp Quotes
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The best Reformed theology isn't just about careful arguments for theologically sophisticated conclusions. It is about how to live the Christian life.
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[Jonathan] Edwards definitely shows up in the book [Saving Calvinism]. He appears as one of the interlocutors in the chapter on free will, the other being the Southern Presbyterian theologian John Girardeau.
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[John Calvin's] Humanist training makes him an excellent writer. What is more, he is as relevant today as he was 500 years ago.
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[John] Calvin is revered as a thinker of immense importance in Reformed thought, Jonathan Edwards could say in his preface to his treatise on Freedom of the Will that he had derived none of his views from the work of Calvin, though he was willing to be called a "Calvinist" for the sake of convention.
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Reading [John] Calvin is a breath of fresh air.
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Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not rubbishing penal substitution. But there are other options that have been advocated by Reformed thinkers of the past.
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Here is the interesting twist:[McLeod] Campbell came to his views through reading Jonathan Edwards who suggested at one point in his ruminations on the atonement that Christ could have offered up a perfect act of penitence instead of punishment, and that this would have been an acceptable offering suitable to remit our sinfulness.
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[John] Calvin is often identified with his account of predestination. Yet that appears in the third book of his Institutes, not the first.
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[John] Calvin's Institutes is often called a summary of Christian piety. You can't say that about many modern works of theology. You can say it of Calvin.
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There is no such thing as a stationary tradition. Traditions are always developing, living things.
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How many people in the pews know that [ Jonathan Edwards] is both a founder of evangelicalism and, say, an idealist who denied that the material world exists?
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I'm sometimes asked about my productivity, which I find a bit embarrassing to be honest. I don't really have a particularly interesting answer to this question.
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We may think that our tradition is exactly the same as it has always been, but that is an illusion.
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I don't really have a lot of interns, although I do now use Research Assistants to help me compile indexes when that is necessary.
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I recommend Doug Sweeney's recent book [Jonathan] Edwards the Exegete (Oxford University Press, 2015), which is a terrific treatment of the way in which Edwards was steeped in the Bible, so that it shaped the whole of his thinking.
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That is the great contribution of Reformed thinking to the Christian church: theology for a life well-lived.
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For those who have only ever read about [John] Calvin, reading the man himself is an invigorating experience.
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In the chapter on the nature of the atonement [in the book saving Calvinism] I argue that it is a mistake to think that penal substitution is the only option on the doctrine of atonement.
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To my mind [ Jonathan Edwards] is an interesting figure because he is both a canonical Reformed thinker, and yet also someone that pushed the envelope in a number of key areas of theology.
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These days I'm often called a Deviant Calvinist, but I don't really think my views do deviate from the Reformed tradition, though in some respects they may represent views that are not as popular now as they once were, or that may represent a minority report in the tradition.
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[I'm often called a Deviant Calvinist] but that only goes to underline the point I'm trying to make about the need to broaden our account of the tradition!
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The atonement chapter [from the book Saving Calvinism] shows how there are real riches in Reformed theology that most Christians today have no idea about.
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I think everyone who has an interest in Reformed theology, or just in Christian theology more generally, should read John Calvin Institutes.
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One of the things we in the Reformed tradition are very good at is writing doctrinal theology!