Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals Quotes

“Christianity is a system of doctrines supernaturally revealed and now recorded in the Bible. Of that system there can be no development. No new doctrines can be added to those contained in the word of God. No doctrine can ever be unfolded or expanded beyond what is there revealed. The whole revelation is there, and is there as distinctly, as fully, and as clearly as it can ever be made, without a new supernatural revelation. Every question, therefore, as to what is, or what is not Christian doctrine, is simply a question as to what the Bible teaches.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“To construct a metaphor, Protestant theology is the castle in which we safely live: patristic and medieval theology is a dark forest surrounding the castle into which we may occasionally venture.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“a metaphor, visiting the Sistine chapel does more than conceptually advance your knowledge of Michaelango’s view of final judgment, as visiting the Grand Canyon does more than provide you information about the history of the Colorado River. There are sensibilities and emotions that are shaped by the whole experience. So also patristic and medieval theology can function to shape theological values and inclinations we will likely lack so long as we work narrowly within Reformation and modern theology alongside the Bible. It is an enriching, formative experience, comparable to traveling to a foreign country and being immersed in the culture and geography.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“To the extent that evangelicals adopt a kind of “me and my Bible” theological method, as though theology can be done without appropriation of the battles and settlements of earlier generations, we diminish and destabilize our theological witness.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“God enters the world without ceasing to be God; God then leaves the world without ceasing to be man.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“Vanhoozer argues that “the Reformation was a retrieval, first and foremost of the biblical gospel, particularly the Pauline articulation, but also, secondarily, of the church fathers.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“Sometimes the best way to go forward is, paradoxically, to go backward. This is true in solving math problems, executing military operations, navigating relational conflict, and (here I suggest) doing theology.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“Luther and Calvin, by contrast, saw the early church as a resource to be utilized and spoke of the goal of the Reformation as its retrieval.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“As severe as the Reformers’ criticisms of medieval Roman Catholicism could be, they always distinguished themselves from the Anabaptists, making clear that their intention was to reform, not recreate, the true church of God.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“To construct a metaphor, Protestant theology is the castle in which we safely live: patristic and medieval theology is a dark forest surrounding the castle into which we may occasionally venture”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“That these perceived tensions in Augustine become Warfield’s rubric for engaging the medieval church as a whole is evident in his definition of the Reformation as “the triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church.”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future

“For Warfield, “a new Christian piety dates from [Augustine],” as well as “a new theology corresponding to this new type of piety,” such that Augustine may be termed the author of grace as well as the father of evangelicalism”
― Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future