Matthew Grove > Matthew's Quotes

“The teaching of Colossians 2:3-8 is unambiguous. ALL knowledge (note: not simply knowledge of "religious" matters is to be found in Christ.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“When someone's paradigm changes, the world itself changes with it. So "facts" are only facts *for a system* or paradigm.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues 'no air exists' but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe - they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] - but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such 'breathing' impossible. They are breathing God's air all the time they are arguing against him.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen

“The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God… then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) - the standard of self-law or autonomy. And when autonomous laws come to govern a commonwealth, the sword is certainly wielded in vain, for it represents simply the brute force of some men’s will against the will of other men.”
― Greg Bahnsen

“We must not be satisfied to present Christianity as the most reliable position to hold among the competing options available. Rather, the Christian faith is the only reasonable outlook available to men.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“Without faith, there is no proper understanding by which a man can judge. As Augustine well said, 'I believe in order to understand'.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“Faith in the self-attesting Christ of Scripture is the beginning, not the end result of wisdom.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“God either rules as sovereign in interpretation over *all* areas of life or none.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“To reject revelational epistemology is to commit yourself to defending the truth of autonomous epistemology.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“When an apologist attempts to be autonomous in his reasoned argumentation he indicates that he considers God to be less certain than his own existence and that he places greater credence in his independent reasoning than in God's Word.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

“The foundation of knowledge is God’s revelation.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith

“Humble submission to God’s word must precede man’s every intellectual pursuit.”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith

“There is no environment where man can flee to escape the revelational presence of God (Ps. 139:8).”
― Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith

“God gave us minds to think with and hearts to thank with. Instead we use our hearts to think about the world as we would like it to have been, and we use our minds to come up with rationalizations for our ingratitude. We are a murmuring, discontented, unhappy, ungrateful people. And because we think we want salvation from our discontents...”
― Douglas Wilson

“If boys don't learn, men won't know.”
― Douglas Wilson

“Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda.”
― Douglas Wilson, What I Learned in Narnia

“For the people of God, the Word of God leaves pleasant bruises.”
― Douglas Wilson, Exhortations : A Call to Maturity in Worship

“...if the Democrats suggested a plan to burn down the Capitol building, the Republicans would counter with a plan to do it over the course of three years.”
― Douglas Wilson, Black and Tan: Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America

“Whether the Bible is Law or Gospel depends on the spiritual condition of the one hearing it. If someone is regenerate and loves God, then the whole Bible is Gospel to him. If someone is unregenerate and hates God, the whole Bible is Law to him, the whole thing condemns him.”
― Douglas Wilson

“Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. This”
― Douglas Wilson, Rules for Reformers

“The reign of Christ has been established. The nations who object to this settlement trouble the decrees of God about as much as dogs barking at the moon trouble the moon.”
― Douglas Wilson, Hebrews Through New Eyes: Christ and His Rivals

“Disagreements about things like the necessity of Christian education are actually disagreements about the nature of knowledge, the meaning of common grace, the authority of natural revelation, and the possibility of neutrality in education.”
― Douglas Wilson, Why Christian Kids Need A Christian Education

“We confess that Jesus is Lord. He is not simply Lord of a spiritual zone somewhere, but He is Lord of the nations.”
― Douglas Wilson, Flags Out Front: A Contrarian's Daydream

“God directly inspired the writers of the New Testament canon and so the words recorded by them in the autographs are God’s Word absolute, inerrant and infallible in all they affirm. This inspiration extends down to the Greek equivalent of jots and tittles—Jesus was emphatic about that (Matt. 5:18). And if inspiration is applied to the smallest pen strokes, it certainly should also apply to sentences, paragraphs, pericopes, and more. The relevance of the doctrine of inspiration extends into all the corners.”
― Douglas Wilson, Debating the Text of the Word of God

“Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace—that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth—every manifestation of it—and they embrace the absurd. And this is why the only place where academic integrity can flourish over time is in a Christian school. The”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Every Christian school must adopt an implicit, absolute, childlike wonder at the glory of the Scriptures. We must be people of the Book, knowing it top to bottom, front to back. And we must resolve, before the fact, to have absolutely no problem with any passage of Scripture once the meaning of that passage has been ascertained through honest exegesis. This means, among other things, that Christians must be prepared to condemn sodomy, embrace the doctrine of creation, say that husbands are the heads of their wives, believe in giants and dragons, and believe in Noah’s ark right down to, if necessary, the giraffe’s head sticking out the window.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“The ground for the necessity of Christian schools lies in this very thing, that no fact can be known unless it be known in its relationship to God. And once this point is clearly seen, the doubt as to the value of teaching arithmetic in Christian schools falls out of the picture. Of course arithmetic must be taught in a Christian school. It cannot be taught anywhere else.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“Every culture has blasphemy laws. They are not always called that, but no society allows citizens to rail against the reigning deity. In our pluralistic times, these blasphemy laws are called “hate crimes” legislation, among other euphemisms, but they are really religious protections to keep the reigning god, demos, from being blasphemed.”
― Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education

“if God doesn’t want us to do it, He doesn’t want us to get pleasure from thinking about doing it”
― Douglas Wilson, Fidelity: What It Means to Be a One-Woman Man