Wayne Grudem QUOTES

81 " John 10:27 – 28: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

82 " And all of this then enables Webb to say that Paul’s appeal to the creation of Adam prior to Eve is not proof of a transcultural ethical standard. But if a theological argument has to deny significant portions of Scripture for its support, it should surely be rejected by evangelicals who are subject to the authority of the entire Bible as the Word of God. Webb’s three ways of denying the historicity of Adam’s creation before Eve in Genesis 2 are three steps on the path toward liberalism. "

― Wayne Grudem , Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

83 " One of the distinctive differences between historic, orthodox Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church has been that Protestants base doctrine on “Scripture alone” (once again, the Latin phrase commonly used for this is sola Scriptura), while Roman Catholics base doctrine on Scripture plus the authoritative teaching of the church through history.18 "

― Wayne Grudem , Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

84 " God is the sum of all desirable qualities, and he possesses every quality that is truly desirable. "

― Wayne Grudem , Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know

85 " Yet another liberal tendency is the claim that if an organization is not a church, it does not have to follow the New Testament commands regarding such activities as women teaching the Bible to men. The reason I say this is indicative of a liberal tendency to avoid the authority of Scripture is that, while we may agree that parachurch organizations are not required to do everything that the New Testament commands for churches, nevertheless, when a parachurch organization does those same things that the New Testament talks about for churches, it is required to follow the same rules that the New Testament lays down for churches. It is not as if we can set up a separate organization next door to a church and then say that the rules no longer apply to us. This is another argument that is not usually made by thoroughgoing egalitarian writers, because to make this argument someone has to assume that the New Testament restrictions on women in ministry do apply to a church situation. That is an assumption egalitarians are not willing to make. "

― Wayne Grudem , Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

86 " Now in holding up Christ as an example, he wants the Philippians to imitate Christ. But certainly he is not asking the Philippian Christians to “give up” or “lay aside” any of their essential attributes or abilities! He is not asking them to “give up” their intelligence or strength or skill and become a diminished version of what they were. Rather, he is asking them to put the interests of others first: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:4). And because that is his goal, it fits the context to understand that he is using Christ as the supreme example of one who did just that: he put the interests of others first and was willing to give up some of the privilege and status that was his as God. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

87 " But it does indicate that among the members of the Trinity it is especially God the Son who in his person as well as in his words has the role of communicating the character of God to us and of expressing the will of God for us. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

88 " I think someone needs to say that it is doubtful that liberal theologians have given us any significant insights into the doctrinal teachings of Scripture that are not already to be found in evangelical writers. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

89 " For the question of abortion, perhaps the most significant passage of all is found in the specific laws God gave Moses for the people of Israel during the time of the Mosaic covenant. One particular law spoke of the penalties to be imposed in case the life or health of a pregnant woman or her preborn child was endangered or harmed: When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe (Exod. 21:22–25).1 This law concerns a situation when men are fighting and one of them accidentally hits a pregnant woman. Neither one of them intended to do this, but as they fought they were not careful enough to avoid hitting her. If that happens, there are two possibilities: 1. If this causes a premature birth but there is no harm to the pregnant woman or her preborn child, there is still a penalty: “The one who hit her shall surely be fined” (v. 22). The penalty was for carelessly endangering the life or health of the pregnant woman and her child. We have similar laws in modern society, such as when a person is fined for drunken driving, even though he has hit no one with his car. He recklessly endangered human life and health, and he deserved a fine or other penalty. 2. But “if there is harm” to either the pregnant woman or her child, then the penalties are quite severe: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth …” (vv. 23–24). This means that both the mother and the preborn child are given equal legal protection. The penalty for harming the preborn child is just as great as for harming the mother. Both are treated as persons, and both deserve the full protection of the law.2 "

― Wayne Grudem , Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture

90 " The procedure followed in this egalitarian claim troubles me more than most of the other claims that I consider in this book. When no explanations or disclaimers are made alerting readers to the uniform lack of support from scholarly specialists for such an interpretation, this wild speculation (or so it seems to me, after reading these other articles) is taken as truth by unsuspecting readers. Cindy Jacobs, for example, simply trusts Kroeger’s interpretation of this fresco as truthful, and counts it as evidence for women’s participation in high positions of governing authority in the early church.6 Thousands of readers of Jacobs’s book will also take it as true, thinking that since it has a footnote to a journal on church history, there must be scholarly support for the idea. And so something that is a figment of Catherine Kroeger’s imagination, something that no scholar in the field has ever advocated, is widely accepted as fact. The requirements of truthfulness should hold us to higher standards than this. Kroeger’s article therefore uses apparently untruthful claims based on obscure material outside the Bible in order to turn people away from being obedient to the Bible in what it says about restricting the office of pastor and elder to men. And turning people away from obeying the Bible is another step on the path toward liberalism. "

― Wayne Grudem , Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

91 " While egalitarian positions had been advocated since the 1950s by theologically liberal Protestant writers, no evangelical books took such a position until 1974. In that year freelance writers Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty published their groundbreaking book All We’re Meant to Be.1 The following year, Paul Jewett, then a professor at Fuller Seminary, published Man as Male and Female.2 Both books claimed that the apostle Paul’s advocacy of female subordination in marriage and the church was a remnant of his rabbinic training that he had not fully resolved when he wrote his epistles, and that this particular rabbinic element was inconsistent with Paul’s other emphasis on total equality for men and women in Christ. In fact, though Scanzoni and Hardesty’s book was published earlier, they actually depended on Jewett’s class notes from Fuller Seminary for their key argument that Paul was wrong on this issue.3 Jewett therefore may be considered the intellectual father of the modern evangelical feminist movement. "

― Wayne Grudem , Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

92 " Another example of assurance that believers will persevere to the end is found in Paul’s statement to the Philippians: “I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). It is true that the word “you” here is plural (Gk. hymas), and thus he is referring to Christians in the Philippian church generally, but he is still talking about the specific believers to whom he is writing, and saying that God’s good work that began in them will continue and will be completed at the day Christ returns. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

93 " This law is even more significant when we put it in the context of other laws in the Mosaic covenant. In other cases in the Mosaic law where someone accidentally caused the death of another person, there was no requirement to give “life for life,” no capital punishment. Rather, the person who accidentally caused someone else’s death was required to flee to one of the “cities of refuge” until the death of the high priest (see Num. 35:9–15, 22–29). This was a kind of “house arrest,” although the person had to stay within a city rather than within a house for a limited period of time. It was a far lesser punishment than “life for life.” This means that God established for Israel a law code that placed a higher value on protecting the life of a pregnant woman and her preborn child than the life of anyone else in Israelite society. Far from treating the death of a preborn child as less significant than the death of others in society, this law treats the death of a preborn child or its mother as more significant and worthy of more severe punishment. And the law does not place any restriction on the number of months the woman was pregnant. Presumably it would apply from a very early stage in pregnancy, whenever it could be known that a miscarriage had occurred and her child or children had died as a result. Moreover, this law applies to a case of accidental killing of a preborn child. But if accidental killing of a preborn child is so serious in God’s eyes, then surely intentional killing of a preborn child must be an even worse crime. The conclusion from all of these verses is that the Bible teaches that we should think of the preborn child as a person from the moment of conception, and we should give to the preborn child legal protection at least equal to that of others in the society. Additional note: It is likely that many people reading this evidence from the Bible, perhaps for the first time, will already have had an abortion. Others reading this will have encouraged someone else to have an abortion. I cannot minimize or deny the moral wrong involved in this action, but I can point to the repeated offer of the Bible that God will give forgiveness of sins to those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Although such sin, like all other sin, deserves God’s wrath, Jesus Christ took that wrath on himself as a substitute for all who would believe in him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). b. Scientific "

― Wayne Grudem , Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture

94 " It is Scripture alone, not “conservative evangelical tradition” or any other human authority, that must function as the normative authority for the definition of what we should believe. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

95 " I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to result in confusion and frustration. "

― Wayne Grudem , Making Sense of Salvation: One of Seven Parts from Grudem's Systematic Theology

96 " Something should strike us as deeply troubling about such a movement. Is the authority of the Bible really primary for egalitarians? Or is there a deep-seated mentality that actually puts feminism first and the Bible second? The more I have read these egalitarian arguments, the more I have found myself wondering this: Are these writers actually operating from a deep conviction that says, “I know that egalitarianism is right, now let me see if I can find any ways to support it from the Bible. If one approach does not work, I’ll try another, and if twenty-five approaches do not work, I will look for a twenty-sixth, because the one thing I cannot accept is that egalitarianism is wrong”? I cannot say for sure. But I can think of no other viewpoint or movement within the whole history of the Christian church (except theological liberalism itself) that has generated so many novel and ultimately incorrect ways of interpreting the Bible. "

― Wayne Grudem , Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

97 " La Biblia nunca considera la especulación humana aparte de la Palabra de Dios como suficiente base en la cual decir que esa es fe que salva. La fe que salva, según la Biblia, siempre es la confianza en Dios que se apoya en la veracidad de las propias palabras de Dios. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

98 " I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to be dry and boring. Theology is the study of God and all his works! Theology is meant to be lived and prayed and sung! All "

― Wayne Grudem , Making Sense of Salvation: One of Seven Parts from Grudem's Systematic Theology

99 " When we recognize that there are unbelievers in the visible church, there is a danger that we may become overly suspicious. We may begin to doubt the salvation of many true believers and thereby bring great confusion into the church. Calvin warned against this danger by saying that we must make a “charitable judgment” whereby we recognize as members of the church all who “by confession of faith, by example of life, and by partaking of the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us.”9 We should not try to exclude people from the fellowship of the church until they by public sin bring discipline upon themselves. On the other hand, of course, the church should not tolerate in its membership “public unbelievers” who by profession or life clearly proclaim themselves to be outside the true church. "

― Wayne Grudem , Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

100 " The egalitarian agenda will not stop simply with the rejection of male headship in marriage and the establishment of women as pastors and elders in churches. There is something much deeper at stake. At the foundation of egalitarianism is a dislike and a rejection of anything uniquely masculine.1 It is a dislike of manhood itself. "

― Wayne Grudem , Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?