Ligon Duncan:
“How should we read the fathers? We should read the fathers respectfully, but carefully, under the authority of scripture. . . . Our greatest concern in studying the church fathers is not to read what they said about a particular doctrine and then decide that what they said about that particular doctrine is authoritative, infallible, and true, but to learn what they said about a particular doctrine in order to know how they read the scriptures. The scriptures are our final authority, and they help test our reading of scripture. Sometimes they’re right; sometimes they’re wrong. But they help us, whether they’re right or wrong, to read the Bible better, and to sit under its authority better, and that’s how we need to read the church fathers. We don’t go back and say, ‘What did they say about this doctrine, and whatever they say about this doctrine must be infallibly true.’ No, we say, ‘What did they say about this doctrine, because what they say about this doctrine will help me see if I am completely out to lunch as to how I’m reading the Bible.’ They may be wrong, and I may be right. I may be wrong, and they may be right, but I’ll read the scriptures in conversation with these expositors, these early expositors, of God’s Word. So we read the fathers respectfully, but carefully, under the authority of scripture. This is exactly what the Magisterial Reformers in the days of the Reformation did.”
“The fathers were best in polemics. We do not like polemics today, or we don’t like it for very long; it feels to negative for us. When godly men start criticizing other Christians, after just a short period of time, we get the heebie-jeebies, and there’s a whole psychology behind that that is unique to this generation. But listen to this, my friends, when you read the fathers, in areas that were not disputed contested matters of church doctrine in their own time, let me give you this word of advice: watch out, because they’re all over the map. But when you read the fathers in any area which was a disputed debate in the church in their time, they almost always get it right, and gloriously so. And so heresy served the church to get the Bible’s proper understanding rightly articulated to the people of god. In the church fathers you find this repeatedly. So the church fathers will serve you best in the areas where the truth of the scriptures is under assault in their own time, and where it is not under assault, you better watch out, because sometimes they will assume the gospel, sometimes they will muddle the truth, and they will contradict one another, but put them in a fight, and they’ll almost always get it right.”
Matt Chandler [possibly the most quotable statement from the entire conference]:
“I don’t care what you think; I care what the Bible says. There’s a way that seems right to all of us, and in the end, it gets everybody killed. If you want to talk about the text, that’s great; if you want to tell a story about your cousin Jim, I don’t care.”
C. J. Mahaney:
“Never assume those in your church have exhausted their need for the gospel. Never assume those in your church have a sufficient knowledge of the gospel. Never address a topic isolated from the gospel. Never exhort to obedience apart from the gospel. Never be more passionate in your preaching on another topic than you are the gospel. You have been entrusted with the old, old story. You must not alter that story; you must not adjust that story; you must not add to that story. Instead, we are charged to faithfully proclaim this story. You will experience temptations to stray from this story, temptations to satisfy the sinful inclinations described in [2 Timothy 4] 3 and 4, but you, as for you, you must be faithful to preach the Word, and in order to be faithful to this charge, you must resolve to be unoriginal. . . . You must preach the Word with an absolutely clear commitment to unoriginality, because if you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, you will easily be distracted by matters of secondary importance instead of fixed on the matter of first importance. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, you’ll be distracted by all that is new, and trendy, and popular, and supposedly original. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, the administration of the church will eventually take precedence over your preaching the gospel to the church. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, your intelligence, or historical skill, or personality will take precedence over you faithfulness to the message of the gospel. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, you will lose sight of what matters the most.”
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