Category Archives: Faith

Kierkegaard on the Difference Between the Tragic Hero and Abraham

22 Sunday Mar 2020

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In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard draws an interesting contrast between Abraham and Agamemnon: both men are called upon to sacrifice a child: but Agamemnon is a tragic hero and Abraham is an example of faith. What then is the true distinction between the two?

The tragic hero is compelled to his end by an ethical demand. To fulfill his oath, Agamemnon must lead the force into war. The demand to sacrifice is daughter is tragic and painful, but it is compelled by the demand of his oath. His act is meaningful and ethical to the community.

But it is not so with Abraham. There is no ethical duty which is recognizable to anyone who watched Abraham. The soldiers who saw Agamemnon move to give up his daughter, would have a basis to understand and even sympathize with Agamemnon. But if one were to watch Abraham: his actions would make no ethical sense. There is no apparent duty.

A second and related comparison comes with the matter of disclosing his conduct.

In this section Kierkegaard first makes an observation about concealment and revelation. In the older Greek tragedies, the concealment was brought about by fate. Oedipus kills his father, but it is concealed to him. It is revealed afterward.

In the modern age, the act of concealment is brought about the character’s decision. He compares two types here. There is the esthetic concealment, where two lovers conceal to bring about their desired end. And to have the happy ending we enjoy such action.

Esthetics permits these actions, even if unethical:

But esthetics is a civil and sentimental discipline that knows more ways out than any pawnshop manager. What it do then? It does everything possible for the lovers. (75)

But ethics requires revelation: The concealment is a deception, and even if pleasing aesthetically it is repugnant to ethics. Ethics requires an explanation, a justification for the conduct. There must be a public rationale.

Abraham differs, because he cannot explain. What is there to say? He is seeking something absurd. Abraham is not merely doing something which seems outside of all ethics; he is doing something he knows cannot be true. He will kill Isaac and Isaac is the child of promise and God will fulfill his promise. This is not merely improbable; it is paradoxical.

There is no public rationale, because the wisdom of God is greater than man.

We go wildly astray if we think Kierkegaard says that faith is believing things which are untrue or improbable. That is what is often miscredited to him. Faith is not believing stupid or false things. Faith is believing that God is above human categories:

1 Corinthians 1:20–29 (ESV)

 20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

 

Some observations on the “absurdity” of faith from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling

06 Friday Mar 2020

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Kierkegaard’s Fear and Loathing considers the fact of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. A central concern of this work has to do with the obvious ethical problem of murder: how can Abraham be a great man of “faith” when his greatest act of “faith” is so obviously unethical?

Kierkegaard takes on this problem from multiple directions. Here, to merely get the ideas straight in my own mind, are certain elements of this text which I found most interesting and useful.

“The old saying that things do not happen in the world as the parson preaches.” (Cambridge University Press, trans. Sylvia Walsh.) Too often philosophy is too abstract, to pat; too often sermons are more platitude than help in patience.

When it comes to the question of Abraham, this book works to avoid neat theories of Abraham’s act: What could he do? God was making him do this thing. Or, well he knew that Isaac would live again in the resurrection; so what does it matter? Or Abraham knew it was some mere trial.

The work (written by a pseudonym; thus, there is some distance between Kierkegaard and the “author” of the work, does nothing to shy away from the fact this great act of faith hinges upon a murder; and thus, unethical in the fullest sense of the world. “What is left out of the Abraham’s story is the anxiety … to the son the father has highest and most sacred duty.”

The ethical makes a demand upon Abraham which runs counter to the command of God; thus, the ethical paradoxically becomes a temptation!

One aspect of the analysis lies with the common understanding of ethical as merely a culturally determined pattern for behavior. While faith may be consistent with such ethics, faith is not necessarily constrained by such ethics.

Abraham cannot kill Isaac and point to some greater ethical good. If it were, then Abraham’s killing could be justified on the ground of the greater good.  But, there is no argument of the loss of the one for the community. And yet somehow, Abraham’s act is a matter of faith. He is not a “tragic hero” who ultimately has an ethical justification for an unethical act.

Kierkegaard aims to disentangle the matter of temptation (by the ethical) from the matter of paradox.

Next, faith is not merely resignation to the greater will of God and a willingness to lose Isaac.  Kierkegaard writes at length of the Knight Infinite Resignation. This knight resigns himself to the loss because there is (again) a greater context in which the paradox of God’s command “makes sense”.

A common intellectual tactic is to resolve a present problem into an unknown future good in the world to come. There is something in the “infinite” which justifies this action in the “finite”. In such a circumstance, the present loss and conflict removes the difficulty of the command of God.

Again, the resolution of the matter is completed by resolving and dismissing the “paradox” of God’s command.

But this will not work, because Abraham does not proceed according to some platitude and hope for the vague future. Abraham expects to murder and receive Isaac in the same act: “By faith Abraham did not renounce Isaac, but by faith Abraham received Isaac.” (41)

In another place, Kierkegaard notes that Abraham was not hoping for some future but was hoping for something in this life: God had promised Abraham that Isaac was the son of promise.

How then does this work out? Abraham is tempted to the ethical; but how could God command the unethical. Abraham is tempted to merely resign himself to duty or overwhelming power, but instead expects to receive Isaac back.

Moreover, Kierkegaard rules out another escape hatch. Abraham is not believing in something merely improbable (which is another dodge undertaken in the name of faith).  Kierkegaard expressly does not mean by faith, something highly unlikely.

Rather, solves his problem by grasping it squarely and stating that faith is a paradox; it actually does hinge upon something “absurd” which we too often which to domesticate.

Abraham believed. He did not believe that he would be blessed one day in the hereafter but that he would become blissfully happy here in the world. God could give him a new Isaac, call the sacrifice back to life. He believed by virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation had long since ceased. (30)

By absurd, he does not mean “the improbable, the unforeseen, the unexpected.” (39). Before Abraham can believe that he will receive Isaac in this life, he must first fully resolve himself to the fact that Isaac is lost. He knows that Isaac is lost, utterly lost. That is the “movement” of infinite resignation. Faith then takes an “absurd” step to believe that Isaac will be restored in this life – knowing full well that Isaac is lost. Faith then says, Yes, Isaac is lost and I will receive Isaac back though he is lost.

One could ask what this dense, often difficult discussion of faith and ethics has to do with the actual life of a Christian today? I do not necessarily find myself struggling with Hegelian categories of thought on the same grounds as that faced by Kierkegaard in the 19th Century church of Europe.

The answer lies in our constant tendency tame faith in some manner.

Olivia Walsh, in her essay, “The Silencing of Philosophy” makes the observation

This idea of the absolute duty to God in faith can lead to some rather remarkable commands, such as the Gospel injunction to hate one’s “own faith and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life” (Luke 14:26 RSV) which exegetes tend to water down in typically ethical fashion.

I will testify to having heard this and similar texts being domesticated by turning the word “hate” into the phrase “love less”.  But the language itself is shocking. We can say this means hyperbole; but if so, what is the toned-down understanding of “hate”.

Moreover, Jesus in nowise ever abrogates the duties to one’s family. Indeed, he commands love even of one’s enemies. Kierkegaard helps us here by seeing the paradox in the duty toward God and human beings. There is a resignation to loss and recovery back which refuse to be resolved by ethical games or linguistic tricks.

Indeed, the Christian religion itself hinges upon the most profound of paradoxes:

2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

God made Christ sin – the one who was sinless; so that we who are sinful might become righteous. There are no ethical tricks, no linguistic tropes, no logical move which resolves the utterly paradoxical movement in this passage. Faith takes hold of the paradox in joy.

Faith and fear go hand in hand

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Faith, Faith, Fear, fear of God, Fear of the Lord, Thomas Watson, Uncategorized

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The graces of the Spirit work for good. Grace is to the soul, as light to the eye, as health to the body. Grace does to the soul, as a virtuous wife to her husband, “She will do him good all the days of her life.” Prov. 31:12. How incomparably useful are the graces! Faith and fear go hand in hand; faith keeps the heart cheerful, fear keeps the heart serious; faith keeps the heart from sinking in despair, fear keeps it from floating in presumption; all the graces display themselves in their beauty: hope is the helmet, 1 Thess. 5:8. meekness “the ornament,” 1 Pet. 3:4. love “the bond of perfectness,” Col. 3:14. The saints’ graces are weapons to defend them, wings to elevate them, jewels to enrich them, spices to perfume them, stars to adorn them, cordials to refresh them: and does not all this work for good? The graces are our evidences for heaven; is it not good to have our evidences at the hour of death?

 Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial; The Saint’s Spiritual Delight; The Holy Eucharist; and Other Treatises, The Writings of the Doctrinal Puritans and Divines of the Seventeenth Century (The Religious Tract Society, 1846), 17–18.

What hope produces, what produces hope.2

28 Thursday Mar 2019

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[Picking up from the first part]

I said there were not three things, but here are three things in this verse about hope. First, hope has a very present effect. That is the word “because”. Second, the hope is certain:  it is laid up in heaven. Third, the hope marks goal, the end of our pilgrimage. Our hope is laid up in heaven.

First we are going to consider the effect of hope. I want you to notice something about. In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul writes that, “faith, hope and love” now abide. Here is a triad which lies at heart of being a Christian: we cannot be a Christian without faith hope and love. Paul mentions these three in our text:

4since we heard of your faith [there is faith] in Christ Jesus and the love [there is love] which you have for all the saints;

5because of the hope [there is hope] laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel

Notice also that the hope comes about from hearing “the word of truth, the gospel”.  So there is a chain of events here: 

First there was hearing the word of truth. We will think about what is that word of truth in moment. For right now, just notice that hope did not come their imagination or their experience or anything else. Hope came from hearing “the word of truth”.

In 1 Thessalonians 1:5 Paul describes what happened to that church:

“for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and full of conviction”

There is the pattern which is throughout the Scripture — and demonstrated over and again in the history of the Church. Believers, the church of Jesus Christ are created by Word of God and the Spirit of God. The Word of God comes to people and comes in the power of the Holy Spirit.  It presses down upon the elect and they believe and are transformed. 

Now understand this about true, saving faith: it is not just some sort of historical calculation. For instance, I believe George Washington was the first president of the United States. But that belief is just an idea, it’s just an exercise of thought.

Saving faith is different, it is not just an idea. It comes with power, with conviction, it changes. When true faith comes, it comes with hope. In Romans 4:18, Paul describes Abraham’s saving faith like this, “In hope again he hope he believed.” And in Romans 8:24, Paul writes, “For in hope we have been saved”. 

Faith and hope are very close together; and in saving faith, it comes with hope. We believe we are now saved, and we believe we will be saved. We believe we will be justified on the day of judgment, we believe we will be resurrected, we believe we will be forever with the Lord. But notice that all of that belief entails hope:

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.

Rom. 8:24-25. And conversely, we could not possibly hope for something we did not believe to be true and real and ahead of us. No one could hope for something he did not sincerely believe was true.

Now consider this also: faith and hope strengthen one another. As we believe, we can more easily and clearly hope: as we hope, our faith gains strength and vigor.

Let’s do a little thought experiment.  Let us assume that the story gets around that Tom is feeling generous today and that he is taking every out to lunch. And so we all hope and believe that Tom is going to bring around limos and we will all be ferried down to Gladstones at the ocean and we will have lunch and be brought back to church in time for evening service. 

But after our initial rush of hope and belief, we start to think about this. We begin to realize that taking a couple of hundred people in limos to lunch at the ocean might be unrealistic for Tom. Tom probably doesn’t have ten thousand dollars to spend on our lunch. And so, our belief begins to wane. And as our belief wanes, our hope wanes. And by the time noon comes around, our faith and hope in Tom’s wonderful lunch surprise goes away.

Faith and hope need one another to survive. 

Here is a point of application. We must keep our faith and our hope well and in good strength. When we becomes hopeless, when we begin to falter in our hope, our faith will decline. In fact, I would surmise that for most people it is their hope which falters first, and then their faith.  The Devil would not easily get you to deny the Incarnation — but if he can discourage you, if he can distract your hope and draw it on to other things, you faith will fail. Faith cannot stand without hope. To keep faith without hope is like keeping a roof without walls. Faith and the roof will fall to the ground.

But Paul also draws love into this equation look again 

4since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints;

5because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel

The love which the Colossians experience and exhibit is “because of the hope”. Their hope gives rise to their love. Some of the commentators are puzzled by this connection. Since love is a very generous affection, it seems odd to connect with one’s hope. How can hoping make one more able and willing to love?

Let us think of the greatest act of love in the history of humanity: without question, it is the love Jesus showed to us when he went to the cross. Jesus himself said that giving one’s life for another was the greatest act of love. Jesus abounded in love, when he went to the cross.

Now I want you to consider Hebrews 12:2, “Jesus … who for the joy set before him endured the cross”. Jesus’ love toward us was itself grounded in hope. Jesus died for us to glorify his name, to glorify the Father — and for us, he made atonement for sin. Jesus gave himself in love, but Jesus also gave himself in hope. 

Because Jesus knew his work would be successful does not mean that Jesus did not hope. Hope does not mean an uncertain a foolish desire. Hope can be quite certain, as we will see. The security of the hope does not mean that it is not hope. Hope is desire for something which is not now present. 

Hope is means of enjoying something in the future now. It is taking possession of something just beyond our grasp. 

Jesus’ love and Jesus’ hope were in perfect agreement and were both fulfilled together. 

Love is a generous affection. Hope is also generous. A hope of acceptance and love from God, makes us wealthy — it makes love and generosity wise. Hope fixes our eyes upon Christ (and that is a whole other thing which we cannot fully consider) — and as it fixes our eyes upon Christ, it makes us like Christ:

2 Corinthians 3:18 (NASB95)

18But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

Our hope transforms us by fixing our gaze upon our Lord. And in so doing, our hope transforms us into those who love. We could never love without hope. We love in hope that our love will be received and will work good in the beloved.

If our gaze could never go beyond the confines of this life and this world, then the full generous love God commands, to love our neighbor as ourself would be insane, it would be dangerous and foolish. To love as God calls us to love is a sucker’s game if there is no heaven calling us: if there is no life beyond this life, then as Paul writes, we are most to be pitied. 

But hope gives room and promise and purpose to Christian love. As Paul also says, our labor will not be in vain. 

When we are filled with hope, then faith and love will grow themselves. And here is the amazing thing: When we have these three, they each make the other grow. When we have love and faith, it grows hope. When we have hope and love it grows faith. Love fulfills the law, love is obedience to Christ. And in Hebrews 5:14, we learn that obedience — which will necessarily require love — makes us fit and able to learn more of God, to increase the scope and depth of our faith and hope, because it gives more range for faith and hope act.

What produces hope? The Word of God brought to bear by the Spirit of God, the word of God believed produces hope. And what does hope produce: faith and love. If you see you faith flagging look to your hope. If you love has grown cold, look to hope. If you hope is weak, look to your faith. 

If you feel yourself wander, discouraged, fallen into sin and tempted with despair, come back to the fountain, come back to the place you lost your way. Come back to the start, to the Word of God, pick up the trail in faith; your flagging hope will stir and that will set you going in the correct direction.

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation XXVII

30 Wednesday May 2018

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(From the Spiritual Chymist, William Spurstowe, 1666)

Upon the Weapon Salve

Who was the author of this weapon salve, cannot certainly be affirmed. Some attribute it to Paracelus who was very pregnant in mysterious inventions: others to one Parmensis Anshelmus, an Italian, who was called a “Saint” as Simon Magus of old, the great power of God, though both were no better than sorcerers. But whoever he were, the ointment is much famed (yet not altogether unquestioned) for its strange manner of healing and curing wounds, differing from other physical applications in a double respect: the one is that it is applied not other person who receives the wounds, but to the active instrument that inflicts it, which is a subject not at all capable of sickness of sanity, or ease or pain, and so cannot be receptive of the alternative power of the ointment; which, if it work by virtual contact must necessarily have the intermedial bodies to participate of it.  The other is, the salve cures at distances which are inconsistent with the rule of a mediate contact: it heals the patient when he is a hundred miles off, as well as when he is hear; and the it requires a vicinity of place, as well as a right disposition of the medium.

Now these difference, though they have served to heighten its esteem in the apprehensions of many, and have given learned men who are great admirers of sympathies to write for it or to be fautors [patrons] of it; yet others of no less worth and repute have divided from them and have slighted it as an empty vanity or censured as a magical impiety. 

For my part, I am not satisfied with such subtle niceties as are used to defend it, of common and universal spirits which convey the action of the remedy to the part and conjoin the virtue of bodies far disjoined; neither can I think it worthy of such speculations: it commonly healing only simple wounds, and such, which being kept clean need no other hand than that of nature and the balsam [anything healing] of the proper part.

But there is a weapon salve of which it is easy to speak much, but impossible to say enough: so full it is of divine and mysterious wonders, if we consider what it is, or what the cures are which it effects, or what the distance is in which it operates.

Would you know what this salve is? The blood of Christ crucified, whose sufferings do all turn to the advantage of believers: 

The blood is his, 

but the balm is theirs; 

the thorns are his, 

but the crown is theirs; 

the price is his, 

but the purchase is theirs.

Would you hear what cures it does? It heals inveterate ulcers and mortal wounds; it extinguishes the fiery darts of Satan. It eases pressures; it destroys yokes, and what not that rise to let [stop] or bar to a believer’s life or happiness. 

Would you know the extent of its virtue, and at what distance it operates? Paul tells us that by the blood of the cross he has reconciled all things to himself, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. [Col. 1:20]

There is no person that can stand so remote or be at any such angle or corner of earth but he may partake of the influence of it, if he do but cast an eye of faith toward heaven and be as fully healed as any other. Like as to the stunned Israelite who lay in the utmost part of the camp did receive equal benefit by looking to the brazen serpent with him that stood next unto the pole upon which it was erected.

O therefore let not any who are exercised with spiritual conflict cast away their confidence, but fight the good fight of faith unto the end. For though they be not invulnerable, yet none of their wounds are incurable. The blood of Christ is more powerful to save, than sin or other enemies to destroy; else the great end of Christ’s coming into the world of being a physician to the sick, a deliverer to the captive, a healer of the broken hearted would be in vain and all the saints must still be in their sins. 

Set then faith on work you that faint and droop in your minds; and say not, who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring this salve unto us that we may live? Or who shall go over the sea for us and bring this sovereign balm [all powerful medicine] of Gilead [Jer. 8:22] unto us that we may e healed by it.

Do but believe and the cure is wrought. Faith is the instrument which makes a virtual contact between Christ and every believer: It receives healing grace from him, and straightways conveys it uno the subject in which it is to terminate. 

For as futuriton [existing in the future] in respect of the existence of things is no prejudice to the eye of faith in beholding of them in the present; so neither is distance of place any hinderance to the efficacy of the touch of faith, but that it may forthwith transmit the sanitive efflux of Christ’s blood [Christ’s blood pour out makes holy] unto him, who by faith touches him [touches Christ].  The woman that labored many years of the bloody issue in the same instant that she touched the hem of Christ’s garment, get in herself, that she was healed of her plague. [Mark 5:24-34]

But I am jealous, that while I commend this sacred remedy, some presumptuous sinner who is more apt to abuse grace, than a wounded spirit to improve it [make use of it]should make no other use of it than to think he may sin securely and need not fear what bruises and wound he contracts, seeing the cure is certain and speedy.

I can therefore, do no less than express myself in a holy indignation against such who would make the precious blood of my Savior subservient to their lusts, desiring rather to be freed from the danger than from the dominion of sin.

O my soul, come thou not into their secrets; unto their assembly mine honor be not thou united:  Cursed be their lusts, for they are vile, and their desires for they are devilish. [Gen. 49:6-7] Let me bless God who has made me whole, and sin no more lest a worse thing come unto me. [John 5:14]

Soren Kierkegaard, The Mirror of the Word Part One

23 Monday Apr 2018

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How to Derive True Benediction from Beholding Oneself in the Mirror of the Word

James 1:22 to the End

Fifth Sunday After Easter

 

Introduction

Kierkegaard prefaces his discourse with a note about the necessary “eloquence” of Christian preaching: it must be an eloquence of word and action:

He who is to preach ought to live in the thoughts and conceptions of Christianity; this should be his daily life — if such is the case, then (as Christianity teaches) thou shalt have eloquence enough, and just what is needed, when thou dost speak straightforwardly without special preparation. On the other hand, it is a false eloquence,  if without being concerned with these thoughts or living in them, one sits down from time to time to make a collection of such thoughts, culling them perhaps from the field of literature, and working them up together into a well-developed discourse, which then is learned perfectly  by rote and is admirably delivered, both with respect to elocution and with respect to movement of arms. No, just as in a well-appointed house one is not obligated to go downstairs to fetch water, but by pressure already has it on the upper floors merely by turning the tap, so too is with real the Christian orator, who, just because Christianity is his life, has eloquence, and precisely the right eloquence, close at ham, immediately present with him ….

For the sermon ought not to establish an invidious distinction between the talented and the untalented, it ought rather in the unity of the Holy Ghost fix attention exclusively upon the requirement that actions must correspond to words.

This idea of correspondence between actions and words is worked in the subsequent discourse on the correspondence between faith and action. There must be an integrity between what is said, and what is done.

The Sermon

Kiekegaard preaches on the following text:

James 1:22–27 (ESV)

22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Kierkegaard begins his consideration of these words with the apparent contradiction of Martin Luther: we are saved by faith alone. He then notes the nature of human depravity when it comes to works:

yet every man has a disposition either to want to have merit from works when they are to be done; or, when faith and grace are to be stressed, to want to be as far as possible liberated entirely from works.

Luther sought to work around that dual tendency:

Luther wanted to take away the meritoriousness from works and apply it in a somewhat different place, namely to witnessing for truth. Worldliness, which understood Luther radically, did away entirely with meritoriousness — and with works along with it.

Luther also notes that “faith is a perturbing thing”. Well, then if faith is a perturbing thing, “To what effect has faith, which thou sayest thou hast, perturbed thee?”

That is the trouble. And what sort of disquiet should come from faith? The disquiet of faith will seek to change things to conform to the faith — whether it is the religious order or a disquiet of “inward order.”  “A true love-affair is a disquieting thing, but it does not occur to the lover to want to change the established order.”

Kierkegaard mentioning Luther’s trouble with James suggests that perhaps Luther did not realize how easily one could twist “faith alone” to mean faith apart from effect upon one. “That does not apply to the Lutheran doctrine, but it applies to me: I have reason to know that I am not an upright soul, but a crafty fellow.”

Since I am a crafty fellow, I think to think more carefully about what is meant by this “faith alone”. “So it doubtless would be well to examine a little more carefully the subordinate clauses (works, existence, witnessing and suffering for the truth, works of love, & c.), the subordinating clauses of Lutheranism.”

It is that examination of what faith must do that occupies the discourse proper.

Loyalty to the Saints

24 Sunday Dec 2017

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This sermon (“Loyalty to the Saints”) by James Denney is based upon Psalm 78:15, ” If I had said, I will speak thus; Behold, I had dealt treacherously with the generation of thy children.”

This sermon concerns the “generation of God’s children”, the people of God and the individuals need of relationship to God’s children. Having established that God has a generation in every age, Denney explains the importance:

At this moment, there is such a thing in the world as the generation of God’s children, the spiritual successors of those to whom the Psalmist refers; they inherit the same hopes, and represent the same ideals and beliefs.

[1] It is a great matter to recognize this. For one thing, it is an important part of our moral security to have our place among God’s children.

[2 For another, it is a great test of the soundness of our judgment in spiritual things when we find ourselves in agreement with them.

James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 128.  Here is an important aspect of the stability in the Christian life: both as to how we live (“moral security”) and right thinking (“soundness of our judgment”).  Therefore, it is critical that we rightly understand the Church.

Denny singles out trust or faith in God as a distinguishing mark of the Church:

The one mark of the children of God which never varies is that they believe in Him. From generation to generation they perpetuate the sublime tradition of faith. In various modes, through all sorts of discouragement, they look unceasingly to Him, believing that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him. (129)

While not a comprehensive theory of the “true Church”, Denney does focus on the distinguishing attribute of “faith”.  He does not attempt to distinguish true and false objects at faith. Rather he looks to three practical objections to faith. The rationale for such an examination is that faith must be challenged to be faith, “No doubt it belongs to the nature of faith that it should be tried; if there were not appearances against it, it would not be faith; it would be sight.” (129)

First, the political evil of the world may cause us to question God: “Faith in God implies faith in His government of the world.” (129) But when we look at the world — from the time of the psalmist until now — there is constantly more than enough to cause us to question God, “It is manifest that the Psalmist had had more than enough to try his faith in the Divine government. When he looked abroad upon the earth, it was as though God had abandoned it, or rather as though there were no God at all.” (129-130).

When we see the evil of this world, we wonder at the evil of the world and wonder why we should try. But in this skepticism, we should be checked, because the children of God have persevered through generations. To doubt would be to betray the perseverance of the Church:

What, it was suggested to him, does the indulgence of this sceptical temper mean? It means that I am betraying the cause for which the children of God have fought the good fight from generation to generation, that I am deserting the forlorn hope of the good to side with the enemies of God and man. God forbid! Be my soul with the saints, and shall my mind cherish thoughts, shall my lips speak words, that are disloyal to their faith, their hopes, their sacrifices? To choose your creed is to choose your company, and the feeling that such scepticism would range him in base opposition to the Israel of God is the first thing which rallies the Psalmist again to assert his faith. (131).

Rather than back down, the witness must become more certain (Thomas Watson, “The profaneness of the times should not slacken but heighten our zeal. The looser other are, the stricter we should be.”),

No: they are trumpet calls for witnesses for God; for soldiers, for martyrs, for men and women who will fight God’s battle against all odds, and though they die fighting die assured of victory at last. All the hope of the world lies in them, not in the cynical or sceptical who say, How doth God know?

The same principle applies to our private trials of faith, “by your own faith and patience set a new seal to its truth”. (132).

Second, we must not question God’s moral agency even when world proves to us that we should change our position: we must not be relativists. Our Faith in the authority of God’s law must remain unchanging.  While the first tests our patience and hope, this second tests our relationship to society, ”

While the first point shows itself in private defections, this second point has recently shown itself in claiming Christian Churches rejecting the law of God, particularly on matters of sexuality:

And how many novelists there are, exhibiting their criticism of life in all languages, who seem to have it as their one motive to show that there is nothing absolute in the seventh commandment. A man is to be true to his wife, naturally; but it is a poor kind of truth to sacrifice to his legal obligations to one woman the genuine love for another in which his true being would attain its full realization. (134)

What then should we do?

What should we say when we encounter ideas of this kind, in philosophy or in literature, in cruder or in subtler forms? Let them be met on their own ground, by all means; let bad philosophy be confuted by good; let the inadequacy of such theories to explain the actual moral contents of life be made clear; but before everything, let the soul purge itself from every shadow of complicity in them in the indignant words of the Psalm, “If I spoke thus, I should be false to the generation of God’s children.” I should desert those who have done more than all others to lift the life of man from the natural to the spiritual level.

It is also reject that which God has “set His seal” upon.

Finally, this faith is in the promises of God, particularly the promise of eternal life. (136)  Eternal life is at the crux of the Christian hope, “As the Scottish father whom I quoted at the beginning has said, ‘Eternity is wrapt up and implied in every truth of religion’.” (136).

How then do we respond to such necessary doubts? First, “that true as the disconcerting phenomena referred to may be, they are not the whole truth.” (138)

Second, why should I reject the the faith of the Church, why should “I separate myself from the generation of God’s children”? (139) He drives this argument further,

No one, I fancy, has ever argued more subtly against immortality than Hume: but what has Hume contributed to the spiritual life of the world that he should be counted an authority at all? Who would weigh his negative inferences, whatever the weight of logic behind them, against the insight and conviction of this Psalm, against the assurance of Jesus, against the struggling yet ever triumphant faith of the generation of God’s children? None who would be loyal to the best that man has been. (139)

Denny ends with an exhortation as to the life of the Church:

I will add one word of application to this interpretation of the text: Associate with God’s children, and let their convictions inspire yours; frequent the church, and let the immemorial faith of all saints beget itself in you anew. It is one great service of the Church that it perpetuates the tradition of faith—that sublime voices like those of this Psalm are for ever sounding in it, waking echoes and Amens in our hearts—that characters and convictions of the highest type are generated in it, not by logic but by loyalty, not by argument but by sympathy with the good—deep calling unto deep. We need the common faith to sustain our individual faith; we need the consciousness of the children of God in all ages to fortify our wavering belief in His government, His law and His promises. To be at home in the Church is to absorb this strength unconsciously. It is to be delivered from the shallows and miseries of a too narrow experience, and set afloat on the broad stream of Christian conviction which gathers impetus and volume with every generation the saints survive. (139-140).

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Affliction Creates Faith

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in 2 Corinthians, affliction, Faith, Faith, Uncategorized

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It is a melancholy reflection upon human nature that we have, as the Apostle expresses it elsewhere, to be “shut up” to all the mercies of God. If we could evade them, notwithstanding their freeness and their worth, we would. How do most of us attain to any faith in Providence? Is it not by proving, through numberless experiments, that it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps? Is it not by coming, again and again, to the limit of our resources, and being compelled to feel that unless there is a wisdom and a love at work on our behalf, immeasurably wiser and more benignant than our own, life is a moral chaos? How, above all, do we come to any faith in redemption? to any abiding trust in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of our souls? Is it not by this same way of despair? Is it not by the profound consciousness that in ourselves there is no answer to the question, How shall man be just with God? and that the answer must be sought in Him? Is it not by failure, by defeat, by deep disappointments, by ominous forebodings hardening into the awful certainty that we cannot with our own resources make ourselves good men—is it not by experiences like these that we are led to the Cross? This principle has many other illustrations in human life, and every one of them is something to our discredit. They all mean that only desperation opens our eyes to God’s love. We do not heartily own Him as the author of life and health, unless He has raised us from sickness after the doctor had given us up. We do not acknowledge His paternal guidance of our life, unless in some sudden peril, or some impending disaster, He provides an unexpected deliverance. We do not confess that salvation is of the Lord, till our very soul has been convinced that in it there dwells no good thing. Happy are those who are taught, even by despair, to set their hope in God; and who, when they learn this lesson once, learn it, like St. Paul, once for all…. Faith and hope like those which burn through this Epistle were well worth purchasing, even at such a price; they were blessings so valuable that the love of God did not shrink from reducing Paul to despair that he might be compelled to grasp them. Let us believe when such trials come into our lives—when we are weighed down exceedingly, beyond our strength, and are in darkness without light, in a valley of the shadow of death with no outlet—that God is not dealing with us cruelly or at random, but shutting us up to an experience of His love which we have hitherto declined. “After two days will He revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live before Him.”

James Denney

Expositor’s Bible, 2 Corinthians, pp. 25-26, “Faith Born of Despair”

Thomas Watson: 24 Helps to Read the Scripture.10

04 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Bibliology, Faith, Reading, Thomas Watson, Uncategorized

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In this section, Watson makes one argument: To read the Scripture profitably, we must believe that the Scripture comes from God.

He supports that direction with the contention that the assertion of divine origin is not a bare assertion, but one grounded in reason. Thus, it is an interesting mix of presuppositional and evidentiary apologetic.

First, the basic direction

Give credence to the word written; believe it to be of God; see the name of God in every line. The Romans, that they might gain credit to their laws, reported that they were inspired by the gods at Rome. Believe the Scriptures to be divinely inspired. 2 Tim. 3:16: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

Before going further with this argument, we must realize the importance of this direction. If we do not believe the Scripture to be sacred, we cannot read it with any profit. All good which we receive from God comes through the conduit of faith, of trust and belief. If we do not trust or believe the words of Scripture, the words can never do us good. It did the disciples no good to be told that Jesus had risen from the dead, when they did not believe the story related by the woman. Luke 24:11.

Watson then turns to his evidence: He sets up his argument by testing the presuppositions against evidence. His basic argument runs as follows:

If the Scripture is divine, then it will have quality X.
It has quality X.
Therefore, the Scripture is divine.

Who but God could reveal the great doctrines of the Trinity, the atonement of Jesus Christ for sinners, the resurrection? Whence should the Scriptures come, if not from God?

He then makes a second argument which supports and develops the first.  The structure of the argument is:

If the Scripture were from someone beside it God, it would lack quality X.
It does not lack quality X.
Therefore, it is from God.

However, to make it more rhetorically emphatic, he phrases the argument, It is not from someone beside God, because it has quality X.

Sinners could not be the authors of Scripture; would they indite such holy lines, or inveigh so fiercely against the sins which they love?

Saints could not be the authors of Scripture; how could it stand with their sanctity to counterfeit God’s name, and put “thus saith the Lord,” to a book of their own devising?

Angels could not be the authors of Scripture. What angel in heaven durst personate God, and say, “I am the Lord?”

Then re-asserts his primary contention and adds additional divine qualities: antiquity, profundity, purity, harmony, efficacy.

Believe the pedigree of Scripture to be sacred, and to come from the Father of light. The antiquity of Scripture speaks its divinity. No human history extant reaches farther than Noah’s flood; but the Scripture treats of things before time. Beside, the majesty, profundity, purity and harmony of Scripture, show it could be breathed from none but God himself.

Add to this the efficacy the written word hath upon men’s consciences; by reading Scripture they have been turned into other men, as may be instanced in Austin, Junius, and others. If you should set a seal upon a piece of marble, and it should leave a print behind, you would say there was a strange virtue in that seal; so that, when the written word leaves a heavenly print of grace upon the heart, it argues it to be of divine authority. If you would profit by the word, you must believe it to be of God. Some skeptics question the verity of Scripture; though they have the articles of religion in their creed, yet not in their belief.

He ends with the restatement

Unbelief enervates the virtue of the word and makes it abortive; who will obey truths he does not believe? Heb. 4:2: “The word did not profit them, not being mixed with faith.”

Thomas Watson, “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit,” in The Bible and the Closet: Or How We May Read the Scriptures with the Most Spiritual Profit; and Secret Prayer Successfully Managed, ed. John Overton Choules (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1842), 25–27.

January 1799, Evangelical Magazine: Regeneration

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Faith, Uncategorized

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Excerpts from “Regeneration”, Evangelical Magazine, January 1799, pp. 18-19, H.K.

Except a man be born again he cannot see, he cannot understand, the things of the kingdom of God, so as to discern their nature and importance; to feel their influence, and to relish and enjoy their excellence. A true knowledge of these spiritual objects is communicated by the Spirit, accompanied by a taste of them them, and a delight in them. When a man has once obtained this kind of knowledge, it begins a new ear in the system of his experience, and in his life and conduct.

It is evident that what in Luke viii.10 is called knowing the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven is the same that is here meant by seeing them. And what is knowing when applied to spiritual things, but the mind’s perception of them in a manner which gives them a due influence upon the minds?

Heb. xi. 1. “It is the perception, or mental conviction of the reality of things not seen or invisible;” that is, of the things of the Spirit of God, and of the kingdom of heaven. It is a perception of these heavenly realities by the mind, illuminated by a supernatural influence; so viewing them as to choose and love them before everything, and so live under the influence of them in this manner.

It is possess a relish for them, and a pleasure in them superior to anything we habitually feel or the things of sense. They will then give a decided bias to the mind, and manifest their native tendency to holiness. They will form the heart and life anew. The word of Christ is, indeed, the word of the kingdom, and is described as a seed of a divine and incorruptible quality; and being introduced into the mind, by the agency of the Spirit, produces a creature like itself, holy and heavenly, which in Scripture is called a new man and a new creation.

We must become fools in our own estimation to be wise; we must become weak to be strong, and lowly to be exalted. Without such a frame of heart, we cannot enjoy the things of the kingdom of God: we cannot love, we cannot delight in them, we cannot receive them. Let the reader seriously enquire whether his professed acquaintance with divine truth produces these effects; for without them, nothing is more certain than, that his faith and hope are only fatal presumption and delusion.