Category Archives: Theology

The pattern of biblical judgment

05 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by in Idolatry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

Biblical judgment follows a consistent pattern: we judged on the basis of our idol 

Consider the plagues of Egypt. The Pharaoh orders the death of infant boys; one by one they are cast into the river, the Nile, that great god of Egypt. The Nile brings life in the desert: their water, their food, their safety are all bound up in that great god.

But when God sets his eyes upon Egypt, it is the Nile that fails. The blood of the boys wells and the river is blood. The life of Egypt has become a gushing artery of death. The Nile has been killed and kills in turn.

The sun was a great god, the source of life. And so, God in his turns, kills the sun. The sky grows dark at day.

The Pharaoh himself is the issue of the sun. The Pharaoh’s firstborn boy is likewise a god and the son of a god. Rather than turn their worship to the true Creator, the Egyptians gave their praise to the boy in his turn.

And so the Pharaoh who brought death to the son of his slaves finds death in his own home. 

There is a pattern here, the idol matches the judgment. One the type, the other the antitype. 

Our idols fail precisely in their promise. They promise life, but deliver death. 

The judgment need not be the end. When God first struck the Nile, the plea was for Egypt to turn. When God brought night and day, the proof was the Sun was no god. But persistence in rebellion is its own curse. And finally, the child of a lie, the promise which could not deliver, the god who is no God will fail. 

Chained to an idol

30 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Ante-Nicene, Idolatry, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

14747415206_3fb6503527_o

For that wicked reptile monster, by his enchantments, enslaves and plagues men even till now; inflicting, as seems to me, such barbarous vengeance on them as those who are said to bind the captives to corpses till they rot together. This wicked tyrant and serpent, accordingly, binding fast with the miserable chain of superstition whomsoever he can draw to his side from their birth, to stones, and stocks, and images, and such like idols, may with truth be said to have taken and buried living men with those dead idols, till both suffer corruption together.

Therefore (for the seducer is one and the same) he that at the beginning brought Eve down to death, now brings thither the rest of mankind.

Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Heathen,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 173.

This quotation is interesting on a few grounds. First, it contains a source for the not-uncommon image used in sermons particular on Romans 7:24 (who will deliver me from this body of death). But I note that even Clement didn’t have a definite source of the story beyond the indefinite “they say” (legousin, in the original).

Second, it is a striking description of the danger and evil of idolatry: “to have taken and buried living men with those dead idols, till both suffer corruption together.” To have an idol is to be shackled to an idol.

A similar image is used of addictions in our day, which is appropriate seeing addiction is another way to understand magic and idolatry. It is to be chained to, buried with.

Framing the Issue of the Spirit’s Indwelling and the Old Testament

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Pneumatology, Theology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Often we misunderstand a topic because we consider the issue in fundamentally the wrong way. Having taken up the question at the wrong end, the actual solution becomes invisible.

One such issue is the matter of the indwelling of the Spirit how that relates to OT believers. I Dr. Abner Chou’s paper at the November 2018 meeting of the ETS entitled, “Revisiting the Spirit’s Indwelling of OT Saints: Ezekiel’s Contribution to the Issue” provides a good example of how recasting the issue can provide a “way forward” to resolve a long-standing quandary.

The essay begins with a survey of the various potential ways to address the issue, ranging from total continuity, through varying degrees of discontinuity. But in this discussion, the underlying issue for the commentators seems to concern the question of regeneration: “At least in recent history, people cannot speak of the indwelling without speaking of regeneration.”

The issue has been how do we talk about the salvation or sanctification of OT saints if they were not indwelt by the Spirit? And I must admit as thought of the topic, without any particular study of the issue, I began the with the question of how salvation or sanctification took place without indwelling of the Spirit.

This leads to a primary element in Chou’s argument, “such a presupposed link is not necessarily required.”

As he rehearses the various positions, it becomes clear that the primary issue among those who have been discussing the issue is how salvation and sanctification took place before the coming of  the Spirit promised in John 14: Perhaps the OT saints were indwelt, but were merely not indwelt to the same extent as NT saints. Or the Spirits work was done by the Spirit presence’s in the Temple.

The discussion thus leads to an impass. The Scripture supports non-indwelling, but theology requires indwelling (or no one was saved before Christ).

Chou puts the problem at the level of definition: The discussion of indwelling has presumed that indwelling is necessary for salvation, therefore, we must nuance the concept of “indwelling”. The emphasis has thus been upon the results of indwelling rather than the nature of indwelling.

In effect, the issue has been grabbed from the wrong end.

Rather than beginning with the presupposition that indwelling effects salvation, Chou begins with what the Scripture says about indwelling. The issue of indwelling, or the Spirit is discussed in the OT but in terms of the Spirit filling the Temple. Thus, to understand the issue, we must the Temple: The Temple is indwelt with the Spirit: For instance, the Temple is “filled” with the glory of God.

The NT believers have taken over as the Temple, and thus believers are filled with the Spirit in the exhibition of the Glory of God.

The article is 29 pages of single space 12-point text, so plainly there is a great more to be found. The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society is available online

 

 

How the doctrine of God can lead to adoration

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Augustine, Theology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

In this quotation summarizing Augustine’s doctrine of God, we see how each aspect of the doctrine is the ground for praise:

Consequently, Augustine emphasized God’s immateriality, invisibility, and immutability. In God, he claims, there is no extension and no divisibility.5 God is everywhere without being the sum total of all geographic points. God cannot break or deteriorate, for God is simple; in God all the virtues are one, and God’s attributes and very being are one. Furthermore, God does not flit from one thought to another in a chronological sequence; rather, God comprehends everything past, present, and future simultaneously.6 Augustine associates the passage of time with the loss of the past and anxiety about the future. Therefore, it is a blessing that he can be assured that in God there is no temporal movement.7 These affirmations of God’s metaphysical perfections serve to reassure the reader that there is something in the universe that is immune to vacillation, anxiety, and disappointment. We humans may be harried by misfortunes and by our own fickle natures, but God is not. The unchangeableness of God is the antidote to the ephemeral nature of all earthly things. The existence of such a God grounds the possibility that one’s own self can come to participate in such a state of blessedness. To hint that God might be vulnerable or mutable would rob life of all hope for serenity and joy. To ascribe the perfections of immutability, self-sufficiency, and unity to God is to cultivate the longing for God’s truth, goodness, and beauty. For example, the refrain repeated throughout Augustine’s writings that all of God is everywhere functions to reassure the reader of God’s universal accessibility.8 Appropriately, in Augustine’s pages these metaphysical assertions about God are usually sandwiched between prayers of adoration. Philosophical speculation is motivated not by curiosity, but by a doxological impulse. God is the beauty and the splendor that will satisfy our mysterious yearnings for a joy that the world can neither give nor take away.

This quotation is from the marvelous book: Eros and Self-Emptying The Intersections of Augustine and Kierkegaard Lee C. Barrett

By way of contrast, I am reminded of this which I saw recently on twitter

Our desire to subvert the text

02 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Bibliology, Scripture, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

In his essay, “God and the Bible,” in the volume The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures Peter F. Jensen, responds to proposition that the Scripture is a word about God. Or, he quotes Brunner, “The spoken word is an indirect revelation when it bears witness to the real revelation: Jesus Christ, the personal self-manifestation of God, Emmanuel.” To respond to this challenge, states the issue as whether the “classical position” that the words of Scripture are the word of God; or, is there a way in which we can, by means of the Spirit, come to Christ effectively bypassing the words in the book?

There is a profound temptation here to want not some words but a person. Indeed, when phrased in that way, the “classical position” sounds foolish and misguided. I will not recount his argument here, which is well-structured and persuasive. He effectively demonstrates that there is no gospel without holding fast to the “classical position.” I cannot do that argument justice without simply repeating what he wrote.

What do wish to underscore here is the nature of the temptation to go-around the text. The desire to go around the text seems to have two roots as referenced by Jensen. First, there is the matter of idolatry; an argument which he traces to Tyndale. Second, he locates the movement in a desire for autonomy.

Jensen notes that our forebearers sought for “godliness” by means of obedience (see page 494), while we moderns speak of “spirituality”. But a desire for “spirituality” can easily become a guise for autonomy. We are dependent creatures who must have a clear rule to be obedient. “ A human life lived without the rule of God would be like a game of tennis without a net.” (495).

But I would like to venture an observation on idolatry and the textual nature of Christianity. Idolatry is a desire for a god whom we can control; an object of technology and desire. The god created is a god whom conforms to my desire.

I am in place one. My desire is place two; but reality is place three. I use the god of my idolatry to coerce reality to conform to my present desire.

When one claims a spirituality which supersedes the text and goes-around the text, and does not need the text; then my desires will become the “prompting of the Spirit.” Getting what I want will be the will of Christ. It is the strategy which underlies so much doctrinal change (as if a vote of some denominational leaders had the power to rewrite the Bible).

Words are a brake on hazy thinking and deceitful desires. I am well-aware of the strategies to subvert a text and to torture words into saying what I like. That is it’s own conversation.

And yes, there can be difficult questions. But so little of the trouble in life comes from the difficult questions about the Bible.  The “you can make it say whatever you want” dodge is written by people who have no idea what the text says. That is merely a dodge for one who wants to ignore the text.

The words of the text stand athwart our desire to create our own god.  We have to play deceitfully with the words to justify our own deceitful desires. A “modern” stance which simply seeks a make-believe Jesus on the basis of a “Spirit” which is remarkably consistently with my personal inclinations at the moment (sometimes this shows up when a Christian embarks on a path of disobedience and justifies it on the basis that he feels “peace about it.”)

The pattern laid out in Scripture, from Adam on, is God speaks and we obey. Our obedience is bound up with both our knowledge of God and our love of God. Paul, in Romans writes of the “obedience of faith.” But, “such a piety of obedience clashes deeply with our Western contemporaries to promote human autonomy as the highest aspiration.” (493). And hence, the desire to subvert the text.

As for the entire book, highly recommended. This is a remarkably comprehensive work on the authority of Scripture at over 1200 pages; Jensen providing one of the many essays. Please do not confuse any limitations in my writing with the very fine work done by Jensen in his essay.

Kierkegaard on the Difference Between the Tragic Hero and Abraham

22 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in Faith, Faith, Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

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 brief observations on the Church and heavenly realities.

11 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Ecclesiology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

One of the critical aspects of the Christian religion is the nature of the Church. There have been many ways this could be understood and explained.

In this short summary taken from an article “Some Classic Views of the Church”in the Ashland Theological Journal, Owen H. Alderfer provides the a summary of the self-understanding of the Eastern Church:

The church is a means whereby the ideas and experiences of the divine realms—the real world—are communicated to men. Indeed, as the future concerns of the Eastern church would show, there must be concerns for truth—orthodoxy, the law of God, and clerical orders, but these are of value only as they contribute to experiencing the relation to Christ and the attainment of immortality through Him.
Such a view of the church resulted in the development of an extensive liturgy as an aid to the attainment of spiritual reality. Congar in his work After Nine Hundred Years shows that the Eastern church across the years has placed great value on “a line of descent from celestial realities to the midst of the sensible world,” so that there developed “a rather sumptuous liturgy, imbued with Holy Mysteries and the idea of ‘Heaven on Earth.’ It was a church essentially sacramental, a church of prayer with less attention to the exigencies of its militant and its itinerant state.”

First there is something important in this understanding of the church; something which is routinely absent in any self-understanding of the average American evangelical congregation: the church is an outpost of another age. It partakes and points forward to the age to come. The church is an outpost of heaven and the worship of the Church resounds in heaven.

The contemporary Church is too mundane; too immanent in all its concerns. The head of Church is ascended in high; we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places; or we are blessed not at all.

If the Church does not express divine worship, it is not the Church of Christ:

1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Col3.1-4 (ESV)

But there is a danger in this self-understanding, particularly with an emphasis on sacrament and liturgy: while typical American worshipper can sing his contemporary songs which make him feel good; the practice of words and forms of precise character and order can become magic. The worship again becomes immanent: but here my behavior wrenches some sort response from heaven.

I believe it was Pelikan who wrote of worship being mystery but not magic.

We are such instantaneous and easy isolators that anything can be wrenched to bad end.

Another concern I have here is the apparent Platonism: where physical forms portray heavenly reality.

I see the physical form we have here being the Word of God, baptism and the Supper. But the ornate forms, the gold and incense were not prescribed for the worship of Christ. The temple forms pre-represented truths about Christ which became moot when Christ appeared.

The power of God is the Spirit of God working in the Word of God. The forms place too great a premium upon human ingenuity and cultural taste.

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

06 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in Faith, Faith, Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

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.

The Right Way to Shake Off a Viper.3 (The Sovereignty of God)

18 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Cotton Mather, Sovereignty, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

1 Acknowledge the Sovereignty of God, and not this only but the righteousness and faithfulness of the Sovereign God in the wrongs which are defamatory invectives of any man may offer you. If dirt be cast upon you, my first advice to you is what was once given to the prophet, Go down to the house of the potter.[1]

Adore the uncontrollable sovereignty of God which may make you a vessel of dishonor on a much worse account than that of being a little reproached by some in whose reproaches perhaps a man is really honored. With a most profound adoration of divine sovereignty, confess that if God single out you to be an object of numberless indignities and malignancies and satisfy himself in beholding what is done to you and by you and under them, there is nothing to be murmurred at[2].

Forever submit, yea, tho’ the dispensations of sovereignty be never so dark, mysterious, unsearchable[3]; and with all possible submission, say: Lord, I am willing to be whatever thou wilt have me to be; do what thou wilt with my name; if thou wilt have it vilified, let it be so. Only let thy Name be glorified.

I may tell you, this resignation will have admirable consequences. It had so when a servant of God oppressed with a world obloquies, thus resigned himself:

If the Lord say, I have no delight in thee, behold, there am I, let Him do to me as seemeth good unto Him!

1 Sam. 15.26[4]

[1] This is a reference to Jeremiah 18, where God instructs Jeremiah to go the house of the potter and see that a potter has complete sovereignty over the vessels he makes from clay:

Jeremiah 18:5–8 (ESV)

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.

Thus, the instruction is to realize that in everything which happens God is ultimately sovereign. While it goes beyond the scope of this footnote, when this writer refers to sovereignty it does not mean fatalism. The way in which human freedom and divine sovereignty relate is a matter with significant discussion within Christian theology.

[2] God is sovereign. God is content with this attack upon you; therefore, there is no logical basis for human complaint.

[3]

William Cowper

 

God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform:

He plants His footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.

2

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill,

He treasures up His bright designs,

And works His sovereign will.

3

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

4

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust Him for His grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

5

His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour:

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower.

6

Blind unbelief is sure to err,

And scan His work in vain;

God is His own Interpreter,

And He will make it plain.

[4] The reference is to David resigning himself to God’s sovereignty at the time that David’s son Absalom had raised a rebellion against David and drove David from Jerusalem.

How the Spirit Gives Testimony to the Word

09 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Herman Bavinck, Scripture, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

But that must not be understood as if we blindly submit to a thing that is unknown to us. No; we are conscious that in Scripture we possess unassailable truth and feel that “the undoubted power of his divine majesty lives and breathes there,” a power by which we are drawn, knowingly and willingly, yet vitally and effectively, to obey him.60 Calvin knew that in this doctrine of the testimony of the Holy Spirit he was not describing some private revelation but the experience of all believers.61 Nor was this testimony of the Holy Spirit isolated from the totality of the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers but integrally united with it. By it alone the entire church originates and exists. The entire application of salvation is a work of the Holy Spirit; and the witness to Scripture is but one of many of his activities in the community of believers. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is not a source of new revelations but establishes believers in relation to the truth of God, which is completely contained in Scripture. It is he who makes faith a sure knowledge that excludes all doubt.

60 J. Calvin, Institutes, I.vii; Commentary on 2 Tim. 3:16. Ed. note: Bavinck again refers to the literature he cites in par. 21 in Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, which is given above in n. 58.

61 Ibid., I.vii.5. Erasmus also affirms that it is especially the Spirit of Christ who, by his secret working, communicates unwavering certainty to the human mind.” Cf. Martin Schulze, Calvins Jenseitschristemtum in seinem Verhältnisse zu den religiösen Schriften des Erasmus (Görlitz: Rudolf Dulfer, 1902), 54.

 Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 583–584.