Category Archives: Theology

Kuyper, Common Grace, 1.21

26 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by in Abraham Kuyper, Image of God, imago dei

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The previous post may be found here.

Chapter 21 continues with the consideration of Adam’s original state and the image of God. The first half of the chapter concerns the question of what is meant by Adam’s original righteousness, holiness, and wisdom. First, Adam was simply created in a right relationship with God: he was thus righteous. Adam did not need to acquire this right standing, he was created in this place.

Since Adam was in a right standing with God, Adam by nature of the arrangement must possess original holiness. If had any sense been unholy, that right relationship could not exist (“Strive for … holiness without which no one will see God.” Heb. 12:14.) Our current holiness is of a different nature in this life, for our holiness is in a mediator. We are counted righteous in Christ. In the case of Adam, he stood in holiness by nature of his having been created without sin. 

This brings Kuyper to Adam’s wisdom. Here Kuyper looks to 1 Corinthians 1:30 where Christ is our righteousness, our holiness, and our wisdom (the final element in  1:30 is redemption, which would be unnecessary for Adam). 

Although not developed, Kuyper’s implicit argument seems to be that if we must received righteousness, holiness, and wisdom from Christ, then the triad must have been present with Adam (and in some manner lost). 

As to wisdom, he emphasizes that we know – we do not merely feel—the truth. When Satan comes to Eve, he comes to her with deceptive reasons. He compares these to pearls on a string which all must be present together: wisdom, righteousness, holiness. 

This leads to the question of the image of God: If these three make up the image of God, then when Adam fell whence the image? But we if make these things the image, then there is man and the image is something added to him (because we are human beings after the fall, even if we lack the original righteousness, holiness, and wisdom). 

The Roman theologian solve this problem by dividing between the image and likeness: Image is the essence of a man; likeness, an addition of righteousness, holiness, and wisdom. The likeness then acted like a bridal upon the image. 

Kuyper does not find that argument persuasive. Rather, he speaks of the essence of Adam as the image of God in that by essence, Adam was able to reflect God. There is also the actual display of those qualities in Adam.

This capacity to reflect is inherent in all that we are as human beings, including in the fact being physical creatures. We are organically body and soul; death is the grotesque sundering of the two. Our body is the means by which the spiritual reality of reflecting God physically displays. 

But our capacities for thought, memory, appreciation of joy and beauty go beyond being a bare animal, “and can be explained only on the basis of the reflection of the things of God in our human being.”

Human beings thus exist for God and God’s glory. From this, Kuyper argues to immorality: Since we exist for God and not ourselves: to display the glory of God, the individual (and not merely the race) must always exist, lest God lose that glory.

He does not argue the point further, but our continued existence after death in an eternal state fulfills that point. Even those who are lost display his glory in God’s patient endurance of their rebellion, in the display of his wrath. And a point made by Bray, God’s love continuing as such even toward the lost in that he refuses to utterly destroy even the Devil.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 32, Stanza 4

18 Thursday Mar 2021

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Grace, Incarnation

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Fourth Stanza

Then Grace, my Lord, wrought in thy heart a vent

Thy soft soft hand to this hard work did go  (20)

And to the milk white Throne of Justice went 

And entered bond that Grace might overflow

Hence did thy Person to my nature tie

And bleed through human veins to satisfy.

Summary: This stanza turns to the means by which the grace of God was actually conveyed. The paradox and wonder of the Christian Gospel is laid out. The grace of God was provided with his own blood (as Paul puts in Acts 20:28, “the church of God which he obtained with his own blood”). In line 19, the blood comes from a vent in the heart of God. In line 24, that blood was shed through “human veins”. And in a further paradox, this pardon and mercy were obtained from the “Throne of Justice.”

Notes: 

First, note the agent of this work:

Then Grace, my Lord, wrought in thy heart a vent

Thy soft soft hand to this hard work did go  

In line 19, the agent is “grace” – as if it were an actor. In line 20, it is God’s own “hand” (his own agency). Placing “grace” as the primary motivation for this action is foregrounded in Ephesians: 

Ephesians 1:2–10 (AV) 

2 Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenlyplaces in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 

7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; 

9 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: 10 That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:

And:

Ephesians 2:1–8 (AV) 

1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. 

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in hiskindness toward us through Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 

Note also the same movement of thought in Ephesians 2 as in Taylor’s poem: I am in rebellion (“Children of disobedience”), but God has shown me grace in Jesus Christ. 

This hard work: Is the death of Christ. The love of God, the grace of God is the motivation; God himself is the actor:

John 10:17–18 (AV)

17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. 18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

This work of mercy is done at the Throne of Justice: God’s mercy is not contrary to God’s justice: In forgiving the rebel, God establishes justice. The penalty of sin is fulfilled by Christ.

This then brings us to the couplet:

Hence did thy Person to my nature tie

And bleed through human veins to satisfy.

Two things are present here: Again we come to a paradox of the Incarnation. God fulfills the demands of the Law which were imposed upon human beings by becoming a human being: Thus, the penalty of death was paid by a human being  on behalf of human beings.

And in so doing, the Son “tied” himself to human nature in the person of Jesus (which is of two natures and one person). 

Justice bleeds mercy. God bleeds as a man. Grace is shown to the rebellious. The innocent gives life for the guilty. God is the agent of fulfilling justice and mercy at the same moment. 

Yahweh Elohim in the Old Testament, though just, holy, zealous for his honor, and full of ire against sin, is also gracious, merciful, eager to forgive, and abounding in steadfast love (Exod. 20:5–6; 34:6–7; Deut. 4:31; Ps. 86:15; etc.). In the New Testament God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the God of all grace and mercy (Luke 6:36; 2 Cor. 1:3; 1 Peter 5:10). There is no antithesis between the Father and Christ. As full of love, merciful, and ready to forgive as Christ is, so is the Father. It is his words that Christ speaks, his works he does. The Father is himself the Savior (σωτηρ; Luke 1:47; 1 Tim. 1:1; Titus 3:4–5), the One who in Christ reconciles the world to himself, not counting its trespasses against it (2 Cor. 5:18–19). Christ, therefore, did not first by his work move the Father to love and grace, for the love of the Father is antecedent and comes to manifestation in Christ, who is himself a gift of God’s love (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; 8:32; 1 John 4:9–10).

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 368.

Musical:

There are two lines which deserve special consideration. First, 

Thy soft soft hand to this hard work did go  

First, the repetition of “soft” slows down the line and creates a contrast with “hard”. The accented words are soft soft hand … hard work … go. We have an extra accent in this line. The emphatic ‘soft’ thus helps to underscore the paradox: 

Next note the  hand … hard work. Hand and hard come on opposite sides of the line pause, which is an element of Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry: it holds the halfs of the line closely together. Next the “r” of “hard”  is picked up in work. 

The opening of the couplet begins with an accented “Hence.” This draws the conclusion from the proceeding passage. The conclusion is not a logical deduction but rather the working out of this work of grace: To fulfill justice, extend mercy, rescue me, My Lord tied his nature to mine.

George Swinnock, The Christian Man’s Calling, 1.5

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

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In this fifth chapter, Swinnock contends that the purpose of our creation was to worship God. Hence, our final cause must be godliness.

I come in the third place to the reasons, Why godliness should be every man’s main and principal business.

God created us for the purpose of godliness: this was the ‘final cause’ for our creation. Although not explicitly set forth here, Aristotle’s fourth cause sets the basis for this argument. Aristotle broke causation down into four elements: For instance, if someone were to carve a statue, the artist, the hammer, and the stone would all contribute to the creation of the final statue: each would be a cause of what was created. But there is a fourth cause, the final cause which is the point of the whole thing. The point of God’s creation is to Glorify God and enjoy him forever. 

First, Because it is God’s chief end in sending man into, and continuing him in, this world.  It is without question, that the work should be for that end to which it is appointed, and for which it is maintained by a sovereign and intelligent workman. 

Analogous principle: a servant has a duty to fulfill that end whichhas been set out by his master. We are not our own master, and we are not at liberty to determine our own actions. 

Where the master hath authority to command, there his end and errand must be chiefly in the servant’s eye. Zeno well defines liberty to be ἐξουσία αὐτοπραγίας [authority over one’s own conduct] a power to act and practise at a man’s own pleasure; opposite to which, servitude must be a determination to act at, and according to, the will of another. 

A servant is, as the orator saith well, nomen officii, a word that speaks one under command; he is not one that moveth of himself, but the master’s living instrument, according to the philosopher, to be used at his pleasure. 

Now he applies the principle: If God has authority over us then our obedience must correspond to his authority:

According to the title or power which one hath over another, such must the service be. Where the right is absolute, the obedience must not be conditional; God having therefore a perfect sovereignty over his creatures, and complete right to all their services, his end and aim, his will and word, must be principally minded by them. Paul gathers this fruit from that root: ‘The God whose I am, and whom I serve,’ Acts 27:23. His subjection is founded on God’s dominion over him.

Having established the principle that a servant owes due obedience to his master, Swinnock returns to the principle of this chapter:

Now the great end to which man is designed by God, is the exercising himself to godliness.

God erected the stately fabric of the great world for man, but he wrought the curious piece of the little world [man] for himself. Of all his visible works he did set man apart for his own worship. 

Here is an important move in the argument. By being made for godliness, human beings were made for something more than the world. The world was made for human beings, but human beings were made for God. Godliness will then entail something more than merely getting by in the world on such terms are convenient or acceptable to us.

The force of this argument is apparent when it is raised in the opposite direction. When a standard for godly living is raised, we can object to it on the ground that it does not seem to create problems or have negative consequences. Such an argument would sound like this, “Why do you think X is wrong, who does it hurt?” Such an argument has implicit it in the proposition that the only final cause for a human being is oneself, and that only final cause for a rule must be ease or immediate good. This is incidentally, similar to the nature of therapy: The purpose of therapy is help you feel good about whatever you are doing. As long as you do not violate the right of consent in another person, you have fulfilled your moral obligations. 

The nature of godliness will not correspond to the therapeutic, consent-based morality. The final cause, the purpose of godliness is not that you should feel good right now. There may be some immediate pleasure or happiness from godliness, but 

godliness will not necessary entail immediate goods. Restraint, humility, kindness, chastity are not considered immediate goods.

The trouble is that our subjective emotional response is not identical to the ends for which God has created human beings. 

Swinnock’s argument that we are made for something more than this world, explains why immediate emotional response may not be a good indicator of highest end. To the extent our judgment is based upon an evaluation of what is best for me right now, my judgment will be impaired. He needs to establish this point early on, because the course of godliness will not always match my feelings or subjective evaluation.

Man, saith one, is the end of all in a semicircle, intimating that all things in the world were made for man, and man was made for God. It is but rational to suppose that if this world was made for us, we must be made for more than this world. 

It is an ingenious observation of Picus Mirandula, God created the earth for beasts to inhabit, the sea for fish, the air for fowls, the heavens for angels and stars, man therefore hath no place to dwell and abide in, but the Lord alone.

The great God, according to his infinite wisdom, hath designed all his creatures to some particular ends, and hath imprinted in their natures an appetite and propensity towards that end, as the point and scope of their being.2

He here gives a great many examples from nature showing a conformity of all things to their purpose.

Yea, the very inanimate and irrational creatures are serviceable to those ends and uses in their several places and stations. Birds build their nests exactly, bringing up their young tenderly. Beasts scramble and scuffle for their fodder, and at last become man’s food. The sun, moon, and stars move regularly in their orbs, and by their light and influence advantage the whole world. The little commonwealth of bees work both industriously and wonderfully for the benefit of mankind. 

Flowers refresh us with their scents; trees with their shade and fruits; fire moveth upward; earth falleth downward, each by nature hastening to its centre; thunder and winds, being exhalations drawn up from the earth by the heavenly bodies, are wholly at, though stubborn and violent creatures, the call and command of the mighty possessor of heaven and earth; and with them, as with besoms, he sweeps and purifieth the air; fish sport up and down in rivers; rivers run along, sometimes seen, sometimes secret, never ceasing or tiring till they empty themselves into the ocean; the mighty sea, like a pot of water, by its ebbing and flowing purgeth itself, boileth and prepareth sustenance for living creatures. 

Through this womb of moisture, this great pond of the world, as Bishop Halltermeth it, men travel in moveable houses, from country to country, transporting and exchanging commodities [ships and trading]. Thus the almighty Creator doth, γεωμετρεῖν, as Plato saith, observe a curious comely order in all his work, and appoints them to some use according to their nature. 

Since all created things are suitable to their ends, it must be so with human beings:

Surely much more is man, the point in which all those lines meet, designed to some noble end, suitable to the excellency of his being; and what can that be, but to worship the glorious and blessed God, and the exercising himself to godliness?

‘The Lord made all things for himself,’ Prov. 16:4. God made things without life and reason to serve him passively and subjectively, by administering occasion to man to admire and adore his Maker; but man was made to worship him actively and affectionately, as sensible of, and affected with, that divine wisdom, power, and goodness which appear in them.

Here Swinnock expressly raises the question of Aristotle’s causes:

As all things are of him as the efficient cause [God is the agent of causation] , so all things must necessarily be for him as the final cause [the end of everything which God makes is God’s glory]. 

But man in an especial manner is predestinated and created for this purpose: Isa. 43:1, 7, ‘Thou art mine; I have created him for my glory; I have formed him, yea, I have made him.’ There is both the author and the end of our creation: the author, ‘I have created him;’ the end, ‘for my glory.’ As man is the most exact piece, on which he bestowed most pains, so from him he cannot but expect most praise. Lactantius accounteth religion the most proper and essential difference between men and beasts.[1] The praises which beasts give God are dumb, their sacrifices are dead; but the sacrifices of men are living, and their praises lively.

Here Swinnock plays on the idea of the natural world as a theater of God’s Glory. The world as theater is certainly well known from Shakespeare. But the matter of a theater for God’s glory goes at least back to Calvin: “Therefore, however fitting it may be for man seriously to turn his eyes to contemplate God’s works, since he has been placed in this most glorious theater to be a spectator of them, it is fitting that he prick up his ears to the Word, the better to profit.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 72.

God did indeed set up the admirable house of the visible world (flooring it with the earth, watering it with the ocean, and ceiling it with the pearly heavens) for his own service and honour; but the payment of this rent[2] is expected from the hands of man, the inhabitant. He was made and put into this house upon this very account, that he might, as God’s steward, gather his rents from other creatures, and pay in to the great landlord his due and deserved praise. 

Note again this understanding of the image of God: We could look to the image in terms of the capacity to reflect God. But Swinnock here emphasizes the natre of image as the reflection (rather than the capacity to reflect):

Man is made as a glass, to represent the perfections that are in God. A glass can receive the beams of the sun into it, and reflect them back again to the sun. The excellencies of God appear abundantly in his works; man is made to be the glass where these beams of divine glory should be united and received, and also from him reflected back to God again.

A return to the final cause argument: If the human being is capable of worship and reflection, then the final cause of the human being must be congruent with that capacity. If we were merely fit for animal-actions, then there would have been no need to have made us as we are:

Oh, how absurd is it to conceive that God should work a body so ‘curiously in the lowest parts of the earth,’ embroider it with nerves, veins, variety and proportion of parts, (miracles enough, saith one, between head and foot to fill a volume,) and then enliven it with a spark of his own fire, a ray of his own light, an angelical and heaven-born soul, and send this picture of his own perfections, this comely creature, into the world, merely to eat, and drink, and sleep, or to buy, and sell, and sow, and reap. Surely the only wise God had a higher end and nobler design in forming and fashioning man with so much care and cost.

The upright figure of man’s body, as the poetical heathen could observe, may mind him [put him in mind to do so] of looking upward to those blessed mansions above; and that fifth muscle in his eye, whereby he differeth also from other creatures, who have only four—one to turn downward, another to hold forwards, a third to turn the eye to the right hand, a fourth to turn the eye to the left; but no unreasonable creature can turn the eye upward as man can—may admonish him of viewing those superior glories, and exercising himself to godliness, it being given him for this purpose, saith the anatomist, that by the help thereof he might behold the heavens.

Conclusion: we were made for the purpose of godliness:

Thus the blessed God, even by sensible demonstrations, speaks his mind and end in making man; but the nature of man’s soul being a spiritual substance, doth more loudly proclaim God’s pleasure, that he would have it conversant about spiritual things. He made it a heavenly spark, that it might mount and ascend to heaven.

Living at the time Swinnock, it was simply known that human beings were made to fit into a particular place in the world. 

A philosopher may get riches, saith Aristotle, but that is not his main business; a Christian may, nay, must follow his particular calling, but that is not his main business, that is not the errand for which he was sent into the world. God made particular callings for men, but he made men for their general callings. 

It was a discreet answer of Anaxagoras Clazamenius to one that asked him why he came into the world; That I might contemplate heaven.[3]

Heaven is my country, and for that is my chiefest care. May not a Christian upon better reason confess that to be the end of his creation, that he might seek heaven, and be serviceable to the Lord of heaven, and say, as Jerome, I am a miserable sinner, and born only to repent. [See, Phil. 3:2, “But our citizenship is in heaven.”]

The Jewish Talmud propounds this question, Why God made man on the Sabbath eve? and gives this answer: That he might presently enter upon the command of sanctifying the Sabbath, and begin his life with the worship of God, which was the chief reason and end why it was given him.

2 The ancient philosophers, and the old divines among the pagans, did portray their gods in wood and stone with musical instruments, not that they believed the gods to be fiddlers, or lovers of music, but to shew that nothing is more agreeable to the nature of God, than to do all in a sweet harmony and proportion.—Plutarch.

[1]

“It follows that I show for what purpose God made man himself. As He contrived the world for the sake of man, so He formed man himself on His own account, as it were a priest of a divine temple, a spectator of His works and of heavenly objects. For he is the only being who, since he is intelligent and capable of reason, is able to understand God, to admire His works, and perceive His energy and power; for on this account he is furnished with judgment, intelligence, and prudence. On this account he alone, beyond the other living creatures, has been made with an upright body and attitude, so that he seems to have been raised up for the contemplation of his Parent. On this account he alone has received language, and a tongue the interpreter of his thought, that he may be able to declare the majesty of his Lord. Lastly, for this cause all things were placed under his control, that he himself might be under the control of God, their Maker and Creator. If God, therefore, designed man to be a worshipper of Himself, and on this account gave him so much honour, that he might rule over all things; it is plainly most just that he should worship Him who bestowed upon him such great gifts, and love man, who is united with us in the participation of the divine justice.”

Lactantius, “A Treatise on the Anger of God,” in Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Lactantius, Venantius, Asterius, Victorinus, Dionysius, Apostolic Teaching and Constitutions, Homily, and Liturgies, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, trans. William Fletcher, vol. 7, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886), 271.

[2] For this same idea, see, “The setting forth of his glory is a rent due to him from all creatures. We are to praise him both in word and deed, in mind, and heart, and practice, which we can never do unless we understand the dignity of his person.” Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 1 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1870), 432.

[3] “When some one asked him if the hills at Lampsacus would ever become sea, he replied, “Yes, it only needs time.” Being asked to what end he had been born, he replied, “To study sun and moon and heavens.” To one who inquired, “You miss the society of the Athenians?” his reply was, “Not I, but they miss mine.”” Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 141. ἐρωτηθείς ποτε εἰς τί γεγέννηται, “εἰς θεωρίαν,” ἔφη, “ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης καὶ οὐρανοῦ.” Diogenes Laertius, “Lives of Eminent Philosophers,” ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 140.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 32, Third Stanza

15 Monday Mar 2021

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Third Stanza 

Eternal love an object mean did smite

Which by the Prince of Darkness was beguiled,

That from this love it ran and swelled with spite. (15)

And in the way of filth was all defiled

Yet must be reconciled, cleansed and begraced

Or from the fruits of God’s first love displaced.

Summary: Eternal love rescued the poet. The poet was unworthy of such love. This rescue and reconciliation were necessary or the poet would have been lost. 

Notes:

Here he continues with the striking metaphor of the violent overthrow brought about by God’s love.  In the first stanza, he spoke of God’s grace being a torment to him as he sought to find words to express this wonder. 

In this stanza he uses a similar metaphor: Eternal love, which is another way to refer to God’s grace, actually strikes him violently as in a war. He could only be stopped by a violent act of God overthrowing his rebellion.

In this way, there is a relationship between this poem and Donne’s sonnet, Batter my heart

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend 

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

I, like an usurp’d town to another due, 

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; 

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, 

But am betroth’d unto your enemy; 

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, 

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The work of God’s love is violent from the perspective of the poet in his state of rebellion. God to redeem the poet and show him love, had to first overcome the utter refusal to be reconcile to God. Note the elements of the poet’s pre-conversion status:

Which by the Prince of Darkness was beguiled,

That from this love it ran and swelled with spite

And in the way of filth was all defiled

The poet had been taken over to the enemies camp: he had been seduced, beguiled by the Prince of Darkness. (For this name for the devil, consider Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress, “The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him.”

The poet did not merely refuse God’s love but actively rejects such love to the point of running away from God. And, he did not merely run away, but he actively hated God. He describes himself as having “swelled with spite.” This is an interesting phrase because it plays off the idiom “swell with pride.”  To swell with pride was a phrase used by other writers, for instance, “See the difference between an heart that is swelled with pride, and that which is ballasted with humility>”

Thomas Watson, The Select Works of the Rev. Thomas Watson, Comprising His Celebrated Body of Divinity, in a Series of Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, and Various Sermons and Treatises (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1855), 510.

But this phrase, “swell with spite” is exceptionally rare. Even an internet search came back with only one use of the phrase. I found nothing in the published books catalogued by Google, and nothing in the writings of the contemporary Puritans. 

The poet describes himself as being stuffed with spite for God. 

And so he was a member of the opposing forces. He sought to evade God at all costs and he hated God. Finally, he was morally corrupt:

And in the way of filth was all defiled

Here again he plays upon a common idiom, “Way of life.”  Here is an apropos example of the common idiom: “Who would lose that which is certain and present, for the hope or fear of that which is to come and doubtful, when they suspect or believe it not fully? No wonder they go on still in the paths that lead down to the chambers of death, and are prejudiced against the ways of life. But why are men such infidels as to future things?” Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 2 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1871), 367.

But rather than being in the “way of life,” the poet was in the way of filth. 

Think again about the picture painted here: A man seething with hatred is running away from a fearsome enemy. In his struggle to escape his enemy, he is plunged into an open sewer, wading through the refuse and vermin, defiled – disgusting. And then his enemy overtakes and smites him in the midst of rebellion and escape. 

But what is the nature of this attack, “Eternal love.” 

Now consider the necessity mentioned in these lines:

Yet must be reconciled, cleansed and begraced

Or from the fruits of God’s first love displaced.

There are two sorts of necessity: One sort is merely conditional necessity. In this instance, if God does not rescue Taylor, Taylor will not be rescued. It is as simple as that. “He must be reconciled” or he will be lost as a conditional matter.

But there is a second sort of necessity, the necessity of compulsion. Taylor speaks of a sort of compulsion in the love of God. 

Kuyper, Common Grace, 1.20

13 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in Abraham Kuyper, Anthropology

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In this chapter, Kuyper considers the issue of original righteousness in Adam when created. To explain man as the image of God, Kuyper uses the language of a mirror (as Lints in Identity and Idolatry). When God created humanity, at the moment of creation, the reflection was there: “In creating man, God makes for himself a mirror in which he wants to see his own image as clearly as the nature of the creaturely makes this possible.” This was not an addition to Adam, but was inherent in Adam.

Here is a critical distinction between the Reformed and Roman positions. The original righteousness of Adam was not a gracious addition to nature.  The importance of this doctrinal distinction was addressed in the previous chapters, here and here. 

Kuyper next contends that the matters of creation can be in a state of maturity: particularly with respect to the formation of Adam. That is, God did not create a baby and then wait 20 years for the baby to be an adult.

Having considered the creation of the body, Kuyper turns to the soul, Adam’s spiritual existence. He makes mention here of the relatively new discipline of psychology as a “soul science” (this volume was originally published in 1902).  He then asks the pointed question, What do we really know about the essence of the soul – beyond what is said in Scripture? We can look at effects, but what is happening there in the soul is a kind of mystery. 

As an aside, it would be difficult to say that we know all that much more than Kuyper. Certainly there have been behavioral observations and untold thousands of college freshman have been duped into disclosing their willingness to lie or their preference for this or that in response to graduate students’ experiments. Yet, what is really happening, what is the essence is still a mystery. 

Thus, as Kuyper says we should be thankful for anything God has told us of ourselves. We know there is a development of sorts. And here he begins to make observations. 

There are elements of our maturation which begin “inside” if you will. There are native abilities, dispositions, and such which mature as the child interacts with his environment and matures. Now Adam’s body was matured, but what of his soul? Was he born with a fully matured soul? To make sense of what we are told of Adam, we must conclude that he a fully matured soul.

This then raises an issue. While I could understand a fully matured body – because the growth of a body comes from the body itself; a fully matured soul is more difficult to understand, because the maturity of the soul comes about through interaction with the environment. Again, Adam must have been fully matured in his intellectual and emotional capacity. 

Then finally what of his religious capacity—and this brings us to the question of original righteousness from a different direction. And here we must contend he was in a state of maturity and holiness. But this is not to say that he was incapable of further growth or maturation. Just as an old scholar can still learn, despite having obtained to righteousness, even so Adam was able to further mature.

And so when we speak of original righteousness, we mean that he not defect of morality nor inclination away from the law of God. He was no double-minded but rather of full accord with his position as a creature before, created for God’s glory, to display God as in a mirror. This is what is meant by “original righteousness.”

“Thus in paradise there was spiritual perfection, though not yet the final consummation, in the three spheres of intellect, morality, and religious life.”

Edward Taylor, Meditation 31, Begraced by Glory.5

12 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Grace

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Stanza 5:

What e’re we want, we cannot cry for, nay, (25)

If that we could, we could not have it thus. 

The angels can’t devise, nor yet convey

Help in their gold pipes from God to us.

But thou my Lord (heart leap for joy and sing)

Hast done the deed: and’t makes the heavens ring. (30)

Summary: The poet undertakes an interesting distance from himself throughout this poem. First, he has been operating from an interesting psychological point of view because he sees himself addicted helpless to sin and simultaneously sees himself from the outside as some sort of loathsome beast. He is an addict who cannot put down the needle and who in the same moment wretches for the vile creature he has become. 

In this stanza the looks to find some relief, but knows it is impossible:

We e’re want [that is, whatever it is we lack] we cannot cry for.

There is something we need but there is no way to fulfill this need: we cannot even cry for it.

We cannot look to angels, because we need is from God, and angels cannot convey this to us. Only God himself can do so – and has done so. This unwarranted and unobtained benefit is a cause for joy.

Notes:

We cannot cry: Crying out in distress is the refrain of the book of Judges. The people of Israel repeatedly turn to idolatry. In response, God leaves them to their unfriendly neighbors. The Israelites then cry out to God, who in turn says them. In the beginning of chapter 2 (the book is not chronological), the Angel of the Lord “went up from Gilgal to Bochim.” Bochim is a Hebrew word which means “weeping.”  The Angel tells the people that since they have refused to keep their covenant with God, God will no longer hear their cries and defend them. 

Later in Judges 10:14, God again confronts the people who have turned from him. “God and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress.”

Taylor seems to have an illusion to these passages: I am so deeply embedded in sin that I cannot cry for help. In particular, the end of line 26 underscores this point: our cry – were able to make such a cry would be of no use, “we cannot have it thus.”

The Angels cannot convey: Even though angels are given as “ministering spirits set out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Heb. 1:14) there are limits on the help they can convey. 

The degree help needed by Taylor in his state of sin exceeds the assistance of angels. The lack of the human being in the state of sin exceeds some external aid. The language used to describe the condition of sin speaks to an irremediable condition.  

The angels are said to have conveyed the law (Heb. 2:2, “the message declared by angels”). This seems to put something into human hands, but “by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

The “golden pipes” of the angels in end only could convey knowledge of guilt.

But thou my Lord … hast done the deed: This speaks to the work of Jesus who destroyed sin and death, and him who had the power of death (Heb. 2:14). 

 Heart leap for joy and sing … “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I will say rejoice.” (Phil. 4:4)

And’t makes the heavens ring: “Let all God’s angels worship him.” Heb. 1:6. 

Psalms 118:23-24

This is the Lord’s doing

It is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day the Lord has made

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Musical

What e’re we want, we cannot cry for, nay

If that we could, we could not have it thus.

These lines have an interesting rhetorical structure: A conditional, followed by an unconditional rejection: Whatever it is we need, we cannot have it. And even if we could have it, we cannot. The structure of the clauses is held together by the repetition of the word “we”: we want, we cannot cry, we could, we could. 

This is an example of anaphora: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/A/anaphora.htm

Thomas Adams, Plain Dealing

03 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Preaching, Sanctification, Sanctifictation, Thomas Adams, Thomas Adams

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(A friend of the poet John Donne, and preacher in early 17th England. He had a remarkable way with a phrase. Even if one did not care for his theology, his words of words would win a hearing)

Thomas Adams

Plain Dealing 

The sermon concerns the interactions between Jacob and Esau. In this sermon Adams discusses that relationship and does a great deal to defend Jacob’s actions with his brother. 

All that can be said is this, Esau preferred his belly before his birthright; Jacob his birthright before his belly. The one sold spiritual things for temporal; the other with temporal bought spiritual. (23)

As Jacob’s deception, he notes, “Chrysostom thus mitigates it: that he did not deceive with a mind to hurt, but only with respect to the promise of God.” (24)

He does spend quite a bit time working through the possible understandings and moral measurements of Jacob’s deception. 

But what is most interesting are the observations he makes of the Christian life, using Jacob and Esau as an illustration. 

He moves into this sense by means of some help from Origen, who took the “mystical sense” of the story to be “two combatants to be within us.” (21)

But in men called and justified by the blood of Christ, yet in a militant state, there is a necessity of this combat. No strife, no Christian….Disturbance is a sign of sanctification; there is no grace where there is all peace. No sooner is the new man formed in us but suddenly begins this quarrel. The remaining corruption will fight with grace, and too often prevail against it. Indeed it hath lost the dominion, but not the opposition; the sovereignty, not the subtlety; it will dwell in us, though it cannot reign.  (21)

But God is often better with us than we would, and with his preventing grace stops the precipitation of erring nature. So sweet is the ordination of the divine providence, that we shall not do what we would, but what we ought; and by deceiving us us, turns our purposed evil into eventual good. (23)

The church esteems heaven her home, this world but a tent, a tent which we all must leave, build we as high as Babel, as strong as Babylon. When we have fortified, combined, feasted, death comes with a voider, and takes away all….He that hath seen heaven with the eye of faith, through the glass of Scripture, slips off his coat with Joseph, and springs away. They that live thrice our age, yet dwelt in tents as pilgrims that did not own this world. The shortness and weakness of our day strengthens our reasons to vilipend it. The world is the field, thy body the tent, heaven thy freehold. The world is full of troubles; winds of persecutions, storms of menaces, cold of uncharitableness, heat of malice, exhalations of prodigious terrors, will annoy thee. Love it not. (27)

When the heart is a good secretary, the tongue is a good pen; but when the heart is a hollow bell, the tongue is a loud and lewd clapper. (29)

Edward Taylor, The Daintiest Draft.1

19 Saturday Dec 2020

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Meditation 30, First Series

2 Cor. 5:17

This poem contains an interesting ambiguity in the way in the precise focus of poem is in places difficult to find. The overall thrust of the poem is a prayer that the Lord would repair the ruined palace of the human being. It is a prayer that the Lord would make the poet into something new

Lord, make me thy new creature. (line 45). Which comes from the text for the meditation, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.” 2 Cor. 5:17.

The “palace” in need of repair is the human being. The ambiguity comes about by the unclear focus as to whether it is the poet or Christ who is immediately in view. To call the poet himself “the stateliest palace angels e’er did view” (3) seems wrong. That would necessarily be Christ, himself.  

It would also be appropriate to write that the palace had been spoiled by an enemy. In Isaiah 52:14, the prophet writes that “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of man.”

In the second stanza, the poet writes

Thou wast more glorious than glory’s wealth. (8)

Again, this would be more appropriately addressed to Christ, than to read this as the poet writing thus of himself fin the second person. 

But then in line 26, Taylor writes

My Lord, repair thy palace. 

And the remainder of the poem unambiguously reckons the poet to be the palace to be repaired, with the prayer to be made a new creature being the sum of that prayer. The deliberate use of the word “palace” then brings us back to the first stanza and the reference to “the stateliest palace”. It is possible the move referenes to two separate palaces. 

But I suspect that Taylor is doing something else. The palace is the image of God which is the purpose and the created nature of each human being (“the image of thyself”). Jesus is the perfect representation of that image; human beings who were created to accurately reflect that image are now spoiled and need to be remade to display that image.

The ambiguity which runs in this poem in his moving between apparent references to Christ and then to the poet can be sorted by using Colossians 3:10 as a key:

And we have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. 

In Colossians 1:16 Paul identifies the creator as Christ, “For by him all things were created.” And in verse 15, Paul identified Christ as “the image of the invisible God.” 

The ambiguity in the poem as to the reference of the palace being renewed lies in the identification of the Christian with Christ. I think that Taylor is playing off of this identification and purposefully creating an ambiguity of a dual reference. This is inherent in text for the poem. Consider:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.

To be “in Christ” is to be the “new creature”. What appertains to Christ becomes in a manner impressed upon the creature in Christ. This identification of the individual believer with Christ lies at the heart of this poem. 

The first stanza sets up the problem:

The daintiest draft thy pencil ever drew

The finest vessel, Lord, thy fingers framed

The stateliest palace angels e’er did view

Under thy hatch betwixt decks here contained

Broke, marred, spoiled, undone, defiled doth lie

In rubbish ruined by thine enemy. 

It begins with a series of three parallel descriptions of the object of the poem: “The daintiest draft”, “the finest vessel,” “the stateliest palace.” Dainty no longer carries the same connotation as it did for Taylor, but the meaning is apparent by looking at the parallel construction: This is the finest which could be. To call a human being a “draft” (a drawing) is an interesting play on the concept of “image.”

A vessel and palace likewise make sense as that bears or displays something greater. 

As we have previously considered, the reference is ambiguous in that it appears to refer to Christ (who would be the greatest of all examples) and yet the reference in the end will be to Taylor and his prayer to be remade.

The fourth line creates a nearly impossible combination of metaphors: this draft, vessel, palace, is now stowed between the decks of a ship. A draft could easily fit below deck, but to put a ship or even more strangely a palace below deck is impossible. Perhaps the use of the word “vessel” in line 2 suggested a return to a ship in line 4.

This for Taylor must have been a vivid image, when we realize that he had taken a ship from England to New England in the 17th century, which would have been a couple of months in a cramped tiny ship in the middle of the Atlantic. That many things must be been spoiled below decks on these trips in the salt water and bilge I take for granted. 

And it is there in the depths of the vessel, churning on the sea, something of surpassing value. An enemy has thrown it into the bilge where is now ruined and sloshing in the half light.

a bilge pump

This is an apt image for the fallen human race; and for the head of the redeemed race, the Second Adam Christ as he was struck down at the cross. 

And before leaving this stanza we should know the alliteration:

The daintiest draft thy pencil ever drew

The finest vessel, Lord, thy fingers framed

The stateliest palace angels e’er did view

Under thy hatch betwixt decks here contained

Broke, marred, spoiled, undone, defiled doth lie

In rubbish ruined by thine enemy. 

Kuyper, Common Grace.19 (Original Righteousness Continued)

01 Tuesday Dec 2020

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The previous post in this series may be found here.

Kuyper continues on with the issue of original righteousness in Adam: Was righteousness a supernatural addition to human nature? In this chapter Kuyper examines the issue from a different direction: Whence disordered or rebellious desire in human beings?

He presents the contrast between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed understanding of the question. 

The Roman Catholic view (he cites to Bellarmine) explains it thus: The mater which makes up human nature is inherently subject to this defect. To create a human being is to create a being capable of defecting and such defection is an unavoidable consequence of making human beings from matter:

Bellarmine, the skillful Roman Catholic polemicist, who has argued the case for the Roman Catholic side of this doctrine most thoroughly, returns time and again to the point that the temptation to sin lies in the makeup of our nature. Thus he says among other things, “The desire of the flesh is at present a punishment for sin, but for man in his natural state this condition would undoubtedly have been natural, not as a given positive aspect of his nature, but as a deficiency, yes, even as a certain sickness of his nature, that flowed from the constitution of matter.”

If this is so, then there is something matter which is inherently contrary to God. If God could have created a human without this defect inherent in matter, then God could have/should have done so. That God did not create such a human being argues that God could not make such a being and still use matter. There thus must be something ultimately incorrigible in matter.

So, the “fountain of sin” lies in the very fact that we are human beings: which is a deduction Kuyper makes from Bellarmine’s understanding of human nature. Since this “fountain” bubbles up as its own accord, a sinful desire is not sinful. It only become sinful when the will consents to the desire. There must be a second move to turn a desire for sin into a sinful desire. 

He makes the observation that the Reformed and Roman Catholic positions differ not on the doctrine of the Trinity but on the doctrine of humanity. Our anthropologies differ: this is the place where the two diverge. Sin does not have its origin in something inherent in the physical body and the soul, but rather has its source in the spiritual (not the physical). Satan a pure spirt without body introduced humanity to sin. 

Human beings were created with original righteousness, not as a supernatural addition but as something inherent in humanity – but that this original righteousness exists in our dependence – not independence from God. 

Kuyper then draws out an implication from this fact of dependence: Human beings were not created with humanity as the end, the purpose of humanity. Human beings were created for God and God’s purposes. Human beings were specifically created to glorify God; God creates us for His glory. 

There is another corollary which Kuyper draws: If human beings have some purpose other than God’s glory, if there is some purpose, some end which we should/may achieve other than God’s glory, then God becomes an instrument to help us achieve that end. God becomes a tool in our effort to achieve our glory. 

God created Adam in such a way, with excellency and glory, because such an Adam was needful for God’s aim. God did not need Adam, but it did please God to create Adam and to work through Adam and to so sustain Adam by grace. 

Kuyper, Common Grace 1.18 (The Nature of Original Righteousness)

22 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in Abraham Kuyper, Creation, Original Sin

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In the 18th chapter, Kuyper analyzes the nature of Adam’s original righteousness. He first considers the Roman Catholic position: In Adam’s pre-Fall state, he consisted of body and spirit, horse and rider. The body, the horse, was possessed by original nature of concupiscence: desire was in man by God’s creation:

This tendency, called concupiscence, was not itself sin, but could easily become the occasion and fuel for sin. (But cf. Rom. 7:8; Col. 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:5, Auth. Ver.). Man, then, as he was originally constituted, was by nature without positive holiness, but also without sin, though burdened with a tendency which might easily result in sin.

L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 209. Thus, to keep man in order God gave the spirit as a rider for the horse. But since this would easily let men fail, God also bestowed a supernatural grace upon man of righteousness. As Charles Hodge explains:

According to their theory, God created man soul and body. These two constituents of his nature are naturally in conflict. To preserve the harmony between them, and the due subjection of the flesh to the spirit, God gave man the supernatural gift of original righteousness. It was this gift that man lost by his fall; so that since the apostasy he is in the state in which Adam was before he was invested with this supernatural endowment. 

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 103. Thus, freedom of choice remained in humanity after the Fall:

But the capacity to choose by one’s free will nevertheless continued in the sinful part of the human spirit, and today free will remains the starting point of moving toward spiritual perfection, if not in the Pelagian sense then at least in the manner of the semi-Pelagians.

Thus, the conflict within the human being is a conflict between desire and reason; and it was by the addition of a supernatural grace that Adam was in a state of original righteousness. 

The Reformed view differs at this point. Original righteousness was part of the original nature of humanity; it was not added by supernatural power. The fall of the Fall was not the loss of supernatural grace but rather corruption. He cites to Lord’s Day question 7 of the Heidelberg Catechism, “hence our nature is become so corrupt.” 

Kuyper insists that it was not the loss of essence but the corruption of nature, the two terms being distinguished:

Essence and nature, so they maintained, must be distinguished. The essence is the abiding, while nature is the changeable, such that sin did change the functioning of the nature of man, but the essence of man has remained what it was, and will remain so, even if it descends forever into the place of damnation. In Satan as well, the essence of the angel remains unchangeably the same; only his nature has, with regard to its function, changed completely into its opposite. The same is equally true of mankind.

As he works through the warrants for these positions, Kuyper first notes that the Roman view implies that man was defective in that he needed an additional to be holy. The second argument is that man in and of himself was defective in this respect then some of a different kind must be added to keep him in line; as if an angel were given to protect him. 

There is an interesting implication of this distinction: is a desire toward something in and of itself. In Roman Catholicism a desire without acquiescence of the will is not sinful – because the capacity for such desire is inherent in the human being. As the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia explains:

From the explanation given, it is plain that the opposition between appetite and reason is natural in man, and that, though it be an imperfection, it is not a corruption of human nature. Nor have the inordinate desires (actual concupiscence) or the proneness to them (habitual concupiscence) the nature of sin; for sin, being the free and deliberate transgression of the law of God, can be only in the rational will; though it be true that they are temptations to sin, becoming the stronger and the more frequent the oftener they have been indulged.  

Bavinck explains the development of this position in Scholatisticism:

Scholasticism, furthermore, began gradually to distinguish between primo-primi, secundo-primi, and plane deliberati desires, that is, those thoughts and desires that arise in us spontaneously before any consent of the will and are not at all sinful; those against which the will has offered resistance but by which it has been overpowered and which are venial sins; and those to which the will has consciously and fully consented and which are mortal sins. Added to this was the fact that the conception of original sin was becoming ever weaker and original sin itself viewed as wholly eradicated by baptism. What remained, concupiscence, was itself not sinful but only a “possible incentive to sin.” Rome, accordingly, decreed that the guilt and pollution of original sin was totally removed by baptism, that though concupiscence remained, it does not injure those who do not consent to it and can only be called sin “because it is of sin, and inclines to sin.”

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 142–143. But in Reformed doctrine, the desire itself is sinful; such sinful desires are culpable before God:

The idea that original righteousness was supernaturally added to man’s natural constitution, and that its loss did not detract from human nature, is an un-Scriptural idea, as was pointed out in our discussion of the image of God in man. According to the Bible concupiscence is sin, real sin, and the root of many sinful actions. 

L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 236. This had an interesting playout in the Reformed world with the Revoice Conference. You can read about it here.