Category Archives: Theology

Is knowledge of God equally available to all, through the use of reason?

24 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by in Theology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

In his Systematic Theology, Douglas Kelley makes an interesting observation concerning our knowledge of God. In his explain of how knowledge of God is made particular, within the context of the Church, Kelley draws the contrast with the Enlightenment belief that all knowledge is available universally, ahistorically through principles of reason:

The philosophy of the Enlightenment has had an aversion to ‘particularlity’, preferring instead supposedly universal ideas drawn by rootless, individual thinkers from concepts that the human spirit extracts from self, from nature and from history (in varying combinations)….That God should be known by a particular revelation in a particular community of faith was abhorrent to the, and in many respects their hostility to the particularlity of the revelation of God’s truth has constituted the deep, underlying fault-line dividing Western Culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.

Douglas Kelly, Systematic Theology: The God Who Is (Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications Ltd, 2008), 1:435.

The idea that knowledge of God (or indeed any related questions) should be knowable beginning from any particular position makes inherent sense to us post-Enlightenment souls. My-self and my reason are sufficient to know and to draw conclusions about God and the “meaning of life”.

By the way, this is not the profound, learned observation we may think it to be. I recall my brother as a child positing this argument, Why does anybody else think they know more about God than me? My opinion is as good anyone else.

This is the reason that another’s conclusions about God can be so unsetting to us: If I meet a man who holds to a different religion, it causes me to question my own. Since both of us are equally positioned to draw proper conclusions, then I must then question the rationality of my position. The only tenable conclusions will ultimately be either no-one knows or everyone knows. There is either no knowledge (and those who think they possess such knowledge are deluded), or everyone knows: in which case the knowledge of very low value.

But such solutions are untenable to most people. They fail on two grounds. Most importantly, they fail because they are unsatisfying. No one knows what life is bothers most people too much. Fortunately, a drug and entertainment culture are sufficient to keep most people distracted, amused to death.

Such solutions also fail because they offend our vanity. We desire to be better situated than others: to be smarter, more in the know, et cetera.

These two problems lead to various “solutions” such agnosticism as a badge of intellectual honesty and virtue or esoteric knowledge. We each have our taste and hence our solution.

But consider against Kelly’s observation: this knee-jerk belief, this Enlightenment doctrine is nothing than a bald assertion. How could one, by reason, possibly know that sufficient knowledge of God must be universally accessible to anyone who takes the time to think? Simple observation does not lead to such a conclusion. There are no universal conclusions which are reached by all. Thus, one posits reason to one’s conclusions: and a lack of reason must inform those who disagree. The agnostic must think the believer of what-ever religion lacking in reason; a quality which the agnostic (and those of his sort) alone possess. And thus, reason becomes a sort of revelation which only a certain sort of person can possess. We are back to particularlity.

Kelly asserts the Christian position that God can only be known on the terms and in the way determined by God:

However, if one wants to meet with the real God, it has to be on his terms. He will be met with in the community of faith which He established, and which He maintains personally by His Word and Spirit; a community which, in turn, bases its life and teaching upon the divinely revealed, particular word in a community that lives by the Spirit.

One can rejects this proposition (and many do). But it is not less intellectually honest to contend that God can only be known in a particular way than to argue that God can be sufficiently known by a-historical reason independent of place or person. The Enlightenment doctrine is an article of bad, blind faith which cannot reasonably assert general warrant for itself; beyond the number of persons who accept the proposition. Reason is really a kind of revelation; and the agnostic, atheistic position, or universalist position (those are the essential options), are particular communities which lay claim to the truth unknown to others.

We are all arguing from a particular community.

The Christian position is that the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to make the people of God, and thus God is only known in that space. (To be clear here, Kelly – and I – are Protestant Christians. And thus, I am not contending that God can only be known in the context of churches in commune with the Bishop of Rome, for instance. There is a potential ambiguity here on the question of “church”.)

This creates a coherent understanding of the knowledge of God, in that the Word of God acts to make us known before God. Kelly draws this point out further. If God could be found outside of the believing community, this would contradict the nature of God. “Otherwise, God could be found impersonally [the church requires personal relationship to disclose the personal God] and generally, rather than personally and particularly.”

It not only permits us to know God, it causes us to be known to God:

Hebrews 4:12–13 (ESV)

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

The Word of God makes God known to us; while it makes us known to God. It causes to be known.

Very often Christians use this passage in such a way that the knowing is really only subjective: the words of Scripture cause me to better understand my-self. The Word of God thus acts like a sort of flashlight to help me look around my own psyche.

But the text is claiming something different: I am not being exposed to myself; I am being exposed to God: “Even to come into a service where believers are worshipping the Triune God strips away pretense, causing one to be frightening unveiled before the Holy One.” 436.

This act of coming to know that I am exposed to God (because nothing is really hidden from God), is too much for many. “For such reasons, multitudes tragically prefer false gods who have been fabricated by other sinners, so as to keep themselves from being embarrassed by an honest exposure of who they really are, and potentially humbled and changed before the true God.” (436)

But to be humbled is to be freed; to be judged by this exposure is to be forgiven. For God is merciful and ready to dismiss all charges against us. He exposes like a surgeon cleaning a wound to end an infection. He kills that which kills us so that we be alive to God in Christ.

 

 

Edward Polhill, A View of Some Divine Truths, 1.2 (God’s self-disclosure)

17 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Edward Polhill, Image of God, imago dei, Theology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

This is an abridgment with notes on Edward Polhill’s first chapter of A View of Some Divine Truths. The previous notes on this chapter may be found here

God’s self-existence and self-sufficiency in all things means that God has no need of his creation. That such a great being would invade his own privacy, as one theologian one-time expressed it is a matter of “supereffluent goodness:

That such an infinite All-sufficient One should manifest himself, must needs be an act of admirable supereffluent goodness, such as indeed could not be done without stooping down below his own infinity, that he might gratify our weakness.

We have no words which could reach or describe God, who is so far above our ability and our reason. And yet God has disclosed himself to us in the Scripture and in the Incarnation:

His name is above every name; nevertheless, he humbles himself to appear to our minds in a scripture image; nay, to our very senses in the body of nature, that we might clasp the arms of faith and love about the holy beams, and in their light and warmth ascend up to their great Original, the Father of lights and mercies.

God hath manifested himself many ways.

He set up the material world, that he, though an invisible spirit, might render himself visible therein: all the hosts of creatures wear his colours.

The evidence of God’s self-disclosure in nature is a matter admitted in various ways by pagans and philosophers. And what is it that they have observed:

Almighty power hath printed itself upon the world, nay, upon every little particle of it: all the creatures came out of nothing, and between that and being is a very vast gulf.

First, creation shows infinite power:

It was an infinite power, which filled it up and fetched over the creatures into being; it was an Almighty word, which made the creatures at an infinite distance hear and rise up out of nothing. The old axiom, ex nihilo nihil fit, is nature’s limit and a true measure of finite powers; but when, as in the creation, nature overflows the banks, when nullity itself springs up and runs over into a world, we are sure that the moving power was an infinite one.

Second, creation displays God’s infinite wisdom:

And as infinite power appears in the being of the creatures, so doth infinite wisdom in their orders and harmonies. The curious ideas and congruities, which before were latent in the Divine breast, are limned out upon outward and sensible things, standing in delicate order and proportion before our eyes. The world is a system of contraries made up into one body, in which disagreeing natures conspire together for the common good: each creature keeps its station, and all the parts of nature hang one upon another in a sweet confederacy.

Here Polhill makes note of natural agency:

Mere natural agents operate towards their ends, as if they were masters of reason, and hit their proper mark, as if they had a providence within them. Such things as these teach us to conclude with Zeno, that λόγος, reason, is the great artist which made all; and to break out with the Psalmist, O Lord, how manifold are thy works? in wisdom hast thou made them all.

Creation also shows God’s goodness, which is a thing even pagans could observe:

And as the two former attributes show forth themselves in the creatures, so also doth infinite goodness: all the drops and measures of goodness in the creature lead us to that infinite goodness which is the fountain and spring of all. Pherecydes the philosopher, said, that Jupiter first transformed himself into love, and then made the world; he, who is essential love, so framed it, that goodness appears every where: it shines in the sun, breathes in the air, flows in the sea, and springs in the earth; it is reason in men, sense in brutes, life in plants, and more than mere being in the least particles of matter.

There is a belief held by the Manichees – and if you would like a modern version think about the “force” in Star Wars in there are two equally powerful principles – that the world is ruled by two equally power gods. Polhill will have none of this and points goodness of God displayed in creation:

The Manichees, who would have had their name from pouring out of manna, did brook their true name from mania, that is, madness, in denying so excellent a world to be from the good God. The light in their eyes, breath in their nostrils, bread in their mouths, and all the good creatures round about them, were pregnant refutations of their senseless heresy: the prints of goodness everywhere extant in nature, shew the good hand which framed all.

And the capstone of creation: the creation of man in the image of God:

In the making of man in his original integrity, there was yet a greater manifestation. In other creatures there were the footsteps of God, but in man there was his image; a natural image in the very make of his soul, in the essential faculties of reason and will, upon which were derived more noble and divine prints of a Deity than upon all the world besides.

The moral uprightness of original man could see this display of God’s glory in all things:

And in that natural image there was seated a moral one, standing in that perfect knowledge and righteousness, in which more of the beauty and glory of God did shine forth, than in the very essence of the soul itself. His mind was a pure lamp of knowledge, without any mists or dark shades about it, his will a mirror of sanctity and rectitude without any spot in it; and, as an accession to the two former images, there was an image of God’s sovereignty in him, he was made Lord over the brutal world; without, the beasts were in perfect subjection to him: and within, the affections. Now to such an excellent creature, in his primitive glory, with a reason in its just ἀκμὴor full stature, the world was a very rare spectacle; the stamps and signatures upon the creatures looked very fresh to his pure paradisical eyes: from within and from without he was filled with illustrious rays of a Deity: he saw God everywhere: within, in the frame and divine furniture of his soul, and without, in the creatures and the impresses of goodness on them: he heard God everywhere; in his own breast in the voice of a clear unveiled reason, and abroad in the high language and dialect of nature. All was in splendour; the world shone as an outward temple, and his heart was in lustre like an oracle or inward sanctuary; everything in both spake to God’s honour. Such an excellent appearance as this was worthy of a Sabbath to celebrate the praises of the Creator in.

Why then do we not see God’s glory so plainly? What has made it difficult to see this expression of God:

But, alas! sin soon entered, and cast a vail upon this manifestation; on the world there fell a curse, which pressed it into groans and travailing pains of vanity; the earth had its thistles, the heavens their spots and malignant influences, all was out of tune, and jarring into confusion.

At this point, Polhill takes up a very contested issue: in what way precisely did the Fall effect man:

In man all the images of God more or less suffered; the orient reason was miserably clouded, the holy rectitude utterly lost: without, the beasts turned rebels; and within, the affections.

Polhill lists irrationality, behavior and affection: the mind, the heart and the hands were all disordered. At point, God then turned to a new means of disclosing himself to man. If man could not accurately read God’s goodness in creation, God would give a new disclosure, first in the law; then in Christ. In this section of the essay, Polhill is generally tracking the argument of the first five chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans: God was manifest in creation but human beings became disordered in their reason, affections and behavior. Paul then turns to the law as evidence of God’s working and of Christ who redeemed.

First, God makes a promise of the redemption

Nevertheless God, who is unwearied in goodness, would further manifest himself. Promises of the Messiah, and of grace in him, brake forth unto lapsed man; and as appendants thereof, there came forth sacrifices and other types to be figures of heavenly things, and a kind of Astrolabe to the pious Jews, that by earthly things they might ascend unto celestial.

This would be the first evangel in Genesis 3:15:

Genesis 3:15 (NASB95)

15            And I will put enmity

Between you and the woman,

And between your seed and her seed;

He shall bruise you on the head,

And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

The sacrifices and other types were being developed in even before Moses and the law; such as Abraham offering Isaac.  Next comes the law of Moses

Also the moral law was given forth by God: the spiritual tables being broken, material ones were made; holiness and righteousness being by the fall driven out of their proper place, the heart of man, were set forth in letters and words in the decalogue.

Notice how he explains the works of the law; it works in a way to undo the effects of the Fall in disordering reason, affections and actions. First, it restore reason:

This was so glorious a manifestation, that the Rabbins say that mountains of sense hang upon every iota of it. The Psalmist, in the 19th Psalm, having set forth how the sun and heavens shew forth God’s glory, raises up his discourse to the perfect law, which, as it enlightens the inward man

It directs actions:

, is a brighter luminary than the sun which shines to sense; and, as it comprises all duties within itself, is a nobler circle in morality than the heavens, which environ all other bodies, are in nature.

Then it restores right affection, being designed to bring about love of God and man:

“The commandment,” saith the Psalmist, “is exceeding broad,” (Ps. 119:96🙂 it is an ocean of sanctity and equity, such as human reason, the soul and measure of civil laws, cannot search to the bottom. Love to God and our neighbour is the centre of it; and as many right lines as may be drawn thither, so many are the duties of it. Whatsoever it be that makes up the just posture of man towards his Maker or fellow-creatures, is required therein.

It surpasses all human laws:

Human laws are δίκαια κινούμενα, moveable orders, such as turn about with time; but the moral law is by its intrinsical rectitude so immortalized, that, as long as God is God, and man, it cannot be altered.

Then the final revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth:

After all these manifestations, God revealed himself to the world in and by Jesus Christ; this is the last and greatest appearance of all.

Jesus was able to display God in a way that no mere creature could:

In the inferior creatures there is a footstep of God, but not his image; in man there is his image, but a finite, a created one: but Jesus Christ is the infinite uncreated image of God. The nearer any creature doth in its perfections approach to God, the more it reveals him; life shews forth more of him than mere being, sense than life, reason than all the rest: but, oh! what a spectacle hath faith, when a human nature shall be taken into the person of God, when the fulness of the Godhead shall dwell in a creature hypostatically!

This display of God in the Incarnation was to display the Creator and show his power, wisdom and goodness; just as the original creation had displayed God before Man’s sin marred his ability to see. Moreover, this display of God encompasses the written revelation of God by being a living word:

Here the eternal word which framed the world was made flesh; the infinite wisdom which lighted up reason in man assumed a humanity; never was God so in man, never was man so united to God, as in this wonderful dispensation; more glory breaks forth from hence, than from all the creation. We have here the centre of the promises, the substance of the types and shadows, the complement of the moral law, and holiness and righteousness, not in letters and syllables, but living, breathing, walking, practically exemplified in the human nature of Jesus Christ.

 

God’s Happiness is not Dependent Upon the Creation

05 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by in Edward Polhill, Theology, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

God has no need of us:

GOD All-sufficient must needs be his own happiness;

By happiness, the 17thcentury Puritan Edward Polhill means more than a transitory emotional state. He means something like a supreme contentment; the need of nothing else. We as creatures are in constant need of another. We need air and space and time; we need food and water; shelter and sleep; company and care. But God’s happiness is complete in himself. Polhill here details the aspects of God’s self-sufficiency:

First

he hath his being from himself,

We need God to sustain our existence. Matter has nothing in itself to make itself continue to exist. There is nothing in the rock that keeps the rock in existence. The fact that we seek rocks continue in existence blinds us to this reality. But God has no need of another to come into being and then continue to be.

Second, God needs nothing to save him from ennui:

and his happiness is no other than his being radiant with all excellencies, and by intellectual and amatorious reflexions, turning back into the fruition of itself.

His excellencies are such as would delight his love. Moreover, he has no need for another to avoid being bored:

His understanding hath prospect enough in his own infinite perfections: his will hath rest enough in his own infinite goodness;

His being is from himself, his thoughts and affections have an infinite view to maintain a constant delight.

Negatively, God has no need of anything else, when God has God:

he needed not the pleasure of a world, who hath an eternal Son in his bosom to joy in, nor the breath of angels or men who hath an eternal Spirit of his own; he is the Great All, comprising all within himself:

If God were delighted with any other than God, that other being would be greater and would be God. By definition, God must be content with God:

nay, unless he were so, he could not be God.

At this point, Polhill makes a list of all things which God would not suffer if he never did create.

Glory:

Had he let out no beams of his glory, or made no intelligent creatures to gather up and return them back to himself, his happiness would have suffered no eclipse or diminution at all, his power would have been the same, if it had folded up all the possible worlds within its own arms, and poured forth never an one into being to be a monument of itself.

Wisdom:

His wisdom the same, if it had kept in all the orders and infinite harmonies lying in its bosom, and set forth no such series and curious contexture of things as now are before our eyes.

Goodness:

His goodness might have kept an eternal Sabbath in itself, and never have come forth in those drops and models of being which make up the creation.

Eternity:

His eternity stood not in need of any such thing as time or a succession of instants to measure its duration; nor his immensity of any such temple as heaven and earth to dwell in, and fill with his presence.

Holiness:

His holiness wanted not such pictures of itself as are in laws or saints; nor his grace such a channel to run in as covenants or promises.

Majesty:

His majesty would have made no abatement, if it had had no train or host of creatures to wait upon it, or no rational ones among them, such as angels and men, to sound forth its praises in the upper or lower world. Creature-praises, though in the highest tune of angels, are but as silence to him, as that text may be read. (Psalm 65:1.)

Were he to be served according to his greatness, all the men in the world would not be enough to make a priest, nor all the other creatures enough to make a sacrifice fit for him. Is it any pleasure to him that thou art righteous? saith Eliphaz. (Job. 22:3.)

No doubt he takes pleasure in our righteousness, but the complacence is without indigence, and while he likes it, he wants [lacks] it not.

Edward Polhill, The Works of Edward Polhill (London: Thomas Ward and Co., 1844), 1.

All Things to the Glory of God

02 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Glory, John Piper, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

In his book, The Pursuit of Godliness, Jerry Bridges defined godliness as devotion in action. Devotion he further defines as “an attitude toward God.”

Devotion is not an activity; it is an attitude toward God. This attitude is composed of three essential elements:

❖ the fear of God
❖ the love of God
❖ the desire for God

We will look at these elements in detail in chapter 2; but for now, note that all three elements focus upon God. The practice of godliness is an exercise or discipline that focuses upon God. From this Godward attitude arises the character and conduct that we usually think of as godliness. So often we try to develop Christian character and conduct without taking the time to develop God-centered devotion. We try to please God without taking the time to walk with Him and develop a relationship with Him. This is impossible to do.
Consider the exacting requirements of a godly lifestyle as expounded by the saintly William Law. Law uses the word devotion in a broader sense to mean all that is involved in godliness—actions as well as attitude:

Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted to God. He therefore is the devout [godly] man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety [godliness], by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to his Glory.2

Note the totality of godliness over one’s entire life in Law’s description of the godly person. Nothing is excluded. God is at the center of his thoughts. His most ordinary duties are done with an eye to God’s glory. In Paul’s words to the Corinthians, whether he eats or drinks or whatever he does, he does it all for the glory of God.

Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 1983), 14–15.

The application is obvious: Am I doing this to the glory of God? There are two difficulties in this application. First, is the training of oneself to constantly ask this question of oneself. The second trouble: How do I do this mundane task to the glory of God? What does that even mean? John Piper applies this to one of the most simple tasks, drinking orange juice:

Orange juice was “created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe the truth.” Therefore, unbelievers cannot use orange juice for the purpose God intended—namely, as an occasion for heartfelt gratitude to God from a truth heart of faith.

But believers can, and this is how they glorify God. Their drinking orange juice is “sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.” The word of Godteaches us that the juice, and even our strength to drink it, is a free gift of God (1 Corinthians 4:7; 1 Peter 4:11). The prayer is our humble response of thanks from the heart. Believing this truth in the word, and offering thanks in prayer is one way we drink orange juice to the glory of God.

The other way is to drink lovingly. For example, don’t insist on the biggest helping. This is taught in the context of 1 Corinthians 10:33, “I try to please all men in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved” (RSV). “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Everything we do—even drinking orange juice—can be done with the intention and hope that it will be to the advantage of many that they may be saved.

John Gill on the Duties of Church Members

21 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by in Ecclesiology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

John Gill, the 18thCentury Baptist theologian, in his work A Body of Practical Divinity sets out 12 duties church members owe to one-another:

“First, and which is a principal one, to love one another; “Owe no man anything, but to love one another,” is an apostolical advice, and good advice; this is a debt which every man owes to another, and should be always paying, especially Christians and members of churches (Rom. 13:8, 12:10).”

This love is not only necessary and commanded, but it is love which gives delight to the Church:

“It is this which makes communion in a church state delightful and comfortable, as well as honourable; “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” it is as pleasing and refreshing as the fragrant oil poured on Aaron’s head, and as the dew that fell on mount Hermon (Ps. 133:1-3), when, on the contrary, nothing is more uncomfortable and dishonourable, as well as nothing is more pernicious and ruinous to a church state, than want of love (Gal. 5:15).”

Without love, the gathering of the church is a curse, not a blessing. The remaining aspects can be seen as more specific instances what it means to love-another and how this is to be done.

“Secondly, it is incumbent on church members, as much as in them lies, to endeavour to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace;” to press to which the apostle uses various arguments in Ephesians 4:3-6.”

This is a matter which is routinely misunderstood. The unity is not primarily all of get along with each other, which is neither bad nor good in and of itself. Criminals have a great of unity in their crime. The unity which is to mark the Church unity around Christ, which shows itself in unity of Gospel, of doctrine of worship.

“Thirdly, it is the duty of members of churches to sympathize with each other in all conditions and circumstances they come into (Rom. 12:15), and upon this their membership with one another cannot but have a considerable influence (1 Cor. 12:26), this sympathy should be with respect to things outward and temporal; any calamity, affliction, and distress, of whatsoever kind; they “that are in bonds,” especially for the sake of religion, should be remembered as “bound with them,” as if in the same circumstances, and should pity and relieve them as much as may be; and “them which suffer adversity” in body, family, or estate, “as being themselves in the body,” and liable to the same adversities (Heb. 12:3), and therefore should visit, comfort, and assist them; so Job’s three friends, when they heard of his afflictions in his person, family, and substance, though they lived at a distance from him, by appointment met together, “to come, to mourn with him, and to comfort him,” (Job 2:11) and much more should members of churches act such a part to one another.”

It is your duty when another believer is in difficulty to bear that burden with them, alongside of them. You have heard the expression no man is an island – we are all bound to one-another, especially within the Church.

This can be material or spiritual resources; it may be by communicating with one-another (which Gill lists as a separate aspect of church membership) or by providing for needs.

“Fifthly, it is the duty of church members to watch over one another; that they do not indulge to sinful lusts and pleasures, and make provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof; and so bring a reproach on the good ways of God, and the doctrines of Christ; and to warn them that are unruly, or err from the rule of the word, and recover them from any evil way they seem to be going into; as also to watch over them, lest they receive any notion contrary to the gospel of Christ; for not only pastors of churches are to watch over them for this purpose, but members of churches are to look “diligently,” or act the part of a bishop or overseer in some respect,81 “lest any man fail of the grace of God,” or fall from the doctrine of grace, (Heb. 12:15) they should not suffer sin to lie upon a brother; but rebuke and admonish him for it, according to the gospel rule, first alone, and then, if such rebuke succeeds not, to do it with, and before others; and such rebukes and admonitions should be in love, and with much tenderness, as well as faithfulness; for such only are like to be kindly received, and to be successful; such that are fallen, whether into immorality or error, should be endeavoured to be restored by those who are spiritual, in the spirit of meekness (Lev. 19:17; Ps. 141:5; Gal. 6:1).”

“Sixth: to make these other things possible we must bear with one-another. The Church is a body of the redeemed, but it is also a congregation of those who sin, who are selfish and provoked and quite capable of being difficult. We must therefore live in patience with one-another.”

“Seventh, we must pray one for another. The church has no more strength than that strength supplied by God; and that strength is imparted by prayer.”

An eighth aspect, which is not commonly addressed:“Eighthly, it becomes church members to separate themselves from the men of the world, and not touch persons and things which are defiling; they are in a church state, which is as a “garden inclosed;” they are a separate people, and should dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations or the people of a vain and carnal world; they are called out of the world, and therefore should not be unequally yoked with the men of it; with men unrighteous, ignorant, lawless, disobedient, dead, and profane sinners, with whom they can have no profitable communion; and, indeed, from all such in their own societies who walk disorderly they are directed to withdraw themselves.”

“Ninthly, church members should be constant in assembling together for religious worship; it is remarked of the members of the first Christian church, to their honour, that they “continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayer,” (Acts 2:42) that is, they constantly attended on hearing the doctrines of the apostles, which they gladly received and persevered in; and kept up their communion with them and one another, and were not missing at the Lord’s Supper, and at times of public prayer;”

“Tenthly, there should be no respect of persons among members of churches in their assemblies, and when met together on church affairs, with regard to rich or poor, greater or lesser gifts; there should be no overbearing, no browbeating, nor any supercilious airs use”.

Eleventhly, to “strive for Gospel”.

Twelfthly, being examples of holy and proper living to be an example and encouragement to others and to properly adorn the honor of Christ.

Richard Sibbes Sermons on Canticles, Sermons 2.4

14 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by in Richard Sibbes, Song of Solomon, Uncategorized, Union With Christ

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

The previous post on this sermon may be found here:

The next branch is,
III. Christ’s acceptation.

Sibbes here considers the words:

I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have gathered my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.’

Sibbes takes the general sense of the words to mean that Christ comes to his garden to gather the fruit raised upon by his own grace. Christ has engendered the profit of the Church. But he does not merely to receive, but he comes to bestow comfort and grace upon his people. This creates desire for even more Christ in his people

Whence we observe,
That God accepts of the graces of his children, and delights in them.

He then states three reasons why God accepts the graces of his children. First, because of the relationship he bears:

First, Because they are the fruits that come from his children, his spouse, his friend. Love of the person wins acceptance of that which is presented from the person. What comes from love is lovingly taken.

We far too often undervalue the nature of our relationship to God. He calls us by the closest and most enduring of relationships: son, wife, friend. The church is called, family, household, people and body. These are relationships which overcome difficulties.

The second reason God values the graces is due to their source:

Second, They are the graces of his Spirit. If we have anything that is good, all comes from the Spirit, which is first in Christ our husband, and then in us.

As Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 3:18, we are transformed into the glory of Christ by seeing the glory of Christ. And as it says 1 John 3:2, we will become like Christ when we see him as he is:

Christ sees his own face, beauty, glory, in his church; she reflects his beams; he looks in love upon her, and always with his looks conveys grace and comfort; and the, church doth reflect back again his grace. Therefore Christ loves but the reflection of his own graces in his children, and therefore accepts them.

This is precisely the purpose of being made in the image of God: it is to reflect God.

Finally, he accepts our graces due to his own gracious nature:

Third, His kindness is such as he takes all in good part. Christ is love and kindness itself. Why doth he give unto her the name of spouse and sister, but that he would be kind and loving, and that we should conceive so of him? We see, then, the graces of Christ accepting of us and what we do in his strength.

Sibbes then explains what we offer in light of what Christ has done in making an offering to God on our behalf:

Both we ourselves are sacrifices, and what we offer is a sacrifice acceptable to God, through him that offered himself as a sacrifice of sweet smelling savour, from which God smells a savour of rest. God accepts of Christ first, and then of us, and what comes from us in him.

Because of Christ has done, we may come to God:

We may boldly pray, as Ps. 20:3, ‘Lord, remember all our offerings, and accept all our sacrifices.’ The blessed apostle St Paul doth will us ‘to offer up ourselves,’ Rom. 12:1, a holy and acceptable sacrifice to God, when we are once in Christ. In the Old Testament we have divers manifestations of this acceptation. He accepted the sacrifice of Abel, as it is thought, by fire from heaven, and so Elijah’s sacrifice, and Solomon’s, by fire, 1 Kings 18:38; 1 Chron, 21:26.

He then concludes:

So in the New Testament he shewed his acceptation of the disciples meeting together, by a mighty wind, and then filling them with the Holy Ghost, Acts 2:3. But now the declaration of the acceptation of our persons, graces, and sacrifice that we offer to him, is most in peace of conscience and joy in the Holy Ghost, and from a holy fire of love kindled by the Spirit, whereby our sacrifices are burned. In the incense of prayer, how many sweet spices are burned together by this fire of faith working by love; as humility and patience in submitting to God’s will, hope of a gracious answer, holiness, love to others, &c.

How the Doctrine of Simplicity Guards the Trinity

29 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in Theology, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Simplicity is the understanding that God is not composed of parts. There are no attributes or generic nature lying around which when combined in the right way produce God, like a recipe produces a cake.

First, God’s existence (act of being) and essence (quiddity) cannot be constituent components in Him, each supplying what the other lacks. Rather, God must be identical with His existence and essence, and they must be identical with each other. It is His essence to be. Strictly speaking, His act of existence is not what He has, but what He is.

Dolezal, James E.. All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism . Reformation Heritage Books. Kindle Edition.

A second aspect of simplicity guards against dividing God’s attributes into separate things — parts of God:

Now Christian theology has always been more or less conscious of this calling. On the whole, its teaching has been that God is “simple,” that is, sublimely free from all composition, and that therefore one cannot make any real [i.e., ontological] distinction between his being and his attributes. Each attribute is identical with God’s being: he is what he possesses. In speaking of creatures we make all sorts of distinctions between what they are and what they have. A person, for example, is still human even though he or she has lost the image of God and has become a sinner. But in God all his attributes are identical with his being. God is light through and through; he is all mind, all wisdom, all logos, all spirit, and so forth.67 In God “to be is the same as to be wise, which is the same as to be good, which is the same as to be powerful. One and the same thing is stated whether it be said that God is eternal or immortal or good or just.” Whatever God is, he is that completely and simultaneously. “God has no properties but is pure essence. God’s properties are really the same as his essence: they neither differ from his essence nor do they differ materially from each other.”

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 118.  These are admittedly difficult things to keep in mind — because this is not how our world exists.

Creatures are created things — they exist because they were composed, built by God.  But such segregation and separation of parts became more extraordinary with the entrance of death:

What then is spiritual death? Of course it entails severing the bond that God created in us at creation, but which bond? The answer is: the spiritual bond that connects our soul with God. Not only our body is tied to our soul with a bond, but [at creation] our soul was also tied with a bond to God. That bond is automatically unraveled through sin, and thus immediately at this point death enters simultaneously with sin. Instead of drinking in life with God, the soul is thrown back upon itself, even as a pipe unscrewed from the water supply empties out and dries up. It is thus entirely understandable that there is a dying, a death, in two respects. One involves the tearing asunder of the bond between body and soul in us, the other is a dying in which the bond between the soul and God is torn apart.

Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World: The Historical Section, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, Melvin Flikkema, and Stephen J. Grabill, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas, vol. 1, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Acton Institute, 2015), 247.

Hence being a creature and living in a world which decays into parts makes the concept of a simple God very difficult.

This difficulty seems acute when we come to something such as the Trinity. How is that a simple God could be one God and three Persons? The obvious answer is to try to divide God into three Persons and then try to compose something which have sufficient interaction to make some sort of a “one”.

Yet, a division into parts, indeed into three gods, is unacceptable if we are to take the Scripture seriously. The New Testament, which more fully discloses the Trinity, does not lessen the absolute unity of the One God (indeed, this is one of the things which makes the early Church’s veneration of Jesus as God so striking — how indeed could these early Christians have believed in One God, One Father and One Son — not to mention One Spirit — all at once). Christianity cannot maintain its integrity and permit any division of God into any parts:

To affirm God’s spirituality is also to affirm his simplicity. Christian faith is adamant that God is one and indivisible, that he does not encompass within himself disparate parts or quantities.

Donald G. Bloesch, God, the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 90.

If we divide God into Gods, if we try to somehow lessen the simplicity of God to better make sense of the Trinity — to our thinking — we end up creating something which is an addition to God. The very act of trying to find divisions of being in the Godhead, to make the Trinity more easily comprehensible, will create something extra to God which is necessary for the God to be God (and what could such a thing be?):

By reason of its incomplexity and simplicity, divine essence is indivisible. Not being made up, as matter is, of diverse parts or properties, it cannot be divided or analyzed into them: “The nature of the Trinity is denominated simple, because it has not anything which it can lose and because it is not one thing and its contents another, as a cup and the liquor, or a body and its color, or the air and the light and heat of it” (Augustine, City of God 11.10).

William Greenough Thayer Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, ed. Alan W. Gomes, 3rd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Pub., 2003), 223. The divided parts would be something not-God.

Here is where are thinking must be precise — and precisely where it is most difficult. If we were to think of individual persons who were human beings, we would think of human nature and then human beings. They would be divided by place and appearance and whatnot:

In a multitude of beings of the same kind or class there is something more in the being of the individual than just the nature or essence by which it is defined. That is, something more than the nature or essence as such gives it distinction from all others in the class. This distinctive quality may be one’s particular matter or perhaps some other accidental features of its being.

Dolezal. Location in time and space are something which exist independently of human nature and permit us to distinguish one person from another. One man lived in New York in 1900 another man lived in Los Angeles in 2000. That time and space is an accident which is coupled to human nature and distinguish the two men (there would be numerous accidents which could be used to distinguish both men). Those distinguishing marks are things which can be separated from human nature while the human nature remains.

Yet, as we have seen, if we were to distinguish the members of the Trinity in the same way, we would draw on something outside of God to add to the Son or the Father, some “particularizing feature” which would not be God to distinguish God from God:

But in God, there can be nothing that He is that lies outside His nature—no determination of His being in addition to His essence. If there were, God would require something beyond His divinity, His Godness, for the fullness of His being. For God to be divine and for God to be this God we call Yahweh are one and the same reality. Thus, divinity cannot be a genus or species in which divine persons exist as so many particular instantiations.

Those who maintain the classical doctrine of simplicity deny that there is any distinction in God between suppositum and nature. God has no real particularizing features over and above His divine nature. This feature of simplicity rules out any possibility that true divinity could appear in a plurality of beings really distinct from each other, for instance, as true humanity (nature/essence) is able to appear in a plurality of really distinct humans (supposita). It is thus divine simplicity that undergirds monotheism and ensures that it does not just so happen that God is one, but it must be that God cannot but be one being because of what it means to be God.

Dolezal, James E.. All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism . Reformation Heritage Books. Kindle Edition.

How then to we maintain the simplicity of God and the Trinity? The Trinity is how this one God is:

What, then, are we saying about God when we speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? First, it should be observed that we are not speaking of things that are distinct from the Godhead itself. Whenever we speak of the three, we are in fact speaking of the one, but under different aspects or modes of being. We alternatively speak of the one God Father-wise, Son-wise, and Spirit-wise—in sum, relation-wise. These relations are not something really distinct from the divine substance. As John Owen puts it, “A divine person is nothing but the divine essence…subsisting in an especial manner.”37 The challenge is that in our creaturely experience our talk about substances and our talk about relations must necessarily be distinguished. When we speak of what belongs to humans as human, we speak of them according to substance. When we speak of them as a parent, child, friend, employee, and so forth, we speak according to relation. Because these two realities—substance and relation—are not strictly identical in the human subject, we speak of them as really distinct features of the human’s being. Indeed, we have no other speech pattern available to us. But in God, relations are not features of His being that exist over and above His substance. They add nothing to the substance. They are not principles of actuality adjoined to the divine essence that determine it to exist in some sense, as if the essence were something abstract that is then made concrete in the persons. In God, there is no mixture of abstract and concrete. We are forced to speak of God’s essence under the rubric of substance terminology and relation terminology, which Augustine calls “substance-wise” and “relationship-wise.”38 Our inability to say or even think both at once is why we must proceed in this double way of speaking of the one God.39 Yet this double way of speaking of God, alternatively according to substance and relation, is not to be understood to mirror a double way of being within Himself. He is not composed of substance and relations as creatures are.

Dolezal, James E.. All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism . Reformation Heritage Books. Kindle Edition.

Dolezal quotes Owen in brief, here is the entire paragraph. And in what might be the only instance in Western Civilization, a quotation from John Owen may be clarifying:

The distinction which the Scripture reveals between Father, Son, and Spirit, is that whereby they are three hypostases or persons, distinctly subsisting in the same divine essence or being. Now, a divine person is nothing but the divine essence, upon the account of an especial property, subsisting in an especial manner. As in the person of the Father there is the divine essence and being, with its property of begetting the Son, subsisting in an especial manner as the Father, and because this person has the whole divine nature, all the essential properties of that nature are in that person. The wisdom, the understanding of God, the will of God, the immensity of God, is in that person, not as that person, but as the person is God. The like is to be said of the persons of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Hereby each person having the understanding, the will, and power of God, becomes a distinct principle of operation; and yet all their acting ad extra being the acting of God, they are undivided, and are all the works of one, of the selfsame God. And these things do not only necessarily follow, but are directly included, in the revelation made concerning God and his subsistence in the Scriptures.

A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

In short, simplicity is necessary to protect the doctrine of the Trinity, because it prevents a collapse of God’s oneness into some lesser threeness. To solve the “problem” of three-ness, we need not carve up God but rather understand that the Divine Essence is relational in this manner. While our language and comprehension force us to consider the matter of substance and relation separately; we must not draw the invalid conclusion that substance and relation are separate in God. Our linguistic and intellectual limitations are not limitations in God.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Worth of Your Calling (Ephesians 4:1).

29 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in Ephesians, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Sanctification, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Worthy of Your Calling
Ephesians 4:1–3 (AV)

1 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,
2 With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; 3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

In this sermon, MLJ considers the command that we walk “worthy of the vocation”.
It is this concept of “calling” which concerns Dr. Lloyd-Jones. First, he briefly considers the matter of “worthy”: we are to walk worthy of our calling. Worthy has two basic meanings: one is balanced – it is of the same weight. To that he contends that our life to be “worthy” must be balanced between doctrine and practice. At this point, I have one of my few disagreements with MLJ. That understanding cannot really be gotten from the text, even though he is correct that one’s life should have balance.
The second use of the word “worthy” is something fitting, proper – or as he says, something “becoming”. We must walk in a matter which is “becoming” of our calling. That leads to the primary concern in the passage: walking worthy of our calling.
His primary concern with the word “calling” or “vocation”. The word “vocation” used in the King James Bible comes from the word for “calling”:

Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin vocatio(n-), from vocare ‘to call’.

Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, eds., Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. The Greek is plainly “called” – not trade or profession, which is the usual understanding of the word vocation.

First he notes that the concept of “calling” has two basic uses in the New Testament. There is a general call which made to all people:

Acts 17:30 (AV)
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

All people are called to repent. But there is another call which applies only to believers:
Romans 8:28–30 (AV)

28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

It is this “calling” which is the measure of our walk:

That is precisely what the Apostle Paul is arguing here, that we have been called in order that we may show forth these things. Be worthy, he says, of the vocation, the gcalling by which you have been called. We do so by applying the doctrine and knowledge which we have. We have to live as those who realize that we have been called by God into his heavenly calling.

What then are the elements of doctrine which we must keep in mind in order that we have fitting life?
First, we have been blessed:

Ephesians 1:3 (AV)
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

There is no point in talking about our difficulties, or the problems of life in this complicated modern world of the twentieth century. What matters and counts is that we have been blessed with ‘all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus!

Second, there is a goal to our calling:
Ephesians 1:4 (AV)
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:

God has called us not merely that we might not go to hell, and not only that we might know that our sins are forgiven; He has chosen us ‘to be holy’ and to be ‘blameless before him in love.’ We have no to argue or to question or query. That is the life to which He has called us.

 ‘
Third, we have been chosen for this life: Ephesians 1:5 (AV)  Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

 We have been called into the family of God; we are God’s children. And we are to live in a manner that will reflect credit and glory upon the family and upon our Father.” But this status is not only what I am at the moment, it also entails what I will become. I am destined to be a joint-heir with Christ. We are being fit for an eternal status. “We are to live as realizing that we going on to glory.

Fourth, since we have been blessed in the heavenly places and are so called, “We must live, I say, as realizing that we are seated in the heavenly places even at this very moment.”
Fifth, we must live in the knowledge that this calling is all based upon the free grace of God. This was made possible by the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So when sin comes and tempts you, or when you are doubtful as to whether you ca go on with the Christian life, or feel that is hard and makes excessive demands, remember the price that was paid for your deliverance, your ransom. Christ gave His life unto death that we might be rescued and that we might be holy.
Finally, notice that Paul writes as a “prisoner of the Lord”. MLJ takes this not to refer to a temporal Roman imprisonment but as Paul’s status before God:

I am living the life of a prisoner; I am actually in prison at the moment. And I am in prison because I do not decide what I do; I am the servant of Jesus Christ, I am His bondslave….We have no right to live as we choose and as we please. We were the prisoners of Satan; we are not the prisoners of Jesus Christ. We should have no desire save to please Him.

The limits of church leadership

22 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in Ecclesiology, Elder, Elders, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Proper leaders are marked by allegiance to God’s revealed word, which includes exhibit the holiness it enjoins. A claim to, or even possession of, a leadership role does not in itself invest authority. As we have seen elsewhere, pastor have significant authority; but this authority extends only so far as they conduct themselves in accord with Scripture. When leaders run counter to Scripture, church members must oppose them. Christ rules his church and does by means of Word taught and applied by church leaders.

Ray F. Van Neste, “The Church in the General Epistle,” in The Community of Jesus: A Theology of the Church, ed. Kendell H. Easley and Christopher W. Morgan (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013), 148.