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God’s Happiness is not Dependent Upon the Creation

05 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Edward Polhill, Theology, Uncategorized

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Creation, Edward Polhill, God, Theology Proper

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.

Two Sermons on Romans 6:13 by John Howe, Part 3. How we are to consider God in relation to us.

12 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in John Howe, Romans, Uncategorized

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God, John Howe, Romans, Romans 6:13

This is the third post in this series

Howe will argue that we must “yield” ourselves to God. Therefore, he next underscores aspects of God’s relationship to us which would necessitate such a yielding.  Thus, he notes that God is our Creator and Sustainer. Our very existence depends upon God, he “who renews your life unto you every moment.”

This matter of being our Creator and Sustainer will imply certain aspects which pinch our flesh.

Since God is our Creator and Sustainer, he holds additional relationship to us. He is our Owner. In recognizing such we add nothing to God’s rights:

Your yielding yourselves adds nothing to his rights in you; you therein recognize and acknowledge the right he had in you before; but it add to you a capacity and qualification, both by the tenor of his Gospel-covenant, and in the nature of the thing, for such nobler uses as wither wise you cannot service.

Recognizing his right in us, makes us more serviceable, but it is nothing other than what we owe. If we refuse this acknowledgement, we are no better than “brutes and devils”.

God is also our Teacher:

There is another sort of teaching, which if you yield yourselves to him as your great Instructor, he will vouchsafe unto you. The things you know not, and which it is necessary you should know, he will teach you, i. e. such things as are of real necessity to your true and final welfare, not which only serve to please your fancy, or gratify your curiosity; for his teaching respects an appointed, certain end, suitable to his wisdom and mercy, and to the calamity and danger of your state. The teaching requisite for perishing sinners, was, what they might do to be saved. And when we have cast about in our thoughts never so much, we have no way to take but to yield ourselves to God, who will then be our most undeceiving Guide. To whom it belongs to save us at last, to him only it can belong to lead us in the way to that blessed end.

John Howe, The Works of the Reverend John Howe, vol. 1 (London: William Tegg and Co., 1848), 386. This teaching of God is not new revelation. Rather, God makes the existing revelation effective, it becomes teaching we receive from him:

He will so teach you, as to make you teach yourselves, put an abiding word into you, that shall talk with you when you sit in your houses, and walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up, and whereby you shall be enabled to commune with your own hearts upon your beds while others sleep; and revolve, or roll over in your minds, dictates of life.

 John Howe, The Works of the Reverend John Howe, vol. 1 (London: William Tegg and Co., 1848), 390. His teaching will not leave you unchanged.

Third, since God is our Creator and Sustainer, God is our Sovereign Ruler:

Though teaching and ruling may be diversely conceived of, they cannot be separate in this case. The nobler and final part of God’s teaching you, is teaching you your duty; what you are to practise and do. And so when he teaches you, he commands you too; and leaves it not arbitrary to you whether you will be directed by him or no. What is his by former right, and by after-consent, and self-resignation, shall it not be governed by him, if it be a subject capable of laws and government, as such consent shows it to be? Your yielding yourselves to God is not a homage but a mockery, if you do it not with a resolution to receive the law from his mouth: and that whereinsoever he commands, you will to your uttermost obey. But in this and the other things that follow, my limits constrain me unto more brevity. Only let not this apprehension of God be frightful; yea, let it be amiable to you, as in itself it is, and cannot but be to you, if you consider the loveliness of his government, the kind design of it, and how suitable it is to the kindest design; that it is a government first and principally over minds, purposely intended to reduce them to a holy and peaceful order, wherein it cannot but continue them, when that kingdom comes to be settled there, which stands in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, and all the laws whereof are summed up in love; being such also as in the keeping whereof there is great reward.

John Howe, The Works of the Reverend John Howe, vol. 1 (London: William Tegg and Co., 1848), 392.

Finally, we must consider God as our Benefactor. Now, we often think of a benefactor as someone who does us good by our own sights and according to our own inclination. God is a greater benefactor, because he government and his goodness to us are one. He does us good by being our teacher and sovereign:

The very business of his government is in the first place to alter the temper of your minds; for, continuing carnal, they neither are subject to the law of God, nor can be, as the same place tells you. Therefore if his government take place in you, and you become subject, you become spiritual, the “law of the Spirit of life” having now the possession and the power of you. Nor was it possible he should ever be an effectual Benefactor to you, without being thus an over-powering Ruler; so do these things run into one another. To let you have your own will, and follow your carnal inclination, and cherish and favour you in this course, were to gratify you to your ruin, and concur with you to your being for ever miserable; which you may see plainly if you will understand wherein your true felicity and blessedness must consist, or consider what was intimated concerning it, in the proposal of this head; that he is to be your Benefactor, in being to you himself your supreme and only satisfying Good. He never doth you good effectually and to purpose, till he overcome your carnal inclination.

 John Howe, The Works of the Reverend John Howe, vol. 1 (London: William Tegg and Co., 1848), 393.

Finally, we must consider ourselves in this transaction: If God is our Creator, Sustainer, Owner, Teacher, Sovereign and Benefactor, who are we? We are his creatures, but sadly creatures who are apostate and unfit for communion with God; and yet, under the Gospel, we are “sinners invited and called back to God.”

Richard Sibbes: God is a Relationship

16 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Richard Sibbes, Sanctification, Sanctifictation, Uncategorized, Worship

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Biblical Counseling, Covenant, God, God is a Relationship, Preaching, relationship, Richard Sibbes, Sanctification, Worship

But you will say, How shall we know that this covenant belongeth to us? that we are such as we may say, God is our God?
I answer, first—to lay this for a ground—you must know that to be a God is a relation. Whosoever God is a God to, he persuadeth them by his Spirit that he is a God to. The same Spirit that persuadeth them that there is a God, that Spirit telleth them that God is their God, and works a qualification and disposition in them, as that they may know that they are in covenant with such a gracious God. The Spirit as it revealeth to them the love of God, and that he is theirs, so the Spirit enableth them to claim him for their God, to give up themselves to him as to their God.

Richard Sibbes, “The Faithful Covenanter” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 6 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson, 1863), 8.

This is a profound bit of theology and needs some thought to be understood.

Consider first, “you must know that to be a God is a relation”. We too easily abstract God: God is a being with a set of attributes. Another sort of one has an idea of a celestial butler, the god of moral therapeutic deism:

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.” 2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” 3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about ones self.” 4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.” 5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.” (As Dr. Mohler summarized Smith’s findings.)

Or some other god. But consider what Sibbes is saying: The “God” part of our understanding of God is relational. For instance, Moses speaks to Pharaoh of the “LORD our God.” There is a particular person(s) who is our God. Since He is God, we have a particular relationship toward him.

The abstract God is a powerful being, but we have little relationship to him. He have created us, but he may also have forgotten us: he is not God to us. The Therapeutic god is no God at all. He is a powerful helper, but he is not a God to anyone. That is why the Christian confession is that Christ is Lord.

The remainder of Sibbes’ discussion speaks about how God himself, God the Spirit, brings the human being into a right relation to God. God is there for everyone, but not everyone is God-worshipper relationship with God (indeed, one can think of sanctification as merely the process of turning human beings into right worshipers).

Whosoever God is a God to,
1) he persuadeth them by his Spirit that he is a God to.
2) The same Spirit that persuadeth them that there is a God,
3) that Spirit telleth them that God is their God,
4) and works a qualification and disposition in them,
5) as that they may know that they are in covenant with such a gracious God.
6) The Spirit as it revealeth to them the love of God, and that he is theirs,
7) so the Spirit enableth them to claim him for their God,
8) to give up themselves to him as to their God

Each of these elements makes plain what is in the relationship of “God”. There is a God. This God stands in some sort of relationship to the human being. The human being is in a covenantal relationship to this God. The human being’s affections, thoughts, dispositions, actions are brought into a correspondence to the covenant (that is also known as sanctification: note that sanctification is not merely morally appropriate behavior, although it is not less). Counseling/preaching is the process of using the Word of God (assisted by the Spirit of God) to bring about this relational process.

The heart of a father

03 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Atonement, Forgiveness, Harmatiology, Sin

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Atonement, Father, forgiveness, God, love, R.C. Chapman, Sin

God regards our sins with the heart of a father, but not with the eye of a judge; for his sin-avenging justice has no further demands: the cross has made satisfaction.

R.C. Chapman

Does God Owe Me 80 Years?

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Theology

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Cancer, God, life, Number My Days, Todd Billings

Cancer changes your perception of life. Each day comes to us as a gift from the gracious hand of God — whether it is the last day of a short life or the first day of a long and healthy life. But living into the reality that each day is a gift also involves coming to recognize a stark, biblical truth that is deeply countercultural: God is not our debtor.

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/god-is-bigger-than-my-cancer

This is the God the Church Knows

26 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Historical Theology, Novatian, Theology

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God, Novation, Theology Proper

This God, then, setting aside the fables and figments of heretics, the Church knows and worships, to whom the universal and entire nature of things as well visible as invisible gives witness; whom angels adore, stars wonder at, seas bless, lands revere, and all things under the earth look up to; whom the whole mind of man is conscious of, even if it does not express itself; at whose command all things are set in motion, springs gush forth, rivers flow, waves arise, all creatures bring forth their young, winds are compelled to blow, showers descend, seas are stirred up, all things everywhere diffuse their fruitfulness.

Novatian, Of the Trinity

Theophilus of Antioch, On the Necessity of Faith

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Ante-Nicene, Apologetics, Church History, Faith

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Ante-Nicean, Apologetics, Apologist, Church History, Creation, Faith, God, idols, materialism, Theophilus, Theophilus of Antioch

The previous post on Theophilus may be found here

Theophilus having explained that his God can be known to exist through both providence and creation, proclaims:

This is my God, the Lord of all, who alone stretched out the heaven, and established the breadth of the earth under it; who stirs the deep recesses of the sea, and makes its waves roar; who rules its power, and stills the tumult of its waves; who founded the earth upon the waters, and gave a spirit to nourish it; whose breath giveth light to the whole, who, if He withdraw His breath, the whole will utterly fail.

Why then is God not known? Due to “blindness of soul and hardness of heart”. How then can this be healed? By faith.

But before all let faith and the fear of God have rule in thy heart, and then shalt thou understand these things

This healing will be complete when God has raised the dead and the mortal puts on immorality. It is at this point Theophilus knew he would receive an objection, and so he answers Autolycus:

But you do not believe that the dead are raised. When the resurrection shall take place, then you will believe, whether you will or no; and your faith shall be reckoned for unbelief, unless you believe now.

He thus turns the matter back to faith: the trouble is not really with the resurrection, but with trust in the God of the resurrection:

And why do you not believe? Do you not know that faith is the leading principle in all matters? For what husbandman can reap, unless he first trust his seed to the earth? Or who can cross the sea, unless he first entrust himself to the boat and the pilot? And what sick person can be healed, unless first he trust himself to the care of the physician? And what art or knowledge can any one learn, unless he first apply and entrust himself to the teacher? If, then, the husbandman trusts the earth, and the sailor the boat, and the sick the physician, will you not place confidence in God, even when you hold so many pledges at His hand?

Yes, but, we can hear the critic say, I just don’t believe in such things. I will not believe that these things can be so. Theophilus turns the matter around:

Moreover, you believe that the images made by men are gods, and do great things; and can you not believe that the God who made you is able also to make you afterwards.

When a modern reads this, he could easily think, “Yes, but, I don’t believe in any god, invisible or represented in an image.” Think a bit further on that point. You believe that mere atoms moving around for a bit — if left alone for long enough — will write poems, fall in love, start wars. The modern in the end is worse than the most crass pagan in his believe in the divine power of matter. It is a strange thing to believe that an effect exceeds the cause (that life and person can come from atoms bouncing about through time). At least an idolator believes something extraordinary brings about extraordinary ends.

If But Some Vengeful God

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Thomas Hardy

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God, Hap, poem, Poetry, Thomas Hardy

Hap
BY THOMAS HARDY
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Who Gets the Glory

22 Thursday May 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Preaching

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glory, God, Jim Shaddix, Passion Driven Preaching

If our pursuit in coming to the sermon is primarily to see perceived needs met, to see all questions that are on the table answered, or even to give and receive practical help for daily living, then our journey ultimately will lead to someone or something other than God getting the glory. And usually it’s the preacher or his philosophy that gets the credit. Preaching that is driven by a passion for the glory of God, however, always finds its target. Assuming the Bible is the only source from which the preacher speaks with the authority of God, such a passion frees the preacher to let the Bible simply say what it says—nothing more and nothing less.

So the ultimate question becomes, How do we preach and listen to preaching in such a way as to bring glory to God, in each individual sermon and in the larger preaching ministry of our church?

Jim Shaddix, The Passion Driven Sermon (2003), 4

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER: A LITTLE BLACK THING AMONG THE SNOW

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature

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God, judgment, Kindness, Matthew 25, poem, Poetry, The Chimney Sweeper, William Blake

This is a brutal poem by William Blake. But then everything in Songs of Experience is brutal. The sing-song rhythms, the clipped meter (for instance the “Crying”, with the accept falling on the first syllable seems almost insistant), the childish ‘weep (rather than “sweep”) all make the irony more bitter.

Moreover, the attack of Blake oddly runs in a manner consistent with Christianity (although not always ‘Christianity’ as practiced). Jesus forbad misuse of the weak. In perhaps the strongest section of such argument, Jesus said that on Judgment Day he will evaluate all human actions as if he were the recipient:

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’
45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Matthew 25:41-46.

Jesus must never be thought of as one distant from human suffering, but rather as one who willingly entered into human suffering. Blake saw a God as wholly transcendent above his creation, merely shouting down rules and limitations. He was being deliberately subversive (which I thought very cool when I was in college); but it is a thought which doesn’t wear well.

That being said, The Chimney Sweeper is a remarkable poem.

A little black thing among the snow,
Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!
“Where are thy father and mother? say?”
“They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil’d among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.”

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