Tag Archives: reason

Edward Taylor Meditation 36.3 What strange strange thing am I?

09 Tuesday Nov 2021

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The first two run thy glory would to shame.
The last plea doth my soul to hell confine.
My faith therefore doth all these pleas disdain.
Thou kindness art, it saith, and I am thine.
Upon this bank it doth on tiptoes stand
To ken o’re Reason’s head at Grace’s hand.

Now he considers the possibilities. If vileness indeed has the ultimate power in his life, or if grace lacks the strength to respond to the movement of sin, then God’s promises are weaker than the strength of sin. It would bring God’s glory to shame. For what can we do with a promise such as

For sin will not have dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Rom. 6:14

And he rejects these possibilities on the ground that God cannot untrue.

The third possibility he considered, that he is not truly God’s, he also rejects because that would mean that he is accursed.

What then does he attribute to the basis for this consideration:

My faith therefore doth all these pleas disdain.

These are repugnant to faith, even though they appear as a matter of reason to be the only possibilities. Having worked himself into an apparent dead end, the poem, at this point, spies a way out of the quandary:

His faith “It” sees something. Faith begins with the truth of God: God is kindness. Second, faith knows that it lays hold of God, and those who confess and believe are indeed those who belong to God (I am thine). He knows that God cannot be a liar.

Faith from here spies somewhat difficult to see

Upon this bank it doth on tiptoes stand

Faith stands upon a bank. The bank (such as riverbank) must be (1) the disdain which faith has for the possibilities: since these things cannot be true—even though it seems most reasonable; and (2) the knowledge that God is kind, and he is God’s. I will start here and look for the answer. I belong to a good God. What must that mean for someone in my condition?

Faith has the ability to see over the head of Reason and to see what Grace can do:

To ken o’re Reason’s head at Grace’s hand.

Notice something here about Faith. Faith is not blind. It is not merely guessing or vague hoping. He understands faith as a specific kind of knowledge.

Perhaps it would be best to understand Faith as the means by which persons know one-another. We believe we love another, when we believe another loves us – or hates us for that matter; we are exercising faith. While we use the word “belief” as a weak form of knowledge, that is not the only meaning of that word. Belief/faith is means by which the intangible but real beauty of a relationship can be known.

Reason assumes a sort of self-interestedness: it is unreasonable to give all that you for the good of another. It is unreasonable to love your enemy. These things do not serve my self-interest. But Faith can see things which are unreasonable, not because they are untrue, but because they do not serve one’s self-interest.

There is a kind of love in God which is both true and unreasonable (in this sense). The absolute core of Christianity is the love of the enemy. God loves his enemies and makes them into family. We are then called upon to love our enemies (which is both exalted and impossible, for this is something God must convey through us) and in so doing help to reconcile them to God.

And so Faith can see past reason and see that must exquisite of treasures, Grace.

Faith is needed to understand God, because the work of God is often not directed at the particular moment, but may be directed toward the outcome (thus, as the poet will tell us, God’s patience is not for the purpose of encouraging his sin, but rather for the provocation of the poet’s love toward God). Conversely, difficulties from God often are given out of his love toward us:

Mercy and kindness floweth from him freely, naturally; he is never severe, never harsh; he never stings, he never terrifies us, but when he is sadly provoked by us. God’s hand sometimes may lie very hard upon his people, when his heart, his bowels, at those very times may be yearning towards his people, Jer. 31:18–20. No man can tell how the heart of God stands by his hand; his hand of mercy may be open to those against whom his heart is set, as you see in the rich poor fool, and Dives, in the Gospel; and his hand of severity may lie hard upon those on whom he hath set his heart, as you may see in Job and Lazarus. And thus you see those gracious, blessed, soul-quieting conclusions about the issue and event of afflictions, that a holy, a prudent silence doth include.

Thomas Brooks, The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert, 1866), 304.

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

24 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by in Theology, Uncategorized

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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.

 

 

The Spiritual Chymist, Mediation LVII, Upon the Bible

18 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Bibliology, Scripture, Uncategorized, William Spurstowe, William Spurstowe

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From William Spurstowe, The Spiritual Chymist, 1666.

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(A detail from the Gutenberg Bible)

Upon the Bible

Quintillian [a Roman rhetorician who lived 1 century AD] who makes it a question why unlearned men in discourse seem oft times more free and copious than learned gives as the answer, That the one without either care or choice express whatsoever their present thoughts suggest to them. When the other are both careful what to say, and to dispose also their conceptions in due manner and order. 

If anything make this subject difficult to my meditation, it is not want but plenty which is so great; as that I must, like Bezaleel and Aholiab [the master craftsmen for the Tabernacle, who told Moses, “The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do.” Exodus 36:5 (ESV)] be forced to lay aside much of that costly stuff which present itself to me.

And what to refuse or what to take in is no easy matter to resolve. It will, I am sensible, require and deserve also more exactness in choosing what to say, and what not to say, concerning its worth and excellency, and how to digest what is spoken that what is meet [fitting] for any to assume unto himself. 

I shall therefore account that I have attained my end, if I can but so employ my thoughts as to increase my veneration of this Book of God, which none can ever too much study or too highly prize; and with which to be well acquainted is not only the chief of duties but the best of delights and pleasures. What would be our condition in this world if we had not this blessed Book among us, would it not be like Adam’s which driven out of the Paradise and debarred from the Tree of Life?

Would it not be darker than Earth without the Sun? If the world were fuller of books than the heaven is of stars, and this only wanting [if there books and no Bible], there would no certain way and rule to Salvation. But if this alone were extant, it would enlighten the eyes and make wise the simple and guide their feet in paths of life.

True it is that for many years God made known himself by visions, dreams, oracles to persons of noted holiness that they might teach and instruct others. But it was while the church of God was of small growth and extent and the persons to whom God’s messages were concredited of unquestioned authority with the present age. 

But afterward the Lord spake to his church both by word and writing , the useful for revealing divine truths; and the other for recording of them, that when the canon was once completed all might appeal until ti, and none take liberty in going divine oracles to himself or of obtruding [forcing]  his fancies upon others.

And were there no other use of this Book of God than this, that it should be the standard for trial of all doctrines, it were to be highly prized for its worth; without which [without the Bible] the minds of men would be in a continual distraction through the multitude of enthusiasts that would be pretending commissions from heaven; none  knowing what to believe in point of faith or what to do in point of obedience or whereby to difference the good and evil spirit from each other. [1 John 4:1]

But this single benefit (though it can never enough be thankfully acknowledged to Go by us) is but as a clutter to the vintage, or as an ear of corn to the harvest, in respect of those things many blessings may be reaped from it. 

Does not Paul ascribe unto it a universal influence into the welfare of believers, when he enumerates so many noble ends for which all Scriptures is profitable? What is it that makes man wise to salvation? Is it not the Scripture? What is that instructs any in righteousness and makes him perfect and thoroughly furnished unto all good works? Is it not the Scripture? 

Is not this the only book by which God we come to understand the heart of God to us, and learn also the knowledge of our own hearts? Both which as they are the breasts of mysteries; so they are of all knowledge the best and fill the soul with more satisfaction than the most exact discovery of all created beings whatsoever.

What if a man could, like Solomon, speak of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the Hyssop that grows in the wall; and of beasts, fowls, and fishes; and yet were wholly ignorant of his own heart, would not the light that is inhume be darkness? 

Or what if a man could resolve all those posing questions in which the Schoolman [university philosophers] have busied themselves concerning angels, and yet know nothing of the God of Angels; would he not become as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal? [1 Cor. 13:1] 

Is the knowledge of these things the great end for which our understanding was given us? Or is it any further desirable or profitable than as it conduces to the knowledge of God? Does the rectitude of our actions, and the holiness of them, flow from the knowledge we have of any creature or from the knowledge of God? Is not his will the rule, and his glory the end of all that we do? And should we ever come to know what the good and acceptable will of God is but by his revealing it unto us? Which he has done most clearly in this blessed Book of his, the Scripture of Truth.

That which commends this Book and rendered it worthy of all acceptation is the rich discoveries it makes to us concerning so excellent a being as God, whom it acquaints us with in his nature, perfections, counsels and designs, in relation to the Eternal Salvation of man. It contains not anything that is mean or trivial; the matters in it are all of no less glory for any to behold than of weighty importance for all to know.

Do we not read in it with what majesty God gave forth his Sacred Law, when thunders, lightnings, dark clouds and burnings were used as heralds in the promulgation of it? And yet may we not again see the hidings of his power in the wonderful condescension of his goodness? How he does entreat, woo, and importune those whom he could with a frown or breath easily destroy; and pursue with the bowels [inner most being] of mercy, such whom eh might in justice leave and cast off forever? 

Are there in it precepts of exact purity that are as diamonds without flaws, and as fine gold without dross? 

In all other books, they are as the most current coins, that must have their alloys of baser metals. But in this [Book, the Bible] they [the things stated therein] resemble the author who is light in which there is no darkness [1 John 1:5]; and a sun in which there are no spots. 

Are there not in it promises of infinite value as well as goodness in which rewards are given not of debt, but of grace; and so such who have cause to be ashamed of their duties as well as their sins? Are there not in premonitions [here, foreshadows] of great faithfulness in which God fully declares to men what the issues of sin will be? 

And proclaims a Judgment to come in which the Judge will be impartial and the sentence most severe against the least offenses, as well as against the greatest. What is it that may teach us to serve God with cheerfulness; to trust him with confidence; to adhere to him with resolution in difficulties; to submit to his will with patience in the greatest extremities; that we may not be abundantly furnished with from this book. 

It alone is a perfect library, in which are presented those deep mysteries of the Gospel that Angels study and look into both with delight and wonder, being more desirous to pry into them then of perfect ability to understand them. They are such, that had they not been revealed could not have been known; and being revealed, can yet never be fully comprehended by any. 

Was it ever hear, that he was the Maker of all thing was made of a woman? That the Ancient of Days was not an hour old? That Eternal Life being to live? That he, to whose nature incomprehensibility does belong, should be enclosed in the narrow limits of the womb? Where can we read but in this Book that he who perfectly hates sin should condescend to take upon the similitude of sinful flesh? That he, who was the person injured by sin, should willingly be the sacrifice to expiate the guilt of it; and to die instead of sinners? 

Are not these such mysteries as are utter impossibility to reason? 

And at which, like Sarah, it laughs; rather than, with Abraham, entertain them with an holy reverence and joy when made known? Reason is busy in looking after demonstrations, and enquires how this can be and then scorns what it cannot fathom: 

But faith rests itself in the Revelations of God, and adores as a mystery what he discovers. Yea, it makes these mysteries, not only objects of its highest adoration, but the grounds of its sure comfort and confidence. From whence is it, that faith searches its security against sin, Satan, Death and Hell? 

That he who is their sacrifice through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God to purge their conscience from dead works to serve the Living God? [Heb. 9:14] That he who is their Advocate did raise himself form the dead and ascended into the highest heavens to make everlasting intercessions for them? 

Can then any depreciate this Book, or abate the least iota of that awful esteem which upon all accounts is due unto it and guiltless? Or can any neglect this Book as unworthy of their reading which God has thought worthy of his writings, without putting an affront upon God himself, whose image it bears as well as declares his commands? 

And yet I tremble to think how many anti-Scripturists there be, who have let fall both from their lips and pens such bold scorns as if Satan flood at their right hand to inspire them. It was open blasphemy and worthy that anti-Christian crew of Trent, to affirm That though the Scripture were not, yet a body of saving Divinity might be made out of the Divinity of the School. 

The profaneness of politician shall make his name to rot in perpetual stench, who never read the Bible but once, and said, it was the time he ever spent. And yet what are the fruits of his studies, but such as Gullies styles Scholica Nugalia, a few trifling commentaries and criticisms. 

More I could readily name of the same stamp that have presumed impiously to scoff at the revelations of God, as others at his providence, but who can take pleasure to rake in a dunghill that may enjoy the fragrance of Paradise. I shall therefore turn my thoughts from them, and, as having nothing to cast over their wickedness shall call my blood into my face and spread it as a vail in blushing for them, that should have blushed and been ashamed for themselves. 

But though the Word of God ceases not to be a reproach to them, yet I shall bind it as a crown unto me.

Though they reject the counsel of God against themselves, yet I shall make its testimonies my delight, and the men of my counsel, and shall make the prayers of the Psalmist to be my daily prayer, that God would open my eyes, that I may behold wonders that are contained in his law. [Psalm 119:18]

The Spirit Always Leads People to Think

31 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Uncategorized

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So the first effect of Christianity is to make people stop and think. They are not simply overawed by some great occasion. They say, “No, I must face this. I must think.” That is the work of the Spirit. The people in Acts thought again. They repented—the Greek word is metanoia—they changed their mind completely. The Spirit always leads people to think, and, as I have been showing you, the greatest trouble is that men and women go through life without thinking. Or they think for a moment but find it painful, so they stop and turn to a bottle of whiskey or television or something else—anything to forget.
Is it not obvious that the world, speaking spiritually and intellectually, is in a doped condition? In all sorts of ways men and women evade the facts. They can do this with great energy, they can be very intellectual, but ultimately they end up with nothing.
What does the Spirit make us think about? Well, not first and foremost about ourselves. I must emphasize that Christianity does not start with us. It does not say, “Do you want to get rid of that sin that is getting you down? Do you want happiness? Do you want peace? Do you want guidance?” That is not Christianity. That, again, is the approach of the cults. No, these people in Jerusalem were made to think about Jesus Christ! They were given the objective, historical facts about this person. Peter had just said to them, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
The next verse continues, “Now when they heard this”—they were not thinking about themselves but were beginning to think about Him. That is always the message of the Christian church. The true Christian message brings us face to face with the historical facts.

 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Becoming a Christian,” in Authentic Christianity, 1st U.S. ed., vol. 1, Studies in the Book of Acts (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 53–54.

The Spiritual Chymist: Upon the Bucket and the Wheel

01 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Bibliology, Scripture, Uncategorized, William Spurstowe, William Spurstowe

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William Spurstowe, 1666:  MEDITATION XXXIX
Upon the Bucket and the Wheel

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The saying of Democritus which he spoke concerning the philosophical truth that it did you hide itself and take up it’s about in and deep well may much more be affirmative theological truth when the whole doctrine of the gospel is called the mystery of Christ and the great mystery of godliness that there should be three distinct persons in one essence [the Trinity] and two distinct natures and one person [the Incarnation]. That virginity should conceive, Eternity be born; immortality die and mortality rise from death to life. Are not these, and many more of the like intricacies, unparalleled mysteries? Maybe not justly say, As the Samaritan woman did to our savior when he asked water of her, the well is deep, and who can descend into it, or fathom it?

And yet such is the pride and arrogance he of many men, as that, not contending themselves with the simplicity of believing, many make reason the sole standard where by to measure both the principles and conclusions of faith — for which it [reason] is is unapt as the weak of a bat hold the sun when it shines in its full strength; or the bill of a small bird to receive the ocean.

These high mysteries are not to be scanned, but to be believed; the knowledge and certainty of which does not arise from the evidence of reason from the revelation made of them in the Holy Scriptures; the mouth of God — who is truth itself and cannot lie, has spoken them, and therefore it cannot be otherwise.

But must then reason be wholly shut out as a useless thing in the Christian religion, are must it be confined to the agenda matters of duty and morality, In which you cannot be denied to be both of necessity and constant use? Surely even the creeds, also the doctrines and points which are properly of the faith, do not refuse to sober use of reason, so it be employed as a handmaid and not as mistress.

I have therefore thought that faith is as the bucket, which can best to send you this deep well of mystery and that reason is as the wheel, which stands ever the mouth of it, and keeps always its certain and fixed distance: but yet by its motion is instrumental both to let down the bucket and also to draw up again.

Faith discovers the deep things of God, then reason teaches us to submit ourselves and it to the obedience of faith that so it is. But never becomes more foolish and dangerous then when it busies itself and inquiries, and makes Nicodemus question, How can these things be? Then it turns giddy and loses itself in distracted and motions.

Alas, how unlike the ways and councils of God if they were no other but such as the wisest of men could trace out? How little glory with faith also give to God, if it did not pour forth its strength in asserting his power to affect greater things than can fall within the compass of natural disquisition? Yea, how could the Gospel be acquitted of the Jews stumbling at it, as dishonorable to their law? And the Gentiles derided as absurd in their philosophy, if that reason must be the measure of its mysteries?

Nature is so far from finding out what the gospel discovers, as that he cannot yield on to it, when it is revealed without a spirit of faith to assist it.

Be wise therefore, oh Christians, and set the bounds to your reason, beyond which it may not pass: as Moses did to the Israelites, while faith descends into the deeps of Gospel Mysteries, which angels with stretched out next have a more desire to pry into than ability perfectly to understand.

Now the boundary of reason is, confer and infer: to confer one scripture with another; and to infer conclusions, and to decide instructions thence, buy a clear logical discourse. But if you go further to gays, it may justly fear to be smitten of God, and like the pioneer or bold miner who digs into far for his rich vein of ore meet with a damp which chokes him.

My prayer therefore Shelby that of the apostles to Christ
Adde nobis fidem: Lord Increase our faith.

For if my faith do not exceed my reason, though advanced as high as a pitch as her Solomon had, yet might I well be numbered among those, whom St. Peter said are blind and cannot see far off.

Epictetus Discourses 1.1-4

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Epictetus, Greek, New Testament Background

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Epictetus was a Greek Stoic Philosopher. A biography is available here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/epictetu/
He lived 55-135 A.D. His philosophical statements are useful in their own respect, and also provide a background for the intellectual climate of Apostolic and Sub-Apostolic period of the Christian Church. His positions make an interesting intellectual foil for reading the NT:

The Encheiridion was translated into Latin by Poliziano in 1497 and during the subsequent two centuries became exceptionally popular in Europe. Spanneut (1972) traces its use in monasteries in superficially Christianized form. Seventeenth-century intellectuals like Guillaume du Vair, Justus Lipsius, and Thomas Gataker generally found Epictetus’ Stoicism to be fully compatible with Christianity; see the discussion in Brooke (2006). Pascal reacted against this perception; he admired Epictetus as a moralist but regarded it as sheer arrogance to believe that the human psyche is part of the divine and can be perfected by one’s own efforts

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epictetus/

This is from the beginning of the Discourses. 1.1-4:

 

Now among all the arts, none is able by itself to understand itself; none is able to test and so approve or disapprove itself. What is grammar able to do? Judge grammatical matters. Or music? Judge melodies. Which of these can actually consider itself? None. Let’s say you want to write a friend. Grammar tells you how to write, but not what to write. Likewise, when it comes to melody, music is the judge. But whether you should sing or play the guitar, music doesn’t say.

So then, what does tell us? What is able to consider itself and everything else? What else, but the power of reason. Reason alone by the power contemplation can take hold of something and say , This is its scope and how much it is worth– and all the rest.

 

Greek Text and Notes:
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Reasoning to Affections

23 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by in John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards

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“When he emerged onto the world stage as a revivalist, it was partly because he had become rationally persuaded that the emotions were not being given their due consideration in religious life. Like his contemporary Jonathan Edwards, he was a man of reason whose reason told him he needed to cultivate his heart. He was smart enough to know that it’s not good enough to be smart enough.”

Excerpt From: Sanders, Fred. “Wesley on the Christian Life: The Heart Renewed in Love.” Crossway, 2013. iBooks.

Charity and Its Fruits.2

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Faith, Jonathan Edwards, Love, Obedience

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The previous post in this series will be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/charity-and-her-fruits-1-charity-or-love-the-sum-of-all-virtue/

 

Edwards next proceeds to demonstrate that all virtue that is saving or distinguishing of true Christians, is summed up in Christian love. Edwards sets his proposition upon three arguments: reason, Scripture and the proposition “faith working through love.”[1]

Reason

            It may seem strange that Edwards would dare to argue that “reason” could form basis for any Christian doctrine. The strangeness results not from anything defective Edwards’ thinking but rather from a cultural prejudice which sits upon no greater ground than prejudice. If there has been any good of post modernism, it is the understanding that no human being can claim to argue from some wholly neutral objective place.  The Christian theologian Van Til developed this understanding (in a non-postmodern framework) as presuppositional apologetics.[2] The presuppositions of Edwards which he develops in a rational manner are not sub-rational or unreasonable.  If anything, one who carefully follows Edwards’ thought throughout his works will discover that Edwards constructs a worldview which accords far more consistently with reality, experience and human nature than many of the “rational” arguments which claim the place of “reason”.[3]

Rightly understood, love tends towards virtue.

First. We may argue from what reason teaches of the nature of love. And if we duly consider the nature of love, two things will appear.

Edwards notes that love is what compels the human heart most strongly. And thus love will dispose a human being to rightly value God:

That love will dispose to all proper acts of respect to both God and men. This is evident because a true respect to either God or men consists in love. If a man sincerely loves God it will dispose him to give him all proper respect. Men need no other incitement to show all proper respect but love. Love to God will dispose a man to give honor to God. Love will dispose to worship and adore him, heartily to acknowledge his greatness and glory and dominion. So love will dispose to all acts of obedience to God. The servant who loves his master, and the subject who loves his prince, will be disposed to proper subjection and obedience. Love will dispose a person to behave towards God as a child to a father.

Likewise, love will lead to virtuous action toward other human beings.:

So a due consideration of the nature of love will show that it will dispose men to all duties towards their neighbors. If men have a hearty love to their neighbors, it will dispose them to all acts of justice towards them. Men are not disposed to wrong those whom they truly love. Real love and friendship will dispose persons to give others their due.

He notes that love leads to contentment, humility. In every sphere of human action, love would lead to right conduct. For example, Edwards notes that love present would dispose toward a right politics:

It would dispose a people to all the duties which they owe their rulers, to give them all that honor and subjection which is their due. And it would dispose rulers to rule the people over whom they are set justly, sincerely seeking their good.

He concludes:

And in fine, love would dispose men to do to others as they would that others should do to them, if they were in their neighbor’s circumstances, and their neighbor in theirs. Thus love would dispose to all duties, both towards God and towards men. And if love will dispose to all duties, then it follows that love is a root and spring, and, as it were, a comprehension of all virtues. It is a principle which, if implanted in the heart, is alone sufficient to produce all good dispositions; and every right disposition towards God and men is, as it were, summed up in it.

Second

Reason teaches that whatever performances or seeming virtues there are without love are insincere and hypocritical.

This follows from the proposition that behavior without love is essentially manipulative. It seeks a response and the response is the thing desired, not the good of the other.

Scripture

First, it is the unquestioned proposition of Scripture that love toward God and human beings is the entire purpose of the law:

Or if we take the law in a yet more extensive sense for the whole written Word of God, the Scripture still teaches us that love is the sum of what is required in it, as in Matthew 22:40. There Christ teaches that on those two precepts of loving God with all the heart, and our neighbor as ourselves, hang all the law and the prophets. That is, all the written Word of God. For that which was then called the law and the prophets was the whole written Word of God which was then extant.

And:

Hence love appears to be the sum of all that virtue and duty which God requires of us; and therefore must undoubtedly be the most essential thing, or the sum of all that virtue which is essential and distinguishing in real Christianity. That which is the sum of all duty is the sum of all real virtue.

Faith Works by Love

            Edwards first consider the matter of true faith. He distinguishes true faith from mere “speculative faith” by stating that true saving faith requires assent of the understand and consent of the heart.  What then is the true mark of the heart’s consent? Love:

Now the true spiritual consent of the heart cannot be distinguished from the love of the heart. He whose heart consents to Christ as a Savior loves Christ under that notion, viz. of a Savior. For the heart sincerely to consent to the way of salvation by Christ cannot be distinguished from loving the way of salvation by Christ.

            He also considers the matter of true faith by considering it as a duty owed by human beings to God.  This may sound odd, but it must be understood as true. While we are saved by grace, such grace comes to us unmerited and yet only through the faith (Ephesians 2:8-9).  Edwards considers the content of the duty of faith in light  of the commands and the description of true faith:

Faith is a duty which God requires of it. We are commanded to believe, and unbelief is a sin forbidden of God. Faith is a duty required in the first table of the law, and in the first commandment; and therefore it will follow that it is comprehended in that great commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” [Matthew 22:37]. And so it will follow that love is the most essential thing in a true faith. That love is the very life and soul of a true faith is especially evident from this place [Galatians 5:6] of the apostle Paul, viz. that faith works by love, and James 2:26 compared together:6 “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” The working, acting nature of anything is the life of it. What makes men call anything alive is because they observe an active nature in it. This working, acting nature in man is the spirit which he has in him. Therefore as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without a working nature is dead also.

Edwards then looks at Galataians 5:6, “faith working by love”:

It is further manifest from this place [Galatians 5:6] of the Apostle, wherein he speaks of faith as working by love, that all Christian exercises of heart, and works of life, are from love. For we are abundantly taught in the New Testament that all Christian holiness is begun with faith in Jesus Christ. All Christian obedience is in Scripture called the obedience of faith. Romans 16:26, “Is made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” The obedience here spoken of is doubtless the same with that mentioned in the preceding chapter, ver. Romans 15:18, “For I will not dare to speak of those things, which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed.” And the Apostle tells us that the life he now lived in the flesh, he lived by the faith of the Son of God, Galatians 2:20. And we are often told that Christians live by faith, which carries in it as much as that all graces and holy exercises and works of their spiritual life are by faith. But how does faith work these things? Why, in this place in Galatians it works whatsoever it does work, and that is by love. Hence the truth of the doctrine follows, and that it is indeed so that all which is saving and distinguishing in Christianity does radically consist and is summarily comprehended in love.

 

 

[1] Again, all references to Edwards’ work come from the wonderful Edwards Center at Yale: http:edwards.yale.edu

 

[2] For a background on presuppositional apologetics, see, http://www.frame-poythress.org/presuppositional-apologetics/

Probably the best aggregator for examples of presuppositional apologetics can be found here: http://veritasdomain.wordpress.com/

[3] To be fair, much postmodernism attacks the idea of anything being rational.

The Vanity of this Mortal Life (John Howe).8

17 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in John Owen, Puritan

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Howe moves to the next basis for measurement: reason. His satire and argument are too good to be summarized:

If we rise higher, to the view of such ends as more refined reason may propose, within the compass only of this present state: we will suppose that it be either the acquisition of much knowledge, the furnishing his understanding with store of choice and well-digested notions, that he may please himself in being (or in having men think him) a learned wight. Death robs away all his gain. And what is the world the better? How little shall he enrich the clods, among which he must shortly lie down and have his abode! Or how little is the gain, when the labour and travail of so many years are all vanished and blown away with the last puff of his dying breath, and the fruit that remains is to have it said by those that survive”, “There lies learned dust!”

John Howe, The Works of the Reverend John Howe, Volume 2 (London: William Tegg and Co., 1848), 277.

Howe notes also, again without quoting Ecclesiastes, that an increase in knowledge does not lead to an increase in happiness:

16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. 18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Ecclesiastes 1:16–18 (ESV).

The knowledge acquired by a man indicates that he hopes to somehow keep his knowledge. And so he seems to infer that he thinks he will be immortal – because wouldn’t one prefer just pleasant sensations to the unhappiness of “increased knowledge”?

The loss of human acts of greatness make the loss of life the more poignant:

Or if that a man’s reason, with a peculiarity of temper, guide him to an active negotiating life, rather than that of contemplation; and determine him to the endeavour of serving mankind, or the community to which he belongs: by how much the worthier actions he performs, and by how much more he hath perfected and accomplished himself with parts and promptitude for such actions, the loss and vanity is but the greater thereby; since he, and those he affected to serve, are all going down to the silent grave. Of how little use are the politician, the statesman, the senator, the judge, or the eloquent man, if we lay aside the consideration of their subserviency to the keeping the world in a more composed and orderly state for the prosecution of the great designs of eternity, when ere long all their thoughts shall perish! What matter were it what became of the world, whether it be wise or foolish, rich or poor, quiet or unquiet, governed or ungoverned? Whoever should make their order and tranquillity their study, or that should intend their thoughts and endeavours to the finding out the exactest methods and rules of government and policy, should but do as they that should use a great deal of pains and art in the curious adorning and trimming up of a dying person; or as if some one, among many condemned persons, should be very solicitous to have them march with him in very exact order to the place of execution. If the world be not looked upon as an attiring room to dress one’s self in, for an appearance on the eternal stage; but only as a great charnel-house, where they undress and put off themselves, to sleep in everlasting darkness; how can we think it worth a thought, or to be the subject of any rational design or care? Who would not rather bless himself in a more rational neglect and regardlessness of all human affairs; and account an unconcerned indifferency the highest wisdom?

John Howe, The Works of the Reverend John Howe, Volume 2 (London: William Tegg and Co., 1848), 278-79.