Street Smart

It is enough for us to know that he bare our infirmities, though free from sin and undefiled. Then, as to the ancient and Levitical priests, the Apostle says, that they were subject to human infirmity, and that they made atonement also for their own sins, that they might not only be kind to others when gone astray, but also condole or sympathize with them. This part ought to be so far applied to Christ as to include that exception which he mentioned before, that is, that he bare our infirmities, being yet without sin. At the same time, though ever free from sin, yet that experience of infirmities before described is alone abundantly sufficient to incline him to help us, to make him merciful and ready to pardon, to render him solicitous for us in our miseries. The sum of what is said is, that Christ is a brother to us, not only on account of unity as to flesh and nature, but also by becoming a partaker of our infirmities, so that he is led, and as it were formed, to show forbearance and kindness. (John Calvin, Commentary on Hebrews 5:1-6)

The Lord Jesus Christ, as Mediator, was and is, as it were, street smart. He welcomed sinners to Himself in order to give of Himself to them, to unite them to Himself and thus redeem and transform them into His likeness. He was not a sheltered "pastor's kid" who recoiled at every sin and slight. He suffered the effects of sin without being contaminated by it, and thus was able to be a sympathetic Savior.

This aspect of His ministry is not among those exclusive to His charge as Christ. His undershepherds would do well to be street smart on account of His sheep.

G.I. Williamson: 60 Years of Tending Christ's Sheep

A brief but edifying account of G.I. Willimason's ministry can be found here.

Ministry wisdom from the man himself, undoubtedly utilized by him all these years and ignored to a pastor's detriment, follows:

The Underdogism of Geerhardus Vos

The following short bio on Vos once again brings to the fore the fact that the greats were Underdogs.


Geerhardus Vos: Life Between Two Worlds by James T. Dennison, Jr.

There were not many present that Wednesday afternoon; not many present at all. No one was there from his denomination; no one was there from the institution he had served for nearly thirty-nine years. Only one person from his family appears to have been there. A man and a woman from the local Methodist Church were there. They sang a hymn. Ironically, the institution to which he had declined to transfer at its formation in 1929 was there—in the person of her most noted Dutchman; no antithesis here—Dutchman paying tribute to Dutchman. Cornelius Van Til was there with his Dutch friend, Rev. John De Waard; John De Waard, pastor of Memorial Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Rochester, New York. Van Til of Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church; De Waard, graduate of Princeton Seminary and member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Two Dutchmen were there to bury their countryman, conducting his casket from the village Methodist Church to a simple hillside cemetery. Van Til, De Waard and the casket of Geerhardus Vos in the tiny village of Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, August 17, 1949. And there in that grassy cemetery, they laid his remains next to those of his wife, Catherine; Catherine Vos who had died September 14, 1937. Geerhardus interred in the mountain village not far from the summer house where Catherine and he and their four children passed so many pleasant hours between May and September. Pleasant morning hours of study followed by the mile-long walk to the post office in town. Afternoon reading on the porch with the children followed by another walk to the post office. And evenings in the study once more, surrounded by his books and journals and papers. And on Sunday? the walk to the Methodist Church for worship—the only church in the village. The ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. worships in a Methodist Church; the Professor at the premier Old School Reformed Theological Seminary passes his summer Sabbaths in an Arminian church. And as ironic and incongruous as his church life in Roaring Branch is the surreal photograph of his open casket on that August afternoon in 1949—his open casket flanked by Van Til and De Waard. Geerhardus Vos buried in an obscure mountain village, in an obscure mountain cemetery—all but forgotten by the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., all but forgotten by Princeton Theological Seminary, all but forgotten by the evangelical and Reformed world of post-World War II boomers. At his graveside, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Seminary. But fifty years later, he remains obscure not only in the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.) and Princeton Theological Seminary; fifty years later, he remains an enigma to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Seminary.

But not to Cornelius Van Til fifty years ago; not even to the Cornelius Van Til of his own student days at Princeton Seminary 1924-25. "Dr. Vos was the greatest pedagogue I ever sat under." That is what Dr. Van Til told me in 1981 when he visited Westminster in California for his first and only time. And yet, even at Princeton, Vos was an enigma. Never active in Presbytery; not easily understood by the majority of his students (though J. Gresham Machen said, "if I knew half of what Dr. Vos knows"); ever in the background of the seminary culture—his only prominence (besides his profound scholarship) the regular walks with his friend, B. B. Warfield. Yet after the First World War, that profound scholarship virtually disappears from the pages of the journal of the Seminary he served. And his most penetrating work, The Pauline Eschatology—privately published by the author in 1930. Imagine that—no major publisher interested in a book that revolutionized Pauline Theology for all those who penetrated it—indeed for all those who found Vos's exegesis of the mind of Paul a Copernican revolution. Was Vos marginalized because of his thick Dutch accent and his intricate Germanic style? Was Vos isolated even at Princeton after 1918 because of his sympathies for the German Kaiser during World War I? What did he do to be placed on the periphery; what didn't he do to attain a place in even Princeton's tiny spotlight? Was it too hard to follow his lectures? Was it his distinctive approach to the organic character of revelation? certainly unpopular with students demanding Sunday School level instruction at a Theological Seminary. Was it his fragile health? a metabolism racked easily by fatigue, insomnia, nervousness? Was it his retiring personality? a personality which passed up appointment to Abraham Kuyper's Free University in Amsterdam out of deference to his parents; a personality which rejected William Henry Green's initial pleas to leave the backwater of Grand Rapids and join the faculty of his Princeton alma mater in the critical year before the Briggs heresy trial reached its climax; a personality which saw him rarely invited to speak beyond the chapel of Princeton Seminary; a personality which could not move out of Princeton in 1929, nor out of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. in 1936; a personality which led him to board a train in Seattle, Washington in 1926, leaving his wife and children to make their way by car from Seattle to Princeton without him.

Eschatology—The Ultimate Things

I'll be teaching this Saturday on the topic of "Man in the Covenant of Works" as treated in Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology. After reading through the chapter, I decided to supplement my knowledge with some free, downloadable lectures from sermonaudio.com.

The first two lectures I got were those delivered by Dr. Carl Trueman. I was only a bit surprised to find that the structure and over-all content of his presentations were almost equivalent to Berkhof's. I then got four more lectures, this time by Dr. Lane Tipton. Both men are from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

I was very much enriched by both men, but I got something more from Tipton on just the first lecture. What I got was the better, more biblical definition of eschatology, and how it relates to the Covenant of Works and actually to the entirety of God's economy in redemptive history as revealed in Scripture.

The default understanding of most on the meaning of "eschatology" is bound up in the phrase, the last things, which traditionally deals with death, the intermediate state, the millennium, judgment, the second coming, the new heavens and the new earth, etc. Tipton argues, taking off from Vos, that the better definition would be the ultimate things. He then offers this very helpful elaboration:

The eschatological is:

1. Eternal reality of the kingdom paradise promised to Adam in the CoW.
2. Immutable state of perfect life in the presence of God.
3. Heavenly goal of the promised kingdom under the CoW.
4. The final stage of the kingdom of God, the telos point, the omega point.

Summary: The eschatological is the eternal, immutable, heavenly, and final state of the kingdom of God.

Reproduced below are two articles that might prove helpful in the better understanding of the concept.

"Nice!"

If you practically grew up in a broad/mainline evangelical church like I did, it's likely that you've been charged with acting in a less than Christian-like manner—apart from actual Scriptural imperatives. This is because one of the chief commandments of the moralist is niceness.

It seems that for men, at least, less testosterone is more. While I cannot accept the cheesy posturing of a Mark Driscoll, the times, I believe, demand the employment of creational endowments that serve to augment passion in the defense and protection of orthodoxy, testosterone being one of them (the rap sheet of this hormone includes the crime of inducing un-niceness).

I'm not sure if Tim Challies' hormone levels were higher than usual at the time he wrote this post, but he sure wasn't nice to the nice men. To that I exclaim, "Nice!"

Another post on an article by someone not particularly renowed for niceness can be found here. Hehehe.

The Day After

Today is post-Reformation Day day, and what better way to segue than to discuss Reformed Scholasticism!

The following is Dr. J.V. Fesko's short introduction to the topic by way of a series of posts over at the WSC blog:

An Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism: Introduction

An Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism: Scholasticism Defined

An Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism: Francis Turretin

An Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism: The Benefits for the Church

An Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism: Concluding Thoughts

And this Office Hours episode features Dr. Richard Muller, perhaps the godfather of scholarship on Reformed Scholasticism, discussing the topic with Dr. R. Scott Clark.

While I'm no Barthian, I particularly like Barth when he said this:

"The fear of scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet. The true prophet will be ready to submit his message to this test too." (Church Dogmatics I/1, 279)

Aim My Smiling Skull at You

Grungeheads may be familiar with where the title of this post hails from. Hehehehe. Like me, they may also have a peculiar taste for skull imagery, but perhaps for different reasons.

I own a couple of skull rings and a skull bracelet. My sister, misunderstanding my motivation behind the ornamentation, once remarked that I was such an ironic guy. I think what she meant was the paradox of how I could be so into theology and, at the same time, be into symbols of eviiiiiil!

What is my motivation? This post may shed some light.

Rev. Allen Vander Pol on the Doctrine of Scripture at PCovRC

Dr. K. Scott Oliphint, in this wonderful ReformedForum broadcast entitled, Nature and Scripture, remarked that the Reformation's chief contribution, arguably, is the regrounding of epistemology on Scripture.

In line with this, Rev. Allen Vander Pol of Miami International Theological Seminary will be conducting a seminar at Pasig Covenant Reformed Church on the doctine of Scripture entitled, "That Word Above All Earthly Powers."

This is a FREE seminar on a very important topic, so you wouldn't want to miss it!

Personal Tragedy to Apostasy

I write this post from a position of not having experienced a personal tragedy of the magnitude that would rock the foundations of my faith to the core. In a way, I speak from ignorance, and yet the lives of some of those who have gone before me seem to speak ministration on this issue.

John Calvin lost his wife and son.

John Owen had eleven children. All died in early youth, except one daughter.

Francis Turretin had four children. Only one survived.

More recently, Michael Horton discloses in "A Place for Weakness" how one of his prematurely-born triplets, when older, experienced an accident wherein this elongated toy got jammed down the child's throat. The doctor gave a grim prognosis, but thankfully, the child survived.

As a father, I have often ruminated on the idea of the Lord taking back one of my kids. The same with Him taking back my wife. I have often wondered what my reaction would be. I do not know my heart well enough.

In a way, such thoughts are unwise, for it smacks of the attempt to peer into God's decretive will, and yet it is also wise in that reflection on one's faith, on one's devotion to the Lord, on the depth of one's love for Him, at the time when all is calm, may just be one of the ways in which stability may be had when the storms do come.

There's no minimizing the devastation of losing a family member. Imagining the possibility has often brought me to tears. But should it lead to apostasy? Should it drive one to the despair that leads to destruction? If the Lord Jesus Christ is our treasure, then we should mourn for the loss of a loved one with the passion that is due that love, but then that excruciating pain must be turned sacramental. It should lead us to Christ, whose life and death have redefined "death" for the Christian, with the promise of life forever restored in the future age of glory. Even if we think that the departed is lost by virtue of not being a Christian, our affinity with Christ and His promise of embodied eternal life should prove the stronger tug to renewed rejoicing.

May I love my Lord Jesus Christ more than my wife and children, that I may love them truly while they are here with me in this present age.

Dennison on Vos' Eschatological Sabbatarianism

To say that eschatology has primacy even over soteriology is to say that God's final goal in creation is ultimate in all our theologizing.

James T. Dennison, Jr. offers some explanation on Geerhardus Vos' view on the Sabbath and the way eschatology bears upon his understanding:

Vos on the Sabbath: A Close Reading

Geerhardus Vos provides an exposition of the Sabbath in biblical theological perspective as he comments on the fourth commandment in Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments.1

I am providing a close reading of Vos's remarks in the interest of a careful "exegesis" of his Sabbath position. The clarion call of all responsible scholarship is ad fontes—"to the sources." Thus, I define Vos's views a fontibus—"from the sources."

Seven, Sloth, and Bavinck

The movie, Seven, starring Brad Pitt and Kevin Spacey, has got to be one of the most tragic movies that has ever been made to pass before my eyes. It showcases this serial killer (Kevin Spacey) who goes about snuffing the life out of those he deems as prime incarnations of each of the classic "seven deadly sins." The movie concludes with the protagonist (Brad Pitt) putting a bullet in the antagonist's head, thereby giving the latter his desired ending, i.e., having the former succumb to rage (one of the seven deadly sins) and, consequently, suffer the legal consequences of extra-judicial killing (as if the brutal and grotesque murder of his wife and prenatal baby in the killer's hands was not suffering enough!). Of course, one of the victims was a supposedly slothful man who was tied up on his bed for a year, allowing his inactivity to kill him!

Sloth may be defined as the antithesis of industry, and what I have for you below is Herman Bavinck's theology of work:

Better Than a Pre-Fall Adam

Herman Bavinck explains how Adam, in his pre-Fall state, lacked "absolute certainty" regarding his present state of bliss and its continuity, whereas the believer in Christ, now in this present sin-ravaged age, possesses it:

Still, on the other hand, the state of the first man should not be exaggeratedly glorified as is so often done in Christian doctrine and preaching. No matter how high God placed man above the animal level, man had not yet achieved his highest possible level. He was able-not-to-sin, but not yet not-able-to-sin. He did not yet possess eternal life which cannot be corrupted and cannot die, but received instead a preliminary immortality whose existence and duration depended upon the fulfillment of a condition. He was immediately created as image of God, but he could still lose this image and all its glory. He lived in paradise, it is true, but this paradise was not heaven and it could with all of its beauty be forfeited by him. One thing was lacking in all the riches, both spiritual and physical, which Adam possessed: absolute certainty. As long as we do not have that, our rest and our pleasure is not yet perfect; in fact, the contemporary world with its many efforts to insure everything that man possesses is satisfactory evidence for this. The believers are insured for this life and the next, for Christ is their Guarantor and will not allow any of them to be plucked out of His hand and be lost (John 10:28). Perfect love banishes fear in them (1 John 4:18) and persuades them that nothing shall separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus their Lord (Rom. 8:38-39). But this absolute certainty was lacking to man in paradise; he was not, together with his creation in the image of God, permanently established in the good. Irrespective of how much he had, he could lose it all, both for himself and for his posterity. His origin was Divine; his nature was related to the Divine nature; his destiny was eternal blessedness in the immediate presence of God. But whether he was to reach that appointed destination was made dependent upon his own choice and upon his own will.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.' No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)

What a Gospel!

Bavinck Contra NL2K/R2K

In this post, I argue that to be human is to be in need of both natural and special revelation.

In this article, Dr. Cornelis P. Venema discusses Herman Bavinck's view of the image of God. He quotes the following:

In this [Lutheran] theology the lines of demarcation between the spiritual and the worldly, between the heavenly and the earthly, are so sharply drawn that the result is two hemispheres, and the connection between nature and grace, between creation and re-creation is totally denied. The supernaturalist [or dualist] view is still at work here; the image of God stands alongside nature, is detached from it, and is above it. The loss of the image, which renders man totally deaf and blind in spiritual matters, still enables him in earthly matters to do much good and in a sense renders him independent from the grace of God in Christ . . . [In Reformed theology] sin, which precipitated the loss of the image of God in the narrower sense and spoiled and ruined the image of God in the broader sense, has profoundly affected the whole person, so that, consequently, also the grace of God in Christ restores the whole person, and is of the greatest significance for his or her whole life and labor, also in the family, society, the state, art, science, and so forth (RD 2:553–4)

He then makes a footnote comment:

Though it is anachronistic to put it this way, Bavinck offers in his criticism of the Lutheran view of the image of God an insightful assessment of what today is sometimes called the "two kingdom/natural law" view. Bavinck's point is that, just as sin pervasively corrupts all of human life "before God," so God's grace in Christ restores and perfects all of human life under Christ's lordship. To be restored and perfected as an image bearer of God is not to be elevated to a higher plane of supernatural life and existence, but to be perfected in the fullness of natural (that is, creaturely) human life in communion with God.

It is interesting to see how NL2K/R2K owes much to Roman Catholic nature/grace dualism.