A Brief G. Vos Bio and BT Lesson

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.

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."

Trueman on Bavinck as Model

I am blessed to own Herman Bavinck's 4-volume "Reformed Dogmatics" and the John Bolt-edited, "The Last Things." And though Cornelius Van Til chides Bavinck for instances of excursions into autonomous reasoning, still the latter's influence on the former is undeniable.

In this short article, Dr. Carl Trueman extols the virtues of Bavinckism.

Westminster Wednesday: Intrusion Ethics

The Decalogue is Moral Law (henceforth, "Law"). It is the expression of God's moral will and is binding on every human being by virtue of the Covenant of Creation. When the reprobate is judged on the Last Day, he will be judged by virtue of his inability and failure to keep the Law perfectly, whereas the elect will be judged as righteous (keeper of the Covenant) by virtue of his union with Christ (the One who obeyed the Law perfectly for the elect and bore the penalty of their failure to keep it in the same way).

Given the binding nature of the Law (as an agent of damnation for the reprobate and as the means of manifesting existentially one's union with Christ through obedience for the elect), the particular instances in the Old Testament of seeming contraventions to it may cause confusion to some. What of the Canaanite genocide? Rahab's lie? Etc. Aren't these instances of the Law being broken, with God giving approval? This is where Meredith Kline's notion of "intrusion ethics" comes into play.

Developing on Geerhardus Vos' biblical theology (notably its deeply eschatological character) and Cornelius Van Til's ethics (notably "common grace"), Kline proposes that these instances of seeming law-breaking in the O.T. were actually in-breakings of the consummation (future kingdom) in the context of redemptive history that was functioning typologically.

So, in fact, the massacre of the Canaanites was a type of the future judgment and destruction of all the reprobate in hell.

Dr. Jeong Koo Jeon, in his essay entitled Covenant Theology and Old Testament Ethics: Meredith G. Kline's Intrusion Ethics, explains :

Westminster Wednesday: The Artistry of Meredith Kline

I apologize for the delay of this week's Westminster Wednesday. However, it is my opinion that this week's offering all but makes up for the hold up, as it is a short but profound insight on a key character aspect of one of the giants of the Reformed faith—Meredith Kline the artist.

As an artist myself (I have some aptitude for drawing, drumming, and scribbling poetry), knowing of Kline's musical inclinations made me love him even more. But barring this commonality, art, if not in its creation but in its appreciation, should figure predominantly in the life of the Christian, most especially the minister, as T. David Gordon proposes, "In addition to studying the scriptures in the original languages, the reading of poetry is most helpful in cultivating literary sensibility," which most certainly is significant to the preacher's task.

So here, for your enjoyment and inspiration, do I repost Gregory Edward Reynolds's article on Meredith George Kline:

Bavinck on Truth and Catholicity

"Scripture is not designed so that we should parrot it but that as free children of God we should think his thoughts after him. But then all so-called presuppositionlessness and objectivity are impossible. So much study and reflection on the subject is bound up with it that no person can possibly do it alone. That takes centuries. To that end the church has been appointed and given the promise of the Spirit's guidance into all truth. Whoever isolates himself from the church, i.e., from Christianity as a whole, from the history of dogma in its entirety, loses the truth of the Christian faith. That person becomes a branch that is torn from the tree and shrivels, an organ that is separated from the body and therefore doomed to die.... For just as the Son of God become truly human, so also God's thoughts, incorporated in Scripture, become flesh and blood in the human consciousness. Dogmatics is and ought to be divine thought totally entered into and absorbed in our human consciousness, freely and independently expressed in our language, in its essence the fruit of centuries, in its form contemporary." [1]

"It is not apart from the existing churches but through them that Christ prepares for himself a holy, catholic church. Nor is it apart from the different ecclesiastical dogmas but through them that the unity of the knowledge of God is prepared and realized. In the same way the dogmatician will best be able to work fruitfully for the purification and development of the religious life and the confession of his church.... This significance of the church for theology and dogmatics is grounded in the link that Christ himself forged between the two." [2]

Footnotes:
[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1, (John Bolt [ed.] & John Vriend [trans.]), (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 83.
[2] Ibid., 84.

Some Theobloggers on Preaching

I came across the following blog posts, written by stellar theologians, on the topic of preaching:

A Teaser on Preaching
The Mystery Source Is....
More on Barthian preaching
Preaching again...
Slouching to Bethlehem
Running to Bethlehem
Don't Disagree but....

You have to read them in the same order as they are posted here for the message's coherence to be maintained.

Initially, we have Carl Trueman quoting Karl Barth's polemic against boring and unbiblical preaching. He rightly asserts the juxtaposition of Osteenian speech-making to biblical preaching. But then he inserts a light jab at supposedly "entertainment-driven" preachers that are "confessional in subscription", the latter ascription I take to mean confessionally Reformed. Not content with rightly pointing out the errors of unbiblical and pragmatic/entertainment-driven preaching, Trueman then proceeds to rail against redemptive-historical preaching. Derek Thomas joins him in bewailing the "Reformed error" of being too hung-up on trying to squeeze Christ out of the biblical text, describing most manifestations of this exercise as "flat." Somehow, all this reminds me of Trueman's prior debate with Graeme Goldsworthy, wherein he tries to pit systematic theology against biblical theology, with his dog being the former, and with Goldsworthy counting him out in the corner with the former's rightful insistence that the relationship between the two theological disciplines is perichoretic.

Sean Lucas then comes into the picture, injecting the anti-venom to what has become a toxic mix of what I would consider as a caricaturing of what Reformed preaching is about. Lucas justifiably brings what it means to be a herald of the Gospel to the forefront by reminding us that the whole of Scripture speaks of Christ and of what God has done, is doing, and will do in redemptive history through Him, and that this is to be the crux of all Gospel preaching—indeed, all preaching! Trueman inquires that must this be the be-all and end-all, a confounding of the indicative with the imperative? To that I would remark that the Gospel is the foundation of all truly God-pleasing responses to the imperatives. Anything less is legalism or moralism.

A Primer on Geerhardus Vos, Father of Reformed Biblical Theology

Nineteen ninety-nine marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Geerhardus Vos, widely acknowledged as the father of Reformed Biblical theology. A descendent of French Huguenots, Vos was born in the Netherlands on March 14, 1862. He immigrated to the United States in 1881, when his father accepted a call to a congregation of the Christian Reformed Church, and he enrolled in what is now Calvin College, in Grand Rapids. From there he continued his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary (1883-1885), and he eventually earned his Ph.D. from the University of Strassburg in 1888.

After teaching at Calvin for a few years, Vos went on to serve at Princeton Theological Seminary nearly forty years, where he taught many of the founding ministers of the OPC, such as Machen, Murray, Stonehouse, and Van Til. Yet Vos is not normally included in the chain of Old Princeton giants that preceded Machen and the OPC (a list generally restricted to Alexander, Hodge, and Warfield). Vos was "largely a forgotten man," according to one biographer. "Enrollment in his courses at [Princeton] often was sparse compared to those of other professors of a more 'popular' type, because of the weightiness of his lectures."

Another explanation for Vos's relative obscurity was his low ecclesiastical profile. Rarely did he step outside the classroom and into the courts of the church (though he fought Presbyterian attempts to revise the Westminster Confession). Nearing retirement when Machen founded Westminster in 1929, Vos, an opponent of Princeton's reorganization, did not leave Princeton for Westminster, nor did he ever join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Instead, he retired to southern California in 1932, and he then moved to Grand Rapids in 1937, where he lived until his death in 1949. Moreover, Vos never wrote for the Westminster Theological Journal or the Presbyterian Guardian. While Machen and other founders of the OPC may never have fully understood Vos's reasons for remaining in the PCUSA, there seemed a greater willingness to forgive him than others who stayed in. (The Guardian provided partial absolution in its obituary for Vos, noting that "when he retired in 1932, he left a valuable part of his library to Westminster Seminary.") Undoubtedly Catharine Vos, the author of the popular Child's Story Bible, has been far more widely read by Orthodox Presbyterians than her husband.

Much like Cornelius Van Til, Vos was an acquired taste. Biblical theology and presuppositional apologetics were new subjects in the curriculum of Presbyterian seminaries. Like Van Til, English was not Vos's native language, and his books quickly went out of print before their rediscovery after his death. His most well known work, Biblical Theology, was edited by his son and published by Eerdmans in 1948, just before his death.

Just as Vos was never a member of the OPC, so many of his best contemporary interpreters lie outside the denomination. James T. Dennison edits Kerux, a journal dedicated to redemptive-historical preaching in the Vosian tradition. At Gordon-Conwell Seminary, G. K. Beale is applying Vos's insights in New Testament exegesis (see for example his latest commentary on Revelation).

Still, it can be fairly said that no non-OPCer this century has influenced the denomination as much as Geerhardus Vos. Orthodox Presbyterians often describe themselves as a hybrid between Old Princeton and Dutch Calvinism. More than anyone else, Vos's long career at Princeton forged links between American Presbyterianism and Dutch Calvinism that were to shape the character of the OPC. Latter day Vosians in the church include Meredith G. Kline and Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.

For Vos, "biblical theology" was short-hand for the study of the history of special revelation. So the starting point of his theology was acknowledgment of the progressive character of the revelation that accompanies God's redemptive activity. Vos likened this progress to the growth of a tree: "It is sometimes contended that the assumption of progress in revelation excludes its perfection at all stages. This would actually be so if the progress were non-organic. The organic progress is from seed-form to the attainment of full growth; yet we do not say that in the qualitative sense the seed is less perfect than the tree."

In historian Mark Noll's words, Vos was "attempting to roll back the assumption, prevailing since the late seventeenth century, that historical consciousness was the natural ally of naturalistic views of the Bible." For Vos, this historical progression culminated in the coming of Jesus Christ, whose work is revealed in the New Testament in terms of present inauguration and future consummation. G. K. Beale argues that while this interpretive approach is now standard (cf. Cullmann, Ridderbos, and Ladd), "Vos appears to be the first European or American scholar to espouse an ‘already and not yet eschatology'" to the theology of Paul. Yet the historical sensibilities in Vos's work has yet to gain full acceptance within the OPC, where suspicions persist that his approach may still concede too much to naturalism. Thus some contemporary exegesis of Scripture (for example, on creation), continues to miss its eschatological dimension.

Though originally a systematician, Vos's first love was biblical theology. Some of his followers suggest that Vosian biblical theology calls into question the very nature of dogmatics. Does Vos require a fundamental recasting of the categories of systematics? Can we even speak of a "system of doctrine" after Vos?

Those who would pit biblical theology against systematics have difficulty explaining Vos's long tenure at Princeton and especially his close friendship with Warfield. And Vos himself would hardly identify his insights as Copernican. He was deeply grounded in the Reformed dogmatic tradition. Far from jettisoning systematic theology, Vos was a staunch defender of Reformed confessional orthodoxy, and he used biblical theology to give fresh and creative defense of dogmatics, such as the doctrines of the covenant, soteriology, and the kingdom of God. The two disciplines were complementary, each transforming the biblical data in different ways. "Biblical theology draws a line of development," Vos wrote. "Systematic theology draws a circle." Following in the footsteps of Vos, Meredith G. Kline sees no hard and fast distinction between biblical theology and systematic theology: "biblical theology involves the systematization of the covenantal data under relatively broad historical epochs."

Vos's biblical-theological identification of the church as a pilgrim people has made the most indelible imprint on the OPC, even while it has provoked some of the OPC's strongest critics. American Christians are prone to judge the success of the church in terms of its influence in the world. For this reason, many have dismissed the OPC as "irrelevant" for its want of a social or cultural agenda. Seen from an eschatological perspective, however, it is more accurate to say that the OPC is committed to the "irrelevance" of the world to the church.

The OPC has been molded by Vos's reminder that, as part of the new eschatological order unveiled in the coming of Christ, the church locates its hope in a kingdom that is not of this world, a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Secured in a life that is hid in Christ in the heavenlies, the church longs for the return of her Lord. This eschatological location of the church as the kingdom inaugurated and awaiting consummation is the legacy of Vos. For that source of solid hope and comfort, the OPC abandoned aspirations for earthly glory. A half-century after Vos's death, political gospels and this-worldly agendas continue to tempt the church. Reformed orthodoxy needs to give a fresh hearing to Geerhardus Vos, perhaps now more than ever.

— D.G. Hart & John Muether, Ordained Servant, Vol. 8, No. 3, July 1999.

The Trueman—Goldsworthy Debate (Biblical Theology and Epistemology)

I was in the midst of doing software applications deployment work at the office last night when, while waiting for my colleagues to wrap up, I came across the Trueman—Goldsworthy debate. Finding out that two of modern Christian orthodoxy's pillars—both of whom I highly esteem—had some words to say to each other really got me excited, to say the least. Though the debate occurred many years ago—year 2002, I think—the issue that was tackled seems to be possessed of a timeless nature and certainly has relevance even to the present time; the subject being biblical theology—its nature, potential dangers, and relationship to the other theological disciplines, especially systematic theology.

Carl Trueman gave vent to what he perceives as the danger of biblical theology's usurpation of systematic theology's place in the church's theological discourse. This he likened to a "revolution" in which the element that once was the "outsider" or the "rebel" now has become the "establishment", thereby wielding the greater influence if not the only. He rightly lamented the uncouth implementation of biblical theology by some of its proponents wherein if Christ is even made to "leap from the page", it is an unbiblical Christ that ends up flopping on the floor. He also raises the concern that an overemphasis on biblical theology has the potential of making the church lose sight of what its forefathers labored hard for, namely, the systematization of biblical doctrine in the forms of its catechisms, creeds, and confessions, thereby eroding the ground on which its faith is based as these systematics adhere to Scripture. This he calls a forsaking of "ontology" for "economy", i.e., a giving of too much import to the saving acts of God over the being of God. Finally, he calls for "balance" between biblical and systematic theology, making an appeal for the reclaiming of the ground that systematic theology supposedly lost to its biblical cousin.

Graeme Goldsworthy responds in his classic lucid, and yet very much erudite, fashion (if you've read any of his books, you know what I mean). He observes Trueman's statement of the problem as bordering on exaggeration, and that it has the potential effect of sowing a misunderstanding of the function of biblical theology in church life. In this he challenges the claim of the "establishment" status that biblical theology supposedly currently enjoys. While assenting to the possibility of the various errors (Trueman's "mediocrity") that are open to the implementation of biblical theology, this he states is not inherent to the method itself but to the improper actualization of it. And with regard to the charge that biblical theology is overshadowing systematic theology's rightful place in the theological milieu, and that there is the distinct danger of losing the heritage of the church's catechisms, creeds and confessions, with the neglect of the "ontology" of theology over its "economy", Graeme makes the case that biblical and systematic theology have never been in such a relationship of mutual exclusivity. In fact, he claims, the biblical writers, along with all of the divines of church history, utilized biblical theological method in coming up with their systematizations in what apparently is a relationship that is best described as the hermeneutical spiral. He categorically goes against the proposal of a "balance" between the two paradigms, seeing that such a balance is not to be found in Scripture or is propounded by it. Instead he advances the notion that the relationship between biblical and systematic theology is perichoretic, in that while each carries its own distinctions, an inter-penetration exists that makes the realization of one impossible without the other.

I was deeply impressed by Graeme Goldsworthy's treatment of the matter at hand, and sorely disappointed at Carl Trueman's hasty generalizations. Goldsworthy actually made an appeal to the nature of knowledge (epistemology) in his defense of biblical theology. One cannot know about categories, abstractions, and absolutes without coming to grips with particulars, specifics, and instances, and vice-versa. Scripture makes plain that the created order (particulars) bears testimony to God and His many divine attributes (abstraction), though not in a salvific way. Conversely, God's moral will (abstraction) shows us why the Decalogue, with its imperatives (particulars), is good and is to be obeyed and lived out. The relationship between induction and deduction is perichoretic. With that said, let me leave you with this wonderful quote from Goldsworthy's response:

"...you will never be a good biblical theologian if you are not also striving to be a good systematic and historical theologian, and you will never be a good systematic theologian if you ignore biblical and historical theology. Between the various theological methods (we could add pastoral theology) there is not balance but the perichoresis of the hermeneutic spiral." — Graeme Goldsworthy