Category: Theological Reflections

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Practical Notes Preaching Quotations Theological Reflections

Waiting for a Blessing that Tarries

The Baptist stands in the advent period. He fits into our Advent season. For isn’t our life still Advent: faith, expectation, patience, and longing for what is not yet visible? Do not we Christians have to build on what is “merely” hoped for and believed in? If we really want to be Christians, do we not, with God’s folly, have to sacrifice the bird in the hand here on earth for the sake of the two in the heavenly bush � monetary advantage, pleasures of the body, harsh insistence on our rights, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, that kingdom of heaven, alas, which no eye has seen?
The Baptist of today’s Gospel belongs to such an Advent of waiting for what is still to come. He is in reality what we ought to be in our lifelong season of Advent. He was in prison. He had been stupid enough to speak the truth even to the master of the state. How could anyone be as politically unrealistic as that? He sits there. It serves him right. No one gets him out. His friends do not start a revolt. They are much too insignificant for that, only interested in theology and quite ineffectual in real life, or so it seems at any rate.
And God, too, leaves his preacher of penance where he is. He too seems to be on the side of the big battalions. And yet he was working miracles in his Son. But � is it tragedy or comedy � those miracles cured a few poor wretches of apparently no great importance for the kingdom of God. Those miracles did not free the holy prophet, the blood relation and quite official precursor of the man who was working the miracles. He remained imprisoned until he was “liquidated.”
It is not easy for a prophet to sit in prison waiting for certain death, written off, and at the same time to take an interest in miracles which are of no help to himself.
But the Baptist is not a reed shaken by the wind. He believes despite everything. He is the messenger preparing the way for God, in his own life and heart first of all, preparing the way for the God who takes such an inhumanly long time to come and does not even hurry when his prophet is perishing, the God who always seems to arrive only when it is too late. The Baptist knows that God always makes his point, that he wins by losing, that he is living and gives life by being put to death himself, that he is the future which seems to have no future.
In a word, the Baptist believes. It was not easy for him. His heart was bitter and the sky overcast. The question in his heart has a rather agonized ring: Are you he who is to come? But that question was nevertheless addressed to the right person, to God who is man. In prayer we may show even a frightened heart to God, a heart that can practically do no more and no longer knows how long its strength will hold out. In a heart that prays there still remains faith and this receives a sufficient answer: “Go and tell John what you see� and blessed is he who takes no offence at me” even if he sits abandoned in prison.
We are in Advent all through our lives, for we Christians await one who is still to come. Only then shall we be proved right. Until then, however, the world seems to be right. The world will laugh, you will weep, our Lord said. We too are sitting in a dungeon, in the prison of death, of unanswered questions, of our own weakness, our own meanness, of the hardship and tragedy of our life. We shall not get out alive. But everyday we shall send the messengers of our faith and prayer to him who will come thence to judge the living and the dead. These advent messengers will come back each time with the answer: I am coming; blessed is he who takes no offence at me.

Karl Rahner, The Advent of Faith (on Matthew 11:2-10)

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Consolation of Being United to Adam

Principal Fairbairn explains how the doctrine of headship, that humanity derives its condition from that representative man with whom it is union, is a source of comfort, even considered under the aspect of that guilt and pollution we partake of in Adam:

And though, like every other peculiar doctrine of the Gospel, it will always prove a stone of stumbling to the natural man, it will never fail to impart peace and comfort to the child of faith. Some degree of this he will derive from it, even by contemplating it in its darkest side by looking to the inheritance of evil which it has been the occasion of transmitting from Adam to the whole human race. For, humbling as is the light in which it presents the natural condition of man, it still serves to keep the soul possessed of just and elevated views of the goodness of God. That all are naturally smitten with the leprosy of a sore disease, is matter of painful experience, and cannot be denied without setting aside the plainest lessons of history. But how much deeper must have been the pain which the thought of this awakened, and how unspeakably more pregnant should it have appeared with fear and anxiety for the future, if the evil could have been traced to the operation of God, and had existed as an original and inherent element in the state and constitution of man ! It was a great relief to the wretched bosom of the pro digal, and was all, indeed, that remained to keep him from the blackness of despair, to know that it was not his father who sent him forth into the condition of a swine-herd, and bade him satisfy his hunger with the husks on which they fed; a truly consolatory thought, that these husks and that wretchedness were not emblems of his father. And can it be less comforting for the thoughtful mind, when awakening to the sad heritage of sin and death, under which humanity lies burdened, to know that this ascends no higher than the first parent of the human family, and that, as originally settled by God, the condition of mankind was in all respects “very good?” The evil is thus seen to have been not essential, but incidental ; a root of man’s planting, not of God’s; an intrusion into Heaven’s workmanship, which Heaven may again drive out.


Typology of Scripture, V.1, P.2, C.1

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Quotations Theological Reflections

God is Altogether Beautiful and Stable

Boethius explains this in his little tractate, The Trinity is One God not Three Gods:

But the Divine Substance is Form without matter, and is therefore One, and is its own essence. But other things are not simply their own essences, for each thing has its being from the things of which it is composed, that is, from its parts. It is This and That, i.e. it is the totality of its parts in conjunction; it is not This or That taken apart. Earthly man, for instance, since he consists of soul and body, is soul and body, not soul or body, separately; therefore he is not his own essence. That on the other hand which does not consist of This and That, but only of This, is really its own essence, and is altogether beautiful and stable because it is not grounded in any alien element.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

God vs. Circumstances

John Calvin,Lectures on Lamentations, Lecture 10 on 3:24

But Paul meant that the faithful ought so to fix their minds on God alone, that whatever might happen, they would not yet cease to glory in him. Why? because God is their life in death, their light in darkness, their rest in war and tumult, their abundance in penury and want.
It is in the same sense our Prophet now says, when he intimates that none hope in God but those who build on his paternal favor alone, so that they seek nothing else but to have him propitious to them.

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Valuing Christ Alone

John Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels, V.2 on Matthew 17:8

They saw no man but Jesus only. When it is said that in the end they saw Christ alone, this means that the Law and the Prophets had a temporary glory, that Christ alone might remain fully in view. If we would properly avail ourselves of the aid of Moses, we must not stop with him, but must endeavor to be conducted by his hand to Christ, of whom both he and all the rest are ministers. This passage may also be applied to condemn the superstitions of those who confound Christ not only with prophets and apostles, but with saints of the lowest rank, in such a manner as to make him nothing more than one of their number. But when the saints of God are eminent in graces, it is for a totally different purpose than that they should defraud Christ of a part of his honor, and appropriate it to themselves. In the disciples themselves we may see the origin of the mistake; for so long as they were terrified by the majesty of God, their minds wandered in search of men, but when Christ gently raised them up, they saw him alone. If we are made to experience that consolation by which Christ relieves us of our fears, all those foolish affections, which distract us on every hand, will vanish away.

It’s obvious that being seized by prejudice against Calvin is simply a way to deprive yourself of great blessing.

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Essays Theological Reflections

The Ontological Gulf

The Westminster Standards (Confession of Faith, Shorter Catechism and Larger Catechism) are the home of a theology as profound as it is clear and precise. This may seem confusing to some, who think that if you can speak with plain forthrightness the matter must be simple, that if something is expressible it is consequently jejune. The ineffable does not lose its quality of mystery when we state with comprehensible precision everything that can be said about it. For though vagueness and mist are sometimes confused for depth, the real marvels can be set out plainly in the full light of day and still boggle the mind.

One area where this profundity is evident is in the doctrine of the covenants. WCF VII,1 says:

The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.

The ontological gulf, the distance between God and man with regard to being, was bridged not by man ascending a ladder to God, not by a series of emanations, and not by the Incarnation of Christ. The ontological gulf between God and man was bridged by God’s voluntary condescension – by the covenant of works. When man fell into sin, and rendered himself uncapable of life by that covenant (VII,3), there was a new gulf. To the distance of being between God and man, there was added a moral distance. The covenant of grace, the appointment of Christ as Mediator with all that entailed, including the Incarnation, was the bridge of that moral gulf, so that God could again dwell in and among His people. The Incarnation was never meant to bridge the ontological gulf between God and man. Thus the Confession goes on to assert (VIII,2):
“…two whole, perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined in one person, without conversion, composition or confusion.”
The Incarnation does not render us ontologically capable of union with God, or of the knowledge of God. There is never any possibility of some hybrid of deity and humanity: the natures cannot be blended: the ontological distance never disappears, though God accommodate Himself to us. The One who dwells in inaccessible light must still approach us: if we are to know Him at all He must condescend to our low estate, to our near approach to non-being, to our paltry ontological status. But the Incarnation, as part of what was required for the Son to be Mediator between God and man, bridges the moral gulf – the distance between our wickedness and God’s holiness, so that our vileness is no longer an obstacle to God’s purpose of condescension.
That means, of course, that the covenant of grace is superior to the covenant of works: in the latter, God kindly overcame a natural distance to make Himself known to us; but in the former, God graciously overcomes not only a natural but a moral distance to make Himself known to us as not only our Sovereign Lord but as also our Loving Redeemer.
That means also that salvation should not be conceived of in ontological categories. This would be sufficiently evidenced by God’s pronouncement of His whole creation, including man, to be very good. We don’t need deliverance from a condition of exceeding goodness. It is also manifest in the Incarnation itself. If being human were intrinsically wrong or evil, the Son of God could never have taken into personal union with Himself a complete human nature. Christ came, not to deliver us from the condition of humanity, but from humanity’s accidental (in the sense of not proper to its essence) bondage to sin and consequently the devil and death.
And together all of that means that the attempt to find some natural ground in God that required the Incarnation, to insist with some absurd speculators that Christ would have become incarnate even had the Fall never happened, is ultimately profane.
To begin with, it means prying into what has not been revealed, and in so doing that speculation reveals a lack of proper humility before God (Psalm 131).
This notion fails, secondly, in that it does not recognise God’s providence over all, which requires us to believe that the Fall was included in God’s decree, and though contingent as to Adam, infallibly certain as to God.[1]
It fails too because it seeks for something higher than the will of God, for a cause of God’s will. It looks for a necessity planted in the divine nature, so that the Incarnation is not a free determination of God’s will to deal with the problem of sin, but an inevitable expression of some thing essential in God. This is a fundamental mistake, since there is nothing higher than the will of God, and for His will no cause may be assigned.[2]
In addition to the preceding points, which demonstrate that such speculations minimise God’s sovereignty and the perfection of His decree, it should be said, as sufficient for simple souls, that believing Christ would have become incarnate without sin also falsifies the Scriptural representations that Christ came into the world to save sinners (e.g., 1 Timothy 1:15, 1 John 4:9,10). This wasn’t a super-added purpose, an additional benefit to proceeding with something that was already going to take place. This was the reason that the Son was united to a human nature, and took upon Himself our curse and our subjection to the law.
And the ultimate effect is to minimise and dishonour the grace of God. It diminishes God’s grace to argue that the Incarnation was not done graciously, freely, but because of an intrinsic compulsion: obscuring that this act of condescension is voluntary robs God of the praise due to Him for it. It dishonours the grace of God by failing to recognise that it was on account of sin that this staggering act of condescension was undertaken; it was not man as man, in his condition of humanity, but man as sinful -vile, rebellious, hateful- upon whom God had mercy in sending His Son to be born of a woman.

[1] For more on this point, B.B. Warfield’s article “The Principle of the Incarnation” in Selected Shorter Writings, v.1 is a good beginning point.
[2] For more on this point consult Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Part 1, Question 19, Articles 4 & 5 and Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Topic 3, Question 17.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Justification Differs from Sanctification

Heppe (Reformed Dogmatics) quotes from Wollebius:

Sanctification differs from justification (1) in genus; the righteousness of the former belongs to the category of quality, that of the latter to the category of relation; (2) in form; (a) in justification faith is regarded as a hand grasping the righteousness of Christ, in sanctification faith is regarded as the principle and root of good works; (b) in justification sin is removed only as regards liability and punishment, in sanctification it is gradually abolished as regards existence; (c) in justification Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, in sanctification a new righteousness inherent to us is infused into us; (3) in degrees: for justification is an acting, one individual, perfect, happening alike to all; but sanctification is a successive act, gradually tending to perfection and, according to the variety in the gifts of the H. Spirit, more shining in some, less so in others.

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True Assurance Results in True Piety

Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, IV.13,22

So far is the doctrine of the certainty of grace from being the mother of security and the midwife of licentiousness, that there is no greater incentive to true piety than a vivid sense of the love of God and of his benefits. This so powerfully lays hold of and inflames the mind that it is all on fire with a reciprocal love of him from whom it receives so great favors and has been so highly preferred over others left in the common mass of perdition.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Divine Word

Calvin points out that God’s word is Godlike:

….as the Prophet possessed the discernment of the Holy Spirit, he penetrated into their hearts and brought out what was hid within. We indeed know this to be the power of the word, as the apostle teaches in the fourth chapter to the Hebrews: for the word partakes of the nature of God himself, from whom it has proceeded; and as God is a searcher of hearts, so also the word penetrates to the marrow, to the inmost thoughts of men, and distinguishes between the feelings and the imaginations.

Commentary on Amos 6:13

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Preaching Quotations Theological Reflections

Preaching the communication of properties

Our times do not seem like a high-water mark for doctrinal preaching, for a variety of reasons (one of which might be a foolish notion that doctrinal preaching is opposed to textual or expository preaching). And some doctrines seem harder to preach than others, they seem to be set forth primarily as a safeguard against error, but to serve no purpose other than defense of more fundamental truths.

I suspect it is easy to feel that way about the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, set forth in WCF VIII.7 in these words:

VII. Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.

While it can be seen that this is certainly an explanation of the workings of Scripture phrases such as “crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8; other texts cited in supports of this doctrine include Acts 20:28 and John 3:13), and that this usage itself serves as a safeguard against Nestorianism, the use of the doctrine may not be immediately apparent. But Martin Luther provides an example, not only of preaching doctrine, but of preaching this doctrine and doing so clearly, simply, and movingly. From Volume 24 of the Works edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, speaking of John 14:16:

We have stated often enough that in the divine essence of Christ and the Father there are two distinct Persons. Therefore when speaking of Christ here one must teach clearly that He is one Person, but that there are two distinct natures, the divine and the human. Again, just as there the nature or the divine essence remains unmingled in the Father and in Christ, so also the Person of Christ remains undivided here. Therefore the attributes of each nature, the human and the divine, are ascribed to the entire Person, and we say of Christ: “The Man Christ, born of the Virgin, is omnipotent and does all that we ask � not, however, according to the human but according to the divine nature, not by reason of His birth from His mother, but because He is God’s Son.” And again, “Christ, God’s Son, prays the Father, not according to His divine nature and essence, according to which He is coequal with the Fathe,r but because He is true man and Mary’s Son.” Thus the words must be brought together and compared according to the unity of the Person. The natures must always be differentiated, but the Person must remain undivided.
And now since He is believed as one Person, God and man, it is also proper for us to speak of Him as each nature requires. Therefore we should consider what Christ says according to His human nature and what He says according to His divine nature. For where this is not observed and properly distinguished, many types of heresy must result, as happened in times gone by, when some people asserted that Christ was not true God and others that He was not true man. They were unable to follow the principle of differentiating between the two types of discourse on the basis of the two natures.
(…)
Yes, all that Scripture says of Christ covers the whole Person, just as though both God and man were one essence. Often it uses expressions interchangeably and assigns the attributes of both to each nature. This is done for the sake of the personal union, which we call the “communication of properties.” Thus we can say: “The Man Christ is God’s eternal Son, by whom all creatures were created, Lord of heaven and earth.” And by the same token we say: “Christ, God’s Son (that is, the Person who is true God), was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified and dead.”
(…)
Here we must again confess with our Creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ, God the Father’s only Son, our Lord, born of the Virgin mary, suffered, was crucified, died.” It is always one and the same Son of God, our Lord. Therefore it is certain that Mary is the mother of the real and true God and that the Jews crucified not only the Son of Man but also the true Son of God. For I do not want a Christ in whom I am to believe and to whom I am to pray as my Savior who is only man. Otherwise I would go to the devil. For mere flesh and blood could not erase sin, reconcile God, remove His anger, overcome and destroy death and hell, and bestow eternal life.
Furthermore since the angels in heaven adore Him and call Him Lord as He lies in the manger, and say to the shepherds, according to Luke 2:11: “To you is born this day … a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” He must be true God. For the angels do not worship mere flesh or human nature. Therefore it follows that both God and man must dwell in this Person. And when you speak of Christ, you speak of an undivided Person, who is both God and man; and he who sees, hears, or finds Christ with the faith of the heart surely encounters not only the man Christ but also the true God. Thus we do no let God sit idly in heaven among the angels; but we find Him here below, lying in the manger and on His mother’s lap. We summarize and say: “Wherever we encounter this Person, there we surely encounter the Divine Majesty.”
As has often been stated, all this makes it possible for us to withstand the devil and to vanquish him in the hour of death and at other times when he terrifies us with sin and hell. For if he were to succeed in persuading me to regard Christ as only a man who was crucified and died for me, I would be lost. But if my pride and joy is the fact that Christ, both true God and true man, died for me, I find that this outweighs and eclipses all sin, death, hell, and all misery and woe. For if I know that He who is true God suffered and died for me, and also that this same true man rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, etc., then I can conclude with certainty that my sin was erased and death was conquered by Him, and that God no longer views me with anger and disfavor; for I see and hear nothing but tokens and works of mercy in this Person.
Make sure that you comprehend this doctrine in such a way that you leave the Person of Christ intact and assign the functions of each nature to Him despite the difference in these natures. For according to the divine nature, He was not born of a human being, nor did He inherit anything from the Virgin. It is true that God is the Creator and that man is a creature. But here the two have come together in one Person, and now God and man are one Christ. Mary bore a Son, and the Jews crucified a Person who is God and man. Otherwise � if He were only man, as other saints are � He would be unable to deliver us from even one sin or to extinguish one little drop of hell’s fire with all His holiness, His blood, and His death.