The Supreme Task of the Church

R. B. Kuiper in The Glorious Body of Christ:

"The church's supreme task is to teach and preach the Word of God.  Whatever else it may properly do is subordinate to that task.  This is its supreme task. ... Just because the preaching of the Word is so great a task the church must devote itself to it alone.  For the church to undertake other activities, not indissolubly bound up with this one, is a colossal blunder because it inevitably results in neglect of its proper task.  Let not the church degenerate into a social club.  Let not the church go into the entertainment business.  Let not the church take sides on such aspects of economics, politics, or natural science as are not dealt with in the Word of God.  And let the church be content to teach special, not general, revelation.  Let the church be the church." 
 

Failure in the Intelligent Presentation of the Gospel

From the Letters of Geerhardus Vos, James T. Dennison, Jr, Ed; quoted from Vos's Grace and Glory: Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary.

"Now I do not mean to affirm that in all cases there need be the preaching of false doctrine which involves and open and direct denial of the evangelical truth.  It is quite possible that both to the intention and the actual performance of the preacher any departure from the historical faith of the church may be entirely foreign.  And yet there may be such a failure in the intelligent presentation of the gospel with the proper emphasis upon that which is primary and fundamental as to bring about a result almost equally deplorable as where the principles of the gospel are openly contradicted or denied.  There can be a betrayal of the gospel of grace by silence.  There can be disloyalty to Christ by omission as well as by positive offence against the message that he has entrusted to our keeping.  It is possible, Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year, to preach things of which none can say that they are untrue and none can deny that in their proper place and time they may be important, and yet to forego telling people plainly and to forego giving them the distinct impression that they need forgiveness and salvation from sin through the cross of Christ."

Meat as Intellectual Depth

'"Christ," says Calvin, "is milk for babes, and strong meat for men."  Every doctrine which can be taught to theologians  is taught to young children.  We teach a child that God is a Spirit, everywhere present and knowing all things; and he understands it.  We tell him that Christ is God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever.  This to the child is milk, but it contains food for angels. The truth expressed in these propositions may be expanded indefinitely, and furnish nourishment for the highest intellects to eternity.  The difference between milk and strong meat, according to this view, is simply the difference between the more or less perfect development of the things taught.'

-- Charles Hodge on 1 Cor. 3:2, quoted in John Murray, Collected Writings, Vol 1.

On Being Set In Your Ways

"The claims of truth are paramount.  That is why Westminster Theological Seminary was founded.  As members of the Faculty we should not be here if it were not for the claims of truth upon us. 

But the battle of the faith is oftentimes focused in the inward travail of soul which the claims of truth demand.  There are so many temptations to allow the claims of truth to become secondary.

Mental laziness is one of these temptations.  We have become accustomed to a certain pattern of thought and conduct.  It may be surrounded by the halo of sanctity derived from an established family, social or ecclesiastical tradition, and we are not willing to bring this pattern or conviction to the test of those criteria which the truth demands.  Or perhaps after persuasion to the contrary by the evidence of the truth, we are not willing to let truth have its way, just because it means a breach with the convenient and the conventional. 

The temptation may come in the opposite way.  Convenience or opportunity may dictate the renunciation of former conviction, and the renouncing is dictated by convenience rather than by the claims of truth.  We must beware of that temptation also."

-- John Murray, a fragment found among his papers. (Collected Writings, Vol. 1)

Renewal and Sanctification

From David Peterson's Possessed by God: A New Testament Theology of Sanctification and Holiness:

"What makes me a new person in Christ is essentially faith in God and his promises.  The Spirit's ongoing task is to renew my 'mind' through the gospel and give me a new 'heart' to serve God in faith and obedience.  Renewal of mind and heart transforms character and behaviour because of the central place that the mind has in the orientation, attitudes and beliefs of the human personality.  Renewal is not simply at the rational level, though this is foundational to the whole process of moral renewal and change that is effected by the Spirit.  In the final analysis, renewal is the present experience of glorification through the Spirit, anticipating the glorification that will come with the resurrection of our bodies.  It is being conformed to the likeness of Christ, who is himself the image of God." (p.133)

...

The Spirit's regenerative work brings us to faith in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.  This sanctifies us by consecrating us to God in a new and exclusive relationship of heart-obedience.  The Spirit's renewing work continues in us as we trust in what Christ has done for us and seek to reflect in our lives the practical consequences of our union with Christ in his death and resurrection.  Put another way, the Spirit moves us and enables us to express the holiness which is required of those who have been sanctified in Christ." (p.133)

Good Shepherds

What Makes for a Good Elder - by Jason Helopoulos:

A Summary of this wisdom for the Church:

• Theological, but Fiercely Practical
• Leader, but a Willing Follower
• Dignified, but Wonderfully Approachable
• Listener, but Wisely Vocal
• Courageous, but Pastorally Winsome
• Dogmatic, but Flexible
• Gifted, but Knowingly Humble
• Officer, but Servant First
• Churchly, but a Lover of Men
• Loyal, but a Thoughtful Exhorter

The Ultimate Criterion

"...How do we justify belief in the Bible as our presupposition?  Strange as it may sound, by the Bible itself, as I sought to do in chapters 23-28.  the Bible is our highest standard of truth, the ultimate criterion.  But an ultimate criterion must justify itself.  It would be contradictory to try to justify an ultimate by appealing to something supposedly higher.  But someone will object: isn't this a circular argument?  We prove Scripture on the basis of the presupposition of Scripture.  We appeal to Scripture to prove Scripture.

But if this is a problem for Christian thought, it is equally a problem for non-Christian thought.  All systems of thought are circular in a sense when they seek to defend their ultimate criterion of truth.  If I challenge a rationalist for accepting human reason as his highest principle, he can defend his view in only one way: by appealing to reason.  For him there is nothing higher than reason to which he may appeal in justifying reason."

-- John Frame Systematic Theology (p. 734)

Subscribing to a Statement of Faith ex animo

From Carl Trueman on Reformation 21:

There is all the difference in the world between the one who signs a confession because he passionately believes it to be an accurate summary of scriptural teaching and the one who signs it because, at a pinch, he can just about make it say what he believes the Bible to teach.   The former sees the confession as a place to stand from where he can address both church and world; the latter may at best consider the confession to be an unnecessary appendage and, in time, he might well come to see the confession as a problem, a kind of restrictive cage.  Indeed, he might end up asking himself, 'Well, sure, I can just about sign in good conscience - now, what can I get away with saying or doing?'   For such a person, the confession is (at best) a union card, merely a necessary prerequisite for working on the shop floor; it is not the lifeblood of his ministry.

[An example from] B. B. Warfield's inaugural lecture as Professor of New Testament at Western (now Pittsburgh) Theological Seminary on Tuesday, April 20, 1880:

I wish to declare that I sign these Standards not as a necessary form which must be submitted to, but gladly and willingly as the expression of a personal and cherished conviction and further that the system taught in these symbols is the system which will be drawn out of the Scriptures in the prosecution of the teaching to which you have called me. Not, indeed, because commencing with that system the Scriptures can be made to teach it, but because commencing with the Scriptures I cannot make them teach anything else.

Warfield's point is simple: he signs the Westminster Standards (and thereby vows to uphold and to teach them) because he sees them as simply summarizing what the Bible teaches.  That is true subscription.  To use the Latin phrase, Warfield subscribes ex animo.  We might translate that 'wholeheartedly' or 'from the depths of his heart.' 

The Unity of the Covenant of Grace

From A. W. Tozer  The Knowledge of the Holy (p. 102):

"...Grace made sainthood possible in the Old Testament days just as it does today.  No one was ever saved other than by grace, from Abel to the present moment.  Since mankind was banished from the eastward Garden, none has ever returned to the divine favor except through the sheer goodness of God.  And wherever grace found any man it was always by Jesus Christ.  Grace indeed came by Jesus Christ, but it did not wait for His birth in the manger or His death on the cross before it became operative. Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of world.  The first man in human history to be reinstated in the fellowship of God came through faith in Christ.  In olden times men looked forward to Christ's redeeming work; in later times they gaze back upon it, but always they came and come by grace, through faith."

Clarified by Michael Horton in his article "Who Saves Whom?"

"Thus, there is no true Israel apart from faith in Christ. Only those who cling to him in faith are chosen; the rest are judged along with the Gentiles (Ro.11:5-10). "Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham," Paul instructed the Galatians (Gal.3:7). There are no Jews who ever have been saved, are now saved, or who ever will be saved who were not chosen members of the church in both testaments--the ancient (Old Testament) church looking forward to Christ and the modern church looking back to Christ and forward to his return."

Certainty

So certainty comes ultimately through God’s word and Spirit. The Lord calls us to build our life and thought on the certainties of his word, that we ‘will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life’ (John 8:12). The process of building, furthermore, is not only academic, but ethical and spiritual. It is those who are willing to do God’s will that know the truth of Jesus’ words (John 7:17), and those that love their neighbors who are able to know as they ought to know (1 Cor. 8:1-3).

Secular philosophy rejects absolute certainty, then, because absolute certainty is essentially supernatural, and because the secularist is unwilling to accept a supernatural foundation for knowledge. But the Christian regards God’s word as the ultimate criterion of truth and falsity, right and wrong, and therefore as the standard of certainty. Insofar as we consistently hold the Bible as our standard of certainty, we may and must regard it as itself absolutely certain. So in God’s revelation, the Christian has a wonderful treasure, one that saves the soul from sin and the mind from skepticism.  

--John Frame, "Certainty," New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, IVP, 2006

Reading the Old Testament

Wisdom on reading the Old Testament - from a Biblical Theological perspective (from WRF):

It is this point of the entire truthfulness of the history of revelation and Scripture– involving “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” as Vos says, and critically essential for any doctrine of Scripture, like that set out in chapter 1 of the WCF, intent on doing justice to the unity and coherent harmony of the Bible as God’s own written word–it is just this crucially important point that is compromised or at best obscured by the Christotelic approach to Scripture.  This happens through its “first read-second read” treatment of the Old Testament that it adopts. The first read seeks to establish the original historical meaning or original human author meaning of an Old Testament passage on its own terms without any reference to the New Testament. The second read of the passage then seeks to show how in the light of the New Testament it is about Christ, to disclose its Christotelic content.

"This approach as a whole is ill-conceived and seriously flawed. Though it is motivated in part by the legitimate concern to avoid reading New Testament meanings back into Old Testament texts–no doubt a danger–there is a difference between reading the New Testament back into the Old and reading the Old Testament in light of the New. The former is wrong; the latter is not only legitimate but also requisite. As it is carried out, the first read tends towards highlighting the “messiness” of the Old Testament, as its proponents put it, towards finding unrelated or discordant trajectories of meaning in the Old Testament. It obscures both the organic connection between the meaning of the divine author and what the human authors wrote as well as the organic connection and unity between the Old Testament and New Testament.  

Multivalent, even contradictory trajectories will appear to be the case when the Old Testament documents are read “on their own terms” in the sense of bracketing out their fulfillment in Christ and the interpretive bearing of the New Testament.

"For new covenant readers submissive to both the Old and New Testaments as the word of God, such a disjunctive reading of the Old Testament is illegitimate, as well as redemptive-historically (and canonically) anachronistic. To seek to interpret the various Old Testament documents for themselves and apart from the vantage point of the New exposes one ultimately to misinterpreting them. The Old Testament is to be read in the light of the New not only because Jesus and the New Testament writers read it this way, but also because Jesus and the New Testament writers are clear about the continuity in intention and meaning that exists between themselves and the various Old Testament authors and what those authors wrote in their own time and place." --Dr. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr, Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Emeritus, Westminster Theological Seminary

These Last Days

Recently WTS brought out some of their big guns and conducted a weekend seminar of biblical instruction, addressing key questions about the Last Days, the purpose of God for Israel, the books of Daniel and Revelation, and more.  

These lessons provide informed, scriptural teaching as a welcome counterbalance what is sure to be a falsely prophetic movie.

Loving the Lord

I love this message.  WTS's 2014 commencement speaker Henri Blocher who was granted an honorary doctorate from Westminster, Souderton, PA, May 29, 2014.  By the way, the red hood signifies ThD, blue PhD.  I think some of the faculty are starting to bear uncanny resemblances to Machen, Murray, and VanTil....must be the doctrine.

Why Read 500 Year Old Books?

From Hughes Oliphant Old's Worship:  Reformed According to Scripture (p. 4):

"One often asks why today we should study the Reformers.  We study the Reformers for the same reason the Reformers studied the church fathers.  They are witnesses to the authority of Scripture.  The Reformers studied the patristic commentaries on Scripture because they enriched their own understanding of Scripture.  Today we study the Reformers because they throw so much light on the pages of the Bible.  They were passionately concerned to worship God truly, and they searched the Scriptures to learn how.  We study the Reformers because their understanding of Scripture is so profound."

What Motivates Our Obedience?

From G. Vos - Biblical Theology (p. 32):

"To do the good and reject the evil from a reasoned insight into their respective matters is a noble thing, but it is a still nobler thing to do so out of regard for the nature of God, and the noblest thing of all is the ethical strength, which, when required, will act from personal attachment to God, without for the moment enquiring into these more abstruse reasons.  The pure delight in obedience adds to the ethical value of a choice."

Children, Church Membership, and Baptism

A pair of essays by Vern Poythress on the subject of the status of children in Christ's body.  Both of these are excellent and thought-provoking.

INDIFFERENTISM AND RIGORISM

Here's the first two paragraphs of this piece:

"One’s understanding of the church affects one’s understanding of baptism. Therefore I propose to open further discussion between paedobaptists and baptists by an indirect route, through looking at the church and its membership.

In comparison with New Testament standards, our practice concerning church membership can be either too loose (indifferentist) or too restrictive (rigorist). Errors of both kinds arise from poor understanding of the roots of communal Christian life. Hence we start by examining those roots."

[Published in Westminster Theological Journal 59/1 (1997) 13-29.]

 LINKING SMALL CHILDREN WITH INFANTS IN THE THEOLOGY OF BAPTIZING
Here's the concluding paragraph of the second one:

"The status of children within our communities, as well as the related question of infant baptism, is, I believe, easy to answer when our spiritual vision and our fellowship with Christ are sufficiently deep. The answer has lain smack before our eyes all the time, in the words of Jesus, “Let the little children come to me, …” (Luke 18:16). We have failed to appropriate the answer, or even to see it as an answer, not mainly because we lacked coherent, eloquent arguments, but because we lacked spiritual discernment. We need to see this one word in connection with the entire picture of redemption, as it is manifested in our access to Christ in heaven. Christians everywhere will inevitably come to agreement on this subject, in both theory and practice, as we respond more thoroughly to the realities of our union with Christ at the heavenly Mt. Zion. We must therefore avoid mere wrangling about disputed issues, baptism included, and practice the instructions of Eph 4:11-16 that lead to corporate as well as individual maturity in Christ (John 17:22-23)."

[Published in Westminster Theological Journal 59/2 (1997): 143-158.]

With Reverence and Awe

"God desires reverent worship, worship that reflects the seriousness inherent in a religion that required the death of his only begotten Son in order to redeem a chosen people from the bonds of sin and misery and to deliver them into the glorious blessedness of God's children."

 -- from With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship by D.G. Hart and John R. Muether.

The Highest Science

 "The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. 

 ... the most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. 

... I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead."

-- C. H. Spurgeon. Sermon 7 Jan 1855, New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. 
"I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." 
-- Mal 4:6

Means of Grace and Sanctification

From Michael Horton's Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever:

"In short, for Calvin at least, piety is not just something that is taught; it is also "caught": as we pray, so we believe (lex orandi, lex credendi).  True doctrine is inculcated not only by direct instruction but also by the patterns of public worship and fellowship in the communion of saints, in family life, and in everyday callings."

A Test Along the Way

This test will help you judge how much of the Scriptures you are internalizing as you read and study.  Take it honestly and make adjustments accordingly...

"For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." -- Rom 12:3

100 Bible Knowledge Questions - from Kevin DeYoung's blog

On Proper Balance and Emphasis in the Church

An excerpt from Kevin DeYoung's blog:  The God of Diverse Excellencies

"The reason we want to be a church of diverse excellencies is because God is a God of diverse excellencies. He is sovereign, powerful, omniscient, and holy. And he is merciful, patient, wise, and loving. If we are a church with lopsided virtues we will not reflect the character of God who is perfect in all his ways.

Neither will we reflect Jesus. You want to know why theology matters? It matters because we become what we worship. Therefore, we need to know what God is like and what Jesus is like. If we have a lopsided Lord, we will become lopsided Christians.

We need to know Jesus Christ as both Lion and Lamb."

On the Stewardship of our Time

"If this age is more harried than most, then it is all the more critical that we use our time as wisely as we can.  Our lives are too short and our days are too compressed to spend them on the merely good: we must devote ourselves to what is best.  If we would be extraordinary Christians, we must surround ourselves with the greatest minds and immerse ourselves in their thoughts...When Shedd lays bare the most sublime truths in their dazzling splendor, stop and reflect and then adore the God of whom they speak."

-- From Alan Gomes's Editor's Preface to William G.T. Shedd's Dogmatic Theology

The Sacrament of Baptism

Here are some good resources I've found on the subject of baptism.

A letter from a father to his daughter

A couple of books:
Water, Word, and Spirit - J. V. Fesko
Baptism: Three Views - Sinclair B. Ferguson, Anthony N. S. Lane, Bruce A. Ware. David F. Wright, Ed.
A Christian's Pocket Guide to Baptism - Robert Letham

Shallow Small Group