Monthly Archives: February 2010

Day 5: This is what is meant by ‘Holiness’

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A dogmatic account of holiness is thus not simply concerned to offer an account of immanent divine properties; nor is it an elaboration of a spirituality or ethics of human sanctification. Rather, its concern is with the path taken by the holy three-in-one who, in the majestic fulfillment of his own freedom, elects, reconciles and perfects the creature for holy obedience. Accordingly, it does not think of divine holiness in abstraction from the sanctifying acts of God pro nobis, nor of human sanctity in isolation from election, salvation and the work of the sanctifying Spirit. This is the difference which the Christian doctrine of the Trinity makes in a theological account of holiness.

John Webster, Holiness, 5

Day 4: On Dogmatics

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Dogmatics attempts a ‘reading’ of the gospel which in its turn assists the Church’s reading. Developing such a ‘reading’ of the gospel entails, of course, the development (or annexation) of conceptual vocabularies and forms of argument whose range and sophistication may seem distant from the more immediate, urgent idioms of Scripture. But though technical sophistication is not without its attendant perils, it is only vicious when allowed to drift free from the proper end of theology, which is the saints’ edification.

John Webster, Holiness, 4

Day 3: Welcome Exegesis and Dogmatics

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In the Church’s theological work, the gospel is articulated as the norm of the Church’s praise, confession and action, and the ground of the Church’s understanding of nature and human history. As it seeks to articulate the gospel in the sanctorum communio, theology concentrates on two fundamental tasks, namely exegesis and dogmatics. Exegesis is of supremely critical importance, because the chief instrument through which Christ publishes the gospel is Holy Scripture. Exegesis is the attempt to hear what the Spirit says to the Churches; without it, theology cannot even begin to discharge its office. Dogmatics is complementary but strictly subordinate to the exegetical task.

John Webster, Holiness, 3

Day 2: On The Bounds of Theology

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Theology is not free speech but holy speech. It is set apart for and bound to its object–that is, the gospel–and to the fellowship of the saints in which the gospel is heard as divine judgment and consolation–that is, the Church. Only as it does its work under the tutelage, authority and protection of the Church is theology free.

John Webster, Holiness, 2

Day 1: On What is Theology?

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Theology is an office in the Church of Jesus Christ. It is properly undertaken in the sphere of the Church, that is, in the region of human fellowship which is brought into being and sustained by the saving activity and presence of God. Theology is one of the effects of that saving presence; it is one of the activities of reason transfigured by the renewal of human life and history which the holy God effects in his works and makes manifest in his word. The divine works of renewal culminate in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, his exaltation over all things, and his bestowal of new life in the Spirit’s power. Through the Spirit, Jesus Christ the exalted one generates a new mode of common human life, the life of the Church. To participate in that common human life, hearing the gospel in fellowship under the word of God and living together under the signs of baptism and the Lord’s supper, is to exist in a sphere in which God’s limitless power is unleashed and extends into the entirety of human life: moral, political, cultural, affective, intellectual. Reason, like everything else, is remade in the sphere of the Church; and theological reason is an activity of the regenerate mind turned towards the gospel of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the Church’s origin and vocation.

John Webster, Holiness, 1ff.

On the Start of “20 Days of Webster”

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Reading is not my hobby. Hobby makes me think more of wiffle ball or Nerf sword-fighting or the St. Louis Cardinals. Reading is hard work. It is an effort to decode symbols that make up words and convey an author’s meaning. I should wear wrist bands for that and keep a water bottle close at hand.

Be that as it may, I love to read and God by His grace has put some really good books into my hands. Over the inter-semestermental era I got to open up the book Holiness by John Webster. Being very intentional with my words here, it is my favorite book apart from the Bible. It is only 105 pages and I’ve considered memorizing it. The read was less like a book and more like an encounter. I have been intensely edified and my love for the triune God has been deepened. I’ve never seen a book so small and yet so weighty. Not a sentence is wasted. I am thankful to the LORD for the help that it has been.

I want you to be helped, too. So for the next 20 days I plan to feature a quote from the book for each day. “20 Days of Webster.” I don’t like that title because I want you to think more about the content than the man. And the name “Webster” doesn’t make English-speakers immediately think about theology. But there it is anyway. “20 Days of Webster.”

I pray that you be helped and that perhaps you’ll go read the whole book. More than all of that, may the LORD be pleased to draw near in grace for His glory and your everlasting joy in Him.

Making the Most of Your Sleep

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Sleep is important. It is the most needed moment of vulnerability in the human existence. We would die without sleep. Our bodies demand that we slip away out of consciousness about 1/3 of the day. You just lay there incapable of production, your defense handicapped, your eyes and ears not functioning. It is humbling to think that we need this. God designed it that way.

We relinquish everything at the moment we close our eyes to the One who sustains the universe by the Word of His power (Hebrew 1:3). It is an act of faith, of trusting, of resting in the sovereign goodness of God. There is a means of grace there. So may we make the most of it at night and in the morning. The psalter helps us…

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety

(Psalm 4:8)


I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me

(Psalm 3:5)

What is the glory of GOD?

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What is the glory of God? God the holy Father, holy Son, holy Spirit. What is the kavod that Moses asked to see (Exod. 33:18)? What is the doxa that John declares we have seen (John 1:14)?

In the holy dialogue that Moses had with God in Exodus 33, we see that the request in v. 18 was not his first. That request is preceded by what he asked in v. 13, “Please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.” The parallel shows us that Moses’ request in v. 18 is a re-articulation of what he asked to see in v. 13. Moses wanted to see something, God’s ways, viz., God’s glory. The Apostle John’s opening to his gospel affirms that reality of God’s glory. It is seen. John declares that we have seen the glory of God in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, and that glory is full of grace and truth (John 1:14). The kavod and doxa of God is not a distant attribute or abstract description of God’s person. Rather, it is by its nature a manifestation. The glory of God is revelatory.

Moses’ request in Exodus 33:18 is heard by God. He answers Moses’ prayer. “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘the LORD’ (Exod. 33:19). The glory of the LORD is to “pass by” Moses (Exod. 33:22). And so it does in Exodus 34:5-6. The LORD descended and “proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD…” (Exod. 34:5-6). God’s revelation of his glory is the proclamation of his name.

To say that God’s glory is the proclamation of his name is to say that it is the revelation of his “enacted identity” (Webster, 36). Webster continues to say that God’s enacted identity is “God’s sheer, irreducible particularity as this One who is and acts thus” (36). God’s identity, or essence, is utterly incomparable and eternally inexhaustible. And yet this essence is relational. For this incomparable and inexhaustible God is also a God who acts, who reveals, and who makes known inseparably from his essence. God’s doings is his ‘acting thus’ to who he is. The glory of God is the revelatory action of God proclaiming his name by means of all the ways that he acts out of who he is.

God’s glory is the force of his identity. By force I mean that it should have no connotation of being stagnant or distant. God’s glory is active and he is jealous that it be known. That is what he wills in Exodus, that the Egyptians and Israel would know that he is the LORD, that is, that they would know his name, know his ‘enacted identity,’ know his glory (7:5; 8:10, 22; 9:16; 10:2; 14:4, 18; 16:12; 18:11; 20:2; 33:18-19). Such is the motive for God’s action in Ezekiel where he recounts why he restrained his anger. His name being profaned was at stake. That is, his glory was at stake of being undermined. So he says, “I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned…” (Ezek. 20:14). “But I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned…” (v. 22). For he concludes, “I did it that they might know that I am the LORD” (v. 26). The enacted identity of God is an illocution. To expand the biblical metaphor that God is light (1 Jn. 1:5), inasmuch as light corresponds to God’s essence, the radiance of light corresponds to God’s glory.

Have You Not Read?

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It gets jaw-dropping amazing in Matthew 22. The confrontations between the Jewish leaders and Jesus come to a peak leading up to 22:46, “… nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

It is the Sadducees in the passage from 22:23-33 that shakes me this morning. They try to trip our Savior with a question about the resurrection and the kinsman redeemer OT law. Out Lord’s answer goes right to the heart in verse 29. His first response, “You are wrong…” You are wrong in asking the question. You reveal how much you don’t get it by the things that you are concerned about.

Moreoever, you are wrong “because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” What? But this is their profession. It is what they do. And they are ignorant. Ignorant to the very thing by which they were to shepherd others. And here comes the blow, verse 31. Jesus says, “have you not read what was said to you by God…”

God has said something to them. To them. God has said something. God has spoken to them. God has spoken to them. And they haven’t any read it. It probably doesn’t mean never looked at the words. They haven’t understood. They haven’t grasped. God has said something to them that they are entirely stupid about. May it never be with us. I want to hear Him. May their be light when we open holy Scripture, by grace.

The Inscrutable Grace of Our Capacity to Know Anything Right and True About God

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It is miraculous that man can know anything right and true about God. It is a deep, inscrutable grace that there be any flicker of apprehension in the heart of man that there is an Ultimate Reality and that that Ultimate Reality is outside of man himself. It is a wonder that God put even the capacity of such flickering in man. Although the sense is flawed and tainted, God has imprinted humanity with the truth that He is there and that He is to be known and worshiped.

Paul tells us that the knowledge of God is plain and that the evidences of His Being are clearly understood in the things made by Him that are all around us (Rom 1:19-20). The conscience of man bears witness to some inner law that has been engraved into his person (2:15).

But in our falleness, we have turned the slightest apprehension into a god of our own choosing. We have all turned from the true God to that which is not God (Rom 1:21-23). This is the story of humanity and it is our story…