Tag Archives: theology

John Piper on Chesterton and Calvinism

Posted on by

Piper starts,

Ever since my days at Wheaton College, when I followed Clyde Kilby’s advice to read G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, it has been one of my favorite books. I think it’s the only book I have read more than twice (except for the Bible).

This is strange. Not only was Chesterton a Roman Catholic, he also hated Calvinism. So what’s up with me and Orthodoxy? I still think at least half a dozen Roman Catholic distinctives are harmful to true Christian faith (e.g., papal authority, baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, justification as impartation, purgatory, the veneration of Mary). And I think “the doctrines of grace” (“Reformed theology,” “Calvinism”) are a precious and healthy expression of biblical doctrine.

Here’s an important article on the glad, biblical flavor of Calvinism.

The Sovereign God of “Elfland” (Why Chesterton’s Anti-Calvinism Doesn’t Put Me Off).

The Miraculous Event of Reading the Bible

Posted on by

Before dawn, over midmorning coffee, or at the dinner table with family—whenever you read the Bible, something miraculous is happening.

The presence of desire to hear God’s word and think his thoughts testifies to the blood-bought grace by which he called you out of darkness. The mental energy and hungry soul that you bring to an open Bible is not separated from God’s saving activity. In fact, the act of your reading is part of that saving activity as God continues his perfecting work (Philippians 1:6).

And it is not merely a piece of God’s action in your personal life. It is another scene in God’s whole redemptive and revelatory activity towards mankind. Your simple reading the Bible—your interpreting—is a step forward both in the degree of your transformation and in God’s manifold wisdom being made known to the world.

Read the whole post via Desiring God.

Holiness and Relation are the Selfsame Reality

Posted on by

John Webster writes:

Holiness is a mode of God’s activity; talk of God’s holiness identifies the manner of his relation to us. For if the word ‘holy’ is a shorthand term for a pattern of activity, if it indicates—as von Rad put it—’a relationship more than a quality’, then the holy God is precisely God manifest to humankind in his gracious turning.

‘God’s holiness’, wrote Bavinck, ‘is revealed in his entire revelation to his people, in election, in the covenant, in his special revelation, in his dwelling among them.’

What, then, we may ask, is the force of faith’s language of God’s holiness? What particular aspect of the unified identity of the triune God’s being, works and ways is indicated by this language? We may answer thus: Talk of God’s holiness denotes the majesty and singular purity which the triune God is in himself and with which he acts towards and in the lives of his creatures, opposing that which is itself opposed to his purpose as creator, reconciler and perfecter, and bringing that purpose to its completion in the fellowship of the saints.

Holiness, because it is the holiness of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ now present in the Spirit’s power, is pure majesty in relation. God’s holy majesty, even in its unapproachableness, is not characterized by a sanctity which is abstract difference or otherness, a counter-reality to the profane; it is majesty known in turning, enacted and manifest in the works of God. Majesty and relation are not opposed moments in God’s holiness; they are simply different articulations of the selfsame reality

For if God’s relation to us were merely subordinate to his primary majesty, then God’s essence would remain utterly beyond us, forever hidden; and if God’s relation to us were not majestic, then that relation would no longer be one in which we encountered God.

(Holiness, 41-42, paragraphing mine)

An Old Word for a New Day—Exegetical Integrity and Theological Faithfulness

Posted on by

G. C. Berkouwer writes:

Admist many dangers, the conviction has gradually become stronger that the human character of Scripture is ont an accidental or peripheral condition of the Word of God but something that legitimately deserves our full attention…

The fear that the [human element] of the doctrine of Scripture implies a threat to and an historicizing of the authority of Scripture is really the result of an artificial view of revelation. Those who hold such a view deny that shifts and changes in the history of the church can originate from a better understanding of Holy Scripture. They forget that Scripture is written in human words and consequently offers men legitimate freedom to examine these words and try to understand them (Holy Scripture, 20).

Berkouwer’s insight does not mean that we receive the New Perspective on Paul or biological evolution as the newly-founded norm. But it does mean that we confront these issues exegetically and not merely dismiss them as novel.

We understand Holy Scripture better than believers who lived in the 1300s. This is not because the Bible has changed as if it were some document of undetermined meaning, but because the church has learned how to better understand the Bible’s determined meaning.

This must be the root of faithful theology. This stance has no bias but to be true to the nature of Holy Scripture. The Bible as the inscripturate revelation of God is nothing static. It is active with divine force to accomplish the will of God through the gospel in a new day. The Church is to read upon the shoulders of our earlier generations, being aided and helped but in no way enslaved by the light shed upon them.

“The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple” (Psalm 119:130).

The Image of God in Man

Posted on by

What does it mean to be made in God’s image?

The creation narrative of Genesis 1 is clear that humans are created in the “image and likeness” of God (Gen. 1:26). The idea to create humanity was resolved as “Let us create man in our image, after our likeness.” Exactly what this means to be created in God’s image and after his likeness has been debated throughout the history of the Church.

The text would immediately suggest that the image and likeness is related to dominion. Before the specifics of what the “image and likeness” involve, the reader that is rooted to the text notes the connection to dominion indicated by the Weyiqtol form of the verb “to rule.”[1] The dominion over the rest of creation, therefore, is grammatically linked to the creation of man in God’s image and likeness.

Anthony Hoekema refers to the near context as well in the creation of woman.  He writes:

resemblance must be found in the fact that man needs the companionship of woman, that the human person is a social being, that woman complements man and that man complements woman. In this way human beings reflect God, who exists not as a solitary being but as a being in fellowship—a fellowship that is described at a later stage of revelation as that between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.[2]

In the context of man as a social being, Hoekema lays out the God-ordained three-fold relationship for all image-bearers: between man and God, between man and his fellowmen, and between man and nature.[3]

Hoekema also traces the subject throughout some high points of Church history. The main lines of difference regard the view of the human intellect. Aquinas, in an Aristotelian framework, understood the intellect of man as the primary bearer of God’s image. This indicator of God’s image was not defected by the fall and therefore provides an avenue to fallen man to respond positively to God.[4] Calvin perceived that God’s image is in the soul of man. It was later that theologians, Barth (neo-orthodox reformed), Brunner (dialectical), and Berkouwer (Dutch reformed) rejected the idea that God’s image is found in the reason or intellect. These theologians stressed the image and likeness to be more a matter of man’s relation to God. This emphasis upon man’s relation to God aims to grasp the identity of “creature.” Barth has this in mind with his explanation of the “I-Thou” relationship. The Creator/creature distinction is the preeminent relationship for humans in the universe.

How does the Fall affect this image?

I think the focus on the relationship element of God’s image in man is the best framework in understanding what the Bible teaches happened in the Fall. Like with the details of the image itself, there has been discussion by theologians throughout the history of the Church as to how the image was affected by the corruption of sin.

It is important to note that what we believe was affected by the Fall is directly connected to how we understand the redemption of man by the gospel. Clearly, what was lost by the Fall is what is regained by the gospel. For example, Irenaeus had a trichotomist view of man (body, soul, and spirit) and thought the Fall resulted in the loss of the spirit that was then regained at conversion.

The relationship element of God’s image in man highlights the significance of major salvation motifs in the biblical narrative such as reconciliation and new creation. John Webster writes that the essence of sin is the human “despising his creatureliness.” Man’s relation to God as creature is what is subverted in the picture of fallen humanity in Romans 1:18ff. Webster writes, “To be a sinner is to repudiate this relation, and so absolutely to imperil one’s life by seeking to transcend creatureliness and become one’s origin and one’s own end.”[5] The element of God’s image in man that is lost is the grateful recognition of this privileged relation. Sin has corrupted the image of God in man so that he is estranged from God and hostile to his inescapable identity as creature.

The corruption of sin has affected the image of God in man not by its annihilation, but by its utter distortion. Every faculty of man is touched by the corruption of sin. Though man is still regarded as an image-bearer of God (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9), this image is a marred resemblance of what it was before sin. The original image because of sin is now what Hoekema calls a “perverted image.”[6] This perversion affects man in his three relationships: man to God, man to man, and man to nature.

Humans are distinguished from the rest of God’s creation by this image-bearing identity. Matters of intellect are involved, though relation to God is the primary distinction. Moreover, the redemptive element of man is set apart from the rest of creation. In other words, though all of creation will be redeemed (Rom 8:22-23), the redemption of only humans is to the image of Christ, the perfect image of God (2 Cor 4:4).

[1] Weyiqtols can function to express purpose or they can continue a jussive series indicating “high thematic prominence” (223). DeRouchie and Garrett, A Modern Grammar for Biblical Hebrew, (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2009).

[2] Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 14.

[3] Ibid., 75.

[4] Ibid., 37.

[5] John Webster, Holiness, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 84.

[6] Hoekema, 83.

A Pastor Like John Newton

Posted on by

In a biographical sermon on John Newton, John Piper writes:

Oh how rare are the pastors who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel.

I dream of such pastors. I would like to be one someday. A pastor whose might in the truth is matched by his meekness. Whose theological acumen is matched by his manifest contrition. Whose heights of intellect are matched by his depths of humility. Yes, and the other way around! A pastor whose relational warmth is matched by his rigor of study, whose bent toward mercy is matched by the vigilance of his biblical discernment, and whose sense of humor is exceeded by the seriousness of his calling.

I dream of great defenders of true doctrine who are mainly known for the delight they have in God and the joy in God that they bring to the people of God—who enter controversy, when necessary, not because they love ideas and arguments, but because they love Christ and the church.

via A Pastor Like John Newton.