Soli Deo Gloria

奧古思丁懺悔錄

2012-01-25T11:23:00.000-05:00

五

谁能使我安息在你怀中？谁能使你降入我的心灵，使我酣畅，使我忘却忧患，使我抱持
你作为我的唯一至宝？
你对我算什么？求你怜悯我使我能够说出。我对你算什么，而你竟命我爱你？如果我不
如此，你就对我发怒，并用严重的灾害威胁我。如果我不爱你，这仅仅是小不幸吗？我的
主，天父，请因你的仁慈告诉我，你和我有什么关系。请告诉我的灵魂说：“我是你的救
援。”①请你说，让我听到。我的心倾听着，请你启我心灵的双耳，请你对我的灵魂说：
“我是你的救援”。我要跟着这声音奔驰，我要抓住你。请你不要对我掩住你的面容。让我
死，为了不死，为了瞻仰你的圣容。
我的灵魂的居处是狭隘的，不相称你降来，请你加以扩充。它已经毁败，请你加以修
葺。它真是不堪入目：我承认，我知道。但谁能把它清除呢？除了向你外，我向谁呼号呢？
“主啊，求你清除我的隐慝，不要由于我因他人而犯下的过恶加罪于你的仆人。”②“我相
信，因此我说”。③主啊，你完全了解。我向你承认我的过恶后，“你不是就赦免的心的悖
谬吗？”④你是真理，我绝不和你争辩，我也不愿欺骗我自己，“不要让我的罪恶向自己撒
谎。”⑤我决不向你争辩，因为，“主、主，你若考察我们的罪孽，谁能站得住？”⑥
　　①见《诗篇》34首3节。
②见《诗篇》18首14节。
③同上，115首1节。
④同上，31首5节。
⑤同上，26首12节。
⑥同上，129首3节。

Present, active, participles...

2011-05-04T10:23:00.000-04:00

1 Thess. 4:8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
Paul wrote here "gives" in present, active, participle, masculine, singular, accusative. God who is giving His Holy Spirit? Would that be a better translation instead?

John 1: 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

baptizes: present, active, participle.

oh who are we to limit the Lord, as to put him in the box, to place him in the past. so often our understanding is that He baptized with the Holy Spirit, aorist. But He works in present active participle. Oh what fool we are not to seek His work and face in the present active participle way. Lord, fill us, give us your Holy Spirit, continually, ongoingly.

Modern evangelical’s false understanding of atonement

2011-04-22T00:54:00.002-04:00

It is not a good idea to simply present God as an angry God, and Jesus was loving, that He died to pacify an angry God. Berkhof in the chapter of “the moving cause of the atonement” summarizes this idea, which is so prevalent in the modern evangelical circles: “It is sometimes represented as if the moving cause of the atonement lay in the sympathetic love of Christ for sinners. He was so good and loving that the very idea that sinners would be hopelessly lost, was abhorrent to Him. Therefore He offered Himself as a victim in their stead, paid the penalty by laying down His life for transgressors, and thus pacified an angry God.” This basically summarized the belief generally held and preached among the evangelical churches. Berkhof points out the danger of this view: “ In some cases this view prompts men to laud Christ for His supreme self-sacrifice, but at the same time, to blame God for demanding and accepting such a price. In others it simply causes men to overlook God, and to sing the praises of Christ in unqualified terms. Such a representation is certainly all wrong, and often gives the opponents of the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement occasion to say that this doctrine presupposes a schism in the Trinitarian life of God.” (367)

Berkhof emphasizes that the moving cause of the atonement resides in the good pleasure of God, that “Christ himself is the fruit of this good pleasure of God.” (see Gal. 1:4, Col. 1:19-20)

The assumption of a schism in the Trinitarian life of God is a “monstrous idea”, says Berkhof. He quotes David Smith, author of In the Days of His Flesh: “It (the penal theory of satisfaction) places a gulf between God and Christ, representing god as the stern Judge who insisted on the execution of Justice, and Christ as the pitiful Savior who interposed and satisfied His legal demand and appeased His righteous wrath. They are not one either in their attitudes toward sinners or in the parts which they play. God is propitiated; Christ propitiates; God inflicts the punishment, Christ suffers it; God exacts the debt, Christ pays it.” This is a misunderstanding for which we Christians are at least partially responsible for singing and speaking as if Christ, rather than the triune God, were exclusively the author of their salvation. The Bible teaches us that the triune God provided freely for the salvation of sinners. The Father made the sacrifice of His Son, and the Son willingly offered Himself. There was no schism but the most beautiful harmony between the Father and the Son.

What’s Wrong with Four Spiritual Laws

2010-08-20T13:07:00.001-04:00

1^st Law: God LOVES you and offers a wonderful PLAN for your life.

God's Love

"God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16 NIV).

God's Plan

[Christ speaking] "I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly" [that it might be full and meaningful] (John 10:10).

Misleading Errors of the 1^st Law:

1. It does not define God’s Love. The word Love to an average listener means a completely different thing than what the Bible teaches, and it must be carefully explained of what God’s love is like. He is NOT a Santa Clause who just wants to lavish everyone with great gifts.

2. Similarly, it does not define what the “Wonderful” plan is. It uses John 10:10 to explain an “abundant” life, and once again to an average listener this sounds like “affluent” life.

3. These two concepts of “Love” and “Wonderful” create a gospel that is similar to prosperity Gospel. To the person who is already having a “wonderful” life, he or she would simply reply: “No, thank you, my life is wonderful, and I am not interested in that wonderful life.” To the person who lives in pain and suffering, it creates a false hope. And once he or she finds out it is actually costly to be a Christian, she will quickly abandon this “wonderful plan.”

4. God indeed has a plan for everyone, but it may not be wonderful according to an average person’s understanding.

Why is it that most people are not experiencing the abundant life?

Because...

2^ND Law: Man is SINFUL and SEPARATED from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life.

Man Is Sinful

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

Man was created to have fellowship with God; but, because of his stubborn self-will, he chose to go his own independent way, and fellowship with God was broken. This self-will, characterized by an attitude of active rebellion or passive indifference, is evidence of what the Bible calls sin.

Man Is Separated

"The wages of sin is death" [spiritual separation from God] (Romans 6:23).

Misleading Errors of the 2^nd Law:

1. It has failed to explain the propensity and severity of our sin. Sin has damaged our intellect, will, and emotions. Therefore we worship false gods, we pursue false glories, and we use wicked means to accomplish our goals. We murder, rape, fornicate, steal, covet, lie, and commit high treason against the only King to pursue self-glorification and self-pleasure. Thus corrupted by sin, we are punishable by death and are condemned to eternal punishment in the fiery hell. “Separation” from God and his “Wonderful Plan” is true, but it is an incomplete picture of sin’s consequences.

2. It is also disturbing to find the four Spiritual Laws avoided using “eternal punishment in hell” as it describes sin’s consquences. It quotes Rom. 6:23 to emphasize death and separation, yet it does not point out this “Loving” God will send people to hell for eternity. By avoiding the crucial points of our gospel, it has created a false picture of the gospel. (If not a false gospel altogether.)

3^rd Law: Jesus Christ is God's ONLY provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life.

He Died in Our Place

"God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

He Rose From the Dead

"Christ died for our sins...He was buried...He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures...He appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred..." (1 Corinthians 15:3-6).

He Is the Only Way to God

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me'" (John 14:6).

God has bridged the gulf which separates us from Him by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place to pay the penalty for our sins.

Misleading Errors of the 3^rd Law:

1. The death of Christ is presented in the context of bridging the separation between God and man. While this may not be wrong in itself, the central point of Jesus’ death is to satisfy God’s justice, that is, sinners must be punished, and sin’s penalties must be paid. The four spiritual laws have focused on presenting God’s love, and overlooked His justice. As many critics often ask, why would a loving God must abuse his son on the cross and let him suffer the bloody death? Why can’t a loving God just simply forgive all of our sins? The four spiritual laws offered no answers.

2. Jesus has become a means to an end, and not the one Awesome God whom we need to worship and obey. Jesus helps us to get to God, and he helps us to experience that wonderful life. This is no different than any other religion which uses their gods as a means to wealth and “wonderful” lives.

3. The deity of Christ is omitted. I do not think the person who wrote the four spiritual laws would deny the deity of Jesus, but this omission is not a small misstep. If our gospel presentation fails to emphasize that Jesus is fully God and fully human, the one who deserves our worship, we have removed a central theme of the gospel from our presentation.

4^th Law: We must individually RECEIVE Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.

We Must Receive Christ

"As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12).

We Receive Christ Through Faith

"By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9).

When We Receive Christ, We Experience a New Birth

(Read John 3:1-8)

We Receive Christ by Personal Invitation

[Christ speaking] "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him" (Revelation 3:20).

Receiving Christ involves turning to God from self (repentance) and trusting Christ to come into our lives to forgive our sins and to make us what He wants us to be. Just to agree intellectually that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for your sins is not enough. Nor is it enough to have an emotional experience. You receive Jesus Christ by faith, as an act of the will.

The following explains how you can receive Christ:

You can receive Christ right now by faith through prayer:

(Prayer is talking to God)

God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. The following is a suggested prayer:

"Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be."

Does this prayer express the desire of your heart? If it does, I invite you to pray this prayer right now and Christ will come into your life, as He promised.

Misleading errors:

1. Receiving Jesus has been described as an act of the will. It is true that faith is an act of the will, but the Four Spiritual Laws reduced the act of the will to a prayer. We must exercise our faith by our regenerated will, but will also involves actions such as following Jesus, carrying our cross daily, denying ourselves, participating in the church--the body of Christ, receiving water baptism and Communion, growing in His word and in the knowledge of Him, enduring persecutions, giving 10% of our income, and etc.

2. Salvation is presented as a one-time deal: one prayer will solve all your problems. Salvation in the Bible is a life-long pilgrimage, being a disciple of Jesus, and commitment to Christ and His Church. However, the salvation presented in the four spiritual laws gospel fails to give the holistic picture of our salvation.

Conclusion:

All in all, the Four Spiritual Laws are not false on its own, but it skillfully avoided some of the difficult issues in the gospel: 1. Creation, 2. Full Deity of Jesus, 3. Severity of our sins, 4. Eternal Judgment, 5. Our life-long commitment. By doing so it is guilty of untruthful advertisement. Like a used-car salesman who tells you all the good things but avoided all the problems in the car, the Four Spiritual Laws tries to sell the gospel in the positive way. The gospel presented in the Four Spiritual Laws is no better than the prosperity gospel: a God who is eager to shower mankind with blessings if we would only believe Him and say a sinners’ prayer. My dear brothers and sisters, let us be faithful to the original message that Christ has entrusted us. (2 Tim. 1:14)

A better gospel presentation: Redemptive History (The Story of the Bible)

If someone asks you what does the Bible teach, you should be able to at least mention these things.

1. Creation. God created us and have already given us many wonderful gifts and blessings, yet we are often unthankful and never glorify God for His goodness.

a. Emphasize on what God has already given you. Intelligence, health, relatively wealthy. He is wonderful, that he hasn’t strike us for sins each time we sin.

b. Do read some books on creation/evolution issues. We want to prepared to give an answer to the critics. But be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, don’t make it a full creation v.s. evolution debate. If a person is combative, just politely back away. Debates don’t win people to Christ.

2. Fall. We have committed high treason against the King of the universe. Adam’s first sin is rebellion, not gluttony.

a. Present the 10 Commandments clearly if necessary. The 1^st function of the law is to make us aware of our sins. Most people do not know what sin is anymore, and Rom. 3:23 could be inadequate at times.

3. God’s Goodness and Justice

a. A good God must punish sins. A person whose dear one who was murdered or raped will want a JUST God to punish the escaped criminal. A God who doesn’t punish sinners is evil, not a good God.

b. A good God also wants to save sinners from punishment. God’s Justice and Loving kindness clashes on the cross in the form of Jesus the Son of God died to receive justice in our place.

4. Jesus is fully God and fully man.

a. He lived a perfect life.

b. He really died for our sins.

c. He rose again on the third day.

5. God’s people.

a. God have always saved a people, consisted of individuals.

b. The church is that people, and we must be a part of the church to be saved.

c. One must be baptized in be a part of the church, and receive holy communion.

d. One must stay faithful in the church, receiving its teachings, learning to pray, and to love and serve.

e. Faith is consisted of 3 parts, knowledge, assent (agreement) and commitment (following Jesus).

6. Kingdom of God.

a. Jesus the King will come and set up His kingdom on earth.

b. Serve Him and love Him, and we will be together with him forever.

c. He will come judge all the un-repented sinners and punish them in the eternal hell of fire.

Remember to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s guidance when sharing the gospel. Some people may have different struggles. Listen carefully when he or she speaks, form loving and long term friendship with that person. Your goal is not to have him say a prayer, but to have him joining the church by baptism and communion. You will notice my gospel presentation covers the major themes of the Bible, and I can freely add different materials to help my persuasion. For a Chinese, knowing some Chinese history and Chinese Christian history might also help. When encountering a problem you cannot solve, tell him you will find the answer for him or her. Pray for him, give the result to God, love him, and befriend him. Do not treat this person as a project, but treat him as a friend.

讀書靠天分家長醒醒吧

2010-07-31T13:53:00.001-04:00

2010-07-22
中國時報
【林希陶】

　最近大考剛結束，記者朋友們最喜歡的新聞路線，就是去訪問榜首群怎麼念書的。但是說穿了這樣的新聞千篇一律，榜首們一定說，「我們都沒補習，愛幹嘛就幹嘛，花很少時間念課內的書，但看了很多課外讀物，從事很多課外活動」，諸如此類云云，一般人聽了只會更心酸而已。也有一些人會說，我被視為黑馬，沒有多準備，考前努力念一念，就大躍進了，一下子衝到最前面去。

　其實我們瞭解這些前百分之三的人所說的方法，實際上是很難運用於一般大眾的。這個就像是我們去問張栩為什麼圍棋下這麼好、費德勒（Roger Federer）為什麼網球打這麼好一樣，他們提供的方法，絕對不適用於尋常百姓的。他們這群人，不只天資好而已，後天還拚命用心努力，我們跟天才們的距離，絕非以道里計。很抱歉，這就是天資上差距。英文叫做gifted child，真的是「上天的禮物」，強求不來的。

　我不是說環境不重要，很多資質好的小孩，在一個破碎的環境之下，當然無法展現自己的能力。但是環境轉換之後，他們到最後只是適時展現了自己的能力而已。良好的環境或機會只是促成這件事情的發生而已，假如沒有相對應的資質與準備，成果是很難展現出來的。

　關於讀書這件事，大家從小都在念書，自然都有自己的看法。家長當然也有自己的教育理念，這不是一朝一夕就會改變的。但是假如從專業的角度來思量這件事，我必須誠實的告訴大家，念書這件事，是很講天分的。這是一件超級殘酷的現實，只是大家不願意承認而已。

　大家可能一下子難以接受，都想說我的小孩是「大雞晚啼」，總有一天會開竅，但是你的生命到底能不能等到開竅這一天呢？這是一場賭注，但輸贏也顯而易見。

　也有一些家長，很愛舉一些現實生活不可能出現的特例，如什麼發燒之後變聰明、開刀之後變天才（日劇很喜歡的題材），都覺得自己的小孩總有一天也可以。作夢是無止盡的，只是沒有實現的那一天。很多家長寧願亂逼小孩，也不願意停下腳步，思考其他可能性。逼小孩子念書一定要考幾分，得第幾名，根本是比登天還難，只會造成家庭紛爭，甚至後續衍生出心理問題。

　但是不會念書，不代表一無是處。教養小孩的重點，應該不是擺在念書這一件單一的事情上面。而是讓小孩找到自己擅長、有興趣的事情，這才是最重要的。大家可能會想說，要怎麼找啊？孩子還這麼小，他真的知道自己要做什麼嗎？其實只要從小讓他們多嘗試，多思考如何做決定，各種活動都去參與，百無禁忌，孩子們自然可以從這樣的過程中，得知自己的長處。這些事情不必然要花許多錢，如散步、去野外走走、處理生活各種微小的事情，包含寄信、開帳戶、存錢、洗衣服、晾衣服、洗碗、掃地、拖地、洗浴室、修理電器、操作機器等等，在這樣反覆試驗的過程中，反而能找到自己想走的路。

　另外，家長們勢必要認清的一件事情，就是「念書」、「成功」與「財富」這三件事情是分開的，絕對不是會念書的人一定會成功，也會變成有錢人。成功與否，端靠每個人的定義；有錢與否，同樣取決於個人態度。大家以為醫生、律師們很會念書，也都很有錢，但現實是也很多人每天在金錢邊緣掙扎。他們每月收入也許是很高沒錯，但剩下的錢可能比一般人還少。許多一般尋常百姓一點也不會念書，但是靠著一技之長，可也是月入十萬沒問題的。

　找到適合自己的興趣，有一定的專業能力，定義自己的成功，這樣的人生，也不必然只屬於會念書的人所有。

　（作者為臨床心理師）

My Ministry

2010-05-18T13:54:00.002-04:00

Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. (2 Tim 2:10)

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Tim 2:1-2)

The Lord has called and elected a people for himself in this generation, and many of them are Chinese, and many of them going to come to MSU, and many of them will be undergrad students. I pray that the elects will be revealed through the preaching of the gospel, and we must endure and persevere in the ministry.

Our goal is to pass on the message, and finding trustworthy, reliable disciples, making them the messenger of the gospel as well. I pray that there will be 10 Timothy's with my knowledge, yet with various gifts. I pray that there will be ten different little 'pastors' in DBY group. It will be a long process to train other men to carry on the message, but we must endure all things to carry on the cause.

Martin Bucer's True Care of Souls (5 main tasks of a pastor)

2010-02-23T01:27:00.003-05:00

Bucer lists 'the five main tasks of the care of souls' (The 5 main tasks of a pastor. )

1. to lead to Christ our Lord and into his communion those who are still estranged from him, whether through carnal excess or false worship. （未信的人。）

2. to restore those who had been drawn away again through the affairs of the flesh or false doctrine. （跌倒的，離開神的。）

3. to assist in the true reformation of those who while remaining in the church of Christ have grievously fallen and sinned. （犯罪的信徒。）

4. to re-establish in true Christian strength and health those who, while persevering in the fellowship of Christ and not doing anything particularly or grossly wrong, have become somewhat feeble and sick in the Christian life. （沒犯大罪但卻是軟弱的。）

5. to protect from all offence and falling away and continually encourage in all good things those who stay with the flock and in Christ's sheep-pen without grievously sinning or becoming weak and sick in their Christian walk. （健康的信徒。）

Bucer concludes the means given the pastor are Word, Sacraments, and (church) Discipline.

Augustine's Confessions

2009-12-01T14:40:00.001-05:00

Human sloth pretends to long for rest, but what sure rest is there save in the Lord? Luxury would fain be called plenty and abundance; but thou art the fullness and unfailing abundance of unfading joy. Prodigality presents a show of liberality; but thou art the most lavish giver of all good things. Covetousness desires to possess much; but thou art already the possessor of all things. Envy contends that its aim is for excellence; but what is so excellent as thou? Anger seeks revenge; but who avenges more justly than thou? Fear recoils at the unfamiliar and the sudden changes which threaten things beloved, and is wary for its own security; but what can happen that is unfamiliar or sudden to thee? Or who can deprive thee of what thou lovest? Where, really, is there unshaken security save with thee? Grief languishes for things lost in which desire had taken delight, because it wills to have nothing taken from it, just as nothing can be taken from thee.

All things thus imitate thee--but pervertedly--when they separate themselves far from thee and raise themselves up against thee. But, even in this act of perverse imitation, they acknowledge thee to be the Creator of all nature, and recognize that there is no place whither they can altogether separate themselves from thee.

John Brown of Haddington: Instructions to students of ministry

2009-09-16T01:40:00.002-04:00

John Brown of Haddington is a gem of the Puritans, my only regret is not to have found him earlier.

His instructions to theological students are inspiring.

1. See that ye be real Christians yourselves.

2. Ponder much, as before God, what proper furniture (gifts?) you have for the ministerial work, and labour to increase it.

3. Take heed that your call from Christ and his Spirit to your ministerial work be not only real but evident.

4. See that your end in entering into, or executing your office, be single and disinterested.

5. See that your minds be deeply impressed with the nature, extent, and importance of your ministerial work.

6. See that ye take heed to your spirits, that ye deal not treacherously with the Lord.

7. See that ye, as workmen who need not be ashamed, earnestly labour rightly to divide the word of truth, according to the capacities, necessities, and particular occasions of your hearers, giving every one of them their portion in due season.

8. See that ye be judicious, upright, constant, and faithful in your profession.

9. Always improve and live on that blessed encouragement which is offered to you as Christians and ministers in the gospel.

What is your only comfort in life and in death?

2009-08-23T20:04:00.001-04:00

1. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. I have more than one comfort in life. I cannot answer this question properly. I have only one comfort in death, that is knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord.

My comforts in life includes:

1. A nice house, carpeted, air conditioned, 4 bedrooms, an office, a basement, and clean.

2. Food, good food, I have milk, honey, meat, vegetables, juice, bread, rice, noodles, cheese, butter, various sauces, cookies, cakes, fruits and more.

3. Clothes, warm clothes, nice looking clothes, shoes, socks, great laundry machines.

4. Automobiles. Two of them, in fact. CD players, air conditioned, power windows and so on. Very comfortable.

5. Family, a beautiful and sweet wife. Two very beautiful daughters, and a very supportive parent (who supports me fully for ministry.)

6. Advanced communication devices. Cell phone, wireless internet at home, "Duo-Cores" computers.

7. A neighborhood free of war, terrorism, plagues, pollutions, famines, flood, and earthquakes.

8. A decent healthy body, free of many major diseases and deformities.

In fact, if I lose any one of the things above, I would completely lose my joy and comfort. Even if just my computer crashes will drive me bananas.

How can I, a person who live in such an condition, answer such a question, "my only comfort" in life? No wonder we treat Jesus as the life insurance: we will use him when we die, but before we die I really have no use of him.

What is the answer the Heidelberg Catechism gives to this question?

"That I am not my own, but belong--body and soul, in life and in death-- to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

1 Cor. 6:19-20, Rom. 14:7-9, 1 Cor. 3:23; Titus 2:14. 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7-9; 2:2. John 8:34-36; Heb. 2:14-15, 1 John 3:1-11. John 6:39-40; 10:27-30 2 Thess. 3:3, 1 Peter 1:5, Matt. 10:29-31; Luke 21:16-18. Rom. 8:28. Rom. 8:15-16; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14, Rom. 8:1-17.

Oh how far I have strayed from the Catechism. I "subscribe" to the 3 forms of unity, but what does it mean? Do I live by it? Do I really know my only comfort Jesus Christ? Or is he just a life insurance policy that I filed away?

Forgive me oh Lord, do not let me learn this Catechism when one of my "comforts" is stripped away from me, teach me now to know thy ways and unite my heart to fear you.

Man's Effort to Comfort Himself in Distress

2009-08-20T23:39:00.002-04:00

Owen: "There are also other ways whereby sinful souls destryo themselves by false reliefs. Diversions from their perplexing thoughfulness please them. They will fix on something or other that cannot cure their disease, but shall only make them forget that they are sick; as Cain, under the terror of his guilt, departed from the presence of the Lord, and sought inward rest in outward labor and employment. He went and built a city, (Gen. 4:17). Such courses Saul fixed on; first music, then a witch. [sinful souls] they strive to stifle the guilt of one sin with another. They fly from themselves unto themselves, from their consciences unto their lusts, and seek for relief from sin by sinning. This is so far from believers, that they will not allow lawful things to be a diversion of their distress. He knows it is God alone who is the Lord of his conscience, where his depths lie; God alone against whom he hath sinned; God alone who can pardon his sin."

Owen's Commentary on Ps. 130. p. 38-39

Two Extremes that are Impossible to Happen to Believers

2009-08-20T15:06:00.000-04:00

Owen mentions that there are two extremes that it is impossible for believers to achieve: 1. To be completely perfect on earth. 2. To completely fall away from God. Yet he is also aware that there are many things we must do between these 2 extremes.

"To be wholly perfect, to be free from every sin, in all failings, all infirmities, that is not provided for, not promised in this covenant. It is a covenant of mercy and pardon, which supposeth a continuance of sin. To fall utterly and finally from God, that is absolutely provided against. Between these two extremes of absolute perfection and total apostasy lies the large field of believer's obedience and walking with God. Many a sweet, heavenly passage there is, and many a dangerous depth (by depth he meant spiritual darkness in this passage)in this field…yea, the same person may sometimes press hard after perfection, sometimes be cast to the very border of destruction. Now, between these two lie many a soul-plunging sin, against which no absolute provision is made, and which, for want of giving all diligence to put the means of preservation in practice, believers are oftentimes overtaken withal." (p.27)

By means of preservation he was talking about: "covenant commands and exhortations, on the attendance whereunto the administration of much covenant grace doth depend. To watch, pray, improve faith, to stand on our guard continually, to mortify sin, to fight against temptations, with steadfastness, diligence, constancy, are everywhere prescribed to us…These things are on our part the condition of the administration of that abundant grace which is to preserve us from soul entangling sins." (p.25)

This means of preservation is not absolutely provided for us. We must keep the covenant duty, and remain in the conditions of grace. If we do not do so diligently, we will end up "poor, barren, sapless, withering creatures all your days." (p. 26)

The totally fallen from the covenant is impossible because the everlasting covenant is absolutely provided for us (unconditional) (p.24), and to be perfect on earth is absolutely not provided for us, and finally the means of grace of preservation is not absolutely provided for us.

Notes Taken from A Practical Exposition Upon Psalm 130 by John Owen.

Seven Reasons Why Believers Experience Spiritual Darkness

2009-08-20T12:22:00.002-04:00

John Owen in his commentary on Ps. 130 mentions that "Gracious souls (believers), after much communion with God, may be brought into inextricable depths and entanglements on the account of sin." We in our sins experience darkness of soul.

Owen lists seven incidences when our soul will experience depression and darkness.
1. "Loss of the wonted sense of the love of God, which the soul did formerly enjoy." Owen explains that the strong sense of the love of God is a "transient acting of the heart by the Holy Ghost with ravishing, unspeakable joys, in apprehension of God's love, and our relation unto him in Christ."(p.18) Owen points out that this kind of unspeakable joy isn't for everyday experience; it isn't a meal that the believers should grow on, but are "dainties and high cordials he reserveth only for the seasons and persons wherein and to whom he knows them to be needful and useful." (p. 19)

2. Perplexed thoughtfulness about their great and wretched unkindness towards God. Ps. 77:3 "I remembered God, and was troubled." Our heart is troubled because we remembered how kind God was to us and yet how unthankful our lives have been.

3. A revised sense of justly deserved wrath. "When men have passed through a sense of wrath, and have obatained deliverance and rest through the blood of Christ…to be trading afresh with hell, curse, law, and wrath…this often befalls gracious souls on the account of sin." (p. 20) Ps. 138:7 "Thy wrath lieth hard upon me.'

4. Oppressing apprehensions of temporal judgment. "Let them not be ashamed for my sake." Cries David.

5. There maybe added hereunto prevailing fears for a season of being utterly rejected by God, of being found a reprobate on the last day. I personally experience this many times, that in the back of my mind I would fear that no matter how good I have lived I am just a reprobate and will be in for a big surprise on the final judgment day. Jonah feared the same way: "Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; I am lost for ever, God will own me no more." (Jonah 2:4)

6. God secretly sends his arrows into the soul, the wound and gall it, adding pain, trouble, and disquietness to its disconsolation. Ps. 38:2 "Thine arrow stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore." Owen adds: "these arrows are God's rebukes (Ps. 39:11)… God speaks in his word, and by his Spirit in the conscience, things sharp and bitter to the soul, fastening them so as it cannot shake them out. These Job so mournfully complains of. (Job 6:4)" (p.22)

7. Unspiritedness and disability unto duty. Owen explains: "the soul cannot pray with life and power, cannot hear with joy and profit, cannot do good and communicate with cheerfulness and freedom, cannot meditate with delight and heavenly-mindedness, cannot act for God with zeal and liberty, cannot think of suffering with boldness and resolution, but is sick, weak, feeble, and bowed down." What a graphic description! These are indeed our feelings oftentimes.

Owen concludes: Now, I say, a gracious soul, after much communion with God, may, on the account of sin, by a sense of the guilt of it, be brought into a state and condition wherein some, more, or all of these…maybe its portion. p.23

I appreciate that Owen points out that even believers will experience these spiritual darkness, and the fact that we may experience it doesn't mean that we are not the true elects or "gracious souls."

Reformed View of Music

2009-07-01T15:14:00.001-04:00

By Timothy Peng

The Reformed View of Music

Abraham Kuyper calls music the gift of the Holy Ghost,[1] and the Church of Jesus Christ has been blessed tremendously as she uses music to bring her devotion and prayers to God throughout the ages. However, Christians have also had great controversies over the use of music in church, ranging from Zwingli’s total rejection of music to Rick Warren’s complete embrace of every style of music. The purpose of this paper is to give guidance on how to use music for our benefit and impart wisdom on how to discern the dangers hidden in music as we live in this fallen world. I will briefly trace the development of music theories to the ancient Greeks, then compared the ancient wisdom with the insights from the Reformers (especially John Calvin), and finally explore the natures of music in order to enjoy it for our greatest benefits.

As one of the characteristics of aesthetics, it is difficult to draw philosophical and mathematical equations on what constitutes as good music. The Greek Philosophers have long ago paid attention to the nature and power of music. What makes music beautiful? Can good music be put into mathematical equations? According to legend, Pythagoras (Sixth century BCE) was the first philosopher who discovered that mathematical numbers that underlie musical pitch. One day as he was passing a blacksmith's shop he was captivated by what he heard: every now and then, the clattering from the sounds of the blacksmith's hammering would blend into a harmonious unity. It turned out that each hammer was a different weight and each produced a distinctive pitch; the most "agreeable" musical pitches--that is, pitches that were pleasing to the ear when sounded together--were formed by the simplest mathematical ratios (1:2, 2:3, and so on). Later, away from the blacksmith's workshop, Pythagoras found not only that different lengths of string produced different pitches but also that the most consonant interval, the octave, was produced by string lengths of the ratio 2:1; the next most consonant, the fifth, by lengths of the ratio 3:2; and so on. This led to a vision that was at root numerical, rational--the harmony of the universe can be expressed in mathematical ratios or proportions apprehended by the mind, and musical sounds can mediate these ratios.[2]

However, Pythagoras’ mathematical analysis of musical harmony did not cover every criteria of what constitutes as pleasant-sounding music. Plato definitely thought that there are some instrumental music are harmful for his republic’s soldiers and citizens, as they may become weak and melancholic after listening to certain types of music.[3] Moreover, Plato links music with morality, because music can help to build a balanced soul.[4] Plato took music seriously and made extensive rules on what kind music should be allowed and what should be banned. Begbie explains: "Therefore, heard music for Plato has positive ethical, political, and social potential. The contrast with some dominant present-day attitudes to music--for example, that music is essentially a matter of private individual taste, with little lasting or profound effect--could hardly be greater. But odd as it may seem to us, the power of musical sounds to improve our individual and social behavior was something taken for granted in virtually all ancient Greek musical philosophy and in a vast amount of subsequent Christian thought."[5] In contrast with Plato’s diligence in studying and categorizing musical effects, modern people express a causal approach to the nature and power of music.

However, the wisdom from the ages before is clear, that music is powerful and it has the potential to influence the listeners to various effects. Studies have shown that music often plays a pivotal part in the formation of young people's identity, self-image, and patterns of behavior[6]. The commercial sector knows that music can affect, among other things, the time people spend in a shop[7], the amount of money spent[8], and the choice of product.[9] Begbie recounts his own experience with the power of music:

"Music not only reflects and emerges out of our social-cultural world but up to a point it also constructs it. On a trip I took the United States recently, a music video was playing as we boarded the plane, with images of rivers fading into each other, accompanied by slow melodies and whale song. It was all very soothing. The images and music together helped transport me into a world of calm security. The sounds and pictures of the natural world with its slow and ancient rhythms were designed to help me forget the world I was actually entering--a recently built, wholly artificial, and potentially faulty mechanism, which was shortly to project me at over five hundred miles per hour through the thinnest of air, thirty-five thousand feet above any river…what is going on here? Music, principally through managing our moods, is not only reflecting an existing social reality; it is helping to create and sustain a new one. It is organizing the group, ordering our social world, setting parameters of appropriate reaction, helping to elicit trust and structure desired response."[10]

In short, music has the power to organize its listeners, creating new experiences in life. Brown puts this way: "We should be careful not to imply that music simply replicates in an audible medium the preexisting social and inner realities of our world. Rap music and the hip-hop culture of which it is an integral part are not just an expression of contemporary African American urban life as it already exists…they constitute a new dimension of that life."[11]

However, is music’s power contained in itself or music is only powerful when combined with the power of the words? I think there is not an either/or answer, but we must recognize that yes, music is powerful in itself, but yet it is even more powerful when combined with words. This issue of musical power combined with power of the words is extremely relevant in the church worship setting. Can one worship God with good words yet in bad musical tunes? There could be at least four possibilities: 1) Good words with good melody, 2) good words with bad melody, 3) bad words with good melody, and 4) bad words with bad melody. No one will debate whether the church can use option 3) and 4) for church worship, the answer is obviously no. For it is easy to judge whether a song’s words are sinful or even heretical. And there will be little debate on whether the church should use option 1) to worship. Most people can enjoy a good music containing wholesome and Biblical words. Where the most debates are generated is in option (2), when clearly the words of the song are wholesome and Biblical, but the “taste” or “style” of the music may not be agreed upon as “good.”

The Reformer John Calvin certainly was aware of the issue of good music and bad music. However, he was more worried about the possibility of option (3), bad words with good melody. Brown remarks on Calvin’s introduction to the Genevan Psalter: “As we have seen, however, Calvin also seems to suggest that even a beautiful melody can be harmful when its words are unedifying. In that case the melody can intensify the evil effect of the words and make the text more seductive or debilitating, as though acting as a funnel for wine.”[12] Calvin is well aware of the power of music being able intensify the power of the words. But Calvin really did not give a ruling on the debate of whether good words could be “ruined” by bad melodies. “While Calvin worries about the effect of combining attractive music with dubious words, he does not discuss the effect of combining good or devout words with immoderate or trivial music.”[13]

To explore the possibility of (2) (good words with bad music), Brown experimented putting Psalm 23 to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

Brown noted that the King James Version of the Psalm is not metrical, and “therefore not susceptible to being sung to regularly metered music such as "Rudolph," and one possible procedure is to read the King James text as a ‘voice-over,’ with a small group humming the tune of ‘Rudolph’ in the background.” Even when this is done, Brown notes that it is impossible to have a softer and slower rendition of the “Rudolph” to fit the image of “Shadow of Death” as this Psalm is often thus used in funeral services.[14] Brown concludes:

" the music can be heard as reinforcing the trivializing tendencies …this is prancing and dancing music, with scarcely…any sobering thoughts that might arise when walking through valleys dark as death, the music at that very point has us imagine a pleasant valley detour that is little more than a lark…such an attempt to accompany the veritably classic version of the Twenty-Third Psalm with the music of "Rudolph" will leave little doubt that the reindeer music—the music itself—stays in a much lower orbit than the poetry of Psalm 23…it must be said that this music is not, after all, infinitely malleable or suited to all purposes."[15]

Brown has concluded that although “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is not an evil song in itself, it is however not suitable for worship services. Music has its quality in its tonal melody, harmony, tempo, and phrasing, and we must learn to discern the differences between a joyful or funeral song. It would be not only laughable but disrespectful for someone to play President Obama’s inaugural music at President R. Reagan’s funeral service or vice versa.

Music has its own qualities in itself; it is not just a product of a certain social setting or culture, but it has universal qualities that people from any culture will be able to grasp. Begbie argues: "Is music to be explained entirely in terms of human actions, its social and cultural contexts and uses? Is Music no more than the product of this or that social group, this or that culture? Might there not be something, so to speak, "in the notes" and perhaps even in the makeup of all human beings that plays a key part in musical experience?"[16]

One of the arguments Begbie uses is the human body’s natural connection to music. "Crucial also are the integrities of the human body. Music is a very bodily business, whether or not the human voice is used. Our physical, physiological and neurological makeup shapes the making and hearing of sound to a high degree…the body is deeply implicated in hearing and listening to music. Vibrations in the air enter our auditory canals, stimulate microscopic organs, provoke foot tapping and head swaying. …Indeed, it would seem that music's first appeal is to the body, and certainly not to the ear alone."[17]

Our bodies’ built-in connection to music is so great that it has been exploited by therapists in various degrees. Story was told that a six-year-old autistic boy who could not tie his shoelaces even after repeated demonstration, then a therapist put the process of tying shoelaces into a song, and the boy succeeded on the second attempt.[18]

Moreover, music by itself (without the words) has its own meanings. Begbie calls it the “musical sense.” He explains: “Music has one more dimension beyond ‘sound-producing materials, sound waves, human bodies, and time’, and that is ‘the patterns of sounds that make up music.’ The sounds of music are ‘configured, arranged in particular ways, and as such interact with me in particular ways so as to make sense.”[19]

In other words, the way the sounds are arranged entails it has built-in meanings. There cannot be any music that is without meanings, people may come to various conclusions of what meanings are contained in a particular music, but music cannot be music if it is completely senseless, it would be just pure noise. Anyone can bang on the piano and make noises, but one must be trained to arrange notes on the piano to make 'sensible' music. The example of joyful and funeral musical sense is still applicable here.

Begbie mentions three categories of musical sense:

1. Any piece of music must at least possess some aesthetic integrity for it to be considered of any worth, and this aesthetic integrity is built within the creation order. "When I listen to a Schumann symphony to appreciate its shapely melodies…I am listening to it for aesthetic enjoyment. This aesthetic integrity, from a Christian theological point of view, will be seen as grounded and embodied in God's created order, made and remade in Jesus Christ."[20]

2. Music (and arts) operates in ways that it is metaphorical, generating a "surplus of meaning” as he calls it. Begbie explains: "The surplus of meaning is not to claim that [it] can mean anything at all, any more than the metaphor 'he is a tiger' can mean anything. But it is to say that it can generate multiple meaning, disclose more and more of something, evoke more and more as we are drawn into it…Musical sounds are related--whether by nature or convention—to states of affairs outside of music. Music is not wrapped up in itself…it makes connections…it has immense power to gather connotations and associations."[21]

In other words, any listener listens to a piece of music will associate it to a particular meaning, whether it be sad, joyous, magnificent, extravagant, romantic, and etc. A listener may conclude in various ways how this music is sad, but no one with any musical sense will confuse a sad music with a joyful one.

3. Different pieces of music are structured in different ways, giving them different capacities. Music is not an 'empty sign' to which any meaning can be attached. He explains: “Marches and lullabies, for example, have very different structural properties, which accounts in large part for their different uses. Marches tend to be loud, regular in tempo, their beats at a marching pace in groups of two or four. A lullaby--one of the most universal forms of music--is usually slow, quite, and gentle; the melody moves in small steps, often in a rocking pattern, and the sounds are gentle, not angular or harsh. This is music, after all, for comfort and rest.”[22]

Indeed too many worship songs writers ignored the musical sense and then attached solemn words to loud and rocking music. It is a confusion of the musical sense with the lyrics.

Along the same line, other than musical sense, figures of music also were employed by Baroque composers to further integrate music and words to bring them to their maximum effects. Figures were devices that were thought to give music a greater rhetorical force, analogous to the embellishments orators use to make their speeches more persuasive and drive their points home.[23]

Begbie explains:

“Some figures are very closely allied to the sounds of speech. Pairs of notes, very close in pitch, were thought to heighten a sense of sighing or lamenting--think of the sound of a sigh. The viola da gamba's sighing in "It is finished" is a good example. Sometimes the figures could take the form of word-painting (hypotyposis). When Handel in Messiah sets "Glory to God in the Highest," he uses high, brilliant sounds; for "peace on earth" he uses low, subdued sounds. In Bach's Mass in B Minor, in the "Et in unum" we find words descendit de coelis ("came down from heaven") set to a falling melody. Examples of this kind could be multiplied many times over. What we should not miss is that what drives this more than anything else is the assumed link between music and language. Not only did composers believe these devices worked like rhetorical gestures in speech but they also used the devices to drive home a meaning or emotion already conveyed by the words."[24]

Moreover, composers were aware of the Theory of Affects (Affektenlehre). Musical materials and forms--for example, styles, keys, instrumentation, meters, melodic shapes--were correlated with certain affects, or emotional states, such as sadness, hate , joy, and love. The composer, it was thought, can move the affects (i.e. emotions) of the listener.[25] This did not develop into one widely accepted scheme, but some techniques became very common: for instance, wide intervals between notes became associated with joy and confidence, the French overture style with a sense of stately grandeur, trumpets with triumph and elation. It is not hard to detect such links in Bach. Trumpets, or trumpet-like music, frequently appear in the context of joy (the "Et Resurrexit" of the Mass in B Minor); oboes are often associated with love. D major becomes linked to majesty and splendor (again, the "Et Resurrexit"), E minor to grief and suffering (as in the St. Matthew Passion, where E minor plays a critical role).

Again, we should not miss the very close links presumed here between music and the way words operate.

The Reformed tradition beginning with Calvin is well aware of the power and musical sense of the worship songs. Calvin was more cautious when compared to Luther and the Lutheran tradition in choosing the songs for worship. Rather than Luther’s “sweeping embrace of musical culture”, Calvin called attention to “significant assets and dangers of music”[26] and he would “never accept the assumption that every form of music human beings find somehow pleasurable is healthy and good…since in his view there is nothing that is untouched by sin.”[27]

Calvin is more apprehensive than Luther about the negative powers of music. He has an especially vivid sense of the vulnerability of all human activity to sin. Spiritual joy, of which music can be a reminder, was part of our endowment prior to the fall. But the catastrophe of sin has turned music into a very mixed blessing. Music can poison and disfigure the heart as much as uplift it, and it can generate quite disastrous moral consequences. “It is true that every bad word perverts good character, but when the melody is added, that word pierces the heart much more strongly within. …there is hardly anything in the world with more power [than music] to turn or bend, this way and that, the morals of men, as Plato has prudently considered."[28]

Calvin’s balanced attitude toward music influenced his decision to remove musical instruments in his worship services and his insistence on the development of a distinct style of sacred music. According to Blankenburg, Calvin through his Psalter developed a Protestant musical stilus ecclesiasticus, much as Palestrina might be said to have developed a correspondingly Catholic one.[29] There was also copious research done to track down sources of, and influences on, the tunes of the Psalms in the Genevan Psalter. Although the results are inconclusive, we do know many of the composers and arrangers of the tunes (the most famous being Loys Bourgeois).[30]

One of the Calvin’s purposes of creating a Psalter is to allow believers to pray without ceasing through the memorized singing of the Psalms, whether they be in the homes or fields.[31] Calvin explains that public prayer is of two kinds: with words alone and with song.[32] Calvin’s practicing of singing Psalms in church and at home was intended to the “eventual elimination of all secular vocal music.”[33] Garside adds: “In the ideal future, when men and women sang, not only at public worship, but in their private prayers and everywhere else, even in their entertainment at table and in their homes, they would sing only the divine and celestial hymns of David.”[34] Whether this intention of Calvin’s was successful or even possible is unknown, but at least the contrast is drastic when we compare Calvin to the modern Christians’ effort to “eagerly absorbing and adapting virtually every style from the world outside (the reverse of what Calvin desired).” [35]

Even though Kuyper would not have followed Calvin entirely to search for a “sacred music”, he definitely would not have agreed with modern Christians’ inclusion of every style of music. Kuyper emphasized that the music used in worship must be “the finest, the most exquisite, the most perfect that you can imagine. Our spirit is not moved by the song of a sparrow but by the lark, not by the starling or crow, but by the thrush and the nightingale. When music for itself is wanted as a part of the worship service, it should be outstanding."[36]

Calvin would certainly disagree with Rick Warren’s stance on music: “Worship has nothing to do with the style or volume or speed of a song. God loves all kinds of music because he invented it all—fast and slow, loud and soft, old and new. You probably don’t like it all, but God does! If it is offered to God in spirit and truth, it is an act of worship.”[37] Brown comments on Warren’s stance: “Such a statement, welcoming as it is, forgets entirely that certain kinds of music may be driven—whether by nature or by culture and ‘social construction’—toward feelings and outlooks far removed from either Christian worship or the Christian life in general.”[38]

Reformed Christians must learn from Calvin to wisely discern the styles of music and choose the appropriate ones for the use of worship and even for personal enjoyment. Brown offers his advice: “The church must be discerning as it searches for music that, in the larger culture, gives voice to human feelings and transformative beauty, with or without words, and in a way that can likewise be enjoyed in God, and offered up to God.”[39]

What Brown has suggested is a step beyond what Calvin had allowed in his Geneva church, however, it is in the right trajectory of Calvin’s search of sacred music. Kuyper would also agree that what Calvin did in Geneva was not to set an uniformity of music style, but to set the church free in searching of the most outstanding style of music.[40]

Excellent and pleasant music not only enhances the worship experiences, but it also enriches Christians’ spiritual reflections and devotion. Begbie suggests two more wise uses of musical power for the benefits of Christians living.

1. Tensions and resolutions. "Tension and resolution is one of the most basic psychological patterns governing our lives."[41] "From traffic lights on red to lights on green, sexual arousal to orgasm, nerves before the interview to the relief of a job offer. In the Western Tonal music, the dynamic of tension and resolution is pervasive. Tensions are set up that demand some kind of release or rest."[42]

One of the most important tension-resolution is harmonic tension and resolution. All chords needs to be resolved and cannot be left hanging on the tension chord.[43] If you were to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and stop on "And the home of the", the listeners will be expecting for the resolution of ‘Brave.’ “The full pattern of equilibrium-tension-resolution (ETR) gives music a forward-moving feel. Western tonal music is teleological, or directional. It is not circular, though it may involve much repetition. It drives toward future rest and closure, often leading to some kind of goal or gathering together of a musical process.”[44]

Begbie pointed out that relating this ETR pattern in Scripture is not hard, to say the least, the Scripture has patterns of creation-fall-redemption, promised land-exile-return, orientation-disorientation-reorientation in the Psalms.[45]

Tensions and resolutions (ETR) teaches us three things

(1) Life cannot be rushed. God's timing and our lives cannot be rushed; in the same way, music will become unintelligible when it is rushed.[46]

(2) Music’s ETRs invite us to live on many levels. "Music is not an art of straight lines. It is never simply a string of ETR's, one after the other, on one level. If it were, we will soon lose interest. Music's ETRs work at many levels simultaneously, and this is one of music's strongest powers, one of the prime ways it gets under our skin and holds us."[47] Music is measured by meters and marked by time signature (2/4, 3/4, etc.). Each measure contains the number of beats indicated by the time signature, a wave of tension and resolution is set up, repeated measure after measure. The measures are grouped and they can also be grouped into larger groups of measures (tensions-resolutions). "This process continues up, level after level, higher and higher, until the whole piece is covered. This can be a highly complex process, but this basic multileveled pattern is present in one form or another in virtually all types of Western music, from Bach to Brahms, R.E.M. to Eminem."[48]

In the same way, this multi-leveled tension-resolution is necessary in Christian life, or in Biblical exegesis. Begbie gives an example:

"There is a certain kind of 'fundamentalism' that reads the Scripture in flat time, where every word of the Bible is treated as if it were literal, plodding prose about events on one level alone, where every prophecy has to come true at only one single time and in one unambiguous way. But if we think on many levels, this habit of thinking dissolves. When God promised to Abraham that he would make "a great nation" (Gen. 12:2), how is that fulfilled? In the people who settled in Canaan? In the kingdom of David? In the community who returned from exile in Babylon? In the Church at the end of time? The answer is surely yes, in all of them. A single promise can have many different fulfillments. As long as we limit ourselves to single straight lines, we will struggle hard to conceive of that. But music, with its multiple waves, embodies it for us in even the simplest song.”[49]

(3) ETRs teach us to wait. The gospel gives us this already-and not yet tension. The resolution is coming, but not yet. This theme is also prevalent is music. "The handling of delay is a crucial musical skill…maintaining the 'not yet' of resolution through deferred gratification is generally reckoned to be one of the most important things to be learned by any composer."[50]

2. Sound mix: Two or more notes can sound simultaneously. "This seemingly innocuous phenomenon is in fact one of music's greatest powers, and it is of huge significance from the perspective of Christian faith."[51] If one plays a middle C on a piano, what she hears fills the whole of the heard space. If she plays an E along with the middle C, that second note also fills the whole of the heard space, the same space as the C. The notes interpenetrate, occupy the same heard space, but one can hear them as two notes. “Music has come to depend massively on the interpenetrating and resonating features of sound, and it exploits them to powerful effect."[52].

This sound mixing nature of music can serve to illustrate the Trinitarian nature of God. "What could be more apt than to speak the Trinity as a three-note chord, a resonance of life; Father, Son, and Spirit mutually indwelling, without mutual exclusion, and yet without merger, each occupying the same space, 'sounding through' one another, yet irreducibly distinct, reciprocally enhancing, and establishing one another as other? Early Christians wrote of God's perichoresis (co-inherence), the interchange and mutual indwelling of Father, Son and Spirit, paraphrased by Cornelius Plantinga thus: 'Each divine Person harbors the others at the centre of His being. In a constant movement of overture and acceptance, each Person envelops and encircles the others.'"[53]

We often treat Trinity as a mathematical problem to be solved, rather than a reality of harmony to be enjoyed: "our tendency is to treat the Trinity as essentially a problem to be solved--a mathematical conundrum about three-ness and oneness to be agonized over on Trinity Sunday--rather than a reality to be enjoyed has been exacerbated by giving pride of place to the eye in telling us what is permissible and impermissible. Then it is hard to avoid the dangers of the supposedly easy ways of solving the problem: imagining God as blandly one (Unitarianism), or a celestial committee of individuals (tritheism), or as outwardly three but internally without distinction (modalism).”[54] The illustration of Trinity by music is indeed superior to that given by visual arts. And one must begin to contemplate why "faith comes from hearing the Word" rather than seeing the Word.

The Reformed tradition grants us a richer and wider field for enjoying and contemplating music; it also sets up boundaries and warns us of the hidden danger of music due to the result of the Fall. Reformed Christians is better equipped to search and develop for more outstanding and excellent music for the glory of God and our enjoyments.

[1] See Abraham Kuyper, “Calvinism and Arts” in Stone Lectures, Lectures on Calvinism: Six Lectures Delivered at Princeton University Under Auspices of the L. P. Stone Foundation [The Stone Lectures]. Dearborn: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1953, 153.

[2] Jeremy Begbie, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Engaging Culture). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007, 79.

[3] Plato, The Republic, Book III.

[4] Begbie, 80

[5] Begbie, 81

[6] Andy Bennett, Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity, and Place (New York: Macmillan, 2000). Mark Tarrant, Adrian C. North, and David J. Hargreaves, "Youth Identity and Music" in Musical Identities, ed. R. A. R. MacDonald, David J. Hargreaves, and Dorothy Miell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 134-50.

[7] R.E. Milliman, "Using Background Music to Affect the Behavior of Supermarket Shoppers," Journal of Marketing 46 (1982): 86-91

[8] C.S. Areni and D. Kim, "The Influence of Background Music on Shopping Behavior: Classical versus Top-Forty Music in a Wine Store," Advances in Consumer research 20 (1993): 336-40.

[9] Adrian C. North and David J. Hargreaves, "Music and Consumer Behavior," in The Social Psychology of Music, ed. Adrian C. North and David J. Hargreaves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 274-78.

[10] Begbie, 45.

[11] Frank Burch Brown, Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 162.

[12] Frank Burch Brown, “Religious Music and Secular Music—A Calvinist Perspective, Re-formed.” In Theology Today, 60, 2006, 15.

[13] Brown, 15.

[14] Frank Burch Brown, “Christian Music, More than Just Words” Theology Today 62 (2005):228.

[15] Ibid., 228.

[16] Begbie, 46.

[17] Begbie, 47.

[18] Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind (New York: Ballantine, 1992), 33.

[19] Begbie, 49-50.

[20] Begbie, 50.

[21] Ibid., 51-52.

[22] Begbie, 52.

[23] Ibid., 131.

[24] Begbie, 132.

[25] Ibid., 131.

[26] Brown, “Religious Music and Secular Music--A Calvinist Perspective, Re-formed." Theology Today 60 (2006),18.

[27] Ibid., 20.

[28] Calvin, "Genevan Psalter: Foreword," 347.

[29] Brown “Religious and Secular Music”, quoting Walter Blankenburg, "Calvin," in the encyclopedic Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel und Basel: Barenreite, 1952), 665., 12.

[30] Brown in “Religious and Secular Music” quoting Blankenburg, “Church Music in Reformed Europe,” 522-23., 18

[31] John Calvin, “Forward to the Psalter,” trans. By Charles Garside, in John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, ed. Elsie Anne Mckee, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 96.

[32] Calvin, 94.

[33] Charles Garside, trans. and Elsie Anne Mckee, ed., John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety (Classics of Western Spirituality). New York: Paulist Press, 2002.24.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Brown, “Religious Music and Secular Music” 20.

[36] Abraham Kuyper, Our Worship, 51.

[37] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2002), 65.

[38] Brown, “Religious and Secular Music.” 20.

[39] Ibid., 21.

[40] Abraham Kuyper, “Calvinism and Art” in Lectures on Calvinism: The Stone Lectures of 1898,. “Calvinism frees the musicians from the controls of the state church and were able to find inspirations among the people: "The men who first arranged the music of the Psalm for the Calvinistic singing were the brave heroes who cut the strands that bound us to the Cantus firmus, and selected their melodies from the free world of music.” 168.

[41] Jeremy Begbie, Theology, Music, and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chaps 2 and 4.

[42] Begbie, Resounding Truth, 278.

[43] Begbie, 278.

[44] Ibid.

[45] see Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984).

[46] Begbie, 279-280

[47] Ibid, 280.

[48] Begbie., 281.

[49] Ibid., 282.

[50] Ibid., 283.

[51] Ibid., 286.

[52] Ibid. 287-288.

[53] Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 20-21.

[54] Begbie, 293.

Works Cited

Areni, C.S., and D. Kim. "The Influence of Background Music on Shopping Behavior: Classical versus Top-Forty Music in a Wine Store." Advances in Consumer Research 20 (1993): 336-40.

Begbie, Jeremy S.. Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Engaging Culture). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2007.

Begbie, Jeremy S.. Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Bennett, Andy. Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.

Brown, Frank Burch. "Christian Music, More than Just Words." Theology Today 62 (2005): 223-29.

Brown, Frank Burch. "Religious Music and Secular Music--A Calvinist Perspective, Re-formed." Theology Today 60 (2006): 15.

Brown, Frank Burch. Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2003.

Brueggemann, Walter. The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Augsberg Old Testament Studies). Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1984.

Garside, Charles, trans. and Elsie Anne Mckee, ed., John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety (Classics of Western Spirituality). New York: Paulist Press, 2002.

Hargreaves, David, and Adrian North. The Social and Applied Psychology of Music. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008.

Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism: Six Lectures Delivered at Princeton University Under Auspices of teh L. P. Stone Foundation [The Stone Lectures]. Dearborn: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1953.

Kuyper, Abraham. Our Worship (Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies). Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008.

MacDonald, R. A. R., David J. Hargreaves, and Dorothy Miell. Musical Identities. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002.

Milliman, R.E.. "Using Background Music to Affect the Behavior of Supermarket Shoppers." Journal of Marketing 46 (1982): 86-91.

Plantinga, Cornelius. Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002.

Plato. Plato: The Republic, Books 1-5 (Loeb Classical Library No. 237). London: Loeb Classical Library, 1930.

Storr, Anthony. Music and the Mind. Chicago: Ballantine Books, 1993.

Warren, Rick. The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002.

Love, Respect, and Forgive each other

2009-06-25T13:09:00.000-04:00

My heart is shocked and touched by this story. I applaud this man's courage of repentance, and I feel sad for all the women who are abused. Oh that we learn that man and woman are created in God's image, and deserves respect from each other.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8115219.stm

South African rapist: 'Forgive me'

Dumisani Rebombo says peer pressure led him to rape

Dumisani Rebombo and his friend raped a young girl in their village in South Africa when they were teenagers.

Years later, he returned to the same village to find the woman he attacked and begged for her forgiveness.

Mr Rebombo, 49, is one of thousands of men in South Africa who admit to having carried out a sexual assault - one in four, according to a recent survey.

He told BBC News why he feels so many young men in his homeland engage in the ill-treatment of women.

When I was 15 years old, I took part in a gang rape.

Before the incident, I was constantly jeered for not being man enough.

At the time I was not ready to have a girlfriend when all my friends did.

I did not tend the cattle or sheep, nor did I attend the initiation school [where South African teenagers are circumcised in traditional rites of passage].

This fuelled my daily jeers.

My friends sang and clapped as if we had done something right

Dumisani Rebombo

South African rape survey shock

A friend and my cousin pressured me to prove that I was man enough, by taking part in the rape of a teenage girl in the village.

This was termed "straightening her up", since she did not want to go out with any of the local boys.

I succumbed to this daily pressure and on the day of the incident, when they saw me trembling with fear, they ordered me to take marijuana and beer to defeat my fears.

I did just that and the two of us [my friend and I] proceeded to rape the girl.

Guilty and scared

Afterwards, I was terrified.

I felt guilty but also scared that the news could reach my mother who had a high standing in the community.

The following day, when we went for our soccer practice, this incident was reported to all the other football players.

Dumisani Rebombo said he was prepared to face jail

On hearing the news, they sang and clapped as if we had done something right.

This helped to stop the jeering somewhat and I was allowed to associate with the other boys.

I still felt guilty, at least partially so, especially when I saw the girl in the village. Sometimes I tried to avoid meeting her.

But slowly, over time, I began to think less and less about the incident.

I left my village in Limpopo Province and went to live in the city and joined a religious group from which I learned a lot about love and respect for all.

Strangely, I did not think much of the incident - I just went on with my life.

I started work with an NGO (non-governmental organisation) where I mostly worked with unemployed mothers.

Every Monday morning, the women reported incidents of abuse in different forms.

Every time I heard of a negative act by a man, I was forced to go back to my own incident

Dumisani Rebombo

As they did this, I could not help it but give way to introspection.

It was as if every time I heard of a negative act by a man, I was forced to go back to my own incident.

I then asked my employers to train us in a methodology which would target boys and men.

They did this and very soon, I felt challenged, self-consciously, to set an example to the men I was teaching.

Seeking forgiveness

I took a decision to go back to find the woman I raped.

I realised that the woman needed justice.

But also, I wanted to ask for forgiveness, now that I understood the effects and consequences for someone who has been raped.

South Africa's government has been urged to solve the rape epidemic

I went to my pastor about this. His response was: "You are saved now, you were once in the mud, but now you know the truth and you are therefore OK."

He also asked me if I was ready to go to jail. He said: "What if the woman went to the authorities?"

My answer was: "If I go to jail, that would be justice for that woman."

I therefore took the journey to the north.

I wanted her to know that I felt bad about what I had done to her, that I was a changed man and I was working with other men to prevent rape.

When we met, she showed a wry smile on her face.

Since we were at a public clinic, she thought I was a doctor or someone from the Ministry of Health.

I related my story to her. She looked at me and revealed that she had since been raped on two other occasions.

She told me how she often cringes when her husband touches her

Dumisani Rebombo

She started crying. She told me how she often cringes when her husband touches her.

She told me that her life was never the same emotionally following these incidents.

Worse still, she was not ready to tell her husband of what had happened.

Finally, she said that she forgave me, and thought that I had meant well with all that I had said.

I left that room with a new burden - to do something about rape in my community and my country.

Machismo feelings

If you asked me: "What motivates so many men in South Africa to engage in un-consensual sex?" I would say that it is the machismo feelings and beliefs, coupled with patriarchal processes and tendencies.

I think that we raise boys in the wrong way, but later on in their lives we want to see them as different men who care and love.

My advice to young men who feel under pressure to rape, is to surround yourselves with good friends.

Learn to talk to someone about what is going on inside.

For with this, one can teach the young men to have other means of solving conflict.

And above all, to grow up respecting girls.

Dumisani Rebombo is a community development worker and public speaker, working for the Olive Leaf Foundation, in Johannesburg.

Be Humble before the LORD

2009-06-25T11:00:00.000-04:00

^{2 Kings 1
13} Again the king sent the captain of a third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up and came and fell on his knees before Elijah and entreated him, “O man of God, please let my life, and the life of these fifty servants of yours, ^kbe precious in your sight. ¹⁴ Behold, fire came down from heaven and consumed the two former captains of fifty men with their fifties, but now let my life be precious in your sight.” ¹⁵ Then the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, “Go down with him; do not be afraid of him.” So he arose and went down with him to the king

^k[1 Sam. 26:21; Ps. 72:14]

Oh that we will be humble before God when we inquire of Him. We do not order God to do things, nor do we order the servant of God. The third captain fell on his knees and begged for his life. We need to fall on our knees daily to entreat God for the grace to live our lives.

William Twisse on the 2nd Commandment

2009-06-18T12:54:00.000-04:00

2nd Commandment:

Q. What is the second commandment?

A. Thou shall not make to thyself…etc.

Q. What is forbidden in this commandment, in one word?

A. Will worship.

Q. What is will-worship?

A. To worship God after our own wits and wills.

Q. What is commanded?

A. To worship God according to his Word. So parents look to be served of their children, not doing that which they think will please their parents; but by doing what their parents command them; so masters look to be served by their servants, so princes look to be served of their subjects. Yet the child is made after the image of God, as well as the father, the servants as well as the master; the subjects as well as the Prince: and therefore are able to understand of themselves what is fit to please their parents, their masters, their Princes: but none of us is of himself able to conceive what is pleasing to God: for my ways are not your ways; neither are my thoughts your thoughts, saith the Lord: but as high as the heavens are above the earth; so are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts, saith the Lord. Isa. 55:8, 9.

Q. What is that worship of God which he hath commanded us in his word?

A. It is of a different nature, according unto different times; under the Old Testament, and unto the New.

Q. What was the worship that God commanded in time of the old Testament?

A. In consists in variety of ceremonies, both touching the place of his worship, the temple in Jerusalem; and touching the persons that performs it, which were the priests. And last of all, touching the actions performed by them in variety of services.

Q. What was chiefly meant hereby?

A. The crucifying of Christ Jesus, together with all the graces and benefits which the Church of god both enjoy through the death and passion of Christ Jesus.

Q. What be those benefits which we enjoy by Christ?

A. They are in number three.

Q. What is the first?

A. Our atonement and reconcilement with God, which consists in the forgiveness of our sins.

Q. What is the second?

A. The sanctification and purification of our natures.

Q. What is the third?

A. The salvation of our souls.

Q. What is the worship of God prescribed in God's word, in the days of the New Testament?

A. That which for the most part is merely moral and perpetual.

Q. How many parts be there of it?

A. Three.

Q. What is the first?

A. The ministry of the Word in the preaching and hearing of it.

Q. What is the second?

A. The exercise of prayer.

Q. What is the third?

A. The administration and participation of the sacraments.

Q. What is forbidden?

A. The contraries unto these.

Q. What is contrary to the ministry of the Word?

A. Two things:

Q. What is the first?

A. The contempt of it.

Q. Wherein doth this consist?

A. In two things? To wit, the disuse thereof, or the ole thereof in an unconscionable manner.

Q. What is the second?

A. The bringing in of a worship besides or contrary to the Word of God.

Q. Give some examples hereof.

A. As the sacrifice of the spells among it papists.

Q. What else?

A. The making of images to impression errors, the placing of them in churches, and the worshipping of them.

Q. What else?

A. The worshipping of relics.

Q. What else?

A. The consecrating of opal, cream, salt, etc.

Q. What is contrary unto prayer?

A. Two things.

Q. What is the first?

A. The neglect, or the whole of prayer.

Q. What is the second?

A. The unlawful use of prayer.

Q. Wherein does that consist?

A. In two things.

Q. What is the first?

A. In prayer without a right faith.

Q. Wherein does that consist?

A. In praying unto any other [rather than] unto God. In praying in any other name than in Jesus Christ.

Q. Do papists transgress in this?

A. Yea.

Q. How many ways?

A. In praying unto saints, in praying unto Angels, in praying unto images,

Q. What is the second?

A. In praying without right affections.

Q. How many ways is that committed?

A. Two ways.

Q. How?

A. In praying superstitiously, or in praying profanely.

Q. How superstitiously?

A. In praying in a tongue they understand not, as papists.

Q. How profanely?

A. In praying without due reverence and devotion.

Q. What is contrary to the right administration of the Sacraments?

A. Two things.

Q. What is the first?

A. The contempt of God's institution

Q. How is that committed?

A. Two ways.

Q. What is the first?

A. By not coming to the Lord's table.

Q. What is the second?

A. By receiving it unworthily, when we do come.

Q. What is the second way in general?

A. By bringing in our own institutions, as the papists baby brought in the sacraments maze.

A Brief Catechism by Twisse on the Ten Commandments

2009-06-18T12:51:00.000-04:00

1st Commandment:
Q. Repeat the first commandment.
A. Thou shall have no other gods but me.

Q. How many duties are contained in this Commandment.
A. Three.

Q. What is the first?
A. To love God.

Q. What is the second?
A. To Fear God. (Deut. 6:1, 13)

Q. What is the third.
A. To put our trust in God.

Q. How many things are forbidden?
A. Three things Contrary. (Jer. 17:5, Job 13:15)

Q. What is the first?
A. To love the world. (1 John 2:16)

Q. What is the second? (Isa. 51: 32)
A. To fear the world.

Q. What is the third? (Jer 10:2)
A. To put our trust in the world.

Q. How do we prove that these latter three are contrary to the first three?
A. Because the love of the world is contrary to the love of God. Therefore to fear of the world is contrary to the fear of God, and to put our trust in the world is contrary to our putting our trust in God.

Q. Ought we not to love one another, especially inferiors to love and fear their superiors?
A. Yes, but for God's sake. But God is to be loved and feared for his own sake. (Matt 5:43-44, Matt 22:39, 40)

The Life and Work of William Twisse

2009-06-18T12:49:00.000-04:00

By William Young

http://www.presbyterianreformed.org/articlesbooksShow.php?articlesID=24

William Twisse was born near Newbury, England. His father, a clothier, had him educated at Winchester, from which at the age of eighteen he moved to New College, Oxford. During the sixteen years spent as an undergraduate and later a fellow of the college, he acquired a profound knowledge of philosophy and theology. In 1604 he became Master of Arts and was ordained to the ministry. He was further awarded the Doctorate in Divinity in 1614, and served Sir Henry Seville in transcribing and correcting the great work of Thomas Bradwardine on the cause of God against the Pelagians. His secluded life at the University was cut short when King James I appointed him chaplain to his daughter Elizabeth, the princess Palatine, to accompany her to Germany. By his expositions of Scripture, Twisse was the instrument in the hands of Providence to prepare the princess for the severe afflictions she was to experience. After two months at the court of the elector Palatine, the Doctor was recalled to England, where he became Vicar of Newbury. James Reid, in his biographical account of the Westminster Divines, states, “And in a country village, and mean house, by very close study, he laid the foundation of those rare and elaborate works, which have been the admiration of all the reformed churches both at home and abroad.” He refused to give up his quiet scholarly mode of life for promotion, either to the position of Warden of Winchester College or Professor of Divinity in the University of Franeker in the Netherlands.

His faithfulness in refusing to obey the royal edict that the Sabbath-desecrating book of Sports be read in all churches, as well as his international fame for his massive Latin folios against Arminianism, was acknowledged by the Long Parliament which appointed him Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly in 1643. He had been forced out of Newbury by the Cavaliers, or king’s soldiers at the beginning of the English Civil War, and spent his last years in poverty, in view of Parliament’s inability to make regular payments of the stipends allotted to members of the Westminster Assembly. Robert Baillie, one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Assembly gives the following account: “The Proloqutor at the beginning and end has a short prayer. The man, as the world knows is very learned in the questions he has studied, and very good, beloved of all, and highlie esteemed; but merelie bookish, and not much, as it seems, acquaint with conceived prayers [and] among the unfittest of all the company for any action; so after the prayer he sitts mute. It was the canny convoyance of those who guide most matters for their own interest to plan such a man of purpose in the chaire.” Letters, ed. Laing, II, 108.

As Baillie intimates, Twisse was not at home in the chair at the Assembly. The heated debates no doubt disturbed him and his health broke down. He fainted in the Pulpit on March 1645 and was carried home, where he was frequently visited by members of the Assembly, as the Minutes indicate. He died in July, 1646 at the age of seventy-one, after having uttered the words: “Now, at length, I shall have leisure to follow my studies to all eternity.” Robert Harris was appointed by the Assembly to preach the funeral sermon, and the interment at Westminster Abbey was attended by the Assembly in a body. At the restoration of King Charles II, his bones were dug up by an order of the Council, and cast, with those of other worthies, into a common churchyard in a hole. Reid informs us that Twisse’s children were cheated out of their inheritance and of the generous provision made by Parliament, but that “God was so pleased to appear for them, in his kind providence, that they obtained a decent support.” (p. 58).

Twisse excelled in his scholarly writings on controversial questions, especially in defending the doctrines of grace against Arminians and Jesuits. While he counted others to be better versed in practical and pastoral Divinity than himself, he nevertheless regarded it his duty in 1641 to publish his On the Morality of the Fourth Commandment, as still in force to bind Christians, in answer to Dr. Prideaux’s lecture concerning the Sabbath, and to the preface by the translator. In addition to the pointed replies to the defense of the book of Sports, the work contains interesting digressions on the views of the continental Reformed theologians Revetus, Walaeus, and Thysius as well as the Lutheran Cheninitz. Twisse sees clearly that pious practice on the Lord’s Day must be grounded in a rational understanding of the doctrinal foundations provided in Scripture revelation, and that weakness on that fundamental level provides a handle for the enemies of Sabbath observance. Therefore he argues in defense of the institution of the Sabbath from the creation, the permanent validity of the Fourth Commandment, and the change of the day by divine appointment. He further points out “that it is nothing strange that the Lord’s Day should be called by the name of the Sabbath and makes the pertinent observation that “of Christian liberty from the yoke of Jewish ceremonies I have read, but of Christian liberty unto sports and pastimes under the gentle notion of recreations, and that on the Lord’s Day I never read till now.” (p. 245).

Another of Twisse’s shorter English writings is The Scripture’s Sufficiency to Determine All Matters of Faith Made Good Against the Papist, published in 1652, and reprinted with a preface by James Reid, 1795. In it he shows that a Christian may be infallibly certain of his faith and religion by the Holy Scriptures, by way of reply to what pretended to be a perplexing question, or a doubtful case of conscience. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, in his letter of approbation, writes: “There is a face of a style, by which we scholars know one another, no less than our persons by a visible countenance: whosoever hath read the witty and acute exercitations of this author upon the writings of Dr. Jackson, will easily find him in this tractate both for form and matter. This skulking and disguised challenger could not have met with a meeter combatant; a man so eminent in school-divinity, that the Jesuits have felt, and (for aught I see) shrunk under his strength, in their SCIENTIA MEDIA [middle knowledge, on which Twisse published a Latin Folio of 498 pages in 1639, W. Y.]. The man will find himself here over-answered and receive too much honour from such an antagonist...” (pp. 6, 8)

The most weighty of Twisse’s works are his laborious tomes on the Arminian controversy in which every question relating to the subject is thoroughly canvassed. In English is the posthumously published Folio, The Riches of God’s Love unto the Vessels of Mercy, consistent with his absolute Hatred or Reprobation of the Vessels of Wrath, Oxford, 1653. The text contains the writing of Samuel Hoard, the first elaborate attack on Calvinism in English, together with Twisse’s refutation point by point. The book was recommended by Dr. Owen, at that time Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. It is interesting that Hoard’s work also called forth replies by Davenant and Amyraut. Twisse, following Hoard’s order of treatment, first defends the Supralapsarian position through page 32, and then spends nine times as much space in replying to the objections against Infralapsarianism. Though Twisse enjoys the reputation of being the champion of Supralapsarianism, he emphatically declares the question as to the order of God’s decrees and the object of predestination to be apex logicus, a point of logic, and asks, “And were it not a mere madness to make a breach of unity or charity in the church of God merely upon a point of logic?” (p. 35).

Now Twisse was no enemy to logic in theological discussions. In fact his statement and defense of Supralapsarianism has been obscured if not ignored in later accounts of the question. It is therefore in order to hear his own precise formulation, which differs from that of others with whom he has been included as holding this high version of Calvinism. In treating of the teaching of Prov. 16:4 as to the manifestation of God’s glory as the end of his works, Twisse writes: “And from hence we conclude, that in case the end is such as has been specified, and all those actions following, congruous means tending to that end, therefore the decree of manifesting God’s glory, as above specified is first with God, and secondly, the decree of the means; which means although they are many materially, yet they come all under one formal notion of means tending to a certain end, which according to the several parts thereof bespeaks them all, and consequently they are all to be considered, as making up the object of one formal decree, called the decree of the means: and the intention of none of them is before another, but all intended at once, as means tending to the end which is first intended. In like manner if God shall be pleased to intend the manifestation of his glory in Man, or Angel, in the way of justice vindicative, the means necessarily required hereunto are Creation, Permission of sin, and Damnation unto punishment, and all three make up the object of one formal decree which is to be called the decree of the means. So that like as God doth not intend the creature’s creation, before he intends his damnation, in the same respect he cannot be said to intend his damnation before he intends his creation, or the permissions of his sin.” (p. 11). In this way, Twisse demolishes the Arminian objection that Supralapsarianism is guilty of the blasphemy that God has determined to create men in order to damn them. At the same time he hints gently that Infralapsarians have no reason to agree with Arminians on this point. Twisse’s way of presenting the matter may be read as a reconciliation of the supra- and the infra- positions. On the one hand, the unity of the eternal decree is safeguarded. All suggestion of a change of God’s intention in view of the fall is eliminated. On the other hand, it is admitted that creation and the fall are not means to salvation and damnation, though the decree of creation and of permission of the fall may be held as means to the end of the manifestation of the glory of pardoning mercy and vindicative justice. Twisse’s logic, to be sure, does not admit of the view some have found attractive in Supralapsarianism, i.e., that creation and the fall were in order to redemption. He could hardly join with John Kent in singing, “And all for the lifting of Jesus on high.”

Among the works in defense of Calvinism, most outstanding, is Twisse’s Vindiciae Gratiae, Potestatis, Et Providentiae Dei (Vindication of the Grace, Power, and Providence of God) published in Amsterdam, 1632. It is described as a scholastic reply to Arminius’ examination of Perkins’ short treatise on the manner and order of predestination. The title page also delightfully pictures Paul, Augustine, and Calvin, the champions of Free Grace, opposite Plato, Pelagius, and Servetus, the representatives of human wisdom. In addition to the texts of Perkins and Arminius, followed by Twisse’s detailed observations, there are several digressions, in which the author develops his own views systematically with prodigious erudition and rigorous reasoning, sometimes seasoned by refreshing wit. Bishop Robert Sanderson states that he read the volume “through to a syllable” (Works, Vol. 6, p. 353), although unhappily he was left unconvinced. William Cunningham remarks, “We think it somewhat doubtful whether any other man ever performed this feat.” (The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, p. 371 n.), and describes the book as “the great storehouse of materials on the Supralapsarian side...a folio volume of 800 pages of close printed Latin.”

The work is divided into three books and contains thirty-six digressions, in which the author draws from his rich store of knowledge, not only of Reformed theologians, but of Patristic, Medieval, Arminian, and Jesuit writers.

The first of the ten digressions under the head of Predestination argues that the differences among Calvinists do not imply breach of fellowship. He proceeds, however, to argue vigorously in support of his version of the Supralapsarian position. The object of predestination is the mass of mankind not yet created, although reprobation is not apart from the consideration of sin. Opposing view are refuted and Rom. 9 is explained as providing Scripture grounds. The theses that election is an act of mercy and reprobation of justice are subjected to critical examination.

In Book II, the first digression presents a proof that God can afflict a creature not deserving punishment, on the ground that it is better to be and to be in misery than not to be at all. An initial emotional reaction may be checked when it is considered that God visited upon his beloved and most holy Son the penalties of hell or the equivalent. Augustine’s view in the De Libero Arbitrio (On Free Will), b.3, c.6-8, is set forth, and also the common objection from the Savior’s words about Judas, Matt. 26:24. These are explained as expressing the judgment of erring men, by a common Scripture mode of speech, cf. Gen 1:16; 2 Chron. 28:25.

Many Reformed theologians, especially in defending the doctrines of the Atonement against the Socinians, have objected to Twisse’s claim that God, through his absolute power, can remit sins even without satisfaction. Such a view rests on the assumption that the exercise of justice, like that of mercy is optional with God. John Owen, in his masterly work on Divine Justice has replied to Twisse’s arguments and defended the position that the pardon of sin requires the satisfaction of divine justice, while he speaks of the man as “our learned antagonist,” “the very illustrious, and the accurate Twisse.”

Another Latin folio was published posthumously in Amsterdam, 1649 with a preface by Rivetus. It consists of an analysis of the conference privately conducted between Arminius and Junius and also an answer to the work of the Arminian Corvinus against Tilenus’ earlier position prior to his apostasy from Calvinism. Like the Vindiciae Gratiae, the second division of this work “On Predestination, Grace, and Free Will”, also contains digressions. The first of these treats of the punishment of original sin, and replies to Arminius’ reasons for denying that any infants are condemned on account of original sin. A second digression answers twenty exceptions of Arminius against Supralapsarianism holding the predestination of the uncreated mass. The third and fourth digressions contain curious historical information about the praedestinati, persons who were alleged to draw fatalistic conclusions from the Anti-Pelagian doctrine of Augustine. Among the questions discussed in replying to Corvinus, one may be singled out as being of special interest. In the Schools passions are ascribed to God, not quoad affectum, sed quoad effectum (not with respect to the affection, but to the effect). But the Arminians together with the followers of Vorstius have thought out a new theology, in which they ascribe to God an affection, by which he desires the salvation of all individuals. Twisse argues that God would then desire the creation of all, and that, in the absence of opposition, creation would necessarily follow. The Scriptures to which Corvinus appeals ascribe to God such desire in the same manner as eyes and ears, obviously not properly, but by an anthropopathism (p. 258f.)

The collected works of Joseph Mede, fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge contain fifteen letters by Twisse. In the first letter Mede is praised for the good work he has begun on the Book of Revelation, and the providence of God is suggested to be found in reviving the doctrine of the Reign of the Saints when Antichrist’s kingdom is nearing its end. (p. 758, 4th ed.) The letters contain a number of interesting remarks not only on obscure passages in Daniel and Revelation, but also on the settlements in New England, the frequency of celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and the holiness of times and places.

While the unusual views of this independent and original thinker are sometimes strongly asserted, it appears that as Prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly he did not seek for their inclusion in the Confession of Faith and Catechisms. Prof. Mitchell observes, “Yet with all his eminence he did not claim, nor, proud as his brethren were of him, did they consent to mould their Confession according to his peculiar views either as regards the order of the divine decrees, or the nature of justification, or as to the power of God to pardon sin without requiring any atonement for it.” (The Westminster Assembly, p. 120) Nevertheless, Twisse’s great contentions for the sovereignty of God’s free grace and the observance of the Sabbath according to the revealed will of the Lord of the Sabbath have found immemorial expression in the documents produced by the Assembly of Divines.

2009-06-18T12:30:00.000-04:00

This is what we have now. For the first time I can appreciate the Scriptural concept of you reap what you sow.

Our Vegetable Garden in April

2009-06-18T12:27:00.000-04:00

This is where it all started. The labor and the sweat of farming...

Kyrene

2009-06-18T01:36:00.000-04:00

A fun day at a park. Really enjoying Michigan's summer.

The Law of God

2009-06-18T01:22:00.000-04:00

Ps 119:9
This verse acts as a catechism (Q&A)
Q.: How can a young man keep his way pure?
A: By living according to your word.

The following question must be:
Q. What if a young man cannot live according to God's Word?
A. A young man can, but will not.

Q. What do you mean by will not?
A. v. 174: "I long for your salvation, O LORD, and your law is my delight." A young man who does not keep God's law not because he cannot, but because his will (desire) is not right.

Q. What is delight?
A. Delight is treasuring God's Word above all things. Yes, above silver and gold. 72 The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

Q. What if I cannot find such a kind of delight in my heart?
A. We by our fallen nature do not have such kind of desires to obey God's law. In fact, one of the functions of the Law is to show us that we do not love the Law. We must repent and confess our desires are wrong. And we must ask God to turn our hearts to His Laws. 36 Turn my heart toward your statutes.

Q. What if I do not think New Testament believers should bother with the Law?
A. If a believer continue to sin and keep on breaking the Law, He does not know God at all.
1 John 3:4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

Q. What should I do if I find myself keep on sinning? Such as uncontroallabe lust or greed or anger?
A. We need to pay more attention to God's Law and Our Desires. We need to meditate on God's Law day and night (Ps. 1)

Q. What if I find God's Law too harsh and difficult to keep?
A. 1 John 5:3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

Q. What if I really feel God's Law is burdensome? I can't help with my feelings.
A. Think about it in this way. God's Laws are designed for our happiness. We may lust and covet often, but we do not like other people do that to our spouse or our properties. Those who keep God's Laws will be a happy person. (Ps. 1:1)

Q. I thought we are to live by grace, and not by legalism.
A. Keeping the Law is not legalism. Keeping the Law to earn salvation is legalism. Jude 1:4 warns us: "They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord."
And furthermore, we are saved by grace, to do good works. (Eph. 2:8-10)

Q. My desires are often sinful, and I am not very good at keeping the Law.
A. Keep practicing it, you will get better.

Q. How should I practice it?
A. Think about the 10 Commandments, and its implications.

Q. Where can I find a good explanation/commentary for the 10 Commandments?
A. Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 100 and above and Heidelberg Catechism Q. 92 and above.
http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html

May God bless us as we love and obey His Words.

A Brief Analysis of Alvin Plantinga’s Apologetics

2009-06-18T01:10:00.000-04:00

Alvin Plantinga is among one of the most important Christian apologists in the twentieth century. The scope of the paper is to explore Plantinga’s contribution toward negative apologetics and to offer a brief analysis of his treatment of objections especially those aimed at his warrants of Christian belief and properly basic beliefs.

The atheists have often charged Christian belief of God is irrational because it lacks proper evidence for the existence of God. This position is known as evidentialism. Clifford sums up evidentialism: "To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”[1] Clark expounds Clifford’s point:

“If one violates Clifford's Maxim, then one sins against mankind; he has acted in defiance of his duties to man. Since one ought to avoid such transgressions, one must test all of one's beliefs at the tribunal of reason. One must never stifle doubts except as dictated by the evidence. If one does not have sufficient evidence for one's beliefs, then one should withhold commitment to that belief. If a man does not have time to ponder the evidence, to consider the arguments pro and con, then Clifford says, "he should have no time to believe"[2]

What Clifford proposed is to place human reason at the highest level of judgment, and having evidence is the only criterion for anyone to hold any belief rationally. In Clifford’s view, a person cannot hold any beliefs until he has found sufficient evidence to support his belief. The belief of God, in Clifford’s mind, is outside of the rational belief because there is simply not enough evidence.

Classical Foundationalism is a close relative to evidentialism. Wolterstorff defines Classical Foundationalism:

The classical foundationalist is the foundationalist who holds that just two sort of propositions can be candidates for propositions which it is rational to hold immediately. It will contain propositions which are self-evident to the person in question--propositions which he just sees to be true. 1+1=2 would be an example of something self-evident to most of us. Second, it will contain propositions about one's states of consciousness which one cannot mistakenly believe to be true (or mistakenly believe to be false). These have been called incorrigible propositions in the philosophical tradition. Propositions which are self-evident for the person in question and propositions which are incorrigible for him--such propositions may properly be accepted immediately. They may properly be found in the foundations of a person's belief-structure. They are candidates for being properly basic. So contends the classical foundationalist.[3]

In short, Classical Foundationalism believes one can have a properly basic belief only if the belief is 1) Self-evident or 2) Incorrigible. All other non-basic beliefs a person has must be inferred beliefs. The strength or validity of the inferred beliefs is depended on the validity of basic beliefs. This whole belief system a person has is called “the noetic structure.” Plantinga notes foundationalists’ claim: “1) in a rational noetic structure the believed-on-the-basis-of relation is asymmetric and irreflexive, 2) a rational noetic structure has a foundation, and 3) in a rational noetic structure non-basic belief is proportional in strength to support from the foundations.[4]

It is Plantinga’s goal to show that if one takes Cliffords’ evidentialist point of view, one can have very few beliefs to live on and to function. Plantinga will point out that in order for a person to live, he must accept additional beliefs as properly basic beliefs, such as memory, belief in other minds, belief in testimonies, belief in God and etc. Clark comments: “the overwhelming majority of our beliefs are in fact basic, not acquired or maintained on the basis of others of our beliefs. Given that most of our beliefs are perceptual beliefs, memory beliefs, or beliefs acquired because someone told us that such and such is the case, this should not be surprising. If one carefully attends to the structure of one’s believing, one will note that the number of beliefs that one reasons to—that is, the number of inferential, nonbasic beliefs—is slim indeed.”[5]

However, before we go on to Plantinga’s argument for including these additional beliefs (memory, other minds, etc) as properly basic, we must see how Plantinga debunks the absolute requirements for basic beliefs set by Classical Foundationalism.

The first objection Plantinga raised against foundationalism is that the criteria of what counts as foundational belief is false. In other words, foundationalism cannot meet its own requirement and therefore is self-defeating in its nature. Plantinga writes:

"But now we must take a closer look at this fundamental principle of classical foundationalism:

(32) A proposition p is properly basic for a person S if and only if p is either self-evident to S or incorrigible for S or evident to the sense for S." (The numbering system is Plantinga’s)

(32) contains two claims: first, a proposition is properly basic if it is self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses, and, second, a proposition is properly basic only if it meets this condition. The first seems true enough; suppose we concede it. But what is to be said for the second? Is there any reason to accept it? Why does the foundationalist accept it? Why does he think the theist ought to?” [6]

Plantinga further shows that the 2nd part of (32), which he named (33), that a proposition is properly basic only if A is self-evident or incorrigible or evident to the senses for me. He wrote:

"It therefore appears that the foundationalist does not know of any support for (33) from propositions that are (on his account) properly basic. So if he is to be rational in accepting (33), he must (on his own account) accept it as basic. But according to (33) itself, (33) is properly basic to [him] only if (33) is self-evident or incorrigible or evident to the senses for him. Clearly (33) meets none of these conditions. Hence it is not properly basic for [him]. But then [the foundationalist] is self-referentially inconsistent in accepting (33); he accepts (33) as basic, despite the fact that (33) does not meet the condition for proper basicality that (33) itself lays down."[7]

To conclude, the foundationalists' criterion for proper basicality is: For any proposition A and person S, A is properly basic for S if and only if A is incorrigible for S or self-evident to S. Plantinga adds:

“But how could one know a thing like that? What are its credentials? Clearly enough, it is not self-evident or just obviously true. But if it is not, how does one arrive at it? What sorts of arguments would be appropriate? Of course a foundationalist might find [the criterion] so appealing he simply takes it to be true, neither offering argument for it nor accepting it on the basis of other things he believes. If he does so, however, his noetic structure will be self-referentially incoherent. [The criterion] itself is neither self-evident nor incorrigible; hence if he accepts it as basic, the modern foundationalist violates in accepting it the condition of proper basicality he himself lays down.[8]

Plantinga therefore declared the defeat of foundationalism: "It is evident that classical foundationalism is bankrupt, and insofar as the evidentialist objection is rooted in classical foundationalism, it is poorly rooted indeed.”[9]

After showing foundationalism’s definition of properly basic belief is insufficient and incoherent, Plantinga argues that memory, and belief in other minds among other beliefs can all be counted as properly basic beliefs.

“I believe, for example, that I had lunch this noon. I do not believe this proposition on the basis of other propositions; I take it as basic; it is in the foundations of my noetic structure. Furthermore, I am entirely rational in so taking it, even though this proposition is neither self-evident nor evident to the senses nor incorrigible for me.”[10] He adds: “I seem to remember having breakfast this morning; that is, I have an inclination to believe the proposition that I had breakfast, along with a certain past-tinged experience that is familiar to all but hard to describe…The phenomenology of memory is a rich and unexplored realm; here I have no time to explore it. In this case as in the others, however, there is a justifying circumstance present, a condition that forms the ground of my justification for accepting the memory belief in question.”[11]

Furthermore, Plantinga developed the theory: “God and Other Minds”, in the book of this title he argues that we human beings take the existence of other minds as properly basic without relying on evidence.

“The problem of other minds can be put as follows: each of us believes that he is not alone in the universe--that there are other beings who think and reason, hold beliefs, have sensations and feelings. And while a person can observe another's behavior and circumstances, he cannot perceive another's mental states. ‘The thoughts and passions of the mind are invisible’ says Thomas Reid. ‘Intangible, odorless, and inaudible,’ we might add; and they cannot be tested either. Hence we cannot come to know that another is in pain in the way in which we can learn that he has red hair; unlike his hair, his pain cannot be perceived…we cannot observe the thoughts and feelings of another; so we cannot determine by observation that another is in pain.”[12]

This is quite an interesting comeback for the evidentialist. While we can examine and test the existence of other people’s brains, and chemical functions within the brain, we cannot examine other people’s minds (thoughts and feelings). However, even though we cannot examine other people’s minds, we take it as properly basic belief that other people indeed, do think and have feelings. In the book Plantinga replies the objections to God and Other Minds, but it is not the scope of this paper to explore them in details. It suffices to say that Plantinga has built a good case to include the belief of other minds as properly basic.

It is from the properly basicality of memory and belief in other minds Plantinga launched his proposition that belief in God is analogous to belief in other minds and belief in the past, and therefore it should be included in the properly basic beliefs. Plantinga: “my tentative conclusion: if my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter."[13]

Clark explains Plantinga’s position: “Plantinga's work at this point was an incipient criticism of evidentialism: just as belief in other minds does not require evidence in order to be rationally maintained, so too belief in God does not require evidence for its rational acceptability. Indeed, not only do we not have arguments for other minds, we do not need arguments for other minds; and the same goes for belief in God.[14]

Plantinga points out that his position is also found in Bavinck: “Bavinck points out that belief in God relevantly resembles belief in the existence of the self and of the external world—and we might add, belief in other minds and the past. In none of these areas do we typically have proof or arguments, or need proofs or arguments.”[15]

Clark continues:

“Our belief in other persons--that they exist, that they are persons and not automata, that they are intrinsically valuable, etc.--is never or rarely proportioned to the evidence. The logic of scientific and mathematical discovery is perverse when applied to personal relations. It would seem, then, that Plantinga is right in comparing belief in God to belief in other minds. This belief is affirmed not only on the basis of evidence or arguments. It is, rather, affirmed immediately in the appropriate circumstances. The theist is perfectly justified in rejecting the evidentialist's assumption that belief in God relevantly resembles belief in other scientific and mathematical hypotheses.[16]

Plantinga points out that his position is in agreement with Calvin and that the belief in God is a God given belief, which one should be able to accept it without evidence.

“Calvin's claim, then, is that God has created us in such a way that we have a strong tendency or inclination toward belief in him. This tendency has been in part overlaid or suppressed by sin. Were it not for the existence of sin in the world, human beings would believe in God to the same degree and with the same natural spontaneity that we believe in the existence of other persons, an external world, or the past. This is the natural condition; it is because of our presently unnatural sinful condition that many of us find belief in God difficult or absurd. The fact is, Calvin thinks, one who does not believe in God is in an epistemically substandard position--rather like a man who does not believe that his wife exists, or thinks she is like a cleverly constructed robot and has no thoughts, feelings, or consciousness.[17]

Plantinga further develops his point in his latest book Warranted Christian Belief, in which he delivered a fine tuned version of properly basic belief of God. We found his definition of warranted belief in general:

“a belief has warrant for [a person] only if

(1) it has been produced in [her] by cognitive faculties that are working properly (functioning as they ought to, subject to no cognitive dysfunction) in a cognitive environment that is appropriate for [her] kinds of cognitive faculties,

(2) the segment of the design plan governing the production on that belief is aimed at the production of true beliefs, and

(3) there is a high statistical probability that a belief produced under those conditions will be true. Under those conditions, furthermore, the degree of warrant is an increasing function of degree of belief.[18]

His concise outline of warranted Christian belief is found in the response to voodoo’s belief forming process objection.

“Suppose the extended A/C (Aquinas/Calvin) model is true (not just possible); then

(a) the central claims of the Christian faith are, in fact, true,

(b) there really are such cognitive processes as the sensus divinitatis and IIHS (the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit), and

He elaborates his proposition:

“Suppose a Reformed epistemologist believes the great things of the gospel on the basis of the sensus divinitatis and IIHS; suppose he notes, further, that his belief and that of many others is accepted in the basic way (where, of course, accepting p on the basis of testimony is one way to believe p in the basic way). Suppose he further comes to see or believe that God intends his children to know about him and to know the great things of the gospel, but also that it isn't possible for enough of us to know enough about him by way of inference from other beliefs; he therefore concludes (correctly) that God has instituted cognitive processes by virtue of which we human beings can form these true beliefs in the basic way. He concludes still further that the cognitive processes or mechanisms by way of which we form these beliefs are functioning properly when it delivers them, and are also functioning in an epistemically congenial environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth: that is, he concludes that Christian belief, taken in this basic way, has warrant. He thus concludes that these beliefs are properly basic with respect to warrant, drawing this conclusion from beliefs that themselves have warrant; but forming a belief in that way itself meets the conditions for warrant; hence, his view that theistic belief is properly basic with respect to warrant is itself warranted.”[20]

So far Plantinga has argued that the belief of God is similar to belief of other minds, as summarized in his Warranted Christian beliefs. We now need to examine some of the objections to Plantinga’s position and see how he responded to them.

The first objection is often known as the Great Pumpkin objection, and Plantinga also addressed a variant that he called “Son of the Great Pumpkin (SGP)” objection in his Warranted Christian Belief. We shall first look at “Son of the Great Pumpkin” objection and Plantinga’s response to it, because even atheists like Martin recognizes that the Great Pumpkin Objection does not hold up under scrutiny.[21] Martin raised a related objection which Plantinga called SGP.

“Although reformed epistemologists would not have to accept voodoo beliefs as rational, voodoo followers would be able to claim that insofar as they are basic in the voodoo community they are rational and, moreover, that reformed thought was irrational in this community. Indeed, Plantinga's proposal would generate many different communities that could legitimately claim that their basic beliefs are rational…Among the communities generated might be devil worshipers, flat earthers, and believers in fairies, just so long as belief in the devil, the flatness of the earth, and fairies was basic in the respective communities.”[22]

Martin’s objection is not without legitimacy. If Plantinga could claim that Christian’s belief in God is warranted because they have sensus divinitatis and IIHS as their base of belief, then any community could also claim that they have a sense of a Great Pumpkin and therefore claim their belief is warranted. Plantinga sums up the objection: “Would it follow that for any proposition p, if there were a community who endorsed p, these people would be warranted in believing that p is properly basic with respect to warrant for those in this community?”[23]

Plantinga replies:

“It doesn't follow, of course, that the voodoo epistemologist is also warranted in claiming that voodoo belief is properly basic with respect to warrant. For suppose voodoo belief is in fact false, and suppose further that it arose originally in some kind of mistake or confusion, or out of a fearful reaction to natural phenomena of one sort or another, or in the mind of some group hoping to gain or perpetuate personal political power. If so, then those original voodoo beliefs did not possess warrant. Suppose still further that these voodoo beliefs were passed on to subsequent generations by way of testimony and teaching. Now if a testifier testifies to some belief p that has no warrant for her, then p will also have no warrant for anyone believing it on just the basis of her testimony. If p has no warrant for the testifier, then it has none for the testifiee either--even if the latter's faculties are working perfectly properly. I am taught a lot of garbage by my parents…then, even if my own cognitive faculties are functioning properly in the conditions propitious for warrant, my beliefs acquired by way of this testimony lack warrant.”[24]

Here Plantinga disproves the voodoo belief to be warranted on three bases: 1) Voodoo beliefs is supposed to be false. 2) The belief could be formed out of naturalistic means, such as natural phenomena or for personal gains. 3) The belief is passed down to the next generation by true testimonies, but the belief itself is false.

Plantinga continues: “It could certainly happen, therefore, that the views of the Reformed epistemologist are legitimate in the sense of being warranted, and those of the voodoo epistemologist, who arrives at his views in structurally the same as the Reformed epistemologist, are not. That could be if, for example, the central claims of the Christian faith are true and voodoo belief is false. It is therefore not the case that if the claim that belief in God and in the great things of the gospel is properly basic with respect to warrant is itself warranted, then by the same token the claim that voodoo belief is properly basic with respect to warrant is itself warranted. Martin's argument, construed as we are currently construing it, therefore fails; its first premise is false.”[25] In other words, belief in voodoo is not warranted because voodoo is a false belief, it is a false premise.

Plantinga thinks Christian beliefs are warranted because the A/C model is supposed to be true, and voodoo belief is not warranted because the voodoo belief is supposed to be false. My beliefs are true because it is supposed to be true, and your belief is false because it is supposed to be false. This is the place where I find Plantinga’s explanation inadequate. He deploys circular reasoning in this point of his response, and Plantinga realizes his form of argument appeared to be circular in nature. He quickly addresses it.

"Still, isn't there something circular in my argument?...Isn't it true that my own proposal has warrant for me only if theistic belief is in fact true and, indeed, warranted? I propose the extended A/C model as a model for the way in which Christian and theistic belief can have warrant, but won't it be the case that I am warranted in proposing this model only if, in fact, the model or something like it is correct, and Christian belief does have warrant? Perhaps the idea is something like this: because central Christian beliefs are included in or entailed by the model, I am warranted in thinking the model true only if I am warranted in accepting Christian belief; those central Christian beliefs must already have warrant, for me, if my belief that the model is true is to have warrant. But then am I not involved in some kind of objectionable circle?”[26]

Plantinga denies the charge of circularity:

“I can't see how. It is indeed true that I will have to be warranted in accepting Christian belief if I am to be warranted in accepting the extended A/C model as true; that is because the former is included in the latter. It is not the case, however, that if Christian belief has warrant for me, then the model must also have warrant for me. That would be true if I argued for Christian belief by way of an argument one premise of which was the extended A/C model. More exactly, that would be true if such an argument were the only source of warrant (emphasis mine), for me, of Christian belief. For then any warrant enjoyed by my Christian belief would accrue to it by way of warrant transfer from the premises of that argument; but one premise of that argument would be a conjunction, one conjunct of which was itself part of Christian belief. There would therefore be a vicious circle in the receives-its-warrant-from relation.”[27]

He continues: “So if the source of the warrant of my Christian belief were this argument, then indeed the project would suffer from vicious circularity. But it isn't, and it doesn't. The source of warrant for Christian belief, according to the model, is not argument of any sort; in particular, its warrant does not arise from some argument about how Christian belief can have warrant. To show that there is circularity here, the objector would have to show that any warrant enjoyed by Christian belief must, somehow, have come from argument of some sort; and this, as we have seen can't be done. This objection, then, is no more successful than the others."[28] (Emphasis mine)

Plantinga’s argument could be summarized as:

1. "The belief of God is warranted" is not based on an argument.

2. Anyone who would accuse him of circularity must first show that warranted Christian belief is based on an argument.

3. Since no one can show by a form of logical argument that Christian belief must be based on an argument.

4. Therefore, warranted Christian belief is not based on argument.

5. Therefore, warranted Christian belief cannot suffer from circularity.

I think there is an element of special pleading at this point of response. He proposed that Christian belief is warranted, then instead of giving an argument for the proposition, he argued that his proposition is not based on an argument so he can be exempted from the accusation of vicious circularity. Plantinga could have just said, my belief in God is true because I know it is true; I just know it, and I don't need an argument.

The second objection raised is that Plantinga does not give adequate criterion of proper basic belief. Most atheists would grant that memory and belief in other minds could be counted as properly basic, but are there better criterions than that of classical foundationalism that Plantinga can give in order to prevent any beliefs to become properly basic beliefs? Plantinga responds:

“And hence the proper way to arrive at such a criterion is, broadly speaking, inductive. We must assemble examples of beliefs and conditions such that the former are obviously properly basic in the latter, and examples of beliefs and conditions such that the former are obviously not properly basic in the latter. We must then frame hypotheses as to the necessary and sufficient conditions of properly basicality and test these hypotheses by reference to those examples.”[29]

Plantinga recognizes that such criterion may not be found at all.

"Further, it may be that we cannot find any revealing criterion; we may have to be content with some necessary conditions and some sufficient conditions… it may be that the best we can do here is to give some sufficient conditions of prima facie justification. When I am being appeared to in a certain way, I am prima facie justified in believing that I perceive a tree. But this justification is defeasible; if I am told by an authority that there are a lot of fake trees around, visually indistinguishable at medium range from real trees, then I am no longer justified in taking it as basic that I see a tree. So the circumstance of being appeared to in a certain way confers prima facie, not ultima facie, justification upon my belief that I see a tree."[30] Here Plantinga admits that belief in God is not properly basic in the ultima facie way, but is only prima facie (First-Face, on its first appearance[31].) Prima facie is used in legal court to mean “evidence that is sufficient to raise a presumption of fact or to establish the fact in question unless rebutted.”[32] Belief in God is proper because it seems right to the believers, and there was no authority to tell them that their belief is false. In other words, belief in God is just like belief in trees, both are assumed correct until proven false. And so far Plantinga has not seen any authoritative falsification of belief in God.

Plantinga recognizes that such criterions are not convincing and not everyone would agree on these criterions of properly basic belief:

"Accordingly, criteria for proper basicality must be reached from below rather than above; they should not be presented ex cathedra but argued to and tested by a relevant set of examples. But there is no reason to assume, in advance, that everyone will agree on the examples. The Christian will of course suppose that belief in God is entirely proper and rational; if he does not accept this belief on the basis of other propositions, he will conclude that it is basic for him and quite properly so. Followers of Bertrand Russell and Madelyn Murray O'Hare may disagree; but how is that relevant? Must my criteria, or those of the Christian community, conform to their examples? Surely not. The Christian community is responsible to its set of examples, not to theirs. And hence criteria for proper basicality arrived at in this particularistic way may not be polemically useful.[33]

It is important to remember that Plantinga is doing negative apologetics in his books and we must not criticize Plantinga for failing to build a positive model of properly basic beliefs. His criterion for properly basic belief may not be polemically useful, but we must give him credit for shifting the burden proof to the atheists. It is not Christian apologetics’ task to prove every tree on the street is real, or to prove God exists, but it is the atheists’ job to prove which of the trees are fake and that God does not exist.

Those who are seeking positive apologetics from Plantinga are destined to feel frustrated with him. His model of warranted belief and properly basic belief is apparently circular and lack of proper criterions when viewed with a positive apologists view. Anyone who tries to build her faith on Plantinga’s books will find Plantinga does not provide any building materials. However, anyone who tries to attack Christian beliefs as irrational will find themselves irrational and their efforts self-defeating. As Mascord commented: “Outside of philosophical circles, scholars from within Plantinga's Reformed tradition, from Abraham Kuyper onwards, had been resisting the imperialistic encroachments of foundationalist evidentialism. Plantinga's insights are therefore not entirely new. What is new, or at least noteworthy, is the clarity and strength of Plantinga's counter-attack. Plantinga brings to his work a sharp analytical mind. No-one, to my knowledge, has done as good a job analyzing and critiquing the evidentialism position as has Plantinga.”[34]

[1]William Clifford, The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999), 346.

[2] Kelly James Clark, Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism and a Defense of Reason and Belief in God. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), 102. quotes Clifford, 347.

[3] Alvin Plantinga, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 3

[4] Ibid., 55.

[5] Clark, 131-132.

[6] Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality, 59

[7] Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality, 60-61.

[8] Ibid, 76

[9] Ibid, 62.

[10] Ibid, 60.

[11] Ibid, 79.

[12] Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 188.

[13] Plantinga, God and Other Minds, 271.

[14] Clark, 119.

[15] Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality, 65.

[16] Clark., 121.

[17] Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality, 66.

[18] Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function, (Oxford University Press, 1993), 66.

[19] Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 347.

[20] Ibid., 347

[21] Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 272.

[22] Martin, 272, quoted in Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, p.345.

[23] Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 347

[24] Ibid., 348.

[25] Ibid., 349.

[26] Ibid., 352.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality, 76

[30] Ibid., 77

[31] "prima facie - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary." Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prima+facie.

[32] "Legal Definition of Prima-Facie, Evidence, Case." The 'Lectric Law Library's Entrance, Welcome & Tour - legal resources and definitions. http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/p078.htm.

[33] Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Faith and Rationality, 77.

[34] Keith Mascord, Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics (Paternoster Theological Monographs). (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 68.

Infralapsarianism or Supralapsarianism?

2009-06-18T01:06:00.000-04:00

Francis Turretin and His Case for Infralapsarianism

Francis Turretin was born at Geneva in 1623, son of an Italian immigrant Turrettini, he received his theological education from Jean Diodati, Theodore Tronchin, and the elder F. Spanneim, the first two Geneva's official representatives at the Synod of Dort. He became the pastor of the Italian church in Geneva. He declined the chair of philosophy, and in 1653 became professor of theology and one of the city pastors, holding both titles until his death in 1687. Turretin vigorously supported the scholastic orthodoxy, against all efforts for the modification of Canons of Dort. He also played an important role in the formulation of Helvetic Consensus Formula of 1675.[1] Francis Turretin is virtually synonymous with the term Protestant scholasticism. Muller comments: “Turretin's work, the Institutio theologiae elencticae (1679-1685), stands at the apex of the development of scholastic theology in the post-Reformation era, prior to the decline of Protestant system under the impact of rationalism, pietism, and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.[2]

Turretin is known for his defense of Infralapsarianism against Supralapsarianism. Almost eighty years after the Synod of Dort, Francis Turretin wrote his treatise on the topic of lapsarianism in Institutes of Elenctic Theology under the title “The Object of Predestination: Whether the object of predestination was man creatable, or capable of falling; or whether as created and fallen. The former we deny; the latter we affirm.”[3] The Canons of Dort (1618) had taken the Infralapsarian view to be the standard position of the Reformed churches although the synod did not rule against supralapsarianism as a heresy. One of the main reasons why the Synod held up Infralapsarian view was due to the majority number of delegates were Infralapsarianists. Fesko noted, “The infralapsarians simply possessed more influence by virtue of superior numbers.”[4] Fesko also noted another reason would be that some prominent Supralapsarianists such as Gisbert Voetius, Johannes Bogerman, and Johannes Maccovius did not voice their view in the discussion over infra- and supra- lapsarianism.

The debate of Supra and Infra-lapsarianism focused on the issue of God’s decree of predestination (election and reprobation), namely, whether God’s decree of predestination preceded the decree of creation or fall (supra view) or his decree of predestination follows the decree of creation and fall. (Infra view). Muller explains: “Both views arise out of consideration of an eternal, logical ‘order of the things of the decree,’ or ordo rerum decretarum, in the mind of God.”[5] Put in the simplest forms, the logical order of God’s decree could be summarized as:

Infralapsarianism: Creation, Fall, Predestination.

Supralapsarianism: Predestination, Creation, Fall.

Muller adds: “The infralapsarian view…places the divine will to create human beings with free will and the decree to permit the fall prior to the election of some to salvation.”[6] On the other hand, Supralapsarianists teach that “the election and reprobation of individuals are logically prior to the divine decree of creation and the divine ordination to permit the fall.”[7] Moreover, it is important to note that the order of God’s decree is a logical order and not a chronological order. The entire order of creation, fall, predestination happened in God’s mind before the actual creation occurred in time. Muller explains. “ordo rerum decretarum refers to the arrangement (oro) of the entire causality of salvation under the divine decretum. [The term] arose out of the concern of the Reformed to construct an order of divine saving causality resting upon the logical priorities in the eternal decree as they arise out of the nature and purpose of God.”[8]

One of the points of contention between Supralapsarians and Infralapsarians is on the object of predestination, or to be exact, the status of the object of predestination. The Supralapsarianist claims that in the divine mind, the human object of predestination is “creabilis et labilis, creatable and fallible, i.e. as a possibility for creation and as capable of falling.”[9] On the other hand, the Infralapsarians view the object of predestination as “creatus et lapsus, created and fallen”, in the divine mind.[10]

The other point of contention is the end of man’s existence, namely, whether the end of man’s existence is for the displaying of God’s glory (as the Supralapsarians claimed) or the end was man’s salvation (as the Infralapsarians claimed). With different ends in view, the means to the ends also differ from one another. In Supralapsarian view, the means to the end are creation and fall, while in Infralapsarian view, the means to the end is predestination. Muller explains: “In [Supralapsarian] view, the prior purpose of God is the manifestation of his glory in the mercy of election and the justice of reprobation, while the creation itself and the decree to permit the fall are secondary purposes, or means to the end, of election and reprobation… In [Infralapsarian] view, the prior purpose of God is the creation of human beings for fellowship with himself, and the decree to elect some to salvation appears as a means to the end of that fellowship.”[11] The scope of this paper is to briefly examine the arguments Turretin presented in the chapter “The Object of Predestination” of his Institutes of Elenctic Theology and compare with arguments for Supralapsarianism, especially by William Twisse (being the champion of Supralapsarianism[12]).

Turretin in his chapter on the Object of Predestination offers five arguments for Infralapsarianism: 1) A non-entity cannot be the object of predestination. 2) Man creatable is only one of the many possible creations; therefore they are not eligible for predestination. 3) Man creatable is not eligible for predestination or reprobation because they have not yet fallen. 4) Creation and fall are not means of predestination. (means and condition distinguished.) 5) Supralapsarianism would have had God reprobated men before they were reprobatable through sin.[13]

His first argument is: “A non-entity cannot be the object of predestination.”[14] He points out that predestination (salvation and destruction) are the ends of the existing subject, and it is illogical for the Supralapsarians to claim that there would be ends to the “creatable yet non-existent” object. He explains:

“that the salvation and destruction which are intended by predestination are the ends which are introduced into the subject (which moreover is supposed already to exist)...so the decree concerning the salvation or damnation of man ought to regard man as fallen (because redemption or destruction was destined for him). Moreover, every subject is conceived to be before its adjuncts.”[15]

This is a logical argument from Turretin, that God could not decree to predestine an object that has not been decreed to exist, and it is therefore illogical for Supralapsarians to claim that the object of predestination was “man creatable.” Beardslee comments Turretin’s argument: “Turretin argues largely within the framework of scholastic speculation, declaring that nothing can be decreed concerning a non ens.”[16]

Turretin emphasized that the end of man’s existence is predestination unto salvation. He assumes that the end of man’s existence is salvation without offering any arguments for it. In fact, Turretin’s argument of non ens would be valid if the end of man’s existence was indeed salvation (fellowship with God). It is logical that if an end is to exist for an entity, then that entity must first exist.

However, Supralapsarianists like Twisse does not think that salvation is the end of man’s existence, but rather the Glory of God. Twisse acknowledged that the end of man’s existence does indeed determine the order of God’s decree. He writes: “The ordering of God's decrees of Creation, Permission of the fall of Adam, giving or denying Grace, salvation or damnation…the resolution whereof, depends upon the right definition of these decrees, in reference to the end, and the means tending to that end.[17] A different end will naturally alter the order of decrees and the means to the end.

Twisse contends that the Glory of God is the ultimate end of man’s existence, and thus predestination, creation, and fall are all means to that ultimate end.

“But if salvation and damnation be no ends intended by God, but means rather, as well as creation, and permission of all to sin in Adam, together with the raising of some therehence, and leaving some therein, tending to some farther end, namely, the manifestation of God's glory in a certain kind, as the Scripture together with manifest reason doth justify. For God being the supreme efficient, must necessarily be the last end.”[18]

For Twisse, God is the Supreme Being who must necessarily be the final end of all. On the other hand, Turretin argued (under his fourth argument) that creation and fall is not the means for predestination. Twisse would agree with him on this, except he would argue that predestination itself is not an end but also a mean to an end. Twisses explains:

“So that if God be please to manifest his glorious beneficence on man in the highest degree, and that in the way of mercy mixed with justice; this end requires and bespeaks both creation (no glory at all being manifestable without this) and permission of sin (otherwise it could not be manifested in the way of mercy) and satisfaction for sin (otherwise this mercy could not be mixed with justice exactly) and faith and repentance (otherwise the good which God intends could not be bestowed by way of reward) and last of all salvation, under which we comprehend, the highest and most blessed condition that the nature of man, continuing a mere man, is capable of.”[19]

Thus he categorized all these decrees as means to the end, the glory of God. Furthermore, Twisse categorize all these decrees under one mean, and one decree, which he named “one formal decree” or “the decree of the means.”

“Herehence we conclude, that in case the end is such as hath been specified, and all these actions following, congruous means tending to that end, therefore the decree of manifesting God's glory, as above specified, is first with God, and secondly the decree of the means; which means although they are many materially, yet they come all under one formal notion of means tending to a certain end, which according to the several parts thereof bespeaks them all, and consequently they are all to be considered, as making up the object of one formal decree, called the decree of the means: and the intention of none of them is before another, but all intended at once, as means tending to that end which is first intended.”[20]

The last sentence is the most fascinating part. He states that these orderings of decrees are not be a matter of contention, because they are all decreed at once and they all belong to one decree, namely, the decree of the means. Why should one argue endlessly on the ordering of these decrees when they all belong to one formal decree? He expounds:

“The means…required are, creation, permission of sin, and damnation unto punishment, and all three makes up the object of one formal decree, which is to be called the decree of the means. So that likes as God doth not intend the creatures creation, before he intends his damnation, in the same respect he cannot be said to intend his damnation, before he intends his creation, or the permission of his sin.”[21]

All these decrees are inter-dependent of each other. God cannot decree creation without predestination in mind, and God cannot decree predestination without creation in mind. Therefore, Turretin’s first argument of non-entity is not so much invalid, but it is irrelevant. For a Supralapsarianist like Twisse, the order of decrees is an irrelevant issue, but God’s glory being the end is the relevant issue.

Turretin’s second argument is: man creatable is one of the many possible creations; therefore they are not eligible for predestination. He explains: “there were innumerable possible men who never were to be created, and, consequently, neither to be saved, nor damned.”[22] He argued that if the decree of predestination precedes the decree of creation, then within that decree of predestination many creatable men would be predestined but yet never to be created. “It is absurdity”[23], declared Turretin. “For besides the absurdity of saying they were creatable (if they could not be created), no reason can be brought why as many as were creatable did not fall under the object of predestination.”[24]

Again Turretin offered quite a logical argument, if the order of decrees were linear in the order of predestination-creation-fall, then it would indeed be absurd for God to predestinate the creatable-yet-never-would-be-created men. However, if Twisse was correct in presenting Supralapsarianism, (that there is only one formal decree of means) then it would be perfectly logical for Supralapsarians to assert that man creatable and man-created-and-fallen are one and the same. They are not two different groups of men under two different decrees, but same group of people under the same decree. Twisse’s words are still relevant here: “So that likes as God doth not intend the creatures creation, before he intends his damnation, in the same respect he cannot be said to intend his damnation, before he intends his creation, or the permission of his sin.”[25] It is futile for Turretin to separate creatable and created man here and build an argument on it. Once again Turretin’s argument fell short.

Turretin’s third argument is: man-creatable is not eligible for predestination or reprobation because they have not yet fallen. He writes: “The object of the divine predestination ought to be either one eligible through mercy or reprobatable through justice. This cannot be said of man creatable and liable to fall, but only man as created and fallen.”[26] Here Turretin introduces the concept of mercy and justice into the discussion. Turretin argues that if Supralapsarians were right, then God would have to predestine man who are not yet fallen to destruction and man who are not yet fallen to salvation. Men who are not yet fallen cannot be justly destroyed and men who are not yet fallen do not need salvation through mercy. He develops the issue of justice and mercy fuller in the fifth argument, so we will look at this issue of justice and mercy in detail along with the fifth argument. It suffices to say that Turretin made a sound argument here that men who are not yet fallen are not eligible for just punishment or merciful salvation. A man who is not sick does not need a physician.

In Turretin’s fourth argument he readdressed the issue of means and the ends. He argued that Creation and fall are not the means of predestination, but they are the conditions under which predestination operates. He gives four reasons why creation and fall are not the means to the end of predestination.

a. The Scripture never speaks of them as such.

b. Means has connection with the end, but neither creation nor fall are necessary connected with election or reprobation.

c. The means ought to have same order and dispensation. Creation and fall belongs to natural order of dispensation and providence, but election and damnation belongs to the supernatural order of predestination.

d. If they were means, it is absurd for God to decree saving and destroying them before he had decreed anything about his futurition and fall.[27]

It is interesting for Turretin in (c.) to place creation and fall under the natural order (providence) and predestination under supernatural order. Whether these are the correct categories to place them under is beyond the scope of this paper, but there is nothing illogical to have the natural order to be the means of the supernatural end. God could have used anything to be the means of his supernatural ends. Jesus became flesh in the natural order to be the means of the supernatural end, that is, our salvation. However, since Turretin did not elaborate on this subject, but moved on quickly to distinguish means from conditions, so we will also move on to examine his differentiation between means and conditions.

Turretin stressed that creation and fall are not means to the end of predestination, but they are only the conditions that are necessary for men to receive salvation and punishment. He writes:

“For although sin and creation are required antecedently to the illustration of mercy and justice, it does not follow that they were means, but only the requisite conditions…thus existence and ductility are supposed in clay as the condition for making vessels for honor or for dishonor, but it is not the mean. Disease in the sick is the previous condition without which he is not cured, but it is not the mean by which he is cured.”[28]

Here Turretin made a strong argument against the Supralapsarianists. According to Twisse, creation, fall (sin), and predestination are all means to the ultimate end—God’s glory. Turretin argues here that creation and fall are not means to anything, but they are the necessary conditions for predestination to operate. Like a disease is the condition on which healing can be done, so creation and fall are just the condition on which salvation and reprobation can be done. However, a question which Turretin does not anticipate must be raised here: is predestination contingent upon the fall and therefore is necessitated by the fall? If creation is the necessary condition for the fall, and the fall the necessary condition for predestination, then predestination is indeed a contingent event that is necessitated by the fall. If the fall had not happen, then predestination would not have happened either. If the salvation of man is indeed the end according to Turretin, is that end dependent on a contingency?

Twisse addressed this question from a slightly different angle. His question for Infralapsarianists was: is sin the cause of predestination? Or more to be precise: is sin the cause of reprobation? Although causes and conditions are not exactly identical terms, but Turretin does argue that God cannot decree salvation unless man falls first. Man’s action of sin must be logically prior to God’s action of election and reprobation. God cannot reprobate a sinner unless the sinner commits sins first. Man’s action (or condition) of sin becomes the efficient cause of God’s reprobation; God’s decree is held back by the free will of man and until man acts first God cannot act at all. Twisse thinks it is mad for any man to claim that the fall is the cause of reprobation. “Now as touching the act of predestination never any man (saith Aquinas) was so mad as to say that the merits of man are the cause of predestination.”[29] Twisse builds an argument for his claim.

1. That the moving cause of reprobation, is the alone will of God, and not the sin of man original or actual.

2. This is true in proportion to election, that lie as no good work of man is the moving cause of election, but only the will of God; so no sin or evil work of man is the cause of reprobation, but only the will of God.[30]

Twisse first states that man’s sin cannot be the moving cause of God’s act of predestination. God did not predestinate man because man had sinned; God predestined man according to His will and His pleasure. (Eph. 1:5) This is the fundamental concern of the whole debate, because God’s predestination of the elect is never based on the actions of the elect. No Infralapsarianists would ever agree that God’s election of man is based on the foreseen faith, and Twisse argues here that it is equally absurd to claim that God reprobates man on the condition of foreseen unbelief (sin). For this is the position of the semi-Palegians which Turretin vehemently speak against.[31] In other words, Twisse is essentially saying that God with His absolute will did not need man-fallen to be the condition of predestination. God decreed creation, fall, and predestination, and actualized them in time for His own Glory. There were no conditions or moving causes for God to create, to decree the fall, and to decree election/reprobation.

Twisse cites Romans 9 to further supplement his argument: “And proveth thus, before Esau and Jacob were born, or had done good or evil, it was said, the elder shall serve the younger; therefore election is not of works (that is of good works) but of him that calleth.”

Here on this point Turretin asserts that the twin brothers Esau and Jacob are already in the fallen condition: “The mass of which Paul speaks (Rom. 9:21) is the …corrupt mass.” However, whether Paul speaks of a corrupt mass or not is irrelevant here, because the condition of the mass is not the moving cause of God’s election and reprobation. Esau was reprobated (or passed-on as Turretin would say) not because he was corrupt (for Jacob was equally corrupt), and Jacob was chosen not because he was in anyway better than Esau. God’s election of Jacob and reprobation of Esau is entirely based on His eternal will. Twisse is simply arguing that God does not need man to be a corrupt mass to reprobate them and elect them. Twisse concludes: “therefore reprobation stands not of works, (that is of evil works) but of the mere pleasure of God… as the Apostle afterwards professeth, He hath mercy on whom he will.[32]

The fifth argument Turretin used was: Supralapsarianism would have had God reprobated men before they were reprobatable through sin. He writes:

“This opinion is easily misrepresented (eudiabletos), as if God reprobated men before they were reprobatable through sin, and destined the innocent to punishment before any criminality was foreseen in them. It would mean not that he willed to damn them because they were sinners, but that he permitted them to become sinners in order that they might be punished. And it would imply he determined to create that he might destroy them.”[33]

This argument is essentially the extension of the fourth argument of condition, (although it also involves the third argument’s mercy and justice issue.) Turretin argues that according to the Supralapsarianists, God would have reprobated man before they were in the reprobatable condition and in doing so God is essentially creating man so that he could destroy them. However, Turretin seemed to overlook the fact the same thing can spoken of the Infralapsarianism here. God’s decree of fall is a decree to have man to become creatus et lapsus, created and fallen. The fall of man is in the eternal decree of God; no matter whether you were a Supralapsarianist or an Infralapsarianist, you would have to deal with the fact that God willed (or decreed) man to fall. Infralapsarianists would still have to answer the question: why would God decree man to fall and then bypass them by not electing them to salvation? Turretin the would argue that it is just for God to pass over the reprobate. But the question still remain, is it just for God to decree the fall of man in the first place? If God did not decree the fall then He would not have to “justly” pass over the reprobates. The issue Turretin raised here in his fifth argument certainly is not the issue only the Supralapsarianists had to deal with. The semi-Palegians would definitely have an answer for it, but both the Infralapsarianists and Supralapsarianists would condemn such an answer.

Twisse’s point on the cause of God’s predestination is still relevant here. God did not reprobate some people according to the foreseen crimes, and men do not have to be in the reprobatable condition for God to reprobate them. God’s act of election and reprobation is not caused by man’s actions, and God’s will alone is the moving cause for his act of predestination. Twisse adds more reasons for his point and I will only quote two which are relevant here.

1. Predestination and reprobation are eternal, but good works and evil works of the creature are temporal; but impossible it is, that a thing temporal, can be the cause of that which is eternal. 2. The act of predestination and reprobation is the act of God's will, and the act of God's will, like as the act of his knowledge, is the very essence of God even God himself; and therefore to introduce a cause of God's will, is to bring in a cause of God himself.[34]

The two reasons can be summarized as: 1. Temporal things cannot be the cause of eternal act. 2. God’s will is the essence of God, and since God cannot be caused then His will cannot be caused either. Turretin had created a scenario in which God’s eternal will and justice are questioned and his Infralapsarianism cannot solve the problem either.

In conclusion, the debate between Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism should be re-focused on the end of man’s existence. Is man created to be elected or is man created to glorify God and enjoy him forever? The focus of the debate should shift away from the order of decrees to the topic of means and ends. The endless debates on the order of decrees will only bring exhaustion, but finding out the chief end of man and the means to the end is edifying. The Westminster Larger Catechism addresses this issue as the first and foremost issue.

Infralapsarianism and Supralapsarianism have co-existed within the Reformed tradition for many centuries. Although the Synod of Dort took a deceive Infralapsarian view, it did not rule out Supralapsarianism as a heresy. Very able men like Turretin and Twisse have argued for their cases very well. Although Turretin’s argument seemed inadequate at times, Infralapsarianism is in no wise an error. The church catholic will continue to have debates on this important subject, but the close examination of both Turretin and Twisse indeed helped us to understand the core issues here. I hope that investigations in this paper offers a context on which both the Infralapsarianists and Supralapsarianists can humbly continue the discussion that brings unity and exaltation of God’s glory.

[1] See John Walter Beardslee, Theological Development At Geneva Under Francis Turretin, (Ph.D.

diss., Yale University, 1956), 1-4.

[2] Richard A. Muller, “Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the Object and Principles of Theology” in Church History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History pp. 193.

[3] Francis Turretin, Trans. George Musgrave Giger. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Volume 1. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1992, IV, ix.

[4] J. V. Fesko, Diversity within the reformed tradition : supra- and infralapsarianism in Calvin, Dort, and Westminster, (Ph.D diss., University of Aberdeen, 1999), 243.

[5] Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek theological terms : Drawn principally from Protestant scholastic theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1985, 292.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 215

[9] Ibid., 292.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] See William Young, “The Life and Work of William Twisse” PRC Magazine, Spring, 1993.

[13] Turretin, 343-44.

[14] Ibid., 343.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Beardslee, 404.

[17] William Twisse, “The riches of God’s love unto the vessells of mercy, consistent with his absolute hatred or reprobation of the vessells of wrath..." Early English Books Online - EEBO. http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search/full_rec?SOURCE=pgimages.cfg&ACTIO, pp. 10.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid., 11.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Turretin, 343.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Twisse, 11.

[26] Turretin, 343.

[27] Ibid. 344

[28] Ibid.

[29] Twisse, 36.

[30] Ibid., 35

[31] Turretin, 342.

[32] Twisse, 36

[33] Turretin, 344.

[34] Twisse, 36.

A Case For Amillennialism

2009-06-18T00:52:00.000-04:00

A Case For Amillennialism

Rev. 20

1) Binding of Satan is a spiritual binding. It is not likely that there is a literal bottomless pit and seal over it.

a) Matt 12:29 “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.” Christ casts out the demon from the blind and dumb man, he is binding Satan and rendering him incapable of continuing his work.

b) Luke 10:18 He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” This happened when the disciples were sent out to preach the gospel and they said "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name." (17)

c) John 12:31 “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." 33He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.” He is talking about his own death. Now, he says, the hour has come, not only will he be lifted up on the cross, not only will he die, but at this selfsame time the prince of this world will be cast out. It is our Lord who says this.

d) Heb. 2:14b “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.” Destroy power of death does not mean literally to end and cause to disintegrate but to render null and void, to render ineffective.

e) 1 John 3:8 The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.

f) Rev. 12: 9 “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” The one who deceives the whole world was cast down and can deceive the nations no more. 10 “And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.” This verse pinpoints the defeat of Satan is at the crucifixion of Christ. 11 “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” We overcome the devil by the blood of Christ, and the blood of Christ was not shed at the 2^nd Coming, but at the 1^st Coming. Christ defeats Satan for us, the accuser can accuse no more, and the victory is won not by the glory of the 2^nd coming, but by the blood of the Lamb.

g) Cleary, the binding of Satan began at the 1^st coming of the Lord. We are told that he should deceive the nations no more. The nations always stands for the Gentiles in the contradistinction to the Jews. The gentiles are the ‘nations’ and the Jews are ‘the nation.’

h) Col 2:15 “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” There is no question at all that by His death upon the cross our Lord defeated Satan and, in a special manner, put him to an open shame, exactly as our Lord has prophesied in John 12:31.

i) “Matt. 28:18-20 18And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” All power is given unto Christ, therefore we can disciple all nations. This means that before the crucifixion the nations were in absolute darkness, and that was their condition right through the OT. But as the result of our Lord’s 1^st coming, and his death, the message of the kingdom was to be preached to all the nations, and the devil, who was defeated by the cross, could no longer deceive them. He had deceived them absolutely until then, but from the Day of Pentecost something absolutely new began, the darkness of the nations was enlightened. The history of Christian period, the Christian era, is a verification of the statement that Satan has been bound, cast out, and cannot deceive the nations any lnger in the way that he had been doing in the past. The history of the spread of the gospel is a proof of this statement in Rev. 20:3

2) The saints clearly reign with Christ “in heaven”, not on this old earth.

a) 20:4 “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” The verse clearly indicates that those who reigns are ‘souls’, not ‘bodies’ It is speaking of the spiritual reign they have with Christ, in their souls, not yet received their glorified bodies. Glorified bodies are given at the 2^nd coming of Christ.

b) These people who reign with Christ are the saints who died in Christ in all history before the 2^nd coming and the receiving of their glorified bodies.

3) The first resurrection is the regeneration (born-again) that we received when we were saved.

a) 20: 5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. 6Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.

i) The first death is natural death in physical sense, and the second death is to be cast into the lake of fire.

ii) Those who have a part in the first resurrection will not be harmed by second death, that is, they will not be cast into the lake of fire.

iii) This is indeed a description of all Christians who have been born again, regenerated in Christ. Those who are born-again will not be cast into the lake of fire, this is the clearest teaching of the Bible.

iv) These ‘souls’ who are reigning with Him are not in the body, but they are alive. They are the regenerate who have passed through death and have gone to be with the Lord.

b) John 11:25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 26And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

i) Those who believe in Christ shall never die. Christians do die physically, therefore Christ is not talking about physical death, but spiritual death.

ii) Those who believe in Christ shall not die spiritually. This spiritual death leads to the second death.

c) Rom. 6: 4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 8Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: 10For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. 11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

i) It is the clear teaching of Rom. 6 that we have died, and buried with Christ, and also risen with Him. Therefore we need reckon ourselves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ.

ii) The fact of our first resurrection with Christ is indicated by the symbol of baptism.

d) Eph. 2:4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

i) We have been made alive with Christ, even when we were dead in sins.

ii) God ‘raised us up’ and ‘seated’ us with Christ in heavenly realmsright now.

iii) So that in the coming ages He may show us the incomparable riches of his grace.

iv) As we read in Rev. 20, the souls of them were sitting on the thrones and reigning with Him. It agrees perfectly.

e) Col. 3:1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

i) Anybody who is regenerate has risen with Christ, and that is the first resurrection. “since then, you have been raised with Christ.”

ii) The resurrection of body will occur at the 2^nd coming Christ, and that is called the Second Resurrection. At the Second resurrection all men will be resurrected (bodily resurrection). The saints will be given their body, and also the wicked will be given their bodies. This happens at the 2^nd coming of Christ, at the great white throne judgment seat of Christ. The saints resurrects the 2^nd time, and die no more, but the wicked resurrects, to die the 2^nd death.

iii) Christian timeline: A. died in Christ (1^st death)—resurrected in Christ (1^st Resurrection)— B. pass on to be with Christ (physical death) (technically we are have already died once, so this physical death is sometimes referred to as sleep, or to be with the Lord, that’s why Christ can say those believe him shall never die, because technically we have already died once)— C. 2^nd resurrection unto life.

iv) Unbelievers timeline: B. Physical death (1^st death)—C. resurrected at the great white throne judgment (2^nd resurrection for Christians)—D. 2^nd Death.

v) Christian: A-B-C

vi) Unbelievers: B-C-D

vii) Those who have “A” won’t get “D”, and those who didn’t get “A” will get “D”.

4) The 1,000 years reign is the reigning of our Lord in heaven right now, and along with the saints.

a) Phil 2:8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! 9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name hat is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

b) Matt. 28 “All power is given unto me”. He already has the power, not waiting to get the power in some other time.

Soli Deo Gloria

奧古思丁 懺悔錄

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