Vos on God's Love

Geerhardus Vos, in a 1902 address to Princeton Seminary as the school kicked off its 90th year, with words still relevant today:

No one will deny that in the Scriptural disclosure of truth the divine love is set forth as a most fundamental principle, nor that the embodiment of this principle in our human will and action forms a prime ingredient of that subjective religion which the Word of God requires of us.

But it is quite possible to overemphasize this one side of truth and duty as to bring into neglect other exceedingly important principles and demands of Christianity. The result will be that, while no positive error is taught, yet the equilibrium both in consciousness and life is disturbed and a condition created in which the power of resistance to the inroads of spiritual disease is greatly reduced. There can be little doubt that in this manner the one-sidedness and exclusiveness with which the love of God has been preached to the present generation is largely responsible for that universal weakening of the sense of sin, and the consequent decline of interest in the doctrines of atonement and justification, which even in orthodox and evangelical circles we all see and deplore.

--Geerhardus Vos, "The Scriptural Doctrine of the Love of God," in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (ed. Richard Gaffin; P&R, 1980), 426

Takeaway: To seek to exalt God's love without placing it against the full range of who God is and must be nets out as a diminishing, not exaltation, of that love.

A Thank You From Lane Dennis

Here.

The Odious Inner Radio

In 1958 a woman named Mary Willis Shelburne (the "lady" in Letters to an American Lady) was burdened with a sense of moral guilt. She wrote Lewis, who replied--

Dear Mary Willis,

(1) Remember what St John said 'If our heart condemn us, God is stronger than our heart.' The feeling of being, or not being, forgiven & loved, is not what matters. One must come down to brass tacks. If there is a particular sin on your conscience, repent & confess it. If there isn't, tell the despondent devil not to be silly. You can't help hearing his voice (the odious inner radio) but you must treat it merely like a buzzing in your ear or any other irrational nuisance.

(2) Remember the story in the Imitation, how the Christ on the crucifix suddenly spoke to the monk who was so anxious about his salvation and said 'If you knew that all was well, what wd. you, today, do, or stop doing?' When you have found the answer, do it or stop doing it. You see, one must always get back to the practical and definite. What the devil loves is that vague cloud of unspecified guilt feeling or unspecified virtue by which he lures us into despair or presumption. 'Details, please' is the answer.

--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 962

How Jack Miller Came to Love Sonship

Jack Miller helped a generation recover the significance of what it means to be adopted into God's own family so that God is now our Father and we his sons and daughters. The curriculum that spun off of Jack's ministry in Philadelphia is itself entitled 'Sonship.'

In a 1982 letter to a wife of a pastor who had been asked to resign, Jack describes how the New Testament reality of sonship came home to him personally.

My life's whole strength lies in that God has kindly imparted a confident knowledge of His Fatherhood.

I may have a better knowledge of the Father than do other people. But would you believe that this knowledge really began with the death of my own father? He was killed in a hunting accident when I was two years old. A senseless hunting accident. A piece of foolishness. Yet I am not bitter, and am grateful to God for the perfection of the plan.

The emptiness, the dark nights when I was afraid as a small child to go to bed for fear I too might disappear, led me By God's grace to seek God as Father, to know what Fatherhood meant, to give up self-pity and self-awareness and walk in the confident knowledge of my heavenly Father's love. . . . I love my Father in heaven and trust one day to see my earthly father and to join him in praising God for the marvel of a plan that is sound beyond ordinary human understanding. 

--The Heart of a Servant-Leader: Letters from Jack Miller (P&R, 2004), 276-77

A Double Misery

Luther: 

Scripture represents man as one who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick, and dead, but in addition to his other miseries is afflicted, through the agency of Satan his prince, with this misery of blindness, so that he believes himself to be free, happy, unfettered, able, well, and alive. 

--Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, in LW 33:130

How to Be Miserable

Jack Miller:

Human will-power always fails. It is a human attempt to do God's work with our own resources. But working out of self-dependence is guilt-inducing and exhausting. It impels the egoist to seek relief in pleasure and self-fulfillment, to use the good things of God as drugs to escape from reality. Self-fulfillment then takes over as the person's grand task in life leaving the person burdened with suppressed guilt and shame.

Unfortunately the person seeking self-fulfillment never finds happiness. Instead, his inner life shrivels and dries up. But let this person look away from self-interest, fight self-preoccupation, and set the affectional life on Christ and His cause. Christ is alive; He is the giant Son of God. He walks through the earth. Those who walk with Him know that Christ and the cause of the gospel really do introduce us to the deeply satisfying love of God. 

--Jack Miller, 'Recovering the Grand Cause,' a paper written in 1993 to set the vision for a missionary training center to be launched in London

Covenant Seminary

Joe Novenson:



For a window into Dr. Calhoun and Jerram Barrs, mentioned by Joe above, below is the video from Covenant's Commencement service a week ago, at which Dr. Calhoun preached. Below that is an introduction to Jerram Barrs. Two men I love. Men of whom the world is not worthy.

A Word from Crossway's President

I know Lane Dennis.

You can trust this man and this cause.

Genesis 22 and Christ

Anglo-Catholic Bible scholar Gabriel Hebert--

The command to offer up the son of the promise, with whom the whole future lies, seems the complete contradiction of the Purpose of God on which he has set his faith. Abraham in the story is called by God to make a supreme sacrifice, an act of complete and entire worship, trusting God in the dark, committing everything to him: 'not my will but thine be done'. While God did not in the end demand this sacrifice to be made, that which he did demand was the entire willingness to make the offering.

Such is the meaning of the story as the writer tells it; and because this and nothing less is the true and original meaning therefore we, in interpreting it, may and must look onward to the self-giving of our Lord, in which case no offering of a substitute was possible.

Hence we may and must find the final answer to Isaac's question 'Where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?', and Abraham's reply 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son' (Gen 22:7-8), in the words of John 1.29 'Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.'

Gabriel Hebert, The Old Testament from Within (Oxford University Press, 1962), 34

A Noble Cause

Crossway President Lane Dennis:

I am writing, first, in grateful appreciation for your support of Crossway. As a not-for-profit ministry, the Crossway passion is to provide the Bible and gospel-centered literature as widely as possible, on a global basis. So I am deeply grateful to you for your help in doing this.

Secondly, I am writing because we have a significant opportunity and a corresponding need. We have been offered a matching grant in the amount of $270,000, if we are able to raise an additional $270,000 to match the grant.

The purpose of the grant is to provide the Bible and Bible learning resources free to 1 million people globally—free via the Internet, and free globally, anywhere and everywhere, on every major tablet and smart phone device—particularly to people in great need in China, India, and Africa.

The need is urgent: First, because the all-or-nothing goal needs to be reached by May 31, 2012—but more importantly because of the massive need worldwide for the Bible, and for essential tools to teach and understand the Bible.

More here.