iustitia aliena

HT: Peter Chen

Here’s what is on the back cover:

Michael Horton’s highly anticipated The Christian Faith represents his magnum opus and will be viewed as one of—if not the—most important systematic theologies since Louis Berkhof wrote his in 1932.

A prolific, award-winning author and theologian, Professor Horton views this volume as “doctrine that can be preached, experienced, and lived, as well as understood, clarified, and articulated.” It is written for a growing cast of pilgrims making their way together and will be especially welcomed by professors, pastors, students, and armchair theologians.

Features of this volume include: (1) a brief synopsis of biblical passages that inform a particular doctrine; (2) surveys of past and current theologies with contemporary emphasis on exegetical, philosophical, practical, and theological questions; (3) substantial interaction with various Christian movements within the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodoxy traditions, as well as the hermeneutical issues raised by postmodernity; and (4) charts, sidebars, questions for discussion, and an extensive bibliography, divided into different entry levels and topics.

It is already out for display at Christianbook.com here.

Here are some quotes from Concise Reformed Dogmatics, you gotta love these two confessionally Reformed Christian theologians they carry the good news.  I’m finding this book very beneficial, encouraging, and a good learning resource of the Christian Faith.

Here the authors are writing  about Herman Bavinck’s Dogmatics:

In subsequent editions of his work, in which this preface was omitted, it is noted that the first duty of every practitioner of science, and particularly of any theologian, is to be humble and modest.  He may not think himself to be wiser than he ought to think.  (17)

5.2  Special Revelation

When a distinction is made between general and special revelation a description or definition of special revelation is in order.  Bavinck provided the following one:  It “is that conscious and free act of God by which, he, in the way of a historical complex of special means (theophany, prophecy, miracle) that are concentrated in the person of Christ, makes himself known–specifically in the attributes of his justice and grace, in the proclamation of law and gospel–to those human beings who live in the light of this special revelation in order that they may accept the grace of God by faith in Christ or, in case of impenitence, receive a more severe judgement. One might opt for a shorter formulation: it is that revelation of through which, by special means which have their focus and climax on Christ, he has disclosed a way of life for sinners, whom he grants to live in this light.  (52, 53.   The Bold is mine)

What changed in the light of the Reformation was described in Klare wijn (clear wine, 1967) as follows:  Luther and Calvin are suddenly enflamed with passion.  To them the Bible is not in the first instance a source of information from which they obtain truths and precepts, but in Scripture they encounter the living God and his message.  (70)

In referring to the concept of revelation in theology, we saw that it was typical of Calvin to believe that God adapts himself to our capacity to understand (accommodatio).  God can speak to us in a throughly human manner.  It resembles the teaching of small children.  He is like a king whose majesty we must not take lightly, but who wants to have an intimate conversation with us.  When he communicates his Word to us through human mouths, in human language, he thereby takes our needs into consideration.  (72)

The Old Testament is seen as the book of retribution.  The Old Testament would present the religion of holiness and the New Testament faith in God’s love.  But this view is not really tenable.  It is indeed the case that in the Old Testament we encounter God in his exaltation and holiness.  But he is also “merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”  This is how the announcement of his name begins in Exodus 34:67.  Thus the LORD manifests in Christ but also refers to his wrath (John 3:36).  ”Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31).   Already the first few chapters of the book of Genesis are of fundamental significance for self-knowledge.  Man, created in God’s image, fell away from him, but God considered his state and sought him out.  Thus man stands there as creature of God and sinner before God.  God, who is the creator, also seeks to be his redeemer.  God both demands and grants the atonement for sin (Lev. 17:11).  Via the subsequent preaching of atonement through sacrificial ministry and through prophecy, all lines lead to Christ, of whom the New Testament says:  ”Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).  When Paul refers to Christ as the last Adam the unity of the Old and New Testaments is underscored (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 5:12-21).  (69)

Martin Luther had a very intense struggle over guilt in the 16^th century. As a student already he began to worry about his relationship with God.  How could he as a sinner relate with a righteous God? How could a Holy God except into His presence a sinner like Martin Luther? Luther became so concerned about this issue that he wanted to join a monastery.  His father opposed that move, wanting instead of him to become a lawyer- to do something useful with his life.  But Luther out of the intensity of his concern about his relationship with God became a monk.  There was a saying in the middle ages “doubt makes the monk.”  It was not doubt about the existence of God (a kind of modern problem) but it was doubt about how one could relate to God, and out of that doubt many people like Martin Luther became monks worrying about how to save their souls.  Worrying about how a sinner can be related to a Holy God. Luther invested himself with great seriousness in the life of a monk. He spent all nights in prayer, he spent days fasting, he even beat his back with whips until he bled, hoping by these disciplines to overcome the sin in his own life. He took with great literalness Paul’s words about beating the body into submission, but in spite of all of his dedication he found that he was still a sinner. He found that he still could not please a Holy God. And he reached a point in his own spiritual journey (he said) where he felt that if “God was alive, I am dead”—what he meant was that if God was really God. If God is the Holy one, then surely I am lost and hopeless, and he came to a point where he would even say “I hated God.” He hated God because God was the one that he could not approach. God was the one that he could not satisfy. God was the one that he could not ever please. And it was out of that wrestling with guilt that Luther came to his great Evangelical breakthrough. It was his realization that when the New Testament talks about the righteousness of God it means not only the righteousness that God demands, but also the righteousness that God gives and in his study of the Scripture Luther came to see that Jesus Christ was indeed his substitute. That Jesus Christ had taken the place of the sinner on the Cross and that therefore in Jesus Christ there was an answer to sin and to guilt and to hopelessness. And Romans chapter 5 verse 1 became a great joy to his heart “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It was through looking to Christ by faith, trusting Christ to be the sinner’s substitute, trusting Christ to be the perfect fulfiller of God’s righteous demands that Luther by faith found peace with God.-W. Robert Godfrey, President and Professor of Church History at Westminster Seminary, California.

“This transcription of “Guilt, Grace, Gratitude” is a
broadcast of the White Horse Inn radio program that originally re-aired on May
21, 2006 and is posted with permission. The White Horse Inn exists to equip
Christians to “know what you believe and why you believe it.” For more
information about the White Horse Inn, please visit www.whitehorseinn.org or
call(800) 890-7556.”

Was looking at GP’s old xanga site and found this post with some quotes on it.  

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

“Anyone who denies the prelapsarian covenant of works jeopardizes the Biblical and Protestant doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.”

“Monocovenantalism or refusal to distinguish between the covenants of works and grace implies a confusion of Law and Gospel. “

“The hermeneutical distinction between law (covenant of works) and gospel (covenant of grace) is the distinction between our personal and perpetual obligation to keep the law perfectly for justification and the announcement that Christ has kept the law perfectly for us.”

“The historical distinction between law and gospel may be reckoned as the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.”

“The historical distinction between law and gospel may also be reckoned as the distinction between Moses and Christ.”

“When the law/gospel distinction is reckoned as that between Moses and Christ, there may be said to be gospel in the law and law in the gospel. This way of speaking, however, may not be used properly when considering the law/gospel distinction hermeneutically.” -some sentences from R. Scott Clark On the Covenant of Works

Detail bits regarding the influence of Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology :

The contemporary relevance of Protestant orthodox theology arises from the fact that it remains the basis of normative Protestant theology in the present. With little formal and virtually no substantial dogmatic alteration, orthodox or scholastic Reformed theology appears in the works of Charles Hodge. Archibald Alexander Hodge and Louis Berkhof…Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology draws heavily on Francis Turretin’s Institutio theologiae elencticae and represents, particularly in its prolegomena, an attempt to recast the systematic insights of orthodoxy in a nineteenth-century mold.

Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Othodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1987 and 2003), Volume I, 29.

The Marrow of Theology was most influential in New England, where it was generally regarded as the best summary of Calvinistic theology ever written. It was required reading at Harvard and Yale well into the eighteenth century, when it was supplanted by Francois Turrettini’s Institues of Elenctic Theology. (Footnote: S.E. Morrison, Harvard College in the Seventeeth Century  (Cambridge, Mass: Havard University Press, 1936), p. 267.

Joel R. Beeke and Jan van Vliet, “Marrow of Theology by William Ames (1576-1633),” in  A Devoted Life: An Invitation To the Puritan Classics. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004)

Read on!

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The post-Reformation development can be divided, for the sake of convenience, into three periods: early, high, and late orthodoxy. Early orthodoxy, in two fairly distinct phases (ca. 1565-1618-1640) extends roughly from the time of the deaths of a large number of major second generation codifiers of the Reformation and the promulgation of the great national confessions of the Reformed churches (1559-1566) to a transition in generations and approach that occured followng the Synod of Dort and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War (1618-1619), to the closing phases of the war and the deaths of the major figures who formulated the confessional solutions of the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was the era of the confessional solidification of Protestantism. Specifically, as of 1565, many of the important second-generation codifiers of the Reformed faith (John Calvin, Wolfgang Musculus, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Andreas Hyperius) has passed away–the single eminent exception of Heinrich Bullinger who lived until 1575. Reformed theology passed, in the first phase of early orthodoxy, into the hands of Zacharias Ursinus, Casper Olevianus, Jerome Zanchi, Lambert Daneau, Theodore Beza, Francis Junius, William Perkins, and Amandus Polanus. The theologians who sat at Dort and perpetuated its carefully outlined confessionalism in the early seventeenth century–among them, Antonius Walaeus, Johann Polyander, Sibrandus Lubbertus, Franciscus Gomarus, Johannes Maccovius, John Davenant–together with writers like William Ames and J.H. Alsted belong to the second phase of the early orthodox period. Here also are found the seeds of developments and debates that would occupy the thinkers of the high orthodox era: covenant theology begins to elaborate in the works of Cameron, Ball, and Cloppenburg; worries concerning the universal promise of the gospel not addressed to the satisfaction of all at Dort reached initial formulation in the writings of Davenant and Amyraut; and the first salvos of the debate over the origin of the vowel-points were heard in the writings of Buxtorf and Cappel.

High Orthodoxy (ca. 1640-1685-1725) spans the greater part of the seventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Like early orthodox, it needs to be divided into two phases. It represents a still broader theological synthesis than early orthodoxy: it rests upon a confessional summation of faith, has a somewhat sharper and more codified polemic against its doctrinal adversaries, and possesses a broader and more explicit grasp of tradition, particularly of the contribution of the Middle Ages. Characteristic of the initial phase of this era are internal and intraconfessional controversies, such as the broader Amyraldian controversy and the debate over Cocceian federal theology as well as the vast expansion of debate with the Socinians over the doctrine of the Trinity. In this phase of the high orthodox period are found such authors as Johannes Cocceius, Samuel Maresius, Andreas Essenius, Gisbertus Voetius, Friedrich Spanheim the Elder, Marcus Friedrich Wendelin, Franz Burman, Francis Turretin, Edward Leigh, Matthew Poole, John Owen, and Stephen Charnock.

Following 1685, the tenor of the orthodoxy changed, although the confessional boundaries continued to remain relatively in place. Given the difficulty of preiodization and the presence, in the late seventeenth century, of various forces and pressures that would bring on the Enlightenment, some writers have further divded the chronology of orthodoxy by identifying a “transitional phase” and even a “transition theology” from ca. 1685 to ca. 1725. Certainly, after 1685, the theology represented by the more traditional writers ceased to be as dominant an intellectual pattern in the church and in the theological faculties of the great Protestant universities as it had been in the mid-seventeenth century, although the theology and the ethos of orthodoxy was carried forward by a significant number of theologians. The changes that took place included an increased pressure on the precritical textual, exegetical, and hermeneutical model of orthodoxy, an alteration of the philosophical model used by theologians from the older Christian Aristotelian approach to either a variant of the newer rationalism or a virtually a-philosophical version of dogmatics. This is also the era of the beginning of internal divisions in the Reformed confessions over the issues raised by the piety of the Second Reformation or Nadere Reformatie and by the dispossesed status of Reformed Protestants in England and France. By 1725, a fairly uniform and unified confessional subscription had faded both in England and in Switzerland. In this latter transitional phase of high orthodoxy, reaching into the eighteenth century, the significant theologians included such writers as Benedict Picter, Wilhelmus a Brakel, Louis Tronchin, Leonhardus Rijssenius, Petrus van Mastricht, Herman Witsius, Solomon van Til, Johannes Markius, John Edwards, Thomas Ridgley, Thomas Boston, Campegius Vitringa, Johannes van der Kemp, and J.A. Turretin.

Theology after 1725, in what can be called “late orthodoxy,” is less secure in its philosophical foundations, indeed, searching for different philosophical models, less certain of its grasp of the biblical standard, and often (though hardly always) less willing to draw out its polemic against other “orthodox” forms of Christianity, less bound by the confessional norms of the Reformation, and given to internecine polemics. One can even speak here of a “deconfessionalism” in the late orthodox era that reverses the process of “confessionalization” that took place in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Nonetheless, even in this altered climate, a more or less traditional theology continued to be produced by such late orthodox writers as Daniel Wyttenbach, Johann Friedrich Stapfer, Herman Venema, John Gill, Alexander Comrie, John Brown of Haddington, and Bernhardus de Moor.

Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Othodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1987 and 2003), Volume I, 30-32.

 

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It is sometimes been said that the modern church, usually because of its ignorance of the patristic period, has tended to duplicate in its theology most of the errors and problems of the first five centuries of Christian thought. When approached in a balanced and objectve manner, history provides insight into the limitation of our powers, if only by preserving the reasons for the failures of the past and, in the case of the theological tradition, showing the boundaries within which the community has chosen to formulate its views.

James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works, and Methods (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co.), 62.

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