“For what we do with our time should be joyful. Play cards with your family. Read a good book . . . . Write a letter to an author. Try raising chickens–well, don’t do that. Start musing, and you just might find it entertaining” (R. C. Sproul Jr., Eternity in Our Hearts: Essays on the Good Life, 21).
Monthly Archives: December 2013
Aphoristic Commentary: 2 Cor. 3:2-5
2 Corinthians 3:2-5, Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God . . .
This, “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: . . . our sufficiency is of God,” is an example of incarnational thinking: to be evangelical one must be incarnationally minded.
Scripture and Christian Formation
“The Christian Scriptures are the primary text for Christian spirituality. Christian spirituality is, in its entirety, rooted in and shaped by the scriptural text. We don’t form our personal spiritual lives out of a random assemblage of favorite texts in combination with individual circumstances; we are formed by the Holy Spirit in accordance with the text of Holy Scripture. God does not put us in charge of forming our personal spiritualities. We grow in accordance with the revealed Word implanted in us by the Spirit” (Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book, 15).
Col. 3:16-17, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
Worship, which is Spirit-led and Scripture-saturated, is corporate discipleship; by Spirit and Word, worship provides both corporate-formation and personal spiritual-formation.
Dog-with-a-Bone Kind of Reading
“Language, spoken and written, is the primary means for getting us in on what is, on what God is and is doing. But it is language of a certain stripe, not words external to our lives, the sort used in grocery lists, computer manuals, French grammars, and basketball rulebooks. These are words intended, whether confrontationally or obliquely, to get inside us, to deal with our souls, to form a life that is congruent with the world that God has created, the salvation that he has enacted, and the community that he has gathered. Such writing anticipates and counts on a certain kind of reading, a dog-with-a-bone kind of reading [Peterson equates this with Hebrew word hagah, that is, “meditate”, cf., Ps. 1, Ps. 63, Isa. 31:4.]” (Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, 3-4).
Parenting
“My children, like all children, are sinners; they were born that way. But that doesn’t mean they need to become experts in sin. Wise, yes–jaded, no. While they are by no means innocent before the throne of God in themselves, I still want to maintain their ‘innocence’ as long as possible” (R.C. Sproul Jr., Eternity in Our Hearts: Essays on the Good Life, 23).
WCF. IV. Of Creation – 2. Q & A
Blogging through and answering the questions from G. I. Williamson’s The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes for personal review and comprehension.
WCF. IV. Of Creation – 2.
1. In what do evolutionists and Christians superficially agree?
Generally speaking, both agree that man is the crowning or highest creature on earth.
2. Why do we say this agreement is superficial?
An evolutionist believes that this range of lower to higher forms of creation is all derivative of blind and neutral mechanical forces. A Christian, however, believes God’s immediate will and creative word is at back these forms of creation.
3. Is it anti-Christian to believe that God employed many basic structural designs in lower forms of life and then later in creating man?
No. It is not. We may see similar structural designs, but there was no man (human) until God formed him from the dust of the ground and breathed life into him and called him Adam. “But there can be no yielding at one point: man did not “gradually emerge” from the slime, but was created by an immediate divine act in which matter and spirit were fused together and given existence as a living soul” (57).
4. At what precise point must the Christian never yield respecting man’s creation?
See answer above for Question 3.
5. Is it possible that man may have developed from lower forms of “semi-human” beings? Why?
Absolutely not. Man’s spirit came directly from God. God fused spirit with matter so that man became a “living soul” (Genesis 2:7), that is, human.
6. What does evolutionary dogma say about “early” human existence?
Evolutionary dogma insists man’s genesis being one of dim-wits, pertaining to the caveman variety. This is bogus. Man from the beginning, according to Scripture, was endowed with a highly developed intelligence. For example, evolutionists believe speech is a phenomenon of human evolution, but the Bible describes speech as intricate to man being made in the image of God. As A. W. Tozer said, “Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him. It is highly significant that the first word was the Word: ‘And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ We may speak because God spoke” (The Knowledge of the Holy, 2).
7. What does the Bible say about “early” human existence?
See answer above for Question 6, and Romans 2:15 says the work of the law is written in our hearts.
8. In what sense was Adam’s knowledge primitive?
Adam’s knowledge was primitive in a non-cumulative sense: Adam was created with genuine knowledge, albeit, knowledge that was not composite, i.e., Adam didn’t know about the latest theories of quantum-physics, about the ocean’s tides, etc.
9. Why do scientists believe in the unity of the human race?
Scientists believe in the unity of the human race because they believe man descended from an original pair (I don’t know of any scientists who maintain that human-evolution occurred in-parallel and simultaneously in different geographic regions).
10. Why do Christians believe in the unity of the human race?
Christians believe in the unity of the human race because of God’s revelation: Acts 17:26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. Referencing this truth, Williamson says, “And the Christian resists all racist pride, not on the basis of the evolutionary dogma of man’s greatness, but the biblical doctrine of creation and the fall” (58).
11. Which is correct: the soul is the image of God, the soul contains the image of God, man has the image of God, or man is the image of God?
The correct formulation is “Man is the image of God.” Williamson says, “It would seem to be more scriptural to simply affirm that man (in the totality of his physical-scriptural being) is (rather than merely contains) the image of God” (58).
12. Why may it be that the body has traditionally been excluded from the image?
Williamson thinks this may be the case because of “pagan holdovers” where the body (physical) is considered evil and the spirit (non-physical) is considered good.
13. If God is triune, and man is God’s image, then what must we see in the unity of human personality?
In human personality we see “endowed capacity for knowledge, holiness, and righteousness” (59), that is, we see diversity. “Man has one personality, but various faculties – mind, heart, and will” (357). These three traits correspond to functions as a prophet, priest, and king. Adam was created in the image of the Triune God and was to function and fulfill duties of each of these offices: “As a prophet man was endowed with the physical sense and mental ability to learn the truth. As a priest he possessed the sensibility and desire to worship God in true holiness. And as a king he possessed the physical and mental power and ability to subject in righteousness all things to the purpose and will of God” (59).
14. Do you find Scripture evidence for this diversity?
“Yes, the Scriptures teach that man is a rational, emotional, volitional personality (Isa. 1:18; Acts 24:25; Col. 3:9-10; Rom. 12:10; Matt. 26:39; John 1:13)” (357).