"...he held that theological integrity and cultural authority were inversely related: a theology eager for public influence invariably compromised the Christian faith, while a principled theology could at best benefit society indirectly." (pg. 8)
"For Machen, although he was very conservative in religion, the threat of cultural modernism - pitting modern relevance against old-fashioned dogma, scientific verification against an implausible faith, and metaphysical skepticism against religious certainty - was not as great as the danger posed by Protestant hegemony in a free and diverse society. As great as the challenges of modern science and philosophy were, in the end they were not as profound as the peril of a religion that tailored its faith and practice to fit the prevailing temper of the age." (pg. 9)
"Instead of reducing seminaries to centers of religious sentiment and professional training, Machen wanted them to become 'battlegrounds of the faith.'... This was Machen's call to the ministry, the vision that he hoped to instill in students at Princeton, and the message he would eventually take before the councils of the Presbyterian Church." (pg. 34)
"'Jesus, according to Paul,' Machen concluded, 'came to earth not to say something, but to do something.' Paul's writings did not 'deal with general principles of love and grace, and fatherliness and brotherliness' but instead with the 'thing most distasteful to the modern liberal Church,' Jesus' death and resurrection. The clear implication was that Paul and Jesus were of a piece and the modern church could not reject Paul without also rejecting Jesus." (pg. 57ff)
"In Christian teaching, Machen wrote, a great gulf lay between God and man, and it was widened by human sinfulness. In contrast, the modern age had exhibited a 'supreme confidence in human goodness,' giving liberal ministers the impossible task of 'calling the righteous to repentance.' But Christianity, Machen said, began with the law of God and a conviction of sin." (pg. 70)
"Using religion as a means for solving social ills, Machen asserted, was altogether different from Christ's 'stupendous words' which demanded utter loyalty from his followers, even to the point of hating father and mother." (pg. 76)
"...following the example of the early church Machen recommended that modern church membership be restricted to those believers with an adequate understanding of their denomination's doctrinal standards. Although theological knowledge did not make one a Christian, it redressed the modern tendency to divorce faith from knowledge." (pg. 92)
"By stressing the intellectual aspects even in the subjective dynamics of religious experience Machen, in effect, made theologians out of all believers. Only in the act of regeneration, he explained, once the 'blinding' effects of sin had been removed, could the truth of Christianity be understood properly." (pg. 94)
"He believed that historic Christianity was fundamentally narrow, exclusive, and partisan and, therefore, could not provide the basis for public life in a free society. To do so, he argued, was to mistake ethics for salvation. Using Christian morals to promote public duties gave the faulty impression that people could do good without grace. 'When any hope is held out to lost humanity from the so-called ethical portions of the Bible apart from its great redemptive core, then the Bible is represented as saying the direct opposite of what it really says.'" (pg. 138)
"Indeed, at the same time that secular intellectuals attacked the Protestant ethos of American culture, Machen argued that the churches' involvement in cultural and social life was harmful because it undermined faithful witnessing to Christian truth. Unfortunately for Machen, that twin commitment - to Presbyterian orthodoxy and religious pluralism - went largely unheeded in fundamentalist and evangelical circles. Yet his outlook may still prove instructive to believers and secularists in America today who through a series of cultural wars struggle to reconcile the demands of faith with the realities of modernity." (pg. 170)
D. G. Hart, Defending The Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 2003)
Friday, July 31, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost Of The New Sexual Tolerance - by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
"The integrity of Christian marriage requires a man to exercise his will even in the arena of love and to commit all of his sexual energy and passion to the honorable estate of marriage, refusing himself even the imagination of violating his marital vows." (pg. 7)
"Sex has lost its public shamefulness; moral boundaries have been pulled down in the name of moral 'progress'; and overt sexuality now drives much of our entertainment, advertising, and cultural conversation. How is lust to be separated from all that?" (pg. 14)
"In an odd twist, hyperexposure to pornography leads to a lower net return on investment, which is to say that the more pornography one sees, the more explicit the images must be in order to excite interest. Thus, in order to sustain the excitement of 'transgressing,' as the postmodernist would put it, pornographers must continue to push the envelope." (pg. 29)
"We must also be careful to make clear that while we reject the concept of sexual orientation as a category of identity, we are not denying that there are some persons who discover themselves to be sexually attracted to persons of the same sex. Since our sexuality is such an important part of our lives, we are naturally tempted to think that our profile of sexual attraction is central to our identity. But our identity must not be constituted by mere sexuality. We are first of all human beings created in the image of God. Secondly, we are sinners whose fallenness is demonstrated in every aspect of our lives - including our sexuality." (pg. 67ff)
"We must learn to address the issue of homosexuality and other difficult sexual issues with candor, directness, and unembarrassed honesty. This is not an hour for prudish denial. To fail at the task of speaking clearly and directly to this issue is to fail to speak where God has spoken." (pg. 81)
"In the eyes of all too many in our culture, gender is merely a plastic social construct. Indeed, in the postmodern world, all realities are plastic and all principles are liquid. Everything can be changed. Nothing is fixed. All truth is relative, all truth is socially constructed, and anything that is constructed can also be deconstructed in order to liberate." (pg. 136ff)
"The very habits of human life - the customs and traditions on which civilization is grounded - are now being reversed, marginalized, and discarded in an effort to eliminate all norms by normalizing the abnormal." (pg. 141)
"The single greatest obstacle to the victory of the culture of polymorphous perversity is the Judeo-Christian heritage. The greatest obstacle to the normalization of homosexuality is the Bible." (pg. 152)
"Civilization cannot survive the triumph of the age of polymorphous perversity, because the idea of polymorphous sex is hopelessly incompatible with the very notion of civilization itself. Civilization is based upon order, respect, habit, custom, and institution - all of which are rejected outright by the age of polymorphous perversity." (pg. 155)
"...we must make certain that our marriages and our families are a testimony to God's intention, and that we live before the world declaring that even if insanity, irrationality, and sexual anarchy rule the world, it will not rule us. God's glory will be shown in faithfulness wherever it is found, even in the tiny domestic picture of our seemingly insignificant families." (pg. 159)
R. Albert Mohler Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost Of The New Sexual Tolerance (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2008)
"Sex has lost its public shamefulness; moral boundaries have been pulled down in the name of moral 'progress'; and overt sexuality now drives much of our entertainment, advertising, and cultural conversation. How is lust to be separated from all that?" (pg. 14)
"In an odd twist, hyperexposure to pornography leads to a lower net return on investment, which is to say that the more pornography one sees, the more explicit the images must be in order to excite interest. Thus, in order to sustain the excitement of 'transgressing,' as the postmodernist would put it, pornographers must continue to push the envelope." (pg. 29)
"We must also be careful to make clear that while we reject the concept of sexual orientation as a category of identity, we are not denying that there are some persons who discover themselves to be sexually attracted to persons of the same sex. Since our sexuality is such an important part of our lives, we are naturally tempted to think that our profile of sexual attraction is central to our identity. But our identity must not be constituted by mere sexuality. We are first of all human beings created in the image of God. Secondly, we are sinners whose fallenness is demonstrated in every aspect of our lives - including our sexuality." (pg. 67ff)
"We must learn to address the issue of homosexuality and other difficult sexual issues with candor, directness, and unembarrassed honesty. This is not an hour for prudish denial. To fail at the task of speaking clearly and directly to this issue is to fail to speak where God has spoken." (pg. 81)
"In the eyes of all too many in our culture, gender is merely a plastic social construct. Indeed, in the postmodern world, all realities are plastic and all principles are liquid. Everything can be changed. Nothing is fixed. All truth is relative, all truth is socially constructed, and anything that is constructed can also be deconstructed in order to liberate." (pg. 136ff)
"The very habits of human life - the customs and traditions on which civilization is grounded - are now being reversed, marginalized, and discarded in an effort to eliminate all norms by normalizing the abnormal." (pg. 141)
"The single greatest obstacle to the victory of the culture of polymorphous perversity is the Judeo-Christian heritage. The greatest obstacle to the normalization of homosexuality is the Bible." (pg. 152)
"Civilization cannot survive the triumph of the age of polymorphous perversity, because the idea of polymorphous sex is hopelessly incompatible with the very notion of civilization itself. Civilization is based upon order, respect, habit, custom, and institution - all of which are rejected outright by the age of polymorphous perversity." (pg. 155)
"...we must make certain that our marriages and our families are a testimony to God's intention, and that we live before the world declaring that even if insanity, irrationality, and sexual anarchy rule the world, it will not rule us. God's glory will be shown in faithfulness wherever it is found, even in the tiny domestic picture of our seemingly insignificant families." (pg. 159)
R. Albert Mohler Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost Of The New Sexual Tolerance (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2008)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs In The New Spiritual Openness - by R. Albert Mohler Jr.
"...we live among the ruins of a moral value structure destroyed by the wrecking ball of a radical secularist agenda, but already weakened by compromise from within - even from within the church." (pg. 21)
"These days, most people think themselves to be imperfect, leaving room for improvement - but they do not think of themselves as sinners in need of forgiveness and redemption." (pg. 25)
"For millions of persons in the postmodern age, truth is a matter of personal choice - not divine revelation. Clearly, we moderns do not choose for hell to exist." (pg. 32)
"Sin has been redefined as a lack of self-esteem rather than as an insult to the glory of God. Salvation has been reconceived as liberation from oppression, internal or external. The gospel becomes a means of release from bondage to bad habits rather than rescue from a sentence of eternity in hell." (pg. 43ff)
"...Augustine suggested that Christians uniquely understand that the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real, are indeed one, because they are established in the reality of the self-revealing God - the triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He alone is beautiful, He alone is good, He alone is true, and He alone is real." (pg. 50)
"Several years ago, a major study of religious belief revealed just how radically our culture has compromised the doctrine of God. Sociologists asked the question, 'Do you believe in a God who can change the course of events on earth?' One answer, which became the title of the study, was 'No, just the ordinary one.' That is to say, modern men and women seem to feel no need to believe in a God who can change the course of events on earth - just an 'ordinary God' who is an innocent bystander observing human events. Measured against the biblical revelation, this is not God at all." (pg. 117ff)
"The decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, much less to each other." (pg. 121)
"The very notion of shame has been discarded by a generation for which shame is an unnecessary and repressive hindrance to personal fulfillment. Even secular observers have noted the shamelessness of modern culture." (pg. 126ff)
"Unable or unwilling to deal with moral categories, modern men and women resort to the only moral language they know and understand - the unembarrassed claim to 'rights' that society has no authority to limit or deny. This 'rights talk' is not limited to secular society, however. Church members are so committed to their own version of 'rights talk' that some congregations accept almost any behavior, belief, or 'lifestyle' as acceptable, or at least off-limits to congregational sanction." (pg. 129ff)
"The Bible reveals three main areas of danger requiring discipline. These are fidelity of doctrine, purity of life, and unity of fellowship. Each is of critical and vital importance to the health and integrity of the church." (pg. 149)
"We are no longer seeing the first signs of cultural trouble, but rather the indicators of advanced decay. The reality is that people now do not even know what they have lost, much less that they themselves are lost." (pg. 158)
"...in a truly post-Christian age, the saddest loss of all is a loss of the memory of what was lost. The saddest aspect of our dawning post-Christian age is that there is no longer even a memory of what was discarded and what was denied and rejected. Having lived for so long on the memory of Christian truth, without the substance of Christian truth, the culture now grows hostile to that truth." (pg. 164)
"Postmodernism claimed that this new postmodern age - with the end of modernity, the demise of scientific objectivity, and the openness to new forms and understandings of truth - would lead to an opening of the mind. But as is always the case, the totalitarian opening of the mind always ends with the radical closing of the mind. There is nothing less tolerant than the modern ethos of tolerance." (pg. 169)
"We must recognize that the church has been compliant for far too long, and if we are effectively to challenge the prevailing worldview of postmodern culture, the church must become a post-compliant people." (pg. 176)
"...numerous influential voices within evangelicalism suggest that the age of the expository sermon is now past. In its place, some contemporary preachers now substitute messages intentionally designed to reach secular or superficial congregations - messages that avoid preaching a biblical text, and thus avoid a potentially embarrassing confrontation with biblical truth." (pg. 190)
R. Albert Mohler Jr., The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs In The New Spiritual Openness (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2009)
"These days, most people think themselves to be imperfect, leaving room for improvement - but they do not think of themselves as sinners in need of forgiveness and redemption." (pg. 25)
"For millions of persons in the postmodern age, truth is a matter of personal choice - not divine revelation. Clearly, we moderns do not choose for hell to exist." (pg. 32)
"Sin has been redefined as a lack of self-esteem rather than as an insult to the glory of God. Salvation has been reconceived as liberation from oppression, internal or external. The gospel becomes a means of release from bondage to bad habits rather than rescue from a sentence of eternity in hell." (pg. 43ff)
"...Augustine suggested that Christians uniquely understand that the good, the beautiful, the true, and the real, are indeed one, because they are established in the reality of the self-revealing God - the triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He alone is beautiful, He alone is good, He alone is true, and He alone is real." (pg. 50)
"Several years ago, a major study of religious belief revealed just how radically our culture has compromised the doctrine of God. Sociologists asked the question, 'Do you believe in a God who can change the course of events on earth?' One answer, which became the title of the study, was 'No, just the ordinary one.' That is to say, modern men and women seem to feel no need to believe in a God who can change the course of events on earth - just an 'ordinary God' who is an innocent bystander observing human events. Measured against the biblical revelation, this is not God at all." (pg. 117ff)
"The decline of church discipline is perhaps the most visible failure of the contemporary church. No longer concerned with maintaining purity of confession or lifestyle, the contemporary church sees itself as a voluntary association of autonomous members, with minimal moral accountability to God, much less to each other." (pg. 121)
"The very notion of shame has been discarded by a generation for which shame is an unnecessary and repressive hindrance to personal fulfillment. Even secular observers have noted the shamelessness of modern culture." (pg. 126ff)
"Unable or unwilling to deal with moral categories, modern men and women resort to the only moral language they know and understand - the unembarrassed claim to 'rights' that society has no authority to limit or deny. This 'rights talk' is not limited to secular society, however. Church members are so committed to their own version of 'rights talk' that some congregations accept almost any behavior, belief, or 'lifestyle' as acceptable, or at least off-limits to congregational sanction." (pg. 129ff)
"The Bible reveals three main areas of danger requiring discipline. These are fidelity of doctrine, purity of life, and unity of fellowship. Each is of critical and vital importance to the health and integrity of the church." (pg. 149)
"We are no longer seeing the first signs of cultural trouble, but rather the indicators of advanced decay. The reality is that people now do not even know what they have lost, much less that they themselves are lost." (pg. 158)
"...in a truly post-Christian age, the saddest loss of all is a loss of the memory of what was lost. The saddest aspect of our dawning post-Christian age is that there is no longer even a memory of what was discarded and what was denied and rejected. Having lived for so long on the memory of Christian truth, without the substance of Christian truth, the culture now grows hostile to that truth." (pg. 164)
"Postmodernism claimed that this new postmodern age - with the end of modernity, the demise of scientific objectivity, and the openness to new forms and understandings of truth - would lead to an opening of the mind. But as is always the case, the totalitarian opening of the mind always ends with the radical closing of the mind. There is nothing less tolerant than the modern ethos of tolerance." (pg. 169)
"We must recognize that the church has been compliant for far too long, and if we are effectively to challenge the prevailing worldview of postmodern culture, the church must become a post-compliant people." (pg. 176)
"...numerous influential voices within evangelicalism suggest that the age of the expository sermon is now past. In its place, some contemporary preachers now substitute messages intentionally designed to reach secular or superficial congregations - messages that avoid preaching a biblical text, and thus avoid a potentially embarrassing confrontation with biblical truth." (pg. 190)
R. Albert Mohler Jr., The Disappearance of God: Dangerous Beliefs In The New Spiritual Openness (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2009)
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Growing Up In Grace: The Use of Means for Communion with God - by Murray G. Brett
"...communion with God consists in giving, receiving, and returning; we might even say, a gracious giving, a humble receiving, and a bold returning." (pg. 12)
"Our egos will never be satisfied until clothed in gospel humility. And the essence of gospel humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking more of Christ than ourselves." (pg. 37)
"Our flesh cannot possibly pump repentance out of a heart that is indifferent to God's covenant graces. The flesh cannot possibly produce power to overcome even one single sin, but the covenant grace of God in the gospel can." (pg. 65)
"Enjoying the sweetness of felt communion with God is the highest motive for repentance. The more pleasure we derive from our communion with God, the stronger our desire for His fellowship will be and the more dissatisfied we are without it." (pg. 93)
"The key to answered prayer is abiding in Christ. That is the key to our motivation for prayer and the key to obtaining answers to prayer." (pg. 123)
"To take delight in God's law means that we take 'exquisite pleasure' in it, and Isaiah [58:13] reasons that when we take exquisite pleasure in God's law, we take exquisite pleasure in God Himself." (pg. 158)
Murray G. Brett, Growing Up In Grace: The Use of Means for Communion with God (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009)
"Our egos will never be satisfied until clothed in gospel humility. And the essence of gospel humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking more of Christ than ourselves." (pg. 37)
"Our flesh cannot possibly pump repentance out of a heart that is indifferent to God's covenant graces. The flesh cannot possibly produce power to overcome even one single sin, but the covenant grace of God in the gospel can." (pg. 65)
"Enjoying the sweetness of felt communion with God is the highest motive for repentance. The more pleasure we derive from our communion with God, the stronger our desire for His fellowship will be and the more dissatisfied we are without it." (pg. 93)
"The key to answered prayer is abiding in Christ. That is the key to our motivation for prayer and the key to obtaining answers to prayer." (pg. 123)
"To take delight in God's law means that we take 'exquisite pleasure' in it, and Isaiah [58:13] reasons that when we take exquisite pleasure in God's law, we take exquisite pleasure in God Himself." (pg. 158)
Murray G. Brett, Growing Up In Grace: The Use of Means for Communion with God (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Communion With The Triune God - by John Owen (edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor)
"Now, communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed [grounded] upon some union between them." (pg. 93)
"Our communion, then, with God consists in his communication of himself unto us, with our return unto him of that which he requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him." (pg. 94)
The Father communicates no issue of his love unto us but through Christ; and we make no return of love unto him but through Christ. He is the treasury wherein the Father disposes all the riches of his grace, taken from the bottomless mine of his eternal love; and he is the priest into whose hand we put all the offerings that we return unto the Father." (pg. 117)
"Love in the Father is like honey in the flower - it must be in the comb before it be for our use. Christ must extract and prepare this honey for us. He draws this water from the fountain through union and dispensation of fullness - we by faith, from the wells of salvation that are in him." (pg. 117)
"There are three things in general wherein this personal excellency and grace of the Lord Christ does consist: (1) His fitness to save, from the grace of union, and the proper necessary effects thereof. (2) His fullness to save, from the grace of communion; or the free consequences of the grace of union. (3) His excellency to endear, from his complete suitableness to all the wants of the souls of men:" (pg. 148)
"This is the first thing on the part of Christ - the free donation and bestowing of himself upon us to be our Christ, our Beloved, as to all the ends and purposes of love, mercy, grace, and glory; whereunto in his mediation he is designed, in a marriage covenant never to be broken. This is the sum of what is intended: The Lord Jesus Christ, fitted and prepared, by the accomplishment and furniture of his person as mediator, and the large purchase of grace and glory which he has made, to be a husband to his saints, his church, tenders himself in the promises of the gospel to them in all his desirableness; convinces them of his goodwill toward them, and his all-sufficiency for a supply of their wants; and upon their consent to accept of him - which is all he requires or expects at their hands - he engages himself in a marriage covenant to be theirs forever." (pg. 157)
"Let it be evinced that all true and solid knowledge is laid up in, and is only to be attained from and by, the Lord Jesus Christ; and the hearts of men, if they are but true to themselves and their most predominate principles, must needs be engaged to him." (pg. 183)
"That we may have a saving knowledge of the properties of God, attended with consolation, these three things are required: (1) that God has manifested the glory of them all in a way of doing good unto us. (2) that he will yet exercise and lay them out to the utmost in our behalf. (3) that, being so manifested and exercised, they are fit and powerful to bring us to the everlasting fruition of himself; which is our blessedness." (pg. 197)
"For the knowledge of ourselves, which is the second part of our wisdom, this consists in these three things, which our Savior sends his Spirit to convince the world of - even 'sin, righteousness, and judgment' (John 16:8). To know ourselves in reference unto these three is a main part of true and sound wisdom; for they all respect the supernatural and immortal end whereunto we are appointed; and there is none of these that we can attain unto but only in Christ." (pg. 200)
"...it is not enough that we are not guilty, we must also be actually righteous - not only all sin is to be answered for, but all righteousness is to be fulfilled." (pg. 213)
"The more abilities the mind is furnished with, the more it closes with the curse, and strengthens itself to act its enmity against God. All that it receives does but help it to set up high thoughts and imaginations against the Lord Christ. So that this knowledge comes short of what in particular it is designed unto; and therefore cannot be that solid wisdom we are inquiring after." (pg. 225)
"If in any things, then, we are straitened, it is in ourselves; Christ deals bountifully with us. Indeed, the great sin of believers is that they make not use of Christ's bounty as they ought to do; that we do not every day take of him mercy in abundance. The oil never ceases till the vessels cease; supplies from Christ fail not but only when our faith fails in receiving them." (pg. 269)
"And thus have we a twofold bottom of the necessity of our obedience and personal holiness: God has appointed it, he requires it; and it is an eminent immediate end of the distinct dispensation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the work of our salvation." (pg. 306)
"This is the great mystery of faith in this business of our acceptation with God by Christ: that whereas the soul of a believer finds enough in him and upon him to rend the very caul [membrane; the pericardium] of the heart (Hos. 13.8), to fill him with fears, terror, disquietments all his days, yet through Christ he is at perfect peace with God (Isa. 26:3; Ps. 4:6-8). Hence do the souls of believers exceedingly magnify Jesus Christ, that they can behold the face of God with boldness, confidence, peace, joy, assurance - that they can call him Father, bear themselves on his love, walk up and down in quietness, and without fear. How glorious is the Son of God in this grace!" (pg. 314)
"This is that which I intend by this habit of grace - a new, gracious, spiritual life, or principle, created and bestowed on the soul, whereby it is changed in all its faculties and affections, fitted and enabled to go forth in the way of obedience unto every divine object that is proposed unto it, according to the mind of God." (pg. 326)
"...adoption is the authoritative translation of a believer, by Jesus Christ, from the family of the world and Satan into the family of God, with his investiture in all the privileges and advantages of that family." (pg. 335)
"The Comforter may always abide with us, though not always comfort us; he who is the Comforter may abide, though he do not always that work. For other ends and purposes he is always with us; as to sanctify and make us holy." (pg. 367)
"A soul does never glorify or honor Christ upon a discovery or sense of the eternal redemption he has purchased for him, but it is in him a peculiar effect of the Holy Ghost as our Comforter." (pg. 377)
"When we find any of the good truths of the gospel come home to our souls with life, vigor, and power, giving us gladness of heart, transforming us into the image and likeness of it - the Holy Ghost is then at his work, is pouring out of his oil." (pg. 387ff)
John Owen (edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor), Communion With The Triune God (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books, 2007)
"Our communion, then, with God consists in his communication of himself unto us, with our return unto him of that which he requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him." (pg. 94)
The Father communicates no issue of his love unto us but through Christ; and we make no return of love unto him but through Christ. He is the treasury wherein the Father disposes all the riches of his grace, taken from the bottomless mine of his eternal love; and he is the priest into whose hand we put all the offerings that we return unto the Father." (pg. 117)
"Love in the Father is like honey in the flower - it must be in the comb before it be for our use. Christ must extract and prepare this honey for us. He draws this water from the fountain through union and dispensation of fullness - we by faith, from the wells of salvation that are in him." (pg. 117)
"There are three things in general wherein this personal excellency and grace of the Lord Christ does consist: (1) His fitness to save, from the grace of union, and the proper necessary effects thereof. (2) His fullness to save, from the grace of communion; or the free consequences of the grace of union. (3) His excellency to endear, from his complete suitableness to all the wants of the souls of men:" (pg. 148)
"This is the first thing on the part of Christ - the free donation and bestowing of himself upon us to be our Christ, our Beloved, as to all the ends and purposes of love, mercy, grace, and glory; whereunto in his mediation he is designed, in a marriage covenant never to be broken. This is the sum of what is intended: The Lord Jesus Christ, fitted and prepared, by the accomplishment and furniture of his person as mediator, and the large purchase of grace and glory which he has made, to be a husband to his saints, his church, tenders himself in the promises of the gospel to them in all his desirableness; convinces them of his goodwill toward them, and his all-sufficiency for a supply of their wants; and upon their consent to accept of him - which is all he requires or expects at their hands - he engages himself in a marriage covenant to be theirs forever." (pg. 157)
"Let it be evinced that all true and solid knowledge is laid up in, and is only to be attained from and by, the Lord Jesus Christ; and the hearts of men, if they are but true to themselves and their most predominate principles, must needs be engaged to him." (pg. 183)
"That we may have a saving knowledge of the properties of God, attended with consolation, these three things are required: (1) that God has manifested the glory of them all in a way of doing good unto us. (2) that he will yet exercise and lay them out to the utmost in our behalf. (3) that, being so manifested and exercised, they are fit and powerful to bring us to the everlasting fruition of himself; which is our blessedness." (pg. 197)
"For the knowledge of ourselves, which is the second part of our wisdom, this consists in these three things, which our Savior sends his Spirit to convince the world of - even 'sin, righteousness, and judgment' (John 16:8). To know ourselves in reference unto these three is a main part of true and sound wisdom; for they all respect the supernatural and immortal end whereunto we are appointed; and there is none of these that we can attain unto but only in Christ." (pg. 200)
"...it is not enough that we are not guilty, we must also be actually righteous - not only all sin is to be answered for, but all righteousness is to be fulfilled." (pg. 213)
"The more abilities the mind is furnished with, the more it closes with the curse, and strengthens itself to act its enmity against God. All that it receives does but help it to set up high thoughts and imaginations against the Lord Christ. So that this knowledge comes short of what in particular it is designed unto; and therefore cannot be that solid wisdom we are inquiring after." (pg. 225)
"If in any things, then, we are straitened, it is in ourselves; Christ deals bountifully with us. Indeed, the great sin of believers is that they make not use of Christ's bounty as they ought to do; that we do not every day take of him mercy in abundance. The oil never ceases till the vessels cease; supplies from Christ fail not but only when our faith fails in receiving them." (pg. 269)
"And thus have we a twofold bottom of the necessity of our obedience and personal holiness: God has appointed it, he requires it; and it is an eminent immediate end of the distinct dispensation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the work of our salvation." (pg. 306)
"This is the great mystery of faith in this business of our acceptation with God by Christ: that whereas the soul of a believer finds enough in him and upon him to rend the very caul [membrane; the pericardium] of the heart (Hos. 13.8), to fill him with fears, terror, disquietments all his days, yet through Christ he is at perfect peace with God (Isa. 26:3; Ps. 4:6-8). Hence do the souls of believers exceedingly magnify Jesus Christ, that they can behold the face of God with boldness, confidence, peace, joy, assurance - that they can call him Father, bear themselves on his love, walk up and down in quietness, and without fear. How glorious is the Son of God in this grace!" (pg. 314)
"This is that which I intend by this habit of grace - a new, gracious, spiritual life, or principle, created and bestowed on the soul, whereby it is changed in all its faculties and affections, fitted and enabled to go forth in the way of obedience unto every divine object that is proposed unto it, according to the mind of God." (pg. 326)
"...adoption is the authoritative translation of a believer, by Jesus Christ, from the family of the world and Satan into the family of God, with his investiture in all the privileges and advantages of that family." (pg. 335)
"The Comforter may always abide with us, though not always comfort us; he who is the Comforter may abide, though he do not always that work. For other ends and purposes he is always with us; as to sanctify and make us holy." (pg. 367)
"A soul does never glorify or honor Christ upon a discovery or sense of the eternal redemption he has purchased for him, but it is in him a peculiar effect of the Holy Ghost as our Comforter." (pg. 377)
"When we find any of the good truths of the gospel come home to our souls with life, vigor, and power, giving us gladness of heart, transforming us into the image and likeness of it - the Holy Ghost is then at his work, is pouring out of his oil." (pg. 387ff)
John Owen (edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor), Communion With The Triune God (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books, 2007)
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World - by David F. Wells
"When all is said and done today, many evangelicals are indifferent to doctrine - certainly they are when they 'do church.' Privately, no doubt, there are doctrines that are believed. But in church...well, that is different because, many think, doctrine is an impediment as we reach out to new generations." (pg. 3)
"The truth is that without a biblical understanding of why God instituted it, the church easily becomes a liability in a market where it competes only with the greatest of difficulty against religious fare available in the convenience of one's living room and in a culture bent on distraction and entertainment." (pg. 11)
"For seeker-sensitives, by their own reckoning, traditional evangelical belief is their dance partner but, in building their churches, they cannot be seen dancing with their partner. They must dance alone, theologically speaking. Actually, in place of the old partner is the new one. The new partner is the customer. It is the customer who is their theology!" (pg. 40)
"Those who were once the unconverted have become the unchurched. This spares us the embarrassment of uttering theological truth. And that is the tip-off that something is amiss here. What is amiss is that the Christianity being peddled is not about theological truth. Christianity is not just an experience, we need to remember, but it is about truth." (pg. 45)
"My conclusion is that absolute truth and morality are fast receding in society because their grounding in God as objective, as outside of our self, as our transcendent point of reference, is disappearing. There is nothing outside the individual that stands over against the individual, that remains as the measure for the individual's actions, the standard for what is right and wrong, or as the test of what is true and what is not." (pg. 61)
"The short answer, then, to the question why life has lost its center has a beguiling simplicity to it. The center has not been lost. It has only been lost to our view. And that is because our disposition, the orientation of our nature from birth, leads us inexorably to replace God with our own selves, to substitute our interests for his, and to redefine life around its new substitute center in ourselves." (pg. 104)
"When the (post)modern self becomes religious, it may become liberal, emergent, or loosely evangelical. But when it becomes (post)modern in these ways, it will no longer be historically Protestant. It will not be biblical. It will not be apostolic. It will be Christian in name but not in thought." (pg. 142ff)
"To speak of Virtue, then, is to speak of the moral structure of the world God has made. Rebellious though we are, we have not broken down this structure, nor dislodged God from maintaining it. It stands there, over against us, whether we recognize it or not. We bump up against it in the course of life and we encounter its reflection in our own moral makeup. And from all sides a message is conveyed to our consciousness: 'Beware! This is a moral world that you inhabit!'" (pg. 145)
"Our world is filled with offers of help and of hope, of meaning and of fulfillment, and even of surrogate regeneration, but they all come from a world that is spiritually dead and therefore ultimately worthless. That is an extraordinary, a breathtakingly radical, position to take. The New Testament takes it unapologetically." (pg. 195)
"The gospel, understood as a product, loses its depth and cost. ... The result is a set of damaging triumphs: the triumph of appeal over depth, of technique over truth, and of consumption over cost." (pg. 213)
"An authentic church is one that is God-centered in its thought and God-honoring in its proclamation and life. It can be authentic only when it honors, reflects, and proclaims who God is and what he has done in Christ." (pg. 242)
David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008)
"The truth is that without a biblical understanding of why God instituted it, the church easily becomes a liability in a market where it competes only with the greatest of difficulty against religious fare available in the convenience of one's living room and in a culture bent on distraction and entertainment." (pg. 11)
"For seeker-sensitives, by their own reckoning, traditional evangelical belief is their dance partner but, in building their churches, they cannot be seen dancing with their partner. They must dance alone, theologically speaking. Actually, in place of the old partner is the new one. The new partner is the customer. It is the customer who is their theology!" (pg. 40)
"Those who were once the unconverted have become the unchurched. This spares us the embarrassment of uttering theological truth. And that is the tip-off that something is amiss here. What is amiss is that the Christianity being peddled is not about theological truth. Christianity is not just an experience, we need to remember, but it is about truth." (pg. 45)
"My conclusion is that absolute truth and morality are fast receding in society because their grounding in God as objective, as outside of our self, as our transcendent point of reference, is disappearing. There is nothing outside the individual that stands over against the individual, that remains as the measure for the individual's actions, the standard for what is right and wrong, or as the test of what is true and what is not." (pg. 61)
"The short answer, then, to the question why life has lost its center has a beguiling simplicity to it. The center has not been lost. It has only been lost to our view. And that is because our disposition, the orientation of our nature from birth, leads us inexorably to replace God with our own selves, to substitute our interests for his, and to redefine life around its new substitute center in ourselves." (pg. 104)
"When the (post)modern self becomes religious, it may become liberal, emergent, or loosely evangelical. But when it becomes (post)modern in these ways, it will no longer be historically Protestant. It will not be biblical. It will not be apostolic. It will be Christian in name but not in thought." (pg. 142ff)
"To speak of Virtue, then, is to speak of the moral structure of the world God has made. Rebellious though we are, we have not broken down this structure, nor dislodged God from maintaining it. It stands there, over against us, whether we recognize it or not. We bump up against it in the course of life and we encounter its reflection in our own moral makeup. And from all sides a message is conveyed to our consciousness: 'Beware! This is a moral world that you inhabit!'" (pg. 145)
"Our world is filled with offers of help and of hope, of meaning and of fulfillment, and even of surrogate regeneration, but they all come from a world that is spiritually dead and therefore ultimately worthless. That is an extraordinary, a breathtakingly radical, position to take. The New Testament takes it unapologetically." (pg. 195)
"The gospel, understood as a product, loses its depth and cost. ... The result is a set of damaging triumphs: the triumph of appeal over depth, of technique over truth, and of consumption over cost." (pg. 213)
"An authentic church is one that is God-centered in its thought and God-honoring in its proclamation and life. It can be authentic only when it honors, reflects, and proclaims who God is and what he has done in Christ." (pg. 242)
David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008)
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