Month: January 2007

Humble Calvinism: (4) The Institutes > Knowing God and Knowing Self (1.1)

Tony Reinke John Calvin

02spurgeonhumcalvinism.jpg

Part 4: Knowing God and Knowing Self (1.1)

Most systematic theological presentations of Christianity begin with a study of the character and attributes of God. Calvin begins with a bigger question: How do we know anything about God? Without this first step, nothing else will make sense to us!

1. Grasping personal misery (1.1.1)

To start, we must wrap our minds around the misery and sinfulness of our own hearts. 01spurgeoncalvin1.jpgCalvin will not let us jump into the Institutes on an intellectual mission. Our hearts must be prepared to learn eternal truth, and we will not learn about God until we see the depth of our own blackened hearts. Remember piety is the foundation for all knowledge of God.

A humble self-understanding leads us to seek after God. Calvin writes “We cannot seriously aspire to him before we become displeased with ourselves … The knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him” (p. 37). Our own nakedness, ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, depravity and corruption – when rightly understood – will both humble us and grab us by the hand to flee for refuge in Him! Theology is learned when a sinner runs towards God for mercy.

In one word, only when a sinner is “so stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness” will he flee to God (p. 36). So where do we find such knowledge?

2. Looking upward, looking outward (1.1.2)

Naturally we think of ourselves as righteous and wise. For Calvin, hypocrisy is an “empty image of righteousness” rather than a true righteousness that “abundantly satisfies us” (pp. 37-38). The prayer of the hypocrite is, “God I thank you that I am not like others.”

The solution is to stop looking around at other sinners. Calvin says, first look directly into the blazing sun then look around at the world. After looking at the sun, our vision is clouded and skewed but this clouded vision is actually the greater clarity with which we can actually discern the things of this earth. Everything on earth looks differently after staring into the sun directly.

God is the sun. Look at His perfect righteousness and glory and then, “what [was] masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness” (p. 38).

It’s by staring into the sun that our vision changes and we see, with our spiritual eyes, the depth of our depravity. This depravity becomes foundational in our search to understand God and His motives.

3. Nothing compares (1.1.3)

Scripture teaches us that when sinners see God, they unwind like a cheap sweater.

Job was a favorite book for Calvin. For him, the fact that God’s purity and glory “overwhelms men with the realization of their own stupidity, impotence, and corruption” was a major theme of the book (p. 39).

But it’s not just Job. It’s Abraham (Gen. 18:27), Elijah (1 King 19:13) and Isaiah (Isa. 6:5). The common theme of sinners who see the glory of God revealed is to face certain death! See Judges 6:22-23 and 13:22, Isaiah 6:5, Ezekiel 1:28 and 2:1 (read them all here).

We sinners are confounded and humbled when we compare ourselves to Him! We can only be rotten worms (see biblical passages here).

Thus we read in Isaiah, “Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty” (Isa. 2:10). It’s when we are face-down in a cave that we truly understand God, and rightly understand ourselves. This fear is the beginning of theological wisdom (Ps. 111:10; Pro. 1:7; 9:10).

Calvinistic meditations …

It’s not that we don’t look outside of ourselves to understand ourselves. In school we look at the grades of others to gauge our intelligence. We look at the appearance of others to gauge our beauty. We look to the houses and cars of others to gauge our status in the world. We naturally look outside ourselves. The problem for Calvin was not that sinners fail to compare themselves to outside standards, but that we naturally compare ourselves to a hypocritical worldly standard. We must not only look outward, but upward. To learn who we are we must lay in the dust under the cliff rocks and expect sudden death because of God’s glory!

Calvin says look directly at the sun and be undone by God’s majesty. Be undone by His perfections, His unapproachable-ness, His justice. And for preachers and teachers who want to communicate God’s truth, Calvin says to us, “Preacher, you must start here. You must be concerned, not merely to ‘prove’ truth to the unregenerate but point sinners to look at the sun.” Until sinners are undone they cannot know God! We must first become “displeased with ourselves.”

Our goal is not to write theology to intellectually prove God exists, our goal is to see sinners doubled over under their sinfulness, hiding in a cave, clothed in filthy rags, likening themselves to dust and worms. By God’s grace let your hearers see God’s full majesty of God! Let them first stare into the sun and then help them to drink Grace and mercy from the Cross!

If there was one message contemporary American evangelicalism needs, it’s this one. Without fear of God there is no knowledge of God (Ps. 111:10; Pro. 1:7; 9:10). Theology built without a fear of God is a temple of straw built to an unknown god on a foundation of sand.

So this is where Calvin begins. If the first 5 pages do not grab us the last 1,400 wont either. This is the beginning of understanding God and his motives. If we do not personally start here, frightened worms of God’s glory laying face-down in a cave, we can stop reading and slide the Institutes back on our shelves. We will not understand God because we will have fundamentally misunderstood ourselves.

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Click here to access previous posts in the Humble Calvinism index.

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Book review: Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical by Robert Duncan Culver

Tony Reinke Book reviews, BR > Christian Focus, BR > Mentor, Doctrine, Systematic theology

Book review:

Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical by Robert Duncan Culver

One bookshelf groans and creaks under the weight of my treasured systematic theologies. And so I thought the shelf would completely crack apart when I added the newest (and biggest) addition to my family of contemporary systematic theologies.

Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical by Dr. Robert Duncan Culver was published in 2005 by Mentor (Christian Focus) as one massive book easily surpassing the size and weight of Erickson’s Christian Theology. But it’s impressive for more than its weight.

Culver’s volume adds two dimensions that I have come to love. I’m grateful for Robert Reymond’s ability to clearly set forth a clear Reformed theology systematically based upon an explicitly biblical foundation. Reymond’s A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith is one of the first volumes I reach for when I need specific biblical discussion. But I’ve also grown to love the historical theology of Alister McGrath. McGrath’s Historical Theology is a fabulous look at the historical development of the various components of theology over the centuries. Culver brings both the explicitly biblical framework of Reymond and the historical-mindedness of McGrath together in one massive volume!

But because of its readability and because I most agree with his understanding of the charismatic elements of Christianity, I still prefer Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. It’s very good although it’s one of the oldest of my contemporary systematics (and in need of an overall revision and update). But for my money, Culver sits behind Grudem in the No. 2 position.

A note to expositors is necessary. I am a preacher not a systematician, so systematic theologies are more fun to collect than commentaries (which I must collect). But there is one excellent expositional advantage to a small library of systematic works. When preaching through, say Acts 6, you can see where the doctrine of the passage fits within the larger context. If I browse the Scriptural index in the back of Culver I come to see that Acts 6 is an important chapter because verses 1-5 define some rare but clear proofs that the early church held some form of ‘church membership.’ I may have breezed right past this in my commentaries and expositional studies.

Expositors are good at narrowing their laser-beam attention on 4-8 verses of God’s Word and the systematicians are good at shining a wide-angle beam of light on all Scriptural doctrine. It’s very helpful for preachers like myself to understand where my sermon text fits into the larger systematic structure.

Building a small family of systematic theologies is important (and a fun hobby). So get Grudem and Culver. If you have a strong enough bookshelf (and budget) consider McGrath, Reymond and then Erickson.

Photos (c) 2007, Tony S. Reinke

ISBN: 1845500490

Open Question Thursday > Contextualizing and Natural Revelation

Tony Reinke spurgeon

Open Question Thursday

Contextualizing and Natural Revelation

Hello everyone and happy New Year! This week we are starting what I hope to be a weekly feature called Open Question Thursday (though comments will be open beyond Thursday). I want to hear from you!

My first question is this: It seems with all the talk about contextualizing the message of the bible to our culture, there is a lopsided emphasis on methodology and presentation rather than revelation (an emphasis leading to religious relativism). I’m wondering where the importance of general revelation fits here. Is general revelation God’s way of contextualizing in every generation? Thus the preacher points to a tree (which all are familiar) and says, ‘God made that to bring honor to Himself.’ I don’t know. What do you think? How do contextualizing and general revelation correlate?

A battle-axe for the New Year’s Resolutions

Tony Reinke C.J. Mahaney, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Mortification, Sin

It’s an American tradition to make promises for the New Year and Christians sanctify the tradition by using this opportunity to commit themselves to bible reading, prayer and killing sin. This year I, like many of my friends, have resolved to kill (or ‘mortify’) personal sin. Spurgeon gives us a fitting reminder to focus on the mortifying power of the Cross.

“Some, I fear, use the precious blood of Christ only as a quietus to their consciences. They say to themselves, ‘He made atonement for sin, therefore let me take my rest.’ This is doing a grievous wrong to the great sacrifice. … A man who wants the bloodaxe.jpg of Jesus for nothing but the mean and selfish reason, that after having been forgiven through it he may say, ‘Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry: hear sermons, enjoy the hope of eternal felicity, and do nothing’ — such a man blasphemes the precious blood, and makes it an unholy thing. We are to use the glorious mystery of atoning blood as our chief means of overcoming sin and Satan: its power is for holiness. See how the text puts it: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11): these saints used the doctrine of atonement not as a pillow to rest their weariness, but as a weapon to subdue their sin. O my brothers, to some of us atonement by blood is our battle-axe and weapon of war, by which we conquer in our struggle for purity and godliness — a struggle in which we have continued now these many years. By the atoning blood we withstand corruption within and temptation without. This is that weapon which nothing can resist.”

– C.H. Spurgeon sermon The Blood of the Lamb the Conquering Weapon (#2,043, Sept. 9, 1888)