All the promises in the gospel are for awakened sinners

[Afgewezen]

But only those who feel their sins and grieve because of them should be told that Christ died for such as them.

En dan? Ze zullen toch echt in Christus moeten geloven, willen ze er profijt van hebben dat 'Christus died for such as them'. Pas wie op de koperen slang zag, werd genezen. En die slang werd opgericht voor iedereen die gebeten was door de slangen. Je kon iemand die gebeten was, vertellen dat die slang zo geschikt was voor hem, maar als die persoon niet keek, stierf hij toch.

[Arrow]

There are huge contradictions in the Roman Catholic system. There are much fewer contradictions in the theological systems of the Reformers. There are still fewer contradictions in the systems of Owen or Goodwin. And I am not aware of a single contradiction in the system of JC Philpot. Does this mean that Philpot's system is less inclusive? Far from it; it is more comprehensive than previous. But also more elegant and understandable, and without the wearisome, scholastic distinctions (and abstractions) of some of the Old Fathers.

What's all this about 'systems'? Do we need systems? Do we need addendums to the Bible? All those writings are intended as clarifications of Scripture, not to replace or extend the Word of God, that in itself is sufficient for salvation. It is a grave danger to elevate a theologican/system to a position next to or even above Christ.

I don't believe in a system, I believe in Jesus Christ, who presents Himself to all sinners in Scripture. If you open the Book and read His words, He's speaking to you, His promises are intended for you. He doesn't use disclaimers set in small type, like 'only meant for those who are elected by My Father'.

The narrow road is not too wide, because Jesus Christ created it Himself, and His work is perfect. So don't clutter the road to Heaven with earthly crafted systematic obstacles.

[plebe]

There are huge contradictions in the Roman Catholic system. There are much fewer contradictions in the theological systems of the Reformers. There are still fewer contradictions in the systems of Owen or Goodwin. And I am not aware of a single contradiction in the system of JC Philpot. Does this mean that Philpot's system is less inclusive? Far from it; it is more comprehensive than previous. But also more elegant and understandable, and without the wearisome, scholastic distinctions (and abstractions) of some of the Old Fathers.

What's all this about 'systems'? Do we need systems? Do we need addendums to the Bible? All those writings are intended as clarifications of Scripture, not to replace or extend the Word of God, that in itself is sufficient for salvation. It is a grave danger to elevate a theologican/system to a position next to or even above Christ.

I don't believe in a system, I believe in Jesus Christ, who presents Himself to all sinners in Scripture. If you open the Book and read His words, He's speaking to you, His promises are intended for you. He doesn't use disclaimers set in small type, like 'only meant for those who are elected by My Father'.

The narrow road is not too wide, because Jesus Christ created it Himself, and His work is perfect. So don't clutter the road to Heaven with earthly crafted systematic obstacles.

Those, who are given by the Father to His Son will be saved. And yes, you are right........Sola Scriptura! The proclamation of The Word is the channel of election.

(het zal wel steenkolenengels zijn.maar ja!)

[Arrow]

The proclamation of The Word is the channel of election.

Please clarify this expression (in Dutch if you wish).

[plebe]

De verkondiging van het Woord van God is bij uitstek het kanaal waarmee de Heere verkiezend handelt. Daaro is het gebed om de opening van het Woord en verlichting met/door de Heilige Geest ook zo fundamenteel.

[memento]

De verkondiging van het Woord van God is bij uitstek het kanaal waarmee de Heere verkiezend handelt. Daaro is het gebed om de opening van het Woord en verlichting met/door de Heilige Geest ook zo fundamenteel.

Daar kan ik het niet mee eens zijn. God heeft reeds van eeuwigheid verkozen. Dat is een vaststaand feit. Ja, het feit dat je onder de prediking zit, is door de verkiezing van God....

[plebe]

De verkondiging van het Woord van God is bij uitstek het kanaal waarmee de Heere verkiezend handelt. Daaro is het gebed om de opening van het Woord en verlichting met/door de Heilige Geest ook zo fundamenteel.

Daar kan ik het niet mee eens zijn. God heeft reeds van eeuwigheid verkozen. Dat is een vaststaand feit. Ja, het feit dat je onder de prediking zit, is door de verkiezing van God....

Dat klopt en dat werkt Hij in een mensenleven uit, Hij bevestigt dat d.m.v. de prediking. Dat bedoelde ik te zeggen.

[cannabis]

Nice response. Seems like the soup's been stirred. I mourn the departure of Galio and marginalization of my tongue. Some comments:

Wim: If doctrine is not clear to you, it does not mean it is not logical. The systems of Brakel and Boston (holy and great men that they were) were internally inconsistent. Hence I dont use them too authoritatively, though I love their writings. Too often we pious reformed people say that things are mysteries we cannot explain and that have been hidden from us, because we've bungled up the explanation ourselves.

Ego flos's quote misses the point: that text refers to an outward conversion of Israel, not a call to accept Christ. This outward call to repent comes to us too, as I've stated previously.

Afgewezen: of course you (and Boston, and Calvin, etc) dont agree. Because you make faith a duty. Or rather, you make believing in Christ a duty. Or, to be very clear, you make believing that Chirst is your Saviour the duty of each hearer. This is presumption, nothing less. My apologies to the great Boston (a man whose hem of garment I would not dare to touch). It is the duty for those awakened sinners to whom the Holy Spirit reveals Him, to believe. Not to hearers who do not feel the true nature of their sin and grieve because of it. All confusion ends when you see the address tag on each gospel promise, as Gallio once put it. It says, for the regenerated only. Now, that you will never accept this is obvious.

More important is the criticism of ndonselaar:
- Justification from eternity or upon faith. If upon faith, or rather, upon our believing, there is 1. a disunity between election and justification, and 2. implied arminianism. Rather, God elected His people from eternity in His Son, and saw them complete and just in Him, though He had yet to suffer for their sins. But only in time does a sinner learn to know himself as lost, and when Christ is revealed to them as just in Him.
- If faith (or rather, believing) is something we have to do, then it would make us the agents of our own salvation,

Arrow doesnt believe in systems. Reread my posting about interpretation. Do you see the Bible as a haphazard collection of potentially contradictory dogmas? Or is there a pattern, is there logic, consistency? Inconsistency implies error. Hypercalvinism is perfectly consistent. Calvinism is not. I see no contradiction in the laws of physics that maintain the universe, though I do not understand it all. So in theology. If the natural part of God's revelation is so ordered in all things and sure, maybe His covenant revelations are too (as He claims).

[Afgewezen]

Ego flos's quote misses the point: that text refers to an outward conversion of Israel, not a call to accept Christ. This outward call to repent comes to us too, as I've stated previously.

Wat een dwaasheid. God zou alleen een uitwendige bekering eisen? Dat geloof je toch zelf niet?

Afgewezen: of course you (and Boston, and Calvin, etc) dont agree. Because you make faith a duty. Or rather, you make believing in Christ a duty. Or, to be very clear, you make believing that Christ is your Saviour the duty of each hearer. This is presumption, nothing less. My apologies to the great Boston (a man whose hem of garment I would not dare to touch). It is the duty for those awakened sinners to whom the Holy Spirit reveals Him, to believe. Not to hearers who do not feel the true nature of their sin and grieve because of it. All confusion ends when you see the address tag on each gospel promise, as Gallio once put it. It says, for the regenerated only. Now, that you will never accept this is obvious.

Je redeneringen zijn wat vreemd. Omdat ik van het geloof een plicht maak, ben ik het niet met je eens. Je maakt er zelf een ‘confusion’ van. Verder verlies je uit het oog dat Boston een onderscheid maakt tussen een recht van toegang en een recht van bezit. Op deze laatste manier geloven dat Jezus je Zaligmaker is, dát zou vermetel zijn. De beloften zijn voor ‘the regenerated only’. Ja, wel ‘in bezit’. Maar de beloften worden aan allen aangeboden die onder het Evangelie leven. Zie Hebr. 4 vs. 1, 2. En iedereen heeft de plicht om te geloven, niet alleen ‘awaked sinners’. Dat dit in een weg van bekering gaat, is een andere zaak.

If faith (or rather, believing) is something we have to do, then it would make us the agents of our own salvation.

Faith is faith. Daar moeten we niet allerlei redeneneringen op los gaan laten. Faith is: to believe what God has revealed in the Gospel about his Son (sorry voor mijn Goudse Engels).

Hypercalvinism is perfectly consistent. Calvinism is not.

Calvinism is not perfectly consistent. Fortunately. For there are things which are beyond our thoughts. God heeft van eeuwigheid bepaald wie uitverkoren zijn en wie niet. Toch is God niet de Auteur van de zonde. Dat is niet ‘perfectly consistent’. Dat zullen we nooit tot een kloppend systeem kunnen krijgen. En dat moeten we ook niet willen. Hypercalvinism is de dood in de pot. Het maakt God tot een tiran en het Evangelie tot een ijdele klank.

[ndonselaar]

More important is the criticism of ndonselaar:
- Justification from eternity or upon faith. If upon faith, or rather, upon our believing, there is 1. a disunity between election and justification, and 2. implied arminianism. Rather, God elected His people from eternity in His Son, and saw them complete and just in Him, though He had yet to suffer for their sins. But only in time does a sinner learn to know himself as lost, and when Christ is revealed to them as just in Him.
- If faith (or rather, believing) is something we have to do, then it would make us the agents of our own salvation,

Waarom is er een disunity tussen rechtvaardiging en de verkiezing als we belijden dat de rechtvaardiging door het geloof is? In Johannes 6 vinden we dat Christus zegt dat ‘Al wat Mij de Vader geeft, zal tot Mij komen; en die tot Mij komt, zal Ik geenszins uitwerpen.’ Hier spreekt de Schrift dat de Vader iets geeft in de tijd. Dat is nu ook de tijd dat de mens gelooft. Zie het vervolg van de tekst: en die tot Mij komt. Dit is een geloofsdaad. Dit is niet in strijd met de verkiezing want ook spreekt datzelfde tekstdeel ‘al wat Hij Mij gegeven heeft’. Dit is al gebeurd.

Het argument van dat het geloof iets is wat wij moeten doen en dat wij dan de bewerkers zijn van onze zaligheid vind ik geen argument. Heel de Schrift ademt de ‘rechtvaardiging door het geloof’. Wat te denken van de tekst ‘And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.’

Het geloof Cannabis is niet onze verdienste, nee dat is Gods gave. God schenkt ons het geloof, maar God werkt beide het willen en het werken. De mens is geen stok en blok.

[ndonselaar]

Nog even over de functie van het Woord. Onlangs hoorde ik iets wat me aan het denken bracht:

Achter iedere preekstoel [als het goed is] staat de rechterstoel van Christus.

[gravo]

(...) God deals with man as rational beings. Deny this and you deny that Scripture and theology are rational and logical and meant to be understood by fallen humans, and you have just made all Scriptural truths inaccesible. There is a common fear that we over-rationalize Scripture and theology, and usually this fear is accompanied with a bewildered cry that we should focus on faith. But this fear is without foundation. It is also irrational and unscriptural. (...)

Dear cannabis,

Thanks for quickly answering my posting. Unfortunately you did not react on the core of my message: the meaning of the variation of style and literary forms, used by the authors of the Bible (and therefore by God) for our way of theologize. Should it not hint to the fact, that a mere rationalization of the biblical truth will always be empty unless we experience the truth in our own lifes? In other words: does the involvement of each biblical author not point to the believe, that the truth can only be fully understood and known, unless we experience the truth within our own lifes?

Of course, I can agree on the necessity to have a consistent theology. We must know what we believe in order to educate, to defend and explain our faith. But in the first place we have to be believers ourselves. I allways become a bit nervous, when we defend a theological system, made by people that experienced the truth with heart and soul, in a technical, abstract and distant way. Theological systems do never refer do themselves. It explains and systematizes the experienced and present faith in the best possible way. There are as many ways tot theologize as there are children of God out of the many cultures and many times God has reached.

Still the heart of our believe is the actual presence of our faith.

So, my thesis would be: A well founded theological system in the hands of a non-believer can only convince by his consistency, as many other systems can. The rationality is obvious, but what rationality can reach my heart? At last our rational capacities are not enough to know and meet God. (In spite of the promisses of the Enlightment, that form of rationalism, that made "the turn tot the subject" by which all knowledge will be controlled by reason.)

I do not accuse you of being a kantian rationalist, but I do wonder why you stress that specific type of protestant rationalism, that can be so easily and comfortably used to keep the distance and to hide your personal involvement. The specific theological system, you defend, gives yourself that opportunity, I guess, to talk and argue and analyze, without having the danger, that someday, someone points at you and says: " nice, but what about you...do you believe? The knowledge of all the consistent systems will then be not usefull and not convincing.

For there is a chronological order: first faith, then theology. First we walk the way, then we describe it. That is the reason why I do not like these theological descriptions in a sermon, describing the path allready gone by others and forgetting the poor travellers that need no description of the way but that need to be lead at that way.

Follow me ! That non-descriptive event gives birth to a life-long experience of faith, hope and charity and at the end to a personal theology as all the biblical writers did know.

When I read the Bible and compare it to our systematic language, I allways feel our efforts a bit forced. Many theological systems are like a machine that was rebuild after it fell apart. But at the end of the day we still have a handful of parts of the machine that did not fit and for that reason are ready to be thrown away.

gravo

[cannabis]

Hi Gravo:

You say that your core message was that "a mere rationalization of the biblical truth will always be empty unless we experience the truth in our own [lives]?" I fully agree with this message. That does not mean that we cannot deduce dogmas and doctrines from Scripture and order them into a coherent, internally consistent "system".

You say further: "I allways become a bit nervous, when we defend a theological system, made by people that experienced the truth with heart and soul, in a technical, abstract and distant way." So do I.

But when you say "There are as many ways tot theologize as there are children of God out of the many cultures and many times God has reached." you are out to lunch. There is both diversity and unity in how God converts His elect. Hence election applies to all of them, as does original sin, justification and adoption from eternity, etc. These doctrines are true at all times, no matter how God's children are led.

Having a rational system in our head means nothing, as you state. It leads to formalist, or dry calvinism, as Philpot would say.

Thanks for not considering me a "kantian rationalist". I've read Kant, find him quite fascinating, but follow Edwards in philosophy.

I take strong issue with the statement that my "specific type of protestant rationalism.... can be so easily and comfortably used to keep the distance and to hide your personal involvement." Read Philpot. He was very, very personal and experiential. Much more so than most GG preachers today. Yet he was a hypercalvinist. His system was not worked out in a thick tome as Brakel, Witsius, etc. did, but contained in his sermons. I can very justly argue that many of the great Puritans (alas, also Edwards) and Dutch old fathers were much more systematic than the hypercalvinists I hide behind.

I dislike mixing emotion and sentimentalism into discourses like this in order to give them an experiential flavour. So I stick to doctrines and omit myself. If people only believe me because I've experienced certain truths, then they are looking at the wrong place. Look at the arguments and at Scripture where they are from.

Now, to lead travellers on the way, you need to describe it. Dont get messed up there. If you dislike a technical sermon that is full of subtle doctrinal distinctions and that appears to paint out the exact way each person is converted, I am with you. In the end all doctrine is about one thing, love to God, because He is worthy.

[cannabis]

Ndonselaar:

God's elect were loved from all eternity. God could only love them by considering them in His Son. But by placing them into His Son, their guilt (though they had not yet sinned in eternity) was imputed to Christ, and His righteousness (though not yet meritted) was imputed to them. Hence the elect are righteous from eternity in teh eyes of God. The act of believing when Christ is revealed to them by the Holy Spirit does not make them righteous, but tells them that Christ's righteousness is also for them. Faith, then, must be given to a sinner, in order for the soul to believe that Christ died for him. By no means does this make man a senseless object. It is his soul that does the believing, after his soul has seen Christ revealed, by faith.

[cannabis]

Now to Afgewezen:

I still stand by my comment to Ego flos. God wants us to repent. Truly repent, with the heart, else it is not repentance at all. But that is not the same as believing that Christ is our personal Saviour. God can call us to repent while not calling us to believe until we have repented. Repent, and then believe. Not too dwaas, once you understand what I wrote.

Boston makes a distinction between a right of access and a right of possession (I dont know his words anymore, but am translating yours). A right to come to Christ? And how does an unregenerate person come to Christ of his own power? How, if his heart is full of enmity. This is what I call dwaasheid.
That it is the duty of all to believe that Christ is the Saviour I agree with. But again, that does not mean it is our duty to believe that He is our Saviour. Go, then, to the harbour of Rotterdam and be evangelical to the people you see there. Can you preach that it is their duty to believe that Christ is their Saviour? How can they, if they live in sin? It would be presumption. Then dont do it to the unregenerate in Church, who, with all their formality and insincerity are more abominable to God than the ones I mentioned above. But you can preach that it is their duty to repent and turn to God and beg for His mercy and salvation, because Christ died for the greatest of sinners.


Please, there is no topic more misunderstood than that of faith. Faith is not the same as believing. Believing is an act of the soul. Faith is the ability of the soul to believe. This may seem subtle, but it is not. I can have eyes and have them closed. Having eyes is not the same as looking and seeing. People always mess this up and get their shirts in a knot as a result.

Theology should be consistent. That does not mean that all things can be explained. The trinity, for example. But these doctrines are not irrational, do not contradict with other doctrines. Saying that Christ wants all to come to conversion and that He offers salvation to all but that He has elected some, is contradictory. The Arminians rightly understood this. Hence they beat up the last doctrine. Calvinists try to keep the system alive. Hypercalvinists take issue with the first part.

That God is not the author of sin but has determined who will be saved is perfectly consistent. There is a difference in His will of permission and of decree. You ought to know this.

To call hypercalvinism "de dood in de pot" is a strong statement. To set dead people to work as modern preachers like to do sounds more "dood in de pot" to me. Exchanging power with form. Why you think it makes God a tirant is not clear. I shudder to hear anyone say this, and then give no reasons. Nor does it diminish the gospel. Rather, it prevents it from being trampled by swine.