Sunday School Reading - November 30, 2008

Here are some recommended readings from our discussion this week. Yesterday we discussed the third and fourth aspects of Christ's work in his ascension and baptizing his church with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I will refrain from repeating all of the recommendations on the work of Christ that I had the last three weeks. I would encourage you to look at the last three posts on Sunday School Reading (see the tag line at the bottom to get at them quickly) and I'll focus on recommendations for those two aspects of Christ's work in particular. Many Reformed books on the Holy Spirit focus on Pentecost as a unique event the way that we did so even though we looked at it under the doctrine of Christ I put some of these books in the recommendations below, especially keeping in mind that a few of these are available in the church library and so you can save a little cash that way.

Before I get to recommendations for this week, I wanted to highlight for you that monergism books is offering an 8-part sermon series on the doctrines of grace by Dr. Arturo Azurdia III (Western Seminary) for free - you only pay shipping and handling ($3.99). Please note that these are MP3 cds and so you need a cd-player that has MP3 capability or you'll have to play them through the computer or save them there and then burn as standard audio files. Also, monergism books is offering free shipping on all orders over $50 and they tend to have very competitive prices so you might want to consider packaging this with some other purchases. Later today or tomorrow I will try to put up a post on books that I think every Christian should read so that you can maybe get some gift ideas or winter break reading for yourself.

First, here is the catechism question related to our discussion yesterday:

Q28. Wherein consisteth Christ's exaltation?
A28. Christ's exaltation consisteth in his rising against from the dead on the third day, in ascending up to heaven, in sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day.

Here are some recommended books. I made sure to mention which of these are available in the church library.

Perspectives on Pentecost: New Testament Teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit by Richard Gaffin - This is the best book that you can get dealing with the topic of Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The first two chapters deal with our discussion from yesterday about the uniqueness of the Pentecost event and the importance for God's people today. The rest of the book deals with the special gifts of tongues, prophecy, and the like. This is a very helpful book.

The Holy Spirit by Sinclair Ferguson - This is the single best book that I have found on the Holy Spirit. Dr. Ferguson has a chapter devoted to Pentecost and its uniqueness that is very helpful and surpassed only by Dr. Gaffin's book above. I would highly recommend picking up this book. Unfortunately it is not available through the church library.

The Work of the Holy Spirit by Abraham Kuyper - This is the next best book on the Holy Spirit. Abraham Kuyper was a Dutch theologian and later politician (he served one term as Prime Minister) blessed with a brillant mind. He was a contemporary of B.B. Warfield and Herman Bavinck. While the other two are generally more consistent theologians Kuyper is also often worth reading, particularly his Lectures on Calvinism, which we will mention when we talk about the relationship of church and culture. This is a very helpful book that is available online for free and is also in the church library. As a warning, one of the problems with Kuyper is that he did believe in eternal justification and that does come up briefly in his work. We reject that doctrine on both Scriptural and Confessional bases (please send me an e-mail or leave a comment if you'd like to know why).

The Holy Spirit: His Person and Ministry by Edwin Palmer - I have no read this book but it does come with good recommendations and is by a solidly Reformed theologian who used to teach at WTS. I have it on here because it is available in the church library.

Father, Son, and Spirit: The Trinity in John's Gospel by Andreas Kostenberger and Scott Swain - I mentioned this book yesterday morning and I will recommend it again as an excellent study on the Trinity. This is a fascinating book as Kostenberger is a New Testament professor while Swain teaches systematic theology. This means that the book is almost unique in being sensitive to the way that topics are presented in John's gospel while also seeking to set forth the doctrine of truth that the church confesses on the basis of the whole of Scripture. Hopefully we will see many more books like this in the future. I recommend it here because it was mentioned yesterday and also because the authors do take a few pages to deal with the scene where Jesus breathes on the disciples in John 20.

There are not any books out there that I'm aware of that are dedicated to Christ's ascension. Instead I would recommend that you look at the books on the work of Christ from the last few weeks and also the relevant sections in our systematic theologies. Those are Book 2, Chapters 15-17 in John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion; Volume 3 (Sin and Salvation in Christ), Chapter 8 of Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics; Volume 2, Chapter 13, sections 2-3 of Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology; and Chapter 23 (under the intercession of Christ) in A.A. Hodge's Outlines of Theology (online).

Finally, here are some papers and articles on these topics that you can read online for free:
"The Ascension and Second Advent Practically Considered" by Charles Spurgeon
"Pentecost, Spirit Baptism, and Charismatism" by Fred Zaspel
"Pentecost: Before and After" by Richard Gaffin
"How Believers Experienced the Spirit Before Pentecost" by John Piper

Note: I don't have much here on the ascension because there really isn't much out there that I could find. In one sense it is the forgotten aspect of Christ's work except wherein it is referenced to diffuse a controversy (for example, Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger, and Bruce often reference the ascension in responding to Roman Catholic and Lutheran views on the Lord's Supper and the person of Christ). If you want more then please go to www.monergism.com and in the upper righthand corner type in "Ascension" as a search. At the bottom of the string should be a few sermons by Michael Horton on the subject and one by Robert Godfrey. You should enjoy all of those.

Book Sale

I just wanted to give a heads up that through Friday Reformation Heritage Books is offering God With Us: Knowing the Mystery of Who Jesus Is by Daniel Hyde for 65% off the cover price (only $5 instead of $14). 1100 years ago Anselm wrote a tract called, Cur Deus Homo (Why the God-Man) asking why the eternal Son of God had to become man to win our salvation. Hyde is trying to ask and answer this same question in this book. You'll find this helpful for its focus on the person of Jesus Christ as he is revealed throughout all of redemptive-history as opposed to just in the Gospels or Paul's writings. You can read Anselm's work on Google Books here.

Sunday School Reading - November 23, 2008

This week we finished our discussion of Christ's atonement and then turned to his resurrection from the dead. I'll direct you back to last week's post for more reading on the atonement. Below are some recommended readings regarding Christ's resurrection. First the related catechism questions.

Q27. Wherein did Christ's humiliation consist?
A27. Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.

Q28. Wherein consisteth Christ's exaltation?
A28. Christ's exaltation consisteth in his rising again from the dead on the third day, in ascending up into heaven, in sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day.

Here are some book recommendations on the resurrection. Most of these are repeats from last week as I've generally tried to find books that are on Christ's work as a whole to save money but there are a few new ones.

Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul's Soteriology by Richard Gaffin - I have recommended this book before and I'll put the same disclaimer on it that I did then. It is not an easy book to read. The book is essentially an expansion and development of Dr. Gaffin's Ph.D dissertation on the resurrection in Paul's epistles. Accordingly this is a very academic book. It is also a very useful one with Dr. Gaffin's exegesis and exposition of our union with Christ as life-giving Spirit in his resurrection. It's worth reading but be prepared to go through it carefully two or three times.

Justified in Christ: God's Plan for Us in Justification ed. by Scott Oliphint - This is a repeat recommendation from last week. Again, this book is partly a response to the New Perspective on Paul on the topic of justification and salvation. For this week though I have to say that the article in here by Lane Tipton (professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary) is one of the best things you can find on our union with Christ in his resurrection.

The Person and Work of Christ by Benjamin B. Warfield - Again, this is another repeat from last week. Again, Warfield is always worth reading and this is Warfield at his best. There is a paperback copy available from WTS Books for about a dollar cheaper.

The Work of Christ by Robert Letham - And one final repeat from last week. This is a very useful book but probably not as good as Warfield and not as comprehensive on the Resurrection as Gaffin. Still, it's also cheaper and so might fit the budget more easily.

Far as the Curse is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemption by Michael Williams - This is not a book that is really about the resurrection but is rather a biblical theology of Scripture's overall covenantal message. There are two reasons that I have it in here. First, this is the best book that I have read on covenantal theology and biblical theology and would certainly be on a list of books that I think every Christian should read (coming soon!). Second, Dr. Williams (professor of systematic theology at Covenant Theological Seminary) focuses in the opening on how Christ's resurrection from the dead is the turning point of Scripture's narrative and all of history. To see how the Scriptures place such a high emphasis on the resurrection makes this book invaluable.

Next our systematic theologies. John Calvin deals with the resurrection in Book 2, Chapters 16 and 17 of Institutes of the Christian Religion. Herman Bavinck discusses it in Volume 3 (Sin and Salvation in Christ), Chapter 8 under Christ's exaltation in his Reformed Dogmatics. Charles Hodge addresses the resurrection in Chapter 13, Section 1 in Volume 2 (warning: .pdf file) of his Systematic Theology. A.A. Hodge focuses on the resurrection in its eschatological importance in Chapter 35 of his Outlines of Theology (available online at Google books; it looks like someone bought the copy in the Shady Grove bookstore so it is no longer available there).

Finally, here are some good articles and papers that you can read for free online about the resurrection:
"The Spiritual Resurrection of Believers: A Sermon on Eph. 2:4-5" by Geerhardus Vos
"Resurrection Living" by William Dennison - This is a very good article!
"Declared to be the Son of God by his Resurrection" by Jack Peterson
"The Exaltation of Christ in the Resurrection" by Ligon Duncan - These next few articles are a series of sermons that Dr. Duncan has preached on Easter Sundays at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, MS.
"Why the Resurrection Matters" by Ligon Duncan
"United to Christ" by Ligon Duncan
"He is Risen" by Ligon Duncan
"Who Raised Jesus from the Dead?" by Richard Phillips - This is an excellent article on the Trinitarian aspect of the resurrection.
"On the Third Day He Rose Again" by Duncan Thomas
"Redemption and Resurrection: An Exercise in biblical-systematic theology" by Richard Gaffin - This appears to be an abridged article expressing many of the same things in the book recommended above. If you only read one of the articles then this should probably be the one.

Canons of Dort - Second Head of Doctrine

As we continue to think about the doctrine of definite atonement I thought that it would be helpful to post the articles of faith from the Second Main Head of Doctrine in the Canons of Dort along with a very brief commentary on them. This is the Head of Doctrine where the Synod addressed the Arminian claim of universal atonement. Please see the below post of Sunday School reading for books and articles that explain why we believe in a definite atonement.

Article 1: God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. His justice requires (as he has revealed himself in the Word) that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body. We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God's justice.

The first article points us back to the doctrine of God. Because he is not made up of a bunch of independent attributes we have to remember that his attributes define one another. His mercy is a loving and just mercy. His justice is a righteous and holy justice. He cannot compromised who he is or act contrary to his nature. So as we stand before him as sinners in Adam we stand guilty and condemned to eternal punishment by God's righteous judgment.

Article 2: Since, however, we ourselves cannot give this satisfaction or deliver ourselves from God's anger, God in his boundless mercy has given us as a guarantee his only begotten Son, who was made to be sin and a curse for us, in our place, on the cross, in order that he might give satisfaction for us.

The problem is that we can never offer anything to God that would fully satisfy his righteous and just anger that burns against us sinners. Left to ourselves our destination is an eternal suffering from the pains of hell. Yet we find that as God is also merciful he has given us his Son who became a curse for us and offered a perfect satisfaction of God's just wrath. Those who are covered by Christ's atoning death no longer need to fear punishment for their sins.

Article 3: This death of God's Son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; it is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.

The Synod reminds us that God's death is the only sacrifice sufficient to satisfy God's justice. We cannot choose to offer satisfaction by Christ's death or by something else. We cannot even choose to offer satisfaction by Christ's death and or along with something else. Christ's death alone is the satisfaction for sins and his death has such great value and worth that is sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.

Article 4: This death is of such great value and worth for the reason that the person who suffered it is--as was necessary to be our Savior--not only a true and perfectly holy man, but also the only begotten Son of God, of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Another reason is that this death was accompanied by the experience of God's anger and curse, which we by our sins had fully deserved.

The reason that we know that Christ's death has such a high value as was described in Article 3 is because of who we know and confess Jesus to be. He is the only true and perfect man who is without sin. Of all men who have ever lived Jesus is the only one who never sinned and never deserved to suffer God's wrath. At the same time he is the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal God in his own right. So his death has an infinite value as he alone could bear the entirety of God's wrath for our sins.

Article 5: Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people, to whom God in his good pleasure sends the gospel.

In this article the Synod affirms the promise of the gospel. We know that anyone who does believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. Roger Nicole said that in the whole history of humankind there has not been a single person who has come to Christ earnestly seeking salvation in him that was turned away. The promise of Almighty God, who cannot lie and in whom there is no shadow of turning, is that all who believe will be saved. Therefore we believe and hold that the gospel must be preached to all people without any discrimination as all are called to believe and repent.

Article 6: However, that many who have been called through the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ but perish in unbelief is not because the sacrifice of Christ offered on the cross is deficient or insufficient, but because they themselves are at fault.

The universal call does not mean that we believe in universal salvation. There are many who do not obey God's summons in the gospel to believe in the Lord Jesus and repent of their sins. The Synod affirms that the problem is not that Christ's sacrifice was insufficient but rather than they perish because of their own unbelief and refusal to obey the call of the gospel. The sin and punishment of sinners does not take away from the infinite value of Christ's atonement.

Article 7: But all who genuinely believe and are delivered and saved by Christ's death from their sins and from destruction receive this favor solely from God's grace--which he owes to no one--given to them in Christ from eternity.

Here the Synod reaffirms that salvation is a monergistic (one worker) activity. God does not work with those who believe to save them. God effectively saves those who believe. Sinners cannot rightly force God to save them. They can only be saved by him according to the means of salvation that he has revealed in his word. The ones God saves are only the ones that he has chosen in Christ from all eternity (see the First Main Head of Doctrine).

Article 8: For it was the entirely free plan and very gracious will and intention of God the Father that the enlivening and saving effectiveness of his Son's costly death should work itself out in all his chosen ones, in order that he might grant justifying faith to them only and thereby lead them without fail to salvation. In other words, it was God's will that Christ through the blood of the cross (by which he confirmed the new covenant) should effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and given to him by the Father; that he should grant them faith (which, like the Holy Spirit's other saving gifts, he acquired for them by his death); that he should cleanse them by his blood from all their sins, both original and actual, whether committed before or after their coming to faith; that he should faithfully preserve them to the very end; and that he should finally present them to himself, a glorious people, without spot or wrinkle.

Here we see the key to the doctrine of definite atonement. Because all those who believe are saved and only those who are chosen believe we must hold that the saving effectiveness of Christ's death, which is a real satisfation of God's justice, efficiently saves and only saves the elect. Again, there is nothing aside from Christ's death that they may plead before the judgment seat of God. The Synod says that Christ's death effectively redeems all those who the Father has given to Christ. Those who are redeemed are certainly cleansed. Those cleansed are preserved. Those preserved are glorified. Christ's death is an efficient and efficacious salvific work. Those for whom he died are saved.

Article 9: This plan, arising out of God's eternal love for his chosen ones, from the beginning of the world to the present time has been powerfully carried out and will also be carried out in the future, the gates of hell seeking vainly to prevail against it. As a result the chosen are gathered into one, all in their own time, and there is always a church of believers founded on Christ's blood, a church which steadfastly loves, persistently worships, and--here and in all eternity--praises him as her Savior who laid down his life for her on the cross, as a bridegroom for his bride.

Again the Synod affirms that Christ's death is the effective salvation for all of God's elect. Throughout history everyone who is saved is saved by Christ dying for them. All the powers of hell may assault them but God powerfully works his purposes in his elect. So therefore all of God's people, both in Old Testament and New Testament times, belong to the church of Christ that he has redeemed with his precious blood.

If you'd like a print version of the Canons of Dort then you can find it in this book; along with the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Ecumenical Creeds. You can read the Canons of Dort online here.

A baptist view of the Lord's Supper?

Lane Keister (a PCA pastor currently serving CRC and an RCA churches in North Dakota) and Doug Wilson (a CREC pastor and Federal Vision proponent from Idaho) have resumed their blog debate over Federal Vision theology. I'm going to going evaluate the whole of either of their positions here and I also don't want to recommend that you run over to Green Baggins (Keister) or Blog and Mablog (Wilson) to check it out, it isn't really worth your time (so I'm not linking to the relevant posts, if you'd really like to read them then just google those blogs or look in my blog list to the left and you can find them).

What caught my attention was a recent statement by Wilson that Reformed believers who reject paedocommunion (the practice of allowing baptized covenant children to come to the Lord's table and partake as soon as they are physically able to receive the bread and wine) are baptistic in their approach to the Lord's Supper. By this he means that those who reject paedocommunion draw the same line with regard to the Lord's Supper that Baptists have drawn with regard to baptism. Wilson does allow that this is not strictly baptistic, as we allow people to approach the Table on the basis of a credible profession of faith and not on requiring some "proof" of regeneration, but does argue that it is still a baptistic view of the Lord's Supper.

The question is whether or not this charge is accurate. I would argue that it should be turned around. One of the (many) problems with a credobaptist approach is that is confuses the sacrament of identification with the covenant people of God with the sacrament of spiritual nourishment for the body. That is to say that baptism and the Lord's Supper do not serve the same purpose in the life of the believer. Baptism is the non-repeated sacrament whereby someone is indentified with Christ and brought into the fellowship of his covenant people. According to Scripture we hold that covenant children are to be given this sacrament. The Lord's Supper is the oft-repeated sacrament whereby the Spirit lifts us up so that we remember what Christ has done for us, are blessed by Christ's fellowship with us, enjoy communion with Christ as the Spirit lifts us up to him, publicly proclaim again the Lord's work on our behalf, and anticipate his coming again and the day when we will feast with him in the Father's house. Credobaptists confuse both the requirement and the purpose of these two sacraments and mix them together so that the Lord's Supper becomes dominant over Biblical baptism.

I would hold that paedocommunionists make the same error in the opposite direction. Like credobaptists they refuse to remember that there are differences in the requirements and purpose of the two sacraments. Instead of the Lord's Supper they make baptism dominant. The Lord's Supper ceases to be the Spiritual nourishment of Christ's body as explained above and becomes another confirmatory seal and obligation just like baptism. To be sure a person's baptism as an infant may be a part of his profession of faith wherein a Session receives him as a communicant member but it is not the whole of that profession of faith in the doctrines of the church. Wilson ought to respect what the church has believed and practiced for two thousand years as delivered to us by the Lord and his Apostles and allow each sacrament to stay in its proper place.

Those of you who are curious about the New Perspective on Paul or Federal Vision Theology and how it relates to our Confessions and Scripture should look at the statements put out by the General Assemblies of the PCA (PCA GA Ad Interim Committee Report) and the OPC (Report of the Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification). I would also highly recommend John Fesko's book, Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine.

Van Til's Intro To Systematic Theology Part 5

Chapters 13-14 – Incomprehensibility of God

The last six chapters of Cornelius Van Til’s An Introduction to Systematic Theology deal with the doctrine of God. The first two of these chapters both focus on the incomprehensibility of God. We’ll look at those two chapters in this post.

Normally the doctrine of God is not addressed in theological Prolegomena (first principles). That is usually saved for a later volume on God and creation. Van Til believes that there are enormous apologetic benefits to having a proper doctrine of God and since the primary thrust of his Introduction is apologetic he addresses it here. Van Til wants to put forth a positive doctrine of God even though he begins with the incomprehensibility of God. So he says that the goal of his work in this doctrine is going to explain and apply the fourth question from the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Q. What is God?
A. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable; in his being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Van Til then goes into a brief survey of the history of philosophy when it comes to God. He notes that all non-Reformed/Calvinist philosophies about God always begin with man. This is done one of two ways. There are those, like Aristotle and Aquinas, who seek to build a doctrine of God by saying that his incomprehensibility means that we cannot know what God really is but we can know what he is not. This means that God is the opposite of what we are and know. Second, there are those, like Kant, who try to reason from man to God. Van Til argues that both of these cannot logically reach the transcendent God of Christianity described in the Westminster Shorter Catechism and revealed in his word but can only find an immanent God who is ultimately like creatures. One tries to define God only in terms of how he is different from man. The other tries to define him only in terms of how he is like man. Neither can reason to an absolute, self-existent God.

In contrast, Van Til argues that our doctrine of God must begin with God’s revelatory statements about himself. He says that human reason could never get to God apart from a self-conscious relationship to supernatural revelation. Van Til summarizes this as follows:

Thus the Reformed Christian has an effective answer for the modern man. His answer is that the capacities of the human mind would have no opportunity for their exercise except upon the presupposition that the most absolute God does exist and that all things in this world are revelational of him. We grant that it is only by the frank acceptance of the Scriptures as the infallible revelation of God that man can know this. But this only shows that unless one thus accepts the Scripture, there is no place for the exercise of reason. The most absolute God of the confession can only be presupposed. He cannot be proved to exist in the way that the idea of proof is taken by the Romanist-Arminian apologetics. But so far from this fact being unfortunate, it is the one thing that saves the idea of the reasonableness of the Christian religion. (267)

Because of this we find that the incomprehensibility of God does not make him completely unknowable but means that we cannot comprehend him exhaustively and that our knowledge of him is dependent upon his revelation. So to say that God is incomprehensible ultimately presupposes that his revelation is comprehensible. Otherwise we would not have anyway to know that there was an incomprehensible God. Without that revelation, then, God would not be incomprehensible but inapprehensible. Because God has revealed himself, and has done so in an absolute and authoritative way, we can know that God is and can know something of what he is.

So how is it that we can know God even though we do not know him exhaustively? First, Van Til says that everything that man knows is already known to and interpreted by God. So man at each point is dependent upon divine revelation to interpret any fact rightly. Yet that revelation results in real knowledge and because God is an effective communicator, it results in real knowledge that is understandable to man. “All revelation is anthropomorphic.” (270) Second, Van Til argues that we do not know God according to his essence the way that he knows himself but we know himself in relationship with him and that relationship is covenantal. So Van Til argues that all of our knowledge of God is covenantal knowledge as it presupposes that the transcendent God has come near to his creation. Third, this is closely related to the absolute distinction between Creator and creatures. We cannot ever know as God knows as God’s knowledge is an attribute of being God. We are not God and so we do not know the same way that he does. God knows the way he does because he is the way he is. We know only on the basis of prior revelation of God. Fourth, this is the only doctrine that makes knowledge possible for man. Man is mutable and so is always subject to change. He cannot find in himself the basis for timeless logic. If a fact is not timeless then it cannot be true and cannot be known. Our knowledge depends on the incomprehensibility of God. (Note: the rest of this chapter is a long discourse on the difference between Van Til and Clark on epistemology. This difference is rooted in the third point in this paragraph. Because this is a highly technical discussion I will not go through Van Til’s critique of Clark here.)

Chapter 14 is about the apologetic value of the incomprehensibility of God. Van Til starts by going back to where philosophy independent of revelation leaves us. Here we are stuck trying to define God apart from how he has described himself to us. We also are still reliant upon point four above where our knowledge depends on God’s incomprehensibility. Here Van Til discusses rationalism and irrationalism. Rationally, the non-Christian is aware that logically he must know something in exhaustive detail in order to understand and legislate reality. Yet he also knows that he cannot know anything in exhaustive detail and so he is forced to confess that chance must rule all things. This is irrationalism. Because man cannot live in an irrational universe he is driven back to rationalism. Van Til argues that the unbeliever constantly and unavoidably moves back and forth between these two positions because he refuses to presuppose the God of Christianity which is the only true standard of rationality.

With this in mind, Van Til believes that the incomprehensibility of God, rooted as it is in God as absolute and self-existent, is the ultimate theodicy and apologetic for the Christian. This means that there is no power that is against God or that can thwart God’s will. To admit that there was such a power would be to allow chance and revert to irrationalism again. Thus Van Til argues that we should not tone down our claims that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass but instead we should proclaim it even louder. Here Van Til spends a great deal of time arguing with J. Oliver Buswell Jr. and others. Instead of dealing with those arguments in detail I will only summarize the main reasons that Van Til believes that we need to emphasize God’s sovereignty.

1. Man’s deeds and thoughts only have significance because they take place within the context of an all-inclusive and all-controlling plan of God. Apart from this man’s thoughts and deeds take place in a void and because man is finite they have no real meaning or significance.
2. God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass on the basis of his own person and not according to some impersonal nature. Therefore we know that no matter what occurs it is ultimately good on the basis of God’s plan and God’s character. God’s will, God’s nature, and God’s freedom cannot ever be in conflict with each other. God is good and all his works are necessarily good thus all that he wills according to his own freedom to will that which his nature desires is also good. Therefore his plan is necessarily good though we may not understand it perfectly now. This calls for faith.
3. This also confesses the limits of our knowledge. Because God has told us in his word that he is omniscient we can say and know that he is omniscient. But this does not mean that we truly know or understand what it is to be all-knowing. God can and does comprehend that even though we do not. Similarly we know that God is eternal and we can echo his word in describing him that way. Yet when God says that he is eternal and we say God is eternal it is clear that God knows everything that it means to be eternal but we do not. Yet it is precisely because God is omniscient, eternal, and free that we can presuppose things are knowable to man. Only the Christian system allows for real human knowledge.
4. We must emphasize these difficult but essential doctrines of Christianity in apologetics because it is impossible to win anyone to the Christian position if we choose not to distinguish the Christian position from that of its opponents. Both Romanists and Arminians given in to secular epistemologies when they hold that the relationship between God and the human mind is like that of a teacher and a pupil. The teacher may know more than the pupil but there is at least the idea that the pupil is capable of eventually knowing as much as the teacher. There is not any proposition that the teacher can set forth that will not eventually become clear to the pupil. Thus in these systems man is not really dependent on God. Instead the Christian position is that even if God were to make all the revelational propositions that he will ever make to man about himself even then man will not have the same content in his mind about God that God has about himself unless man were also divine. The finite cannot experience the experience of the infinite. Instead we insist that God is ultimate and man’s knowledge is at every point dependent upon God’s.

Van Til then turns to what he calls the irrationalism of the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. Barth and Brunner sought to show that the “wholly other” (divine and timeless) was completely separate from the “wholly revealed” (things that are). In doing this Van Til says that they deny the revelational character of all reality. Barth often spoke about the “actuality of the book.” In this he wanted to say that the Bible, belonging to what was wholly revealed, was actually there as a revelation of the wholly other. Yet the problem is that our rational minds can only encounter the book through an irrational and subjective encounter. In other words the book does not really provide us with a consistent view of life and the world but instead we can read the book to find the words of God in back of and behind the words in the book and thus we make ourselves the test of all things.

In contrast to this subjective confusion, the Reformed faith asserts that rather than interpret the book in light of ourselves we interpret ourselves in light of the book. The Bible tells us who and what we are. We do not tell the Bible what it is. Thus the apologetic requirement is to assert plainly that unless non-Christians interpret facts as what the Bible says they are then they cannot know the facts at all.

Sunday School Reading - November 16, 2008

Here are some reading recommendations from this past Sunday. This week we discussed the atonement as the first part of our look at the fourfold work of Christ. Next week we will look at the resurrection and then the ascension and Pentecost if we have time. Please see the post below this on the threefold office of Christ for what will hopefully be a helpful connection between the person and work of Christ. First, just one catechism question for this week since we dealt with Christ's offices in the last post:

Q27. Wherein did Christ's humiliation consist?
A27. Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the dross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.

Redemption: Accomplished and Applied by John Murray - As I mentioned on Sunday, this is my favorite book outside of the Bible. This would be the number two book on my list of things that every Christian should read. It is a fantastic work. I will admit that Professor Murray is not always the easiest to read. He is somewhat technical at times but still I think that this book is more worth reading on the accomplishment and application of Christ's work than any other. The first part deals exclusively with Christ's atonement and is a large source of much of our discussion on Sunday. As I mentioned, there are two copies of this available in the church library (look for the brown and yellow cover) but I do think that this one is worth having.

The Work of Christ by Robert Letham - Bob Letham is a former OPC pastor and current teacher of theology in Wales. This book is a good, orthodox introduction to the work of Christ that is built around the threefold office of Christ. It's worth reading but I don't think it's as good as the Murray book above or the Warfield book below.

The Person and Work of Christ by Benjamin B. Warfield - I recommended this book last week as well. If you want to get a good introduction to both sides of our doctrine of Christ then this is the book to get. For what it's worth, John Murray himself said, "There is no subject on which Warfield's master mind showed its depth and comprehension better than on that of the person and work of Christ." As I've said a few times, Warfield is always worth reading though not always easy to read. He writes like the masterful turn-of-the-century theologian that he was. I'm not sure if this is in the church library or not. Note that though I have a link to Monergism Books up that features a hard cover copy there is a paperback option available through WTS Books for about a dollar cheaper.

Justified in Christ: God's Plan for us in Justification ed. by Scott Oliphint - Please see the post I have outlining this anthology. This is a good book but it is written on a high scholarly level. It is largely setting forth the Reformed and Presbyterian doctrine of justification against the New Perspective on Paul. Worth reading but go slow as some of these articles take quite a bit to work through. John Murray's work on the imputation of Adam's sin at the end is worth the price of the book though that might be the most difficult thing to read that Professor Murray wrote.

The atonement is also dealt with in the systematic theologies that we have been referencing. John Calvin closes Book 2 (Of the Knowledge of God the Redeemer in Christ) of his Institutes of the Christian Religion on this topic in Chapters 15-17. Herman Bavinck discusses the atonement under Christ's humiliation in Volume 3 (Sin and Salvation in Christ), Chapter 7 of his Reformed Dogmatics. Charles Hodge spends a great deal of Volume 2 (warning, .pdf file) of his Systematic Theology on these topics. He deals with Christ's work as Mediator in Chapter 4. He deals with Christ's work as Prophet and Priest in Chapters 5-6. Chapter 7 is an explanation of the satisfaction made by Christ (atonement), Chapter 8 asks who Christ died for (definite atonement), and Chapter 9 examines various theories on the atonement. A.A. Hodge writes on the atonement in Chapters 21-23 of Outlines of Theology (available at the Shady Grove bookstore and also for free on Google Books).

Limited/definite/particular atonement is also addressed in the two books we have discussed on the doctrines of grace (TULIP). I did not recommend any books that focus solely on limited atonement (though they are out there) simply because I think that the topic is best dealt with in terms of understanding all that Christ did in his death on the cross and that you will find Murray, Warfield, Letham, Bavinck, and both Hodges (I do think it clear that Calvin believed in limited atonement though he does not deal with it explicitly since it was not a controversy in his day) all to be incredibly helpful on this. Michael Horton appropriate titles the chapter dealing with limited atonement in Putting Amazing Back Into Grace: Embracing the Heart of the Gospel "Mission Accomplished." I think that Horton is very helpful here. Richard Phillips addresses definite atonement in chapter 3 of What's So Great about the Doctrines of Grace? and I think you will find that to also be very good.

Finally, here are some free articles that you can read on the atonement (there are a lot of these since this is obviously such a crucial doctrine):
"Atonement" by B.B. Warfield
"The Atonement" by Lorraine Boettner
"Not Faith, but Christ" by Horatius Bonar - This article is a great reminder that we are not saved by faith but rather by grace working through faith in Christ. Bonar draws our attention away from ourselves and our "work" in believing and points us back to the cross of Jesus Christ where our salvation was truly accomplished. Bonar was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor and hymn writer and I think that you'll find this article to be truly a blessing in meditating on our Lord and Savior.
"Christ Our Penal Substitute" by Robert L. Dabney
"Three Articles on Atonement" by J. Gresham Machen
"Arminianism and the Atonement" by John Murray
"The Atonement" by John Murray - This appears to be a summary of what is contained in the book by Murray recommended above
"The Death of Death in the Death of Christ" by John Owen - This book by Owen is spectacular. Be sure to read James Packer's introduction.
"The Satisfaction of Christ: Studies in the Atonement" by A.W. Pink
"The Love of God and the Intent of the Atonement" by D.A. Carson
"The Judicial and Substitutionary Nature of Salvation" by Greg Bahnsen
"Penal Substitution" by Greg Bahnsen
"Limited Atonement" Part 1 and Part 2 by Greg Bahnsen - While there were some problems with some aspects of Dr. Bahnsen's theology when it comes to theonomy it should be noted that he may very well only be matched by John Calvin and the like when it came to his polemics (defense of the faith against aberrant or heretical theologies). Gary North rightly said after Dr. Bahnsen was suddenly called to glory when he was only in his 40's, "Now that Greg is dead everyone will want to debate him." Very few were interested in engaging Dr. Bahnsen in debate because God had blessed him with such an incredible intellect and wit. You will find that this argument shows why four-point Calvinism simply cannot stand.
"The Case for Definite Atonement" by Roger Nicole - Dr. Nicole is one of the best people you will read when it comes to the doctrines of grace (if only he could be brought around on baptism now!). This is a clear positive (as opposed to polemical like the Bahnsen articles) formulation of definite atonement.
"Covenant, Universal Call, and Definite Atonement" by Roger Nicole - Here Dr. Nicole deals with the objection that believing in definite atonement means that we cannot believe in a universal offer of the gospel. I think that you'll find this article to be very helpful on that front.

Finally, I would strongly recommend that you look at the Canons of Dort Second Main Head of Doctrine and Rejection of Errors on the subject of the extent of Christ's atonement.