Godfrey in Always Reformed

I finally got my copy of Always Reformed from Pastor Joel.  And I couldn’t help it, after looking through the table of contents and seeing the various essays offered in this Festschrift, I went straight to Godfrey’s inuagural presidential address at Westminster Seminary back in 1993.  The editors included the transcript at the end of the book as closure to the essays written in his honor.  While a student at Westminster, I never had the chance to read his address on the direction the seminary would take under his leadership.  Now I have, and what a great read it was.  I only wish I could have heard it as it was originally given.  Well on second thought, maybe not.  I can appreciate it now much more than I would have in ’93 given that I was still in high school.  My introduction to Calvinism at the time was in the public classroom that year and it was conveyed to me as something utterly nasty and repulsive.  Reading Godfrey’s address now conjures up the exact opposite response.  Needless to say, Calvinism is dear to my heart.

One of Godfrey’s hopes in his address entitled The Whole Counsel of God: Courageous Calvinism for a New Century is simply this…

My passion and my concern is that we be committed to the notion that Calvinism holds more promises than memories, as rich and glorious as those memories are.

I love this forward thinking statement from a Calvin historian.  You would think his tendency would be to look back to centuries past and stay there, but the whole address is promise driven, hopeful of the future.  He goes on to explain how the seminary should accomplish leading students to understand the whole counsel of God with these four points:

1. Comprehensive Calvinism
2. Consistent Calvinism
3. Christocentric Calvinism
4. Committed Calvinism

I want to look at two of them.  Before I focus on Christocentric Calvinism, I want to highlight one quote that stopped me in my reading and it comes in his first point regarding “Comprehensive Calvinism”.  I’ll quote the entire paragraph because it builds to what finally challenged me at the end of his thought:

We celebrate this year the 350th anniversary of the seating of the Westminster Assembly, naturally precious to Westminster Seminary.  We need to remember that the Westminster Assembly not only gave us Confession of Faith as the summary of our doctrine, but the Westminster Assembly gave us also catechisms to teach the faith.  It gave us a directory of worship to guide our meeting with God.  It gave us a form of government to help in the organization of the church, and it gave us a Psalter to voice our praise to God.  As we seek a comprehensive Calvinism, we must be sure that we have not shrunk it just to theology–however full our theology might be.  We need not only a Reformed service in this world.  We must be renewed in the fullness of a Reformed life flowing out of a Reformed theology.  Our life must follow a pattern of Bible study and prayer, of word and sacrament, of self-denial and active love, and let me say, of Sabbath and of Psalm.  Too many of us have lost a day of rest and worship and study and reflection and have lost the Psalms which put steel in our souls.  We need to capture that fullness of Calvinistic experience as well as Calvinistic theology.

I know I haven’t given Sabbath keeping enough thought.  It’s something I’m still to this day wrestling with.  I have also failed to give the Psalms the priority they deserve in my praise of God.  I always tell myself I’d much rather have a psalm memorized to music than any of today’s praise songs or hymns, but ask me if I have any memorized save Psalm 1 and 23.  I don’t.  I have issues because I’m inconsistent (see point #2).

I loved his third section on the centrality of Christ.  Let’s finish with Christocentric Calvinism and again, I’ll give you a good chunk to read:

In that comprehensive and consistent Calvinism to which we aspire we must remember that Christ must be at the center: Christ’s atoning work on the cross; Christ’s glorious victory over sin and death in His resurrection; Christ our great prophet, priest, and king; Christ our Lord through the Holy Spirit.  Christ is at the very heart and center of our life, of our piety, of our faith, of our study, of preaching.  And so, we must always and again renew ourselves in that central commitment to Jesus Christ.

On this point I must plead as a church historian the concern of John Calvin that we restore the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to a more central place in our piety because the sacrament so basically draws us back to the very body and blood of Christ where we have our redemption.  We need Christ at the center of our theology, of our piety, of our worship, and of our service.

Nothing beats true faith, where our hearts our focused upon our Savior together with the saints in true fellowship.  Other than the audible preached Word, nothing beats the visible Word given to us in the Lord’s Supper.  If I had it my way, I’d love to fellowship in the Supper week in, week out.  Would you expect to go to worship without the preached Word?  No.  Then shouldn’t the visible Word be present weekly?

Gratitude Must Be Taught

Call it providence.  When Pastor Jeff sent out an email asking for someone to lead our EM in prayer tonight, there it was: prayer of thankfulness.  This is exactly what’s been on my mind for the last couple of months as I went through the Lord’s Prayer in the gratitude section of the HC.  When I started reading Ursinus’ HC commentary this week, I was struck by his concluding paragraph on Lord’s Day 1.  He writes this:

Objection.  It is not necessary to teach that which follows of its own accord.  Gratitude naturally follows a knowledge of our misery and deliverance.  Therefore there is no necessity that it should be taught.

Answer.  There is here an incorrect course of reasoning, in supposing that to be true generally, which is so only in part; for it is not a just inference that because gratitude follows a knowledge of our deliverance from misery, that the manner of it must necessarily follow.  We are, therefore, to learn from the Holy Scriptures, the nature of true gratitude, and the manner in which it should be expressed, so as to be pleasing and acceptable to God.  Again; the major proposition is not universally true; for that also which follows of its own accord, may be taught for the purpose of increasing our knowledge and confirming us therein.  And it is in this way, that is, through the revelation and knowledge of his Word, that God awakens, increases, and confirms in us, true gratitude. (p. 22)

When you think about this, it shouldn’t be striking, but it was to me.  I always tell Jacob to say, “Thank you,” when it’s appropriate.  I think nothing of teaching him to do so; it’s just something I need to do as his dad.  Then why does it shock me that gratitude needs to be taught (to me)?  Yes, a huge part of me thinks it should come from the Spirit’s work in the overflow of your heart.  But, Ursinus is right.  It needs to be taught explicitly and directly, because fools like me don’t think they need instruction on gratitude.  Naturally, then, I cease to be thankful if I abandon its instruction.  Ursinus is right: my thinking and reasoning are way off.

So yes, thankfulness must be taught from the Word, because our sinfulness blinds us to God and His goodness.  Gratitude will only overflow where the Word of God is the authority.  There is no growth apart from the Spirit’s use of the Word and the Word of God is saturated with our gratitude towards God.  This we must be taught.

The New Testament Deacon: The Church’s Minister of Mercy (Introduction)

I started reading this book earlier in the year but never finished it.  I picked it up again and I’m enjoying it enough to go back to the beginning and give it deeper attention.  This is the start of (hopefully) an ongoing book reflection on The New Testament Deacon: The Church’s Minister of Mercy.  I’ll let you know where I agree and disagree with Strauch, and more importantly, where I need to grow in my service as a deacon to our church.  The New Testament Deacon is a four-part book with each section taking up a New Testament passage of interest to the diaconate (Acts 6, Philippians 1, 1 Timothy 3 part 1, and 1 Timothy 3 part 2 respectively).

Here’s the outline:

• Part 1: Dividing Up the Work: Word and Deed
• Chapter 1: The Shepherd’s Priorities: Word and Deed
• Chapter 2: Appointing Ministers of Mercy
• Chapter 3: Official Public Recognition
• Chapter 4: Acts 6: The Prototype for Deacons

• Part 2: A Two-Office Church: Overseers and Deacons
• Chapter 5: Overseer: Episkopoi
• Chapter 6: Deacons: Diakonoi

• Part 3: The Qualifications for Deacons
• Chapter 7: The Absolute Necessity for Character Qualifications for Deacons
• Chapter 8: Five Character Qualifications for Deacons
• Chapter 9: Qualifications Demand Examination
• Chapter 10: Qualifications for Wives Who Assist Their Deacon Husbands
• Chapter 11: Family Requirements for Deacons

• Part Four: The Importance of Deacons in the Church
• Chapter 12: The Significance and Rewards of Deacons
• Chapter 13: Agents of Christ’s Mercy

…some interesting chapter titles.  Like I said, this will be another ongoing project (as much as time permits) here at ADL.  This is what the cover looks like, and if you’re interested, you can read some reviews on it at amazon…