Prophetic Idiom: Understanding the Old Testament Prophecies

… it was impossible for the people of that time to separate the essence from the form. The essence grasped in the form is different from the form being grasped at the expense of the essence. We find the picture of the eschatological state in terms of the holy land, Jerusalem, the rule over the nations, familiar offices and organization and rites, and temporal blessedness. Nonetheless, all this, while expressed in similar terms, was felt to be different from the present because it was represented as eternal. To the mind of God, all earthly apparatus employed is purely symbolical. To the people, and in part to the prophets, the symbolical nature was not always perspicuous. The prophetic understanding of the eschatological revelation was not the measure of its revelation-import to the mind of God, far less the understanding of the people. The problem is: How can the mind of God be ascertained apart from the intent of the prophet? This is to be solved only by reference to the New Testament interpretation of the prophecies because the New Testament does not proceed mechanically or by single cases in this matter, but enables us to fix certain general principles that all cases must follow. This applies not only to the form of Israel’s life, but likewise to the problem of Israel’s permanent or passing significance in the world of redemption.
The spiritualization of the typical began with the Old Testament itself. On the whole this was progressive although not a rectilinear development (Ezekiel falls short of Jeremiah). There was the gradual perception of the symbolism as such on the prophet’s part (cf. Isa. 66:23). The typical theocracy remains behind the antitype in the lack of unification and offices. Another point by which the eschatological picture is influenced is that the various elements that go to describe God are distributed over various institutions and offices. The kingship and priesthood are not united in one order. The idea of the covenant and the kingdom is not carefully adjusted. And what is true of the verbal is also true of the theocratic prophecies. Sometimes even in one prophet there is a total absence of an attempt to correlate; sometimes only the kingship is mentioned and not the priesthood, and vice versa. Thus, the Old Testament is led to pursue these lines of approach separately.
- Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001), 120-21.  

Geerhardus Vos on Spiritualizing the Old Testament

Nobody has a right to say that the Christian church has falsified the Old Testament by spiritualizing it. The truth is that the prophets themselves began this transposition of things into a higher spiritual key, and the New Testament organs of revelation simply continued the process begun by them. When this is admitted in single isolated items, we should not deny the rightfulness of its being done on a comprehensive scale, for which also the New Testament offers precedent. If it be said that the New Testament writers in this manner do not in all things sublimate the fulfillment, but that sometimes they point to single concrete items to which they ascribe the need of literal fulfillment, our business is not to generalize this into a vast system of repristination or perpetuation of the Old Testament forms of religion, but to study carefully the principle in their discriminating treatment of the eschatological material. Learn therefore from Peter and Paul this exegetical and theological secret. Do not handle the matter too much in the confusing details, but in its large broad aspects. I say this with reference to both Romanism and premillennarianism, although it lies, of course, very far from me to identify these two systems.
- Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001), 36-7. 

Two Types of Devotion: Pietism and Confessionalism

In The Lost Soul of American Protestantism D. G. Hart makes the case that the popular categories of liberal and conservative are not sufficient to understand the history of American Protestantism. Hart argues that we must harken back further to the pietists, produced in the first Great Awakening (who can be traced further back to the anabaptists), and the Old-School Confessionalists (who opposed a Christianity based on emotions and conversion experience rather than on doctrine and catechism). Laying out history through these lenses, Hart reveals that mainline liberals and conservative evangelicals may have more in common with each other (pietism) than either have with old-school confessionalism.

Here’s a quotation from the book contrasting the two types of protestantism:

… in contrast with pietism and the ideal of the lone convert engaging in times of private or small-group prayer and Bible study, confessional Protestantism regards the ministry of clergy and corporate worship as the primary sources of spiritual edification. To be sure, parents in confessional Protestantism play an important role by providing catechetical instruction in the home. But the devotion of families is simply a microcosm of the church’s formal teaching and devotion, not an alternative designed to make up for the deficiencies of the church’s routines.
For confessional Protestantism, then, the ministry of word and sacrament, catechetical instruction, and the setting apart of ministers to perform formal religious ceremonies as well as provide informal pastoral oversight, are the building blocks of Christian devotion. Creed, liturgy, and polity are not peripheral or even barriers to genuine faith, as pietist Protestants have usually regarded them, but actually define and communicate religious identity, whether to new converts or those who have grown up in the faith.
If confessionalism constitutes a way of getting religion distinct from the patterns that have dominated American Protestantism, its difference can perhaps best be seen in two contrasting types of Christian devotion, that of crusader and that of pilgrim. For pietist Protestantism the ideal believer is one who is constantly active in extending the kingdom of God. The crusader, accordingly, is always on the lookout for ways to gain new converts and make the good deeds of believers more obvious before the watching world, thereby expanding Christian influence. In other words, the conversionist notion of Protestantism not only relies on the work of full-time revivalists and Christian individuals who share their faith with unbelievers but also results in strenuous efforts to realize the righteous ways of the faithful, whether in various crusades to reform public life or in less noticeable endeavors designed to show the difference that faith makes in daily affairs. Pietist Protestantism is inherently activist; for its adherents the Christian life is one of perpetual motion as converts, secure in their salvation, seek to take their faith to all corners of the globe and to all spheres of human existence.
Confessional Protestantism’s devotion is characteristically withdrawn and secluded compared to pietism’s aggressive and extroverted ways. For confessionalism a good bit of the Christian life includes a recognition of the spiritual dangers that still afflict believers and their consequent need for spiritual help and sustenance that the ministry of the church is designed to provide. Being a Christian, then, means participating in churchly rites and ceremonies, not simply as means of inspiration for evangelism and Christian activism, but primarily to learn dependence on grace and to persevere through life’s doubts and temptations. Pietists have typically complained that confessional Protestant conception of Christian devotion is too passive if not selfish because it is so oriented to believers rather than those outside the faith. Confessionalism, it is said, exhibits a ghetto mentality. But this complaint is based on an assumption about the nature of Christian devotion that confessionalism rejects–namely, that conversion results in strong believers who are so powerful that the true measure of spiritual zeal is what they accomplish either by winning new converts or by performing moral deeds. Confessionalism’s understanding of the Christian life as a pilgrimage, however, assumes the weakness and frailty of believers and measures success by the degree to which they continue to trust in God and hope for the world to come despite the trials and suffering of this life. This outlook even extends to the direction and purpose of history; where confessionalists have regarded human history as a cosmic drama that awaits consummation according to the will of God, pietists have swung between optimism and despair in assessing the relative proximity of history’s conclusion.
- Darryl G. Hart, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism (Oxford, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002) 171-72. 

David Vandrunen and Thomas Schreiner Baptism Debate Audio

Vandrunen and Schreiner held a debate this past Friday (November 21) at Grace Reformation Church of Woodland: listen here.

The actual debate starts at around 8:00 (after the music). 

(HT: Kyle Scheele)

A Righteousness that is Extra Nos

Just as the gospel directs us outside of ourselves to the divine Stranger who meets us in peace and reconciliation, it frees us for an extroverted piety that is no longer obsessed with either self-condemnation or self-justification. It enables us to concentrate not on the inward process of infused habits and our own moral progress, but to turn our attention outward to the fellow strangers all around us. The forensic ontology I have recommended is extrospective, turning our gaze upward to God in faith and outward to our neighbor in love.
- Michael S. Horton, People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008) 305. 

What Has Rome to do With Evangelicalism?

In both Roman Catholic and free-church ecclesiologies, then, the church’s visible holiness is inherent, although for the former it flows from the one to the many and for the latter from the many to the one. To the extent that free churches treat as central the inner experience of conversion and renewal, there is substantial agreement with Rahner’s description of the Roman Catholic position cited above, that “what principally constitutes the Church is the Holy Spirit in men’s hearts, all the rest … are in the service of this inner transformation.” In both paradigms, then, the means of grace employed (whether conceived as sacraments, ordinances, or methods) are oriented first of all towards an infused, inherent, and inward holiness. Where Rome has typically emphasized the church as the place, evangelicals and Pentecostals ordinarily think of  the church as the people. In both ways, however, the emphasis is placed on the church as actor more than receiver. Roman Catholic theology refers to the Mass as “the work of the people,” and Protestant evangelicals typically regard the church primarily as the platform for their service to God and neighbor more than as the place where God serves them.
Covenant theology has taken a different route than either of these paradigms. Regardless of the personal holiness of its members, the church (understood in terms not only of its local but also its broader assemblies) is holy because it is the field of divine activity, in which the wheat is growing up into the likeness of its firstfruits, even though weeds are sown among the wheat. Reformed (as well as Lutheran) ecclesiologies emphasize that the holiness of the Church that sets it apart from the world does not arise from within the corporate body (hierarchically) or its members (democratically), but from the ministry of the Son and the Spirit, sent from the Father, working through the Word and sacraments. This ministry remains holy in spite of the unholiness and even unbelief of those who participate outwardly in its covenantal life. Not even the personal holiness of its ministers is a condition of the church’s holiness, but the holy action of God working through the ministry. The forensic word generates, sustains, and permeates every transformative moment in life of the believer and the history of the church. Only as the field of God’s covenantal action is the church something other than another worldly institution or society.
Furthermore, Reformed theology has maintained that the church, as the covenant community in both testaments consists of professing believers and their children. Even if only one parent is a believer, the children are holy (1 Cor. 7:14). This is due not to any inner transformation or infused grace, but simply to God’s promise. In covenantal thinking, the tree is holy even if some of its branches will finally fail to yield fruit and be broken off to make room for others (Rom. 11:16-24). The tree is holy neither because it is collectively identical to Christ, nor because it is the sum total of the regenerate, but because of the eschatological connection of the covenant people to their living root (vv. 16, 18-20). At any given moment, in any local expression, the church will be a “mixed assembly” and yet the field of God’s action where faith is created and sustained. 
- Michael S. Horton, People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008) 194-95.

Indwelling Sin and Sanctification

Although the justified believer falls into various sins, often so grievous that the progress of his sanctification is for a long time interrupted (nay, itself not a little weakened), it does not follow that sanctification itself is torn away from justification. For if actual sanctification is taken away, still habitual sanctification is not; nor is the seed of God ever removed, but always remains in us (1 Jn. 3:9), as we have already proved concerning the perseverance of faith. He who sins does not act in a holy manner; but still he who does not exercise the act of holiness can have the habit of holiness remaining in himself, although weakened and infirm.
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume II (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed),  693.  

 

Francis Turretin on Justification

Here are some excellent quotations from Turretin’s section on justification [Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume II (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed)]:

Two covenants, two types of righteousness: 

However, we must premise here that God, the just Judge (dikaiokritên), cannot pronounce anyone just and give him a right to life except on the ground of some perfect righteousness which has a necessary connection with life; but that righteousness is not of one kind. For as there are two covenants which God willed to make with men–the one legal and the other of grace–so also there is a twofold righteousness–legal and evangelical. Accordingly there is also a double justification or a double method of standing before God in judgment–legal and evangelical. The former consists in one’s own obedience or a perfect conformity with the law, which is in him who is to be justified; the latter in Christ. Concerning the first, Paul says, “Not the hearers, but the doers of the law shall be justified” (Rom. 2:13); and “Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law. That the man which doeth those things shall live by them” (Rom. 10:5). Concerning the other, he says, “The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:16, 17); and “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). Concerning both, he says, “That I may be found in Christ, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ” (Phil. 3:9; cf. also Rom. 9:30, 31). Hence a twofold justification flows: one in the legal covenant by one’s own righteousness according to the clause, “Do this and live”; and the other in the covenant of grace, by another’s righteousness (Christ’s) imputed to us and apprehended by faith according to the clause, “Believe and thou shalt be saved.” Each demands a perfect righteousness. The former requires it in the man to be justified, but the latter admits the vicarious righteousness of a surety. The former could have a place in a state of innocence, if Adam had remained in innocence. But because after sin it became impossible to man, we must fly to the other (i.e., the gospel), which is founded upon the righteousness of Christ. (637)

On the duplex beneficium:

… proved from the writings of our divines whether public or private, in which everywhere and with common consent they teach that the benefits of justification and sanctification are so indissolubly connected with each other that God justifies no one without equally sanctifying him and giving inherent righteousness by the creating of a new man in true righteousness and holiness. But the question is whether that inherent righteousness (such as exists in believers on earth) enters into our justification, either as its cause or as a part, so that it constitutes some part of our justification and is the meritorious cause and foundation of our absolving sentence in the judgment of God. Romanists, as they pretend that justification consists of two parts–remission of sin and internal renovation of mind–so they assert that the cause on account of which God justifies us is the righteousness of God, which (infused into us) constitutes us internally righteous. For although they do not appear to exclude entirely the righteousness of Christ, inasmuch as they hold that by it he merited that God should communicate to us by the Holy Spirit internal righteousness and thus it is a condition of the formal cause (i.e., of inherent righteousness that it may be given to man), still they maintain that the right to seek life depends upon inherent righteousness and that on account of it God justifies us. (638)

Concerning controversies over the doctrine:

…the controversy is not carried on coldly and unfeelingly in scholastic cloud and dust (as if from a distance), but in wrestling and agony–when the conscience is placed before God and terrified by a sense of sin and of the divine justice, it seeks a way to stand in the judgment and to flee from the wrath to come. It is indeed easy in the shades of the schools to prattle much concerning the worth of inherent righteousness and of works to the justification of men; but when we come into the sight of God, it is necessary to leave such trifles because there the matter is conducted seriously and no ludicrous disputes about words (logomachia) are indulged. Hither our eyes must be altogether raised if we wish to inquire profitably concerning true righteousness; in what way we may answer the heavenly Judge, when he shall have called us to account. Truly while among men the comparison holds good; each one supposes he has what is of some worth and value. But when we rise to the heavenly tribunal and place before our eyes that supreme Judge (not such as our intellects of their own accord imagine, but as he is described to us in Scripture [namely, by whose brightness the stars are darkened; at whose strength the mountains melt; by whose anger the earth is shaken; whose justice not even the angels are equal to bear; who does not make the guilty innocent; whose vengeance when once kindled penetrates even to the lowest depths of hell]), then in an instant the vain confidence of men perishes and falls and conscience is compelled (whatever it may have proudly boasted of before men concerning it own righteousness) to deprecate the judgment and to confess that it has nothing upon which it can rely before God. And so it cries out with David, “Lord, if thou marked iniquity, who can stand?”; and elsewhere, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, because no flesh will be justified in thy sight.” (639-40)

Concerning Romans 6:

… And yet that inference would be founded upon no foundation at all, if Paul had wished to exclude only works done before faith. For who otherwise would gather that sin must not be indulged in after faith on this account because works antecedent to faith do not justify in the least? Now both kinds of works being excluded, it was easy to object this very thing, which the Romanists of the present day object to us (to wit, that it is useless to do good works if there is no merit in works; nay, we should rather sin that grace may abound). This objection of the profane, the apostle did not refute by a distinction between antecedent and subsequent works (which assuredly he ought to have done according to the hypothesis of our opponents); but by an explanation of sanctification and its indissoluble connection with justification. (642)

Concerning the distinction of law and gospel:

… if justification were by inherent righteousness, justification will be of the law, not of the gospel, and the two covenants will be confounded which are nevertheless constantly opposed as diametrically opposite each other. Legal justification takes place in no other way than by inherent righteousness, whether actual or habitual; gospel justification is to be sought not in us, but in another. This the apostle clearly teaches when he wishes to be “found in Christ” (to wit, in the judgment of God) “not having his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ” (Phil. 3:9) (i.e., not an inherent righteousness, arising from an observance of the law and which is called ours because it is in us and is perfected by our actions, but the righteousness of God and Christ, imputed to us and apprehended by faith). (643)

Regeneration and its relationship to justification:

 Paul does not say that we are justified by regeneration (Tit. 3:5-7); nay, since he ascribes justification to the grace of God and takes it away from works, he shows that he is unwilling to ascribe it to righteousness inhering by regeneration, which is rather the fruit than the cause of justification. But his intention is to point out how God will have us saved by two benefits which he bestows upon us–regeneration, of which the Holy Spirit is the author in us; and justification, which we obtain by Christ, by which we are made heirs of eternal life. That denotes the way of salvation, this its cause. (645)

Inability and Ignorance

XXVIII. To render man inexcusable, it is sufficient to take away from him the pretext of ignorance, not however to take away inability. For man is accustomed to plead ignorance, but never inability. For man (such is his pride) always persuades himself that he can do what is prescribed and is sufficiently convinced that he sins through stubborn depravity when he fails in his duty. The pretext of ignorance certainly ought to be allowed because it excuses, provided it is not affected and voluntary. However it is not so with regard to impotency, when it is voluntary and brought on (epispastos). A man is not bound to know what is not revealed. But he is bound to perform even that which through sin he is made unable to do; and consequently it can be exacted from him.
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume II (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed),  510.  

The Incarnation and the Drama of Doctrine

Reading Francis Turretin on the incarnation of Christ makes it real clear: the dogma is the drama.

Here also belongs the verb ekênose, which is not to be taken simply and absolutely (as if he ceased to be God or was reduced to a nonentity, which is impious even to think concerning the eternal and unchangeable God), but in respect of state and comparatively because he concealed the divine glory under the veil of flesh and as it were laid it aside; not by putting off what he was, but by assuming what he was not. And as the verb ekênose properly implies he emptied himself out or seemed to be emptied of all that glory which is rightly called the fulness of the deity, that he might take on our vile nature (which is mere vanity and, as it were, nothing with respect to God, and in it the most abject and miserable condition of a slave), and so from almighty to weak, from most rich to poor (2 Cor. 8:9), from the Lord of angels the servants of men, from a most glorious and happy state, which he enjoyed with the Father, he entered into a most sad condition, in which he was made a worm, no man, a reproach of men and despised of the people (Ps. 22:6), without form, without comeliness (Is. 53:2), and cut off and, as it were, brought to nothing, according to the prediction in Dan. 9:26.
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume II (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed),  314.