CCS Reflections: Genuine-Gratitude

I recently read the following quote by C. H. Spurgeon:

Young men have flung away all hope of salvation in order that they might be thought to be men of culture; they have abjured faith in order to be esteemed "free-thinkers" by those whose opinions were not worth a pin's head. I charge you, dear friend, if you are beginning at all to be a slave of other people, break these wretched and degrading bonds.

This thought by Spurgeon struck a chord within me.

I remember struggling through the "intellectual" questions raised during coursework at university. (I was a Religion and Philosophy major.) I remember struggling with how best to reconcile (on the one hand) "faith" and (on the other hand) "intellectual integrity" -- e.g., the problem of Theodicy, inspiration of Scripture and the New Testament canon, etc. (I was afflicted with doubts regarding God's goodness, his existence, the perspicuity and truth of Scripture, etc. Those were dark days, indeed.)

However, I vividly remember when a compelling idea - nay! - it was a conviction - surfaced in my head: it was sometime during my senior year, I realized that "intellectual integrity" for a Christian was a myth, in so far as it is constructed as something that must be reconciled with one's faith. The fact of the matter is this: "intellectual integrity" for a Christian is part of the warp-and-woof of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for; faith is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is a Christian's "intellectual integrity" - faith is a gift from God, and accepting, receiving, clinging to, persevering in that gifted-faith is "intellectual integrity" for a Christian.

So. Genuine-Gratitude is Intellectual Integrity.

However, in general, the Higher-Education/Peer-Reviewed/Tenure-Seeking/"Free-thinkers"/Men-of-Culture Christian-subculture (whose opinions, as C. H. Spurgeon said, are "not worth a pin's head") have chosen to disagree. If you have genuine-gratitude, then, as I've said before, prepare yourself to be called names. *Shrug*

But the trick is to count it all joy: look beyond the name-calling, look beyond being mislabeled (e.g., Fundamentalist, Anti-Intellectual, etc.), look beyond the complexity of providence, look beyond and lose sight of yourself, and look solely to God who is the author and provider of all.

And if you are looking to God, then you will be able to "respond to each providence in an appropriate way" (see John Flavel's The Mystery of Providence).

An Ideal Curriculum

"God not only gives us inspired teaching in the Bible, but inspired songs too. Songs often do as much as sermons (if not more) to shape our faith. The Scriptures preached and Psalms sung provide an ideal curriculum for shaping the faith of the church" (Michael LeFebvre, Singing the Songs of Jesus: Revisiting the Psalms, 38).

The Historic Objectivity of the Atonement

"The atonement is objective to us, performed independently of us, and the subjective effects that accrue from it presuppose its accomplishment. The subjective effects exerted in our understanding and will can follow only as we recognize by faith the meaning of the objective fact" (John Murray, Redemption - Accomplished and Applied, 52).

Faith

"The existence of faith does not depend upon intellectual distinctions" (Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 18).

Duties and Events

"Providence," wrote the seraphic Samuel Rutherford, "hath a thousand keys to open a thousand sundry doors for the deliverance of his own, when it is even come to a conclamatum est ["when it is all over with us"]. Let us be faithful, and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for Him, and lay Christ's part on Himself, and leave it there. Duties are ours, events are the Lord's." The Lord will establish His kingdom in His own time and in His own way. Our task is that of obedience to His revealed word and will (Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Communicator's Commentary Series, Vol. 19: Daniel, 80-81). 

Word of God: Creates Faith

"The Word [God's word of salvation], all-powerful in its effect and salvific in its benefit, creates the faith that receives it" (Thomas J. Davis, This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, 58).

Faith and Sanctification

"The union with Christ which produces no effect on heart and life is a mere formal union, which is worthless before God. The faith which is not a sanctifying influence on the character is no better than the faith of devils. It is a "dead faith, because it is alone." It is not the gift of God. It is not the faith of God's elect. In short, where there is no sanctification of life, there is no real faith in Christ" (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 17).

Faith and God's Word

In a section examining Martin Luther's Lectures on Hebrews (April 1517), Thomas J. Davis discusses how Luther began to mature theologically by working "extensively through the concepts of personal faith and the word of testament (the promise) and how the two are related in such a way as to portend his mature beliefs." To that point, Davis observes:

Faith is a clinging to the Word of God for Luther. It is the only work of the Gospel, and it is internal. In a telling passage, Luther declared, "Without faith it is impossible for God to be with us." Why is this so? Because God "does everything through the word." For that Word to bear fruit for the believer, there must be faith. One can ties this arrangement to the incarnation. If Christ is God incarnate, as Luther certainly affirmed, the way one possesses that incarnate Word is through faith. The union of believers with the incarnate Word, a union so real that Luther speaks of Christ as the Christian's substance, is achieved only through faith. If the Sacrament is a visible word, as Augustine of hippo taught and Luther accepted, then the Word itself is an audible body, Christ's substance, possessed through the hearing and believing of it--through faith" (Thomas J. Davis, This is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, 33).

Revelation, Again

More from Berkouwer on the relationship between general and special revelation:

We have in mind only that, in the most profound sense, no true knowledge of the revelation of God in the works of his hands is obtainable without faith in Christ. Calvin's reference to the glasses (of faith) as the only means whereby we can know God in this book of "nature," is of decisive significance for all reflection on general revelation. This is not a question of our knowledge of nature as such, but rather of our knowledge of God's self-revelation. Stated otherwise, in Dogmatics general revelation is not to be regarded (in isolation) as an independent object of study. Reflection on dogmas is in principle different from activity in the natural sciences. . . .  

The relationship between general and special revelation is not a competitive one; but in special revelation our attention is focused on the universality of God's actions in relation to (the plan of) salvation and the Kingdom of God. It is precisely this salvation of the Lord which calls forth a song of praise about the works of God's hands, indeed, this hymn of praise is a part of that salvation. When we speak of the general revelation of God, then we are concerned with this universality of God's actions in created reality" (G. C. Berkouwer, General Revelation, 285-286).

Coming to Christ is Faith

Robert Haldane quotes from Bell’s On the Covenants in his opening remarks on Chapter IX of Romans: “The sinner’s right to Christ turns not at all upon any inward gracious qualifications, but purely on the Divine warrant revealed in the word. Faith is not a qualification in order to come to Christ, but the coming itself; it is not our right to Christ, but our taking and receiving Him to ourselves on the footing of the right conveyed by the Gospel offer” (Exposition of Romans, 433).