Heavenly Mindedness (1)

Reflections on Geerhardus Vos’s Message on “Heavenly Mindedness”

A couple of months ago my friend Michael Daily sent me a link to a message by Geerhardus Vos (1862 – 1949) given many years ago in the chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary. I was overwhelmed with the message – it is adorned with the beauty of heaven. In many respects it reminds me of the Church Fathers, and is in the historic stream of those who love our Lord Jesus Christ deeply, whatever their tradition may be – for those who love Christ find themselves transcending the things of earth, and time and space – as they are drawn ever closer to Him and His glory and beauty. As the words of a hymn go, “And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”

 

I’m going to attempt a series of reflections on this message. As I did a few years ago with Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, this is not an attempt to exegete everything that Vos is saying, but is rather an interaction with the text; I want to make some observations as I behold this beautiful artwork, though I will likely venture to comment on Vos himself as I see him through this message. While I have a background in Bonhoeffer, having first read him as a teenager, I have no background on Vos other than some brief biographical notes I’ve read over the past couple of months.

 

C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers were adamant in thinking that an author’s “text” is what is important, not personal information about the author. Perhaps an element of their thinking was a reaction to the many requests they received to share information about their personal lives, their likes and dislikes, the modern preoccupation with personal details at the expense of interacting with a text and critical thinking – perhaps they saw the inevitability of Facebook and it frightened them. I’ve seen this in Bible study, preaching, and in small group material; I’ve seen people so preoccupied with conjecturing what Haggai was like that they failed to encounter the text of Haggai, which is, after all, God’s Word.

 

Certainly there are texts that reveal the author, and texts that don’t. Sometimes we taste the vessel the wine is aged in, and sometimes we don’t. A text is really more than a text, a text is a “word” that comes from within a man or a woman – how transparent and authentic that “word” is may be another question. It’s time to move on and drink some wine.

HEAVENLY-MINDEDNESS, preached by Geerhardus Vos:

 

Hebrews 11: 9-10: “By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he looked for the city which has the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

 

The chapter from which our text is taken is pre-eminently the chapter on faith. It illustrates the nature, power and effects of this grace in a series of examples from sacred history. In the context the prophecy of Habakkuk is quoted: “The righteous shall live by faith.” We remember that in the Epistle to the Romans and Galatians also the same prophecy appears with prominence. Abraham likewise there figures as the great example of faith. In consequence one might easily be led to think that the development of the idea of faith in these Epistles and in our chapter moves along identical lines. This would be only partially correct. Although the two types of teaching are in perfect accord, and touch each other at certain points, yet the angle of vision is not the same. In Romans and Galatians faith is in the main trust in the grace of God, the instrument of justification, the channel through which the vital influences flowing from Christ are received by the believer. Here in Hebrews the conception is wider; faith is “the proving of things not seen, the assurance of things hoped for.” Vos.

 

I love the phrase, “the angle of vision”. This is lacking in much of our teaching and preaching and understanding of God’s Word. This is one reason I loath (perhaps too strong a word, I’m not sure) study Bibles that go beyond giving historical information and cross references and provide theological definitions and interpretations – they contribute to the truncating of our engagement with God’s Word and the Holy Spirit, they dumb down our experience with the Word, rather than putting weight on the bar they ensure that we don’t put any weight on the bar – our spiritual senses are discouraged from exercising.

 

How can we give a one-sentence, or one-paragraph, definition of “faith” or “grace” or “justification”? The Biblical angles of vision are myriad. We have gutted revelation, illumination, and mystery from our thinking and experience; it is as if we’ve excised 1 Corinthians Chapter 2 from the Bible; we have jettisoned Divine epistemology for our humanistic ways of learning – ignoring 1 Corinthians 1:18 – 2:16.

 

Living with limited angles of vision contributes to a failure to “see” the Body of Christ, to “live” in the Body of Christ, and it contributes to division within the Body of Christ. We think that our particular angles of vision (doctrinal distinctives) trump the angles of vision of others; that our angles of vision are first class while those of others are second class. No matter what we may say in the abstract to counter this assertion, functionally this is usually the case – otherwise would we not see functional unity in the Body of Christ? What is 1 Corinthians 1:11 – 17 but a mix of pride, ego, and angle of vision?

 

Vos speaks of the angles of vision of Romans and Galatians being in “perfect accord” with the angle of vision of Hebrews. He also notes that Habakkuk’s, “The righteous shall live by faith” is quoted in Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews; that is, the same quotation occurs within two angles of vision – the quotation in two different contexts is complementary and not contradictory.

 

Let’s be blunt about this, while young children may have problems with nuance and varying ways of viewing things and contexts, we expect them, by exposure to life and to mature adults, to grow in their ability to appreciate angles of vision.  When this doesn’t happen we become concerned and realize there is a developmental problem. Consider Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:1 – 2: “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able…”

 

And then the writer of Hebrews (5:13 – 14), “For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”

 

What is Vos saying about the two angles of vision in the above passage? How would you put this in your own words? How would you explain it to someone?

Saturday Musings - July 25, 2020

I’m told it only takes a few inches of water to drown a person. Shallow water can lead to death. Shallow thinking can lead to the death of a society, and also, in a manner of speaking, of a church. Trees with shallow root systems can more easily be toppled than those whose roots go deep. Houses built on superficial foundations can be knocked off those foundations. The wise builder of the Gospel is the one who both hears and obeys. When the sacrificial Way is our Way, when obedience is our Way of Life, then we obey Christ whether we are in familiar or unfamiliar territory; we obey Christ whether the waters are placid or treacherous.

 

Who is thinking deeply these days? Have we all become reactionaries? Where are those Christians who are looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of their faith?

 

Noah and his family may not have known what the world would look like when the waters subsided – but they knew they were in the Ark.

 

A.W. Tozer wrote the following decades ago:

 

            “One trouble with us today is that we know too many things. The whole trend of the moment is toward the accumulation of a multitude of unrelated facts without a unifying philosophy to give them meaning.

 

            “The neat little digest magazines tend to encourage faith in the idea – hoping type of study. This produces an informed superficiality worse in many ways than ignorance itself.”

 

What would Tozer think today with Google and Alexa and the like? What would he think of the game show Jeopardy? Our pursuit of trivia has trivialized our lives and thinking. Toddlers accumulate experience and data and we expect them to form the data and experience into a functioning “whole” – when that doesn’t happen we realize there is a developmental problem. Can we not look in the mirror and see that there is a problem – individually and collectively?

 

Babies eat baby food, our society imbibes sound bites. And the church?

More from Tozer:

 

            “The prophets and reformers of the past were men of few but mighty convictions. Their very narrowness secured high compression and gave added power to their lives.”

 

I think I’d probably say that the people Tozer refers to kept “the main thing the main thing” and the main thing, to use human language, was Jesus Christ and the Gospel – the entire Biblical counsel of God – from eternity past to eternity future. Christ was all and in all – therein was the “high compression” found and exhibited.

 

Where are the mighty convictions in our society? In our churches? We are masters of short-term thinking, and thus have been subdued and mastered by this very thinking. We are sheep; grazing here one day, there another day, and yet over there another day. We think each change of pasture is progress, we don’t know that we are fattened for the kill, or at the very least to be fleeced. This is in the finest tradition of the false prophets and priests and national leaders of both the Bible and general history.

 

Christ is our Ark, who can we bring into the Ark? We need not understand the meteorological dynamics surrounding us – but it is imperative that we abide in the Ark, testify to the Ark, and bring others into the Ark. In these uncertain times we can trust in our certain Lord Jesus – the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Late Saturday Musings

July 18, 2020

 

Psalm 18 is part of my readings today. I have long loved David’s words to God, “Thy gentleness has made me great.” Have we come to know our Father in this way? Can others say this about us? About our churches? About professing Christians in general?

 

I admit that I often cringe when I hear the words “Christian” and “Evangelical”. Until I hear the context, I don’t know what they mean.

 

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Can someone explain why, if tragedy or upheaval happens in central Africa or in the Amazon, that no one in the United States writes a book about the “End Times”? Cannot we see how self-centered we are? Everything revolves around us in the States.

 

Can we not see how shallow our thinking is?

 

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An African – American woman who loves Gaelic dancing has been accused of “cultural appropriation”. Don’t we see that we have so much more in common than we realize? We love music. We love dancing. We love food.

 

Does this mean that Joe’s Diner at the corner of Park and High streets can no longer serve tacos, hot and sour soup, and pizza unless Joe has authentic ethnic cooks?

 

I’ve always, and I do mean always, loved getting to know folks from other cultures – why even from New England and the Deep South – imagine that!

 

What are we doing to ourselves? Too each other?

 

Well lassie, I’ve got a good bit of Scot in me and I say, “Dance, dance, and then dance some more!” Maybe I’ll give a sword dance a try myself.

 

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God says that He will shake all things, things in the heavens and on the earth, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Jesus tells us a story about two men, one built his house on the sand, the other dug down and laid his foundation on a rock. Until the storm came with the storm surge, both houses looked the same from the outside.

 

How often do you visit a friend in his house who says, “Let me tell you about the great foundation my home is built upon”?

 

What is the foundation of your life built upon? Humanism? Agnosticism? Atheism? Cheapo cultural “Christian” religion that has a Cracker Jack – ‘n – the Box Jesus with prizes for everyone and your very own flavor of cotton – candy?

 

Those who follow Christ are not from Blue states or Red states, they have a citizenship that transcends the chaos of poisoned humanity, they know there is no hope in the things of this world – but they will live their lives for the blessing of the people of this world, indeed, for the benefit of all of God’s creation.

 

Jesus Christ came and died and rose again so that He could cross the greatest aisle of the universe, the great divide, the immense chasm – so that He might plumb the deepest abyss imaginable – the gulf between God and man – so that God might draw us, in Christ, back to Himself into a loving eternal union as His sons and His daughters in Jesus Christ.

 

We who call Jesus "Lord" now have the incredible honor of following Him and His Cross, loving all, giving to all, making peace with all in Christ – being God’s light in Christ in a confused and dark and toxic world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man [or woman], He bids him [or her], ‘Come and die.’”

 

Mark 8:27 – 38; Galatians 2:20; 6:14

 

 

A Test - Peace or Violence?

My readings this morning included Psalm 11; I was struck by verses 4 & 5:

 

“Yahweh is in His holy temple; Yahweh’s throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. Yahweh tests the righteousness and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates.”

 

What does God find within us regarding violence? Are we, professing Christians, a violent people? Are our hearts violent? Do we have violent minds? Are we feeding off the perpetual anger of the world, and have we become propagators of that anger?

 

In Psalm 11, the testing of the sons of men is with respect to violence – what are the results of God testing our hearts?

 

Isaiah (59:8) writes of people who “do not know the way of peace”, certainly a dimension of this is the Prince of Peace, who is the Way of Peace; if we are Christ’s Body, if we are His brothers and sisters, then might we ask ourselves, “Are we displaying the Prince of Peace to the world.” How are our souls responding to the present testing, a testing filled with the temptation to anger and violence? (I am not thinking about physical violence, I am thinking about the violence of our souls, our thoughts, words, emotions – the physical goes without saying – what is going on within us and through us?)

 

Are we a violent and angry people? Are we choosing sides? Is it “us against them”? Have we forgotten that our calling is to cry, “Be reconciled to God!” (2 Cor. 5:20).

 

I fear that we are “eating the bread of wickedness and drinking the wine of violence” (Proverbs 4:17) – this is not the Communion Table to which we are called, this is not the Eucharist of Christ. This is demonic (James 3:15), and yet we think that we are immune from these temptations, that we are immune from the influence and poison of demonic violence, anger, discourse, and action.

 

Solomon wrote concerning those who reject God, “But they lie in wait for their own blood; they ambush their own lives. So are the ways of everyone who gains by violence; it takes away the life of its possessors” (Proverbs 1:18 – 19). Gaining by violence is not limited to physical violence, it is violence in any form – anger, bullying, belittling, mocking, slander, libel, lying. Is this not what we see in the world today? Is this not what our society is drinking from day after day? Have we not seen religious leaders stand in the spotlight and justify violent rhetoric by saying, in effect, “The means justifies the ends”? Are we mimicking these “leaders”? Are they giving us what we crave?

 

We are called to be peacemakers so that we shall indeed be called the sons of God (Matthew 5:9). Are we “making peace”? Do we even know how to make peace? Have we become so enmeshed in the world, so captured by political and economic and social agendas – that we have forgotten who our Father is? Who our Lord Jesus Christ is? Where God the Holy Spirit dwells?

 

God is testing both the righteousness and the wicked – how are we measuring up? Are we loving violence or peace?

 

“Too long has my soul had it dwelling with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.” Psalm 120:6 – 7.

 

“Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is near.” Philippians 4:5.

 

“…malign no one, be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.” Titus 3:2.

 

“Search ME, O God, and know MY heart; try ME and know MY thoughts; and see if there be any way of pain in ME, and lead ME in the Everlasting Way” [our Lord Jesus Christ]. Psalm 139:23 – 24.

 

 

 

 

July 4, 2020 Unstructured Thoughts

Revolutions generally don’t pursue a democratic process – the Loyalists of our Revolution didn’t lose at the ballot box. Have you considered that revolutions justify themselves during the process, but as soon as the revolution is over they deny that process to others?

 

On what basis do we condemn racism as a society? If you say it is morally wrong then I ask, “What is the basis for your morality?” If it is pragmatic or utilitarian then I ask, “Who determines the pragmatic or utilitarian basis?”

 

If you respond, “Well, it just is wrong. That should be self-evident.” Then I ask, “How can something be self-evident?” Is there a transcendent moral law within us? If so, then let’s talk about it. If so, then let’s not refuse to confirm a woman or man for a judgeship because the candidate believes in “natural law”.

 

This is a great time for Christ – followers to talk about the image of God and the “natural” law that God has placed in our hearts. Why do we deny the natural law? When we recognize it, why do we disobey it? What do we justify our disobedience?

 

Then again, if we hold to the Natural Law and the image of God in humanity, defaced though it may be, then I think we should ask ourselves why we aren’t passionate about the welfare of our fellow man. As I’ve said before, I know many more professing Christians who are pro-birth than I know professing Christians who are prolife. Where is our concern over healthcare? Housing? Education? Justice?

 

While I’m writing unstructured thoughts, I think I’ll admit to being a coward. I have never started a book on Reconstruction and finished it. I have never started watching a television program on Reconstruction and been able to finish it. I guess it’s cowardice, or maybe it’s just that I don’t have the heart and stomach for it – it is so disgusting – Reconstruction and Jim Crow were simply hideous. Where was the church? $$$$$?

 

For the Christian, our citizenship is in heaven. Do we believe that? Are we seeking Jesus Christ? My identity in Christ cannot be threatened. If I have another identity that can be threatened then I ask, “How can that be? Am I worshipping an idol?”

 

Idols do tend to gloss over ugly realities.

 

Life does have its complexities. The oceans and heavens have their patterns. Psalm 2 and Daniel 2 remain firm. Christ is indeed our Rock.

 

Just some thoughts…