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?