Heavenly Mindedness (4)

 

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

 

What we read in this chapter about the various activities and acts of faith in the lives of the Old Testament saints might perhaps at first create the impression, that the word faith is used in a looser sense, and that many things are attributed to it not strictly belonging there on the author’s own definition. One might be inclined in more precise language to classify them with other Christian graces. There is certainly large variety of costume in the procession that is made to pass before our eyes. The understanding that the worlds were framed out of nothing, the ability to offer God an acceptable sacrifice, the experience of translation unto God, the preparing of the ark, the responsiveness to the call to leave one’s country, the power to conceive seed when past age, the willingness to sacrifice an only son, Joseph’s making mention beforehand of the deliverance from Egypt, and his giving commandment concerning his bones, the hiding of the child Moses, the choice by Moses, when grown up, of the reproach of God’s people in preference to the treasures of Egypt, all this and more is represented as belonging to the one rubric of faith. But let us not misunderstand the writer. When he affirms that by faith all these things were suffered and done, his idea is not that what is enumerated was in each case the direct expression of faith. What he means is that in the last analysis faith alone made possible every one of the acts described, that as an underlying frame of mind it enabled all these other graces to function, and to produce the rich fruitage here set forth.

 

When I read this message of Vos’s, and attempt to comment on it, I feel as if I might as well try to describe the Grand Canyon or the wonders of Yellowstone; it is so many – faceted, and so vast.

 

We see again Vos’s vision of faith as an underlying frame of mind – that faith is a way of life, a way of thinking, of feeling, of the will, of decision making. Our wills are trained in the way of faith, pruned in the way of faith, molded in the image of faith. Our souls are taught to swim in the ocean of faith. Our lungs are taught to breathe the air of faith. Our eyes are taught to see the light of faith. Our inner selves hunger for the food of faith. Our hearts beat for the beauty of faith.

 

Faith is not a tool in a toolbox, it is a way of life. Faith is not something we exercise when we need it for special occasions, it is the way we live. I breathe air all of the time; I breathe differently when I am exerting my body, when I am running, riding a bike, climbing a hill or mountain, or swimming – the way I breathe at times may be different, but I am always breathing…unless I am dead.

 

Faith is the biosphere in which Christians are called to live.

 

The obedience, the self-sacrifice, the patience, the fortitude, of all these the exercise in the profound Christian sense would have been impossible, if the saints had not had through faith their eye firmly fixed on the unseen and promised world. Whether the call was to believe or to follow, to do or to bear, the obedience to it sprang not from any earth-fed sources but from the infinite reservoir of strength stored up in the mountain-land above. If Moses endured it was not due to the power of resistance in his human frame, but because the weakness in him was compensated by the vision of Him who is invisible. If Abraham, who had gladly received the promises, offered up his only-begotten son, it was not because in heroic resignation he steeled himself to obedience, but because through faith he saw God as greater and stronger than the most inexorable physical law of nature : “For he accounted that God is able to raise up even from the dead.” And so in all the other instances. Through faith the powers of the higher world were placed at the disposal of those whom this world threatened to overwhelm, and so the miracle resulted that from weakness they were made strong. No mistake could be greater than to naturalize the contents of this chapter, and to conceive of the thing portrayed as some instinct of idealism, some sort of sixth sense for what lies above the common plane of life, as people speak of men of vision, who see farther than the mass. The entire description rests on the basis of supernaturalism; these are annals of grace, magnalia Christi [mighty works of Christ]. Even the most illustrious names in the history of worldly achievement are not, as such, entitled to a place among them.  G. Vos.

 

May I ask you a question about the above paragraph? Do you believe it? Do you believe that Vos has a Biblical foundation for saying what he says? (I am asking myself the same question).

 

I have no reservation about crying “Amen!” to Vos’s message, and I have no alternative but to be humbled by the truth of what he says, for he, by God’s grace, does nothing but crystalize the message of the Bible in his faithfulness to the text of the NT book of Hebrews.

 

Consider Hebrews 12:22 - 24, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angles, to the general assembly of the firstborn and are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”

 

When faith is our underlying frame of mind, when it is our biosphere, we do not think in terms of one day coming to Mount Zion, but rather we live in a mysterious awareness that we have come to Mount Zion…and to the general assembly of the firstborn. (Yes, we anticipate a complete breaking forth of the City of God on earth as we “see” the New Jerusalem descending, we know the entire creation waits in agony for the manifestation of the sons of God).

 

As we deposit treasure in the mountain–land above we find that we can make withdrawals from the collective treasures which are there; the infinite reservoir of strength is that of the communion of the saints, rooted and grounded in the Trinity.

 

Through faith the powers of the higher world were placed at the disposal of those whom this world threatened to overwhelm, and so the miracle resulted that from weakness they were made strong.

 

Is this the mindset of the church? How often do we choose Saul over David? How often do we dismiss Paul in his weakness and choose the slick religious person who caters to our whims and fancies? How often do we seek to strengthen ourselves in the natural world, glossing over our weaknesses, instead of drawing upon the treasures of heaven?

 

And how should this inform our epistemology and pedagogy? Are we children of the Kingdom or of humanism and the Enlightenment? I wonder how Vos’s seminary audience received his message. Was it simply beautiful and idealistic rhetoric?

 

The entire description rests on the basis of supernaturalism…

 

Our lives are to be naturally supernatural. But do we believe this? Do we live this? Do we embrace the Divine life of Christ within us? Do we teach our people to live in the supernatural biosphere of faith? Or…are we focused on cultivating intellectual and emotional lives functionally outside the supernatural?

 

What is our underlying frame of mind? The seen or the unseen? The natural or the spiritual? The flesh or the spirit?

 

Let us be obedient to the heavenly vision.