Let Christ Be King

I just finished re-reading this little book by Louis Praamsma.  It’s an excellent and fairly reliable introduction to Abraham Kuyper.  There are just a couple of places where I placed question marks.

One of them is in regard to his discussion of common grace.  He quotes the synodical declaration of 1942 in the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands on the subject and then states:  “What must be stressed, however, is that in 1942 there was unanimity in the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands with regard to the common grace issue, and that this unanimity was in line with Kuyper’s insights” (144).  That’s not a fair representation of the history.  A synodical declaration does not equal unanimity.  The page before this he mentions Schilder’s critique of Kuyper on common grace, so even Praamsma acknowledged that there was dissent.  So far as I know, Schilder didn’t abandon his critique of Kuyper because of the synodical declaration in 1942.

That being what it is, this is still a helpful read.  You can find a free electronic copy in .pdf format right here.

Devotional Literature

I get a lot of requests from people looking for devotional literature.  The one person wants a book of devotions for retired couples.  The other wants a book for engaged couples.  Still another is looking for something for their teenage son or daughter.  I used to search high and low for things I could recommend for these niche needs.  No longer.  Now I recommend that people just start with reading the Bible prayerfully.  Why is it that everyone feels they either need to be spoon-fed or they need someone to make the Bible relevant for them?  It’s almost as if we’ve returned to the stereotype of the medieval church:  everyone talks about the Bible but no one reads it for themselves.  The thought seems to be that the Bible is a deep and mysterious book and we need someone else to interpret it and apply it for us.

Nevertheless, I do think there is a place for devotional literature.  I think there is a place for authors to share their meditations on sacred Scripture.  There is a place for us to learn from our forebears how to pray and to think Christianly.  The thing is that these things ought never to replace our going directly to the source for ourselves.  They should be supplementary.  Moreover, we should lose this (post-)modern idea of niche devotionals — the devotional for the unemployed single mother, the devotional for the engaged couple, etc., etc.  This trend is reflective of the narcissism of our day:  everyone needs something crafted exactly for their personal, individual needs.  Whatever happened to the catholic church?  Whatever happened to the communion of saints?  Whatever happened to being able to think and apply general truths to your individual needs?

So with those caveats, let me recommend some of the devotional literature that I’ve found helpful.  This list is not exhaustive.  There is a lot of good stuff out there, although most of it was written by dead old guys.  Sorry!  There just hasn’t been a lot of thoughtful and at the same time faithful devotional literature written in our day.  In no particular order, these are some of the resources I can suggest:

The Valley of Vision has long been one of my favourites.  This is a collection of prayers from Puritans and Puritan-minded folks.  Prayers are here from Thomas Watson, John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon and many others.  My only complaint about this volume is that it doesn’t tell you where the prayers are from or who wrote which prayers.  This book is also available in a bonded leather edition.  It would be a great gift for young people doing public profession of faith.

Still on the subject of prayer, there’s this volume from Johann Gerhard, a Lutheran theologian from the seventeenth century.  I just recently discovered this and it’s beautiful and powerful.  Throughout Gerhard is either quoting Scripture or working with scriptural concepts.

Thomas Watson is my favourite Puritan.  People who have a stereotype of the Puritans as obscure and difficult to read need to take a look at Watson.  I recently picked up this one and I’ve been enjoying it tremendously.  Here’s a sample quote:  “Let us get love to Christ.  Love is a holy transport.  It fires the affections, steels the courage, and carries a Christian above the love of life, and the fear of death.  Many waters cannot quench love (Song of Sol. 8:7).  Love made Christ suffer for us.  If anyone ask what Christ died of, it may be answered, He died of love” (10).

Thomas Watson is so good that he gets double mention on this list.  This volume is an arrangement of short devotional readings from his book Body of Divinity.  There’s enough here for an entire year.  The language here has been slightly modernized for ease of understanding.

Near Unto God is an abridgement by James Schaap of a classic volume by the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper.  I’ve been reading it for some time and have found it to be remarkable in places, puzzling (and almost bizarre) in others.  It’s hard to tell where Kuyper is being interpreted by Schaap.  Unfortunately, I don’t have either the Dutch original or the earlier English translation to compare.

Finally, also from our Dutch Reformed tradition, there is this classic by Petrus Dathenus.  If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he was involved with the production of our liturgical forms as well as an early edition of the Genevan psalter in Dutch.  As Joel Beeke aptly summarizes it on the back cover, “This succinct treatise lets the light of Scripture shine clearly on the practical issues involved in teaching and living the doctrines of sovereign grace.”  Dathenus powerfully points Christians to an all-sufficient Saviour as the true “pearl of great price.”

The Gospel Promises Victory in Christ’s Resurrection (Lord’s Day 17)

The young man and his friends were excited.  There was a new teacher at the school.  The new professor was not much older than them, only thirty-two years old.  Finally there was some fresh, young blood at the school, some fresh thinking.  His name was Professor Rauwenhoff, a professor of church history.

One of his first lectures dealt with the resurrection of Christ.  The young man listened intently.  Professor Rauwenhoff pointed out that the Bible spoke very clearly about the resurrection.  However, he said, we have to be careful because the Bible often uses symbolic language that is not meant to be taken literally.  After all, the Bible is not a textbook for science or history.  Moreover, no rational modern man could actually believe that Christ’s body was raised from the dead at certain place at a certain point in real history.  That would be against all the laws of nature and everybody knows that those laws simply can’t be broken.  Jesus rose from the dead, yes, but not in history.  He rose in the hearts of his disciples.  His body remained in the tomb.

As the professor reached his conclusion, the young man and his friends leapt from their seats and started clapping.  They were applauding a professor who finally understood.  Finally they had a teacher who was with the times.  The young man, twenty-three years old, was thrilled with a prof who had the courage to say what everybody else was thinking.

That’s a true story and it took place in 1860 in the Netherlands at the University of Leiden.  The students were all men studying to become Reformed ministers.  The young man was Abraham Kuyper.  Now eventually, God would grab hold of Kuyper and convert him and he would become a mighty tool in God’s hands to bring Reformation to the Netherlands.  He had his weaknesses and shortcomings – no man is perfect – but many of our families trace their roots back to the Reformation led by Kuyper, the Doleantie.  Later in life, Kuyper confessed that he was still haunted by what happened in that classroom in 1860.  He had applauded the denial of Christ’s resurrection.  With his denial, he had grieved his Lord and Saviour and this bothered him immensely.

For the first eighteen centuries of church history, the resurrection of Christ was nearly universally accepted as a fact of history.  It was recognized as one of the most well-attested events of the ancient world.  The Heidelberg Catechism emerges from that context and so it doesn’t even have to spend any time on the historical nature of the resurrection.  The Apostles’ Creed says that Christ rose from the dead on the third day and this is what the Christian church has always believed and so we believe it too.  This is certainly the way the Bible is meant to be read.  In fact, the Apostle Paul makes an air-tight case in 1 Corinthians 15 that if the resurrection is not an historical fact, then our faith is useless and we are still in our sins.  For a believer, that has to settle the issue.  Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day and this was a real, historical happening.

From there we can move on to consider the meaning of the resurrection.  The Catechism does that by asking the question of how this historical event benefits us.  The answer has everything to do with victory – Christ’s victory over sin and death is at the heart of the meaning of the resurrection and its benefits for believers.  Again, this is something that Christians must believe, this is something that is promised us in the gospel.

Please click here to continue reading this sermon based on Lord’s Day 17 of the Heidelberg Catechism.

Gootjes: Man as God’s Steward

Okay, one last cool thing about this book (Teaching and Preaching the Word) before I write a review.  Chapter 12 contains an article originally published in 1980 in Dutch, “Man as God’s Steward.”  Gootjes notes that the idea of stewardship did not become influential in the Reformed worldview until the late nineteenth century.  It came through Abraham Kuyper’s treatment of the eighth commandment in his monumental commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, E voto dordraceno.  Kuyper wasn’t the first one to speak of it, but its influence was mediated through him.  Interestingly, Gootjes argues that the “background of Kuyper’s thoughts on the steward is the nineteenth-century reality rather than the multi-faceted picture of the steward found in Scripture” (252).  To be sure, Kuyper generally developed this out of the Bible and its idea of God as owner of mankind, but the details are coloured by his day.  The chapter concludes by outlining four strengths and five weakness of the concept of man as God’s steward.  Fascinating stuff!

The Nine Points and ’44: History Repeating Itself?

Yesterday I described various views regarding the Liberation that happened in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands in 1944.  In the CanRC community, ’44 is often held forth as an important lesson in what goes wrong when too much power gets invested in synods and when synods make binding doctrinal statements.  So, when Synod Schererville 2007 gave its “pastoral advice” on matters pertaining to Federal Vision, many alarm bells went off among CanRC folk.  The Nine Points were like 1944 Redivivus.  It’s time to start reassessing that.

In this regard, three important things happened at the URCNA Synod in London.  First, the Nine Points were reevaluated and reaffirmed.  The Nine Points stand.  Second, the Justification/Federal Vision study committee report was adopted received — apparently with unanimity.  The question is:  what is the status of these two items?  That’s where Overture 14 comes into play.  This overture sought clarification on the meaning and status of doctrinal affirmations, pastoral advice, and adopted received committee study reports.

From the reports I’ve read (here and here) there was extensive discussion about this matter, but no conclusion.  It appears that the matter was committed to the Synodical Rules Committee.  I assume that they will report back to the next Synod.  But let’s see what the advisory committee recommended regarding the definition of pastoral advice (which is what the Nine Points are):

2. Pastoral Advice: Pastoral Advice is the application of the Scriptures and the Confessions in response to particular circumstances in the churches.
2.1 Pastoral Advice expresses the collective wisdom of Synod to guide the churches in their pastoral care. It may not serve as grounds in matters of discipline.
2.2 Pastoral Advice should be received with reverence and respect. It would be unwise to contradict or disregard Pastoral Advice in preaching or writing.
2.3 Pastoral Advice may be appealed as outlined in Church Order Articles 29 and 31. (Regulations for Synodical Procedure 3.4 and Appendix B)

I would especially call your attention to 2.1.  Pastoral advice (such as the Nine Points) “may not serve as grounds in matters of discipline.”  That was the direction the advisory committee wished to move in — it was not adopted by Synod 2010 (at least not that I’ve seen reported).

Now that direction is something quite a bit different than what we saw yesterday with 1944 and the events leading up to it.  For instance, K. Schilder was deposed by a Synod for refusing to teach the Kuyperian doctrine that had been imposed on the Reformed churches.  Now aside from the question of a Synod carrying out discipline of office bearers, we can see that in that situation there was a binding that was regarded as grounds for discipline.  That’s something different than where we see the URCNA apparently going with “pastoral advice.”

Of course, it could happen that the URCNA Synodical Rules Committee turns around and recommends that “pastoral advice” should be grounds for matters of discipline.  Maybe the next Synod will even adopt it.  But I doubt it because, believe it or not, there are historical sensibilities in the URCNA.  It was evident in how the Synod chairman spoke in regards to Overture 14.  He warned that schism could result if this matter is not handled carefully.

Here’s the thing:  we in the CanRC can’t see the spectre of Abraham Kuyper and his epigones (I always wanted to use that word!) behind nearly everything the URCNA does.  When it comes to covenant theology and baptism, most of their (vocal) theologians are not drawing on Kuyper, but on sources far earlier.  I’ve heard no one arguing for baptism on the basis of presumed regeneration!  When it comes to church polity, the historical circumstances leading up to 1944 were entirely different, involving, for instance,  a world war.  As I recall, collaboration with the Nazis was a factor in the Liberation.  Schilder and those who became Liberated were entirely opposed to National Socialism and its anti-Christian agenda.  Some of those who opposed Schilder were less than stalwart in their opposition to Nazism.  That muddied the waters of church politics.  To see our URCNA brothers as the “synodicals” come back to life is not historically justifiable.

To be sure, there are some concerning trends in the URCNA and the way it does church polity.  I’ve written before about the length of URCNA Synods.  The idea of representatives rather than delegates who deliberate on behalf of the federation  is foreign to historical Dortian polity.  The notion of a permanent “stated clerk” could be seen as hierarchical.  We often see language that makes it sound as if the classis is some kind of permanent body in the URCNA (although that language is increasingly used in the CanRCs too).  I could go on.  They’re a young federation and still growing together and we can cut them some slack.  We don’t have it all together either — not anywhere close.  However, to see the Nine Points as 1944 all over again does not do justice either to the URCNA or to what our forefathers experienced in the Liberation.  The similarities are superficial at best.