Category: Quotes & Commentary

Calvin College Professor; ” Both unity in Christ and differentiation in creation are very good”

As many have noted, the idea of separation and differentiation, of dividing and consigning, is a prominent theme throughout the first chapters of Genesis as the world is being described.” The concept of separation and division, the making of things that are different essentially, each having an identity and self-action, controls much of the further presentation of material in the book of Genesis. But in particular it is that which gives the cultural mandate to man to develop (differentiate) the whole earth its concrete content and meaning.

We learn then from Scripture that no choice has to be made between unity and sameness in Christ and having distinct earthly identities. In other words, no appeal to the dynamic directive of redemption to be one in Christ can be made to determine the structures of earthly, institutional life. Both unity in Christ and differentiation in creation are very good, the former representing God’s work in redemption, the latter, which data relevant theory investigates, God’s work in creation. Oneness in Christ is no alternative to natural separations and differences in the world and hence is no alternative to a social theory of separate cultural development.

Stated in general terms, God’s act of creation is an act of separation, definition, and law-giving. The unity of things is a moral and religious principle, not an alternative definition of what being should be like. In fact the unity of things is dependent, according to Christian faith, on their distinctiveness in being. If the central ecclesiastical argument against Apartheid is that its idea of separation contradicts the biblical idea of reconciliation in Christ, then the ecclesiastical critics are simply theologically wrong, cashing in on a biblical and religious idea to legitimate a taken-for-granted “natural theology” of integrationism for which they are dependent on the homogenizing philosophy of modern, British political liberalism. Though there is a moral and emotive point to the outcry that Apartheid is a heresy, in substance this charge is a simplicism that is unbecoming of the best of Reformed social thought and practice.

Dr. Henry Vander Goot
Former  Professor of Religion and Theology,
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis in the Reformed Community Today” , pgs. 111-112

 

A Curious Quote by the Rev. Dr. Tim Keller

“The Gospel of Christianity which is that you are not saved by good doctrine, not by your good works but by sheer unmerited grace. It pulls out the self righteousness and superiority that tends to go along with religious belief. ”

Rev. Dr. Tim Keller

1.) I’m so confused. Isn’t this a doctrine that Rev. Dr. Keller is giving me … a doctrine that apparently I must be conversant with in order to be saved. Presumably, it is even a good doctrine

If I’m not saved via good doctrine must I be saved via bad doctrine or am I saved with no doctrine? (Which, of course, this advocacy is a doctrine.)

In the end Rev. Dr. Keller, the doctrine of no doctrine is still a doctrine.

This diminishing of good doctrine in favor of the doctrine of no doctrine is NOT Christianity.

2.) Rev. Dr. Keller’s doctrine in the first sentence is obviously driving his self-righteousness as seen in his second sentence. Rev. Dr. Keller obviously views himself, because of his superior doctrine, as superior over those poor benighted Christians who believe that good doctrine is related to salvation.

3.) Since Rev. Dr. Keller’s statement is a “religious belief” we can be sure that he is going all self-righteous and superior on us.

Sentimental LUV

“Unconditional love is a more revolutionary concept than any other doctrine of revolution. Unconditional love means the end of discrimination between good and evil, right and wrong, better and worse, friend and enemy, and all things else. Whenever anyone asks you to love unconditionally, they are asking you to surrender unconditionally to the enemy.

Unconditional love is contrary to the Bible. The charge of the young prophet Jehu, the son of Hanani, to King Jehoshaphat was blunt: “Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord” (II Chronicles 19:2). The commandment is “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil” (Psalm 97:10), and the prophet Amos repeated it: “Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate” (Amos 5:15)….

The enemy of God’s justice and God’s law, of fundamental law and order, must not be loved. To love them is to condone their evil. The accusation of the psalmist is to the point: “18 When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, And hast been partaker with adulterers” (Psalm 50:18). What we condone morally, we also approve of or delight in. Those who preach unconditional love are simply trying to disarm godly people in order that that evil may triumph.”

R. J. Rushdoony
“Roots of Reconstruction” p. 625

Dabney — Love Necessitates Hate

Sin is the antithesis of virtue. That moral principle is the reason which makes us desire the reward of righteousness is one and the same with that which makes us crave the due punishment of wickedness; moral approval of virtue and moral indignation against evil are not effluences of two principles in the reason, but of one only. They are differentiated solely by the opposition of the two contrasted objects. The sincere approbation of the good necessitates moral indignation against the evil, because the objects of the two sentiments are opposites. Everybody thinks thus. Nobody would believe that man to be capable of sincere moral admiration for good actions who should declare himself incapable of moral resentment towards vile conduct.

-R.L. Dabney
Christ Our Penal Substitute, pp. 48-49

Abraham Kuyper On Distinctions

“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

“Now this is not something special for the Javanese , but stems from a general rule . The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood and soul, and they do not always remain the same , but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different , as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races , countries and traditions can not be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”

Abraham Kuyper
‘Common Grace’ III.XXXII

People groups vary and are different. Different people groups worshiping in different churches is not wicked.