July 2017

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STUDIES IN THE WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM
by Rev. Leonard T. Van Horn

Q. 18. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell?

A. The sinfulness of that estate wherein man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.

Scripture References: Rom. 5:12,19; I Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:6; Eph. 2:1-3; James 1: 14-15.

Questions:

1. What is original sin?

A better way of expressing this would be “inherited sin.” This sin is the guilt and pollution connected with our origin, in and through the first Adam.

2. Is there not another type of sin besides original sin?

Yes, there is actual sin. This is any breach of God’s law, whether it be by omission or commission, whether it be by thought, word or deed.

3. How are all men guilty because of Adam’s first sin?

All men are guilty of Adam’s first sin by imputation, (Ram. 5:19). This is so because Adam represented his posterity, as we learned in Question 16. As the righteousness of Christ, the second Adam, is imputed to all believers, so the sin of the first Adam is imputed to all the natural seed.

4. What is meant by the “guilt of Adam’s first sin”?

It means the debt, the punishment to which we are exposed because of that first sin, committed by our head and representative, Adam.

5. What is the teaching involved in “the want of original righteousness”?

The teaching here is that two things are involved:
(a) The lack of true spiritual understanding in the mind (I Cor. 2:14).
(b) The lack of the power and inclination toward good (Rom. 7: 18).

6. What is included in the statement “the corruption of his whole nature”?

Included in this statement is the universal depravity present in every part of man since the fall. Calvin states, “Therefore all of us, who have descended from impure seed, are born infected with the contagion of sin. In fact, before we saw the light of this life we were soiled and spotted in God’s sight.” (Calvin’s Institutes, II, 1,5).

ORIGINAL SIN

The lack of belief in this doctrine is probably one of the greatest motivators of mankind toward their popular and many times stated position of: “Well, I do my best and we are all trying to get to the same place. I’ll simply take my chances on my best for a loving God would not condemn me.” This position is heard time and time again and it is hard to take offensive action against it when the person stating it does not believe in the Bible as the inspired, infallible Word of God.

The Presbyterian Standards are very clear about this matter of Original Sin and its effects on mankind. Of the “corrupted nature” the Standards tell us that “we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil” and from this corrupted nature “proceed all actual transgressions”. The Standards further teach that this condition is innate from birth and by nature. It is at this very place that so many modern thinkers disagree with the Standards and insist that there is an “inner goodness in man” and insist that man is rapidly making progress. It is from this position that they move to the natural result that if man does his best he will be taken care of by the loving God.

And yet if a person of the world is forced to be honest with himself, forced because of sickness, or impending death, or trouble of any great variety, he recognizes inward evidences of the corruption of his nature. He recognizes that naturally speaking he does not want to listen to the words that will keep him from erring. He recognizes that he puts all his hope in himself. He recognizes that his body is more important to him than his soul. It is significant that when the person of the world is saved by grace he does not have to be “forced” to be honest with himself in this way, he knows it!

What can all of us learn from this doctrine? The person not saved by grace will learn little from it until he comes to the realization of his sinful state. The person saved by grace can learn once again “Wonder of wonders, He saved even me!” He can thank and praise God once again for the teaching of Ephesians 2:1-10. He can witness to others of the pardon that comes through the merits of Jesus Christ.

A long post, for your leisurely Saturday reading:

This paper was read before a group of ministers in Philadelphia on November 27, 1933. It was subsequently published in Christianity Today (August 1934) and in a collection of Machen’s essays edited by Ned B. Stonehouse, published under the title What Is Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951). The address was again separately reprinted in 2002 by the Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and can also be found online at the OPC website : http://www.opc.org/machen/mountains.html.

Mountains and Why We Love Them
by J. Gresham Machen

machen_climbingWhat right have I to speak about mountain-climbing? The answer is very simple. I have none whatever. I have, indeed, been in the Alps four times. The first time I got up Monte Rosa, the second highest of the Alps, and one or two others of the easier Zermatt peaks. On my second visit I had some glorious days in the Grossglockner group and on a few summits in the Zillerthal Alps and also made my first visit to that beautiful liberty-loving land of South Tirol, where, as a result of a war fought to “make the world safe for democracy,” Mussolini is now engaged in the systematic destruction of a language and civilization that has set its mark upon the very face of the landscape for many centuries. On my third visit, in 1913, I did my most ambitious climbing, all in the Eastern Alps, getting up the Kleine Zinne by the north face, certain of the sporty Cortina courses, and also the Campanile di Val Montanaia, which is not considered altogether easy. In 1932 I was on three of the first-class Zermatt peaks.

Why, then, have I no right to talk about mountain-climbing? For the simple reason that I did all of these climbs with good guides, safeguarded by perfectly good Alpine ropes. An Alpine guide is said to be able to get a sack of meal up the Matterhorn about as well as he can get some tourists up, and then those tourists go home and boast what great mountaineers they are. Well, I differed from the proverbial sack of meal in two particulars: (1) I am a little superior to the sack of meal in climbing ability; (2) the sack of meal is unaware of the fact that it is not a mountaineer, and I am fully aware of the fact that I am not. The man who leads on the rope is the man who has to be a real mountaineer, and I never did that. I am less than the least of the thousands of real climbers who go to the Alps every summer and climb without guides.

But although I am not a mountaineer, I do love the mountains and I have loved them ever since I can remember anything at all. It is about the love of the mountains, rather than about the mountains, that I am venturing to read this little paper today.

Can the love of the mountains be conveyed to those who have it not? I am not sure. Perhaps if a man is not born with that love it is almost as hopeless to try to bring it to him as it would be to explain what color is to a blind man or to try to make President Roosevelt understand the Constitution of the United States. But on the whole I do believe that the love of the mountains can at least be cultivated, and if I can do anything whatever toward getting you to cultivate it, the purpose of this little paper will be amply attained.

One thing is clear—if you are to learn to love the mountains you must go up them by your own power. There is more thrill in the smallest hill in Fairmount Park if you walk up it than there is in the grandest mountain on earth if you go up it in an automobile. There is one curious thing about means of locomotion—the slower and simpler and the closer to nature they are, the more real thrill they give. I have got far more enjoyment out of my two feet than I did out of my bicycle; and I got more enjoyment out of my bicycle than I ever have got out of my motor car; and as for airplanes—well, all I can say is that I wouldn’t lower myself by going up in one of the stupid, noisy things! The only way to have the slightest inkling of what a mountain is is to walk or climb up it.

Photo 1 of 3 from correspondence of J. Gresham Machen to Allan A. MacRae, dated 4 August 1935.

The Mettelhorn in the foreground, 4192 m., & in the background, the Weisshorn, 4512 m.

Now I want you to feel something of what I feel when I am with the mountains that I love. To that end I am not going to ask you to go with me to any out-of-the-way place, but I am just going to take you to one of the most familiar tourist’s objectives, one of the places to which one goes on every ordinary European tour—namely, to Zermatt—and in Zermatt I am not going to take you on any really difficult climbs but merely up one or two of the peaks by the ordinary routes which modern mountaineers despise. I want you to look at Zermatt for a few minutes not with the eyes of a tourist, and not with the eyes of a devotee of mountaineering in its ultra-modern aspects, but with the eyes of a man who, whatever his limitations, does truly love the mountains.

In Zermatt, after I arrived on July 15, 1932, I secured Alois Graven as my guide; and on a number of the more ambitious expeditions I had also Gottfried Perren, who also is a guide of the first class. What Ty Cobb was on a baseball diamond and Bill Tilden is on the courts, that such men are on a steep snow or ice slope, or negotiating a difficult rock, Ueberhang. It is a joy as I have done in Switzerland and in the Eastern Alps, to see really good climbers at work.

At this point I just want to say a word for Swiss and Austrian guides. Justice is not done to them, in my judgment, in many of the books on climbing. You see, it is not they who write the books. They rank as professionals, and the tourists who hire them as “gentleman”; but in many cases I am inclined to think that the truer gentleman is the guide. I am quite sure that that was the case when I went with Alois Graven.

In addition to climbing practice on the wrong side of the cocky little Riffelhorn and on the ridge of the Untergabelhorn—which climbing practice prevented me from buttoning my back collar button without agony for a week—and in addition to an interesting glacier expedition around the back side of the Breithorn and up Pollux (13,430 feet) and Caster (13,850) and down by the Fellikjoch through the ice fall of the Zwillingsgletscher, on which expedition I made my first acquaintance with really bad weather in the high Alps and the curious optical illusions which it causes—it was perfectly amazing to see the way in which near the summit of Caster the leading guide would feel with his ice-axe for the edge of the ridge in what I could have sworn to be a perfectly innocent expanse of easy snowfield right there in plain view before our feet, and it was also perfectly amazing to see the way in which little pieces of ice on the glacier were rolled by way of experimentation down what looked like perfectly innocent slopes, to see whether they would simply disappear in crevasses which I could have sworn not to be there (if they disappeared we didn’t because we took the hint and chose some other way through the labyrinth)—after these various preliminary expeditions and despite the agony of a deep sore on my right foot in view of which the Swiss doctor whom I consulted told me that as a physician he would tell me to quit but that as a man he knew I would not do so and that therefore he would patch me up as well as possible, and despite the even greater agony of a strained stomach muscle which I got when I extricated myself and was extricated one day from a miniature crevasse and which made me, the following night in the Theodul hut, feel as helpless as a turtle laid on its back, so that getting out of my bunk became a difficult mountaineering feat—after these preliminary expeditions and despite these and other agonies due to a man’s giving a fifty-year-old body twenty-year-old treatment, I got up three first-class Zermatt peaks; the Zinalrothorn, the Matterhorn, and the Dent Blanche. Of these three, I have not time—or rather you have not time (for I for my part should just love to go on talking about the mountains for hours and Niagara would have nothing on me for running on)—I say, of these you have not time for me to tell about more than one. It is very hard for me to choose among the three. The Zinalrothorn, I think, is the most varied and interesting as a climb; the Dent Blanche has always had the reputation of being the most difficult of all the Zermatt peaks, and it is a glorious mountain indeed, a mountain that does not intrude its splendors upon the mob but keeps them for those who will penetrate into the vastnesses or will mount to the heights whence true nobility appears in its real proportions. I should love to tell you of that crowning day of my month at Zermatt, when after leaving the Schönbühl Hut at about 2.30 A.M. (after a disappointment the previous night when my guides had assisted in a rescue expedition that took one injured climber and the body of one who was killed in an accident on the Zmutt Ridge of the Matterhorn, opposite the hut where we were staying, down to Zermatt so that we all arrived there about 2 A.M., about the time when it had been planned that we should leave the hut for our climb) we made our way by lantern light up into the strange upper recesses of the Schönbühl Glacier, then by the dawning light of the day across the glacier, across the bottom of a couloir safe in the morning but not a place where one lingers when the warmth of afternoon has affected the hanging glacier two thousand feet above, then to the top of the Wandfluh, the great south ridge, at first broad and easy but contracting above to its serrated knife-edge form, then around the “great gendarme” and around or over the others of the rock towers on the ridge, until at last that glorious and unbelievable moment came when the last few feet of the sharp snow ridge could be seen with nothing above but a vacancy of blue, and when I became conscious of the fact that I was actually standing on the summit of the Dent Blanche.

Photo 1 of 3 from correspondence of J. Gresham Machen to Allan A. MacRae, dated 4 August 1935.

The Matterhorn, 4505 m. and Dent d’Herens, 4180.

But the Matterhorn is a symbol as well as a mountain, and so I am going to spend the few minutes that remain in telling you about that.

There is a curious thing when you first see the Matterhorn on a fresh arrival at Zermatt. You think your memory has preserved for you an adequate picture of what it is like. But you see that you were wrong. The reality is far more unbelievable than any memory of it can be. A man who sees the Matterhorn standing at that amazing angle above the Zermatt street can believe that such a thing exists only when he keeps his eyes actually fastened upon it.

When I arrived on July 15, 1932, the great mountain had not yet been ascended that summer. The masses of fresh snow were too great; the weather had not been right. That is one way in which this mountain retains its dignity even in the evil days upon which it has fallen when duffers such as I can stand upon its summit. In storm, it can be almost as perilous as ever even to those who follow the despised easiest route.

It was that despised easiest route, of course, which I followed—though my guide led me to have hopes of doing the Zmutt Ridge before I got through. On Monday, August 1st, we went up to the “Belvedere,” the tiny little hotel (if you can call it such) that stands right next to the old Matterhorn Hut at 10,700 feet. We went up there intending to ascend the Matterhorn the next day. But alas for human hopes. Nobody ascended the Matterhorn the next day, nor the day after that, nor that whole week. On Wednesday we with several other parties went a little way, but high wind and cold and snow soon drove us back. The Matterhorn may be sadly tamed, but you cannot play with it when the weather is not right. That applies to experts as well as to novices like me. I waited at the Belvedere all that week until Friday. It is not the most comfortable of summer resorts, and I really think that the stay that I made in it was one of the longest that any guest had ever made. Its little cubby-holes of rooms are admirable as Frigidaires, but as living quarters they are “not so hot.” People came and people went; very polyglot was the conversation: but I remained. I told them that I was the hermit or the Einsiedlerof the Belvedere. At last, however, even I gave it up. On Friday I returned to Zermatt, in plenty of time for the Saturday night bath!

The next Monday we toiled again up that five thousand feet to the Belvedere, and this time all went well. On Tuesday, August 9th, I stood on what I suppose is, next to Mt. Everest, the most famous mountain in the world.

From the Belvedere to the summit is about four thousand feet. The Matterhorn differs from every other great Alpine peak that I know anything about in that when you ascend it by the usual route you do not once set foot on a glacier. You climb near the northeast ridge—for the most part not on the actual ridge itself but on the east face near the ridge. In some places in the lower part there is some danger from falling stones, especially if other parties are climbing above. There is scarcely anything that the blasé modern mountaineer calls rock climbing of even respectable difficulty; but it is practically all rock climbing or clambering of a sort, and it seems quite interesting enough to the novice. The most precipitous part is above what is called “the shoulder,” and it was from near this part that the four members of Whymper’s party fell 4,000 feet to their death when they were descending after the first ascent in 1865. There are now fixed ropes at places in this part. You grasp the hanging rope with one hand and find the holds in the rock with the other. It took me five hours and forty minutes to make the ascent from the Belvedere. It would certainly have been no great achievement for an athlete; but I am not an athlete and never was one, and I was then fifty-one years of age and have an elevator in the building where I live. The rarefied air affected me more than it used to do in my earlier years, and the mountain is about 14,700 feet high. I shall never forget those last few breathless steps when I realized that only a few feet of easy snow separated me from the summit of the Matterhorn. When I stood there at last—the place where more than any other place on earth I had hoped all my life that I might stand—I was afraid I was going to break down and weep for joy.

Photo 1 of 3 from correspondence of J. Gresham Machen to Allan A. MacRae, dated 4 August 1935.

The summit of the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin)

The summit looks the part. It is not indeed a peak, as you would think it was from looking at the pictures which are taken from Zermatt, but a ridge—a ridge with the so-called Italian summit at one end and the so-called Swiss summit three feet higher at the other. Yes, it is a ridge. But what a ridge! On the south you look directly over the stupendous precipice of the south face to the green fields of Valtournanche. On the north you look down an immensely steep snow slope—with a vacancy beyond that is even more impressive than an actual view over the great north precipice would be. As for the distant prospect, I shall not try to describe it, for the simple reason that it is indescribable. Southward you look out over the mysterious infinity of the Italian plain with the snows of Monte Viso one hundred miles away. To the west, the great snow dome of Mont Blanc stands over a jumble of snow peaks; and it looks the monarch that it is. To the north the near peaks of the Weisshorn and the Dent Blanche, and on the horizon beyond the Rhone Valley a marvelous glittering galaxy of the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn and the other mountains of the Benese Oberland. To the east, between the Strahlhorn and Monte Rosa, the snows of the Weissthorn are like a great sheet let down from heaven, exceeding white and glistering, so as no fuller on earth can white them; and beyond, fold on fold, soft in the dim distance, the ranges of the Eastern Alps.

Then there is something else about that view from the Matterhorn. I felt it partly at least as I stood there, and I wonder whether you can feel it with me. It is this. You are standing there not in any ordinary country, but in the very midst of Europe, looking out from its very centre. Germany just beyond where you can see to the northeast, Italy to the south, France beyond those snows of Mont Blanc. There, in that glorious round spread out before you, that land of Europe, humanity has put forth its best. There it has struggled; there it has fallen; there it has looked upward to God. The history of the race seems to pass before you in an instant of time, concentrated in that fairest of all the lands of the earth. You think of the great men whose memories you love, the men who have struggled there in those countries below you, who have struggled for light and freedom, struggled for beauty, struggled above all for God’s Word. And then you think of the present and its decadence and its slavery, and you desire to weep. It is a pathetic thing to contemplate the history of mankind.

I know that there are people who tell us contemptuously that always there are croakers who look always to the past, croakers who think that the good old times are the best. But I for my part refuse to acquiesce in this relativism which refuses to take stock of the times in which we are living. It does seem to me that there can never be any true advance, and above all there can never be any true prayer, unless a man does pause occasionally, as on some mountain vantage ground, to try, at least, to evaluate the age in which he is living. And when I do that, I cannot for the life of me see how any man with even the slightest knowledge of history can help recognizing the fact that we are living in a time of sad decadence—a decadence only thinly disguised by the material achievements of our age, which already are beginning to pall on us like a new toy. When Mussolini makes war deliberately and openly upon democracy and freedom, and is much admired for doing so even in countries like ours; when an ignorant ruffian is dictator of Germany, until recently the most highly educated country in the world—when we contemplate these things I do not see how we can possibly help seeing that something is radically wrong. Just read the latest utterances of our own General Johnson, his cheap and vulgar abuse of a recent appointee of our President, the cheap tirades in which he develops his view that economics are bunk—and then compare that kind of thing with the state papers of a Jefferson or a Washington—and you will inevitably come to the conclusion that we are living in a time when decadence has set in on a gigantic scale.

What will be the end of that European civilization, of which I had a survey from my mountain vantage ground—of that European civilization and its daughter in America? What does the future hold in store? Will Luther prove to have lived in vain? Will all the dreams of liberty issue into some vast industrial machine? Will even nature be reduced to standard, as in our country the sweetness of the woods and hills is being destroyed, as I have seen them destroyed in Maine, by the uniformities and artificialities and officialdom of our national parks? Will the so-called “Child Labor Amendment” and other similar measures be adopted, to the destruction of all the decencies and privacies of the home? Will some dreadful second law of thermodynamics apply in the spiritual as in the material realm? Will all things in church and state be reduced to one dead level, coming at last to an equilibrium in which all liberty and all high aspirations will be gone? Will that be the end of all humanity’s hopes? I can see no escape from that conclusion in the signs of the times; too inexorable seems to me to be the march of events. No, I can see only one alternative. The alternative is that there is a God—a God who in His own good time will bring forward great men again to do His will, great men to resist the tyranny of experts and lead humanity out again into the realms of light and freedom, great men, above all, who will be messengers of His grace. There is, far above any earthly mountain peak of vision, a God high and lifted up who, though He is infinitely exalted, yet cares for His children among men.

What have I from my visits to the mountains, not only from those in the Alps, but also, for example, from that delightful twenty-four-mile walk which I took one day last summer in the White Mountains over the whole Twin Mountain range? The answer is that I have memories. Memory, in some respects, is a very terrible thing. Who has not experienced how, after we have forgotten some recent hurt in the hours of sleep, the memory of it comes back to us on our awaking as though it were some dreadful physical blow. Happy is the man who can in such moments repeat the words of the Psalmist and who in doing so regards them not merely as the words of the Psalmist but as the Word of God. But memory is also given us for our comfort; and so in hours of darkness and discouragement I love to think of that sharp summit ridge of the Matterhorn piercing the blue or the majesty and the beauty of that world spread out at my feet when I stood on the summit of the Dent Blanche.

Words to Live By:
God will, in His own good time, bring forward great men again to do His will, great men who will resist the tyranny of experts and lead humanity out again into the realms of light and freedom, great men, above all, who will be messengers of His grace. There is, far above any earthly mountain peak of vision, a God high and lifted up who, though He is infinitely exalted, yet cares for His children among men.

Image sources: The images from the Alps are scanned from postcards sent back by Dr. Machen in a letter to Dr. Allan A. MacRae. To read more about this address by Dr. Machen, click here.

Noting some discussion of this topic elsewhere on the Web recently, I thought I would post this brief article by Dr. William Childs Robinson. Dr. Robinson was a long-time professor at the Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, and as a solidly evangelical and Reformed Christian, he played a huge role in the lives of many seminary students there who later went on to become some of the founding fathers of the PCA.

Cremation Is Not Of Christian Origin
By William Childs Robinson
[excerpted from The Southern Presbyterian Journal 11.10 (9 July 1952): 6-7.]

This is not written to upset loved ones who may have inadvertently acted unwisely in this matter, nor to disturb soldiers who have seen the bodies of buddies destroyed in the horrors of war. Nor is it intended to put limits on the power of God. Certainly, the martyrs who were burned for the faith, are to be resurrected. But it is written to urge our people to conform to the faith and the practice of the Christian Church. An analogy to our position here may be found in that of baptism. God can save a believer without baptism as he saved the penitent thief; but that does not mean a believer is free to neglect or to substitute something else for the sacrament of God.

The forms, provided for burial in The Book of Church Order and in The Book of Common Worship, state that the graves of the saints are sanctified by Christ’s rest in the tomb. This thought is a fair summary of the teaching of the New Testament. Each of the Gospels tells of the burial of Jesus and that constitutes the background of Peter’s words in Acts 2:23-32. Some deny that Paul refers to the tomb of Christ, but a careful reading of the Greek in I Cor. 15:3-4, Romans 6:4 shows that the Apostle does have before him the entombment of the Saviour. Moreover, his thought is that we are entombed with Him. Christ is the head of the elect, our substitute and representative. What occurred to Him is to be, at least in part, parallelled by what occurs to us. Christ and His people belong together in death, entombment, and resurrection.

While the Apostles’ Creed never speaks of the immortality of the soul it twice mentions the resurrection. And in the earliest commentary on the Creed, Rufinus insists that our resurrection will be after the manner of Christ’s Whose Resurrection opened the gates of life. The Gospels and Acts represent Jesus as eating and drinking with the disciples after His Resurrection. Luke records His command to them to handle Him; Matthew tells how the women took hold of His feet; John gives Jesus’ word to Mary .20:17) which many of the best scholars are now translating “Release Me,” “Cease clinging to Me.” First John says that our hands handled the Word of Life, apparently refer-
ring to Christ’s appearances as recorded in the Fourth Gospel. In speaking of the Spiritual body. Paul means not a ghost, but a real body controlled by the Spirit—even as “a natural body” is in the Greek a psychical or psychologically controlled body.

In the second century, the Church held to this faith in the resurrection of the body against every effort of Gnosticism and Platonism to decode the faith into a mere survival of the soul. Ignatius records how Jesus came to those who were with Peter saying, “Lay hold, handle me, and see that I am not an incorporeal phantom.” Irenaeus insisted that God created earth as well as heaven, that the Word took a human body as well as a human reasonable soul, that Christ suffered in the flesh and rose in the body, and that there shall be a new earth as well as a new heaven.

Accordingly, the early Church followed the Jewish custom of burying the dead and rejected the pagan practice of cremation. The Bible gives no encouragement to cremation. The bodies of Saul and of his sons were outwardly burned to purify them from the defilement caused by days of hanging yet their bones were not destroyed but buried and re-interred later—I Sam. 31:11-13; I Chron. 10: 11-12; II Sam. 21:12-14. When the plague became so severe as to make burning necessary, the people were forbidden to make mention of the Name of the Lord, Amos 6:10.

The Roman persecutors tried to ridicule the Christian faith in the resurrection by burning the martyrs. In reply, John presents the souls of the martyrs living and reigning with Christ for a thousand years, Rev. 20:4. The martyrs who gave their bodies to be burned, thereby witnessed to their faith in Christ. When we die natural deaths, let us commend our bodies to loved ones to be placed in the grave in the posture of sleep, that they may witness to our blessed hope of rising to meet Christ Coming in His Glory. The bodies of believers, “being still united to Christ” and resting “in their graves till the Resurrection” bear testimony to Christ, to His Resurrection and to His Return.

We put no limits on the power of God. He is most free, most absolute, all-sufficient. But let us follow the faith and the custom He has given us in His Word and in the life and practice of the primitive Christian community.

—Wm.C.R.

[Three weeks later, Dr. Robinson’s wrote another brief article on this same topic, titled “Your Bodies Are Temples Of The Holy Ghost: Another Word Against Cremation”

As Monty said, “And now for something completely different.”

Like all humor, what follows is at least funny if you’ve not seen it before. Otherwise it may come off a bit droll. This was found a while back while processing the Papers of the Rev. Albert F. (“Bud”) Moginot, Jr.  A note in the corner of the sheet indicates that it was received from Dr. W. Harold Mare, via Bastiaan Van Elderen.

But my main purpose in posting this is also to inquire about the author of this parody. The stated author is one “Jack Lindquist.” But Andreas J. Köstenberger, in a footnote in his Excellence : The Character of God and the Pursuit of Scholarly Virtue attributes the piece to Dr. Edmund P. Clowney. Dr. Clowney was not above using a pseudonym on occasion and for years he authored the regular column “Eutychus and His Kin” in Christianity Today under that pseudonym of “Eutychus.” There was even a gathered collection of the best of those columns, published in the volume Eutychus and His Pen (Eerdmans, 1960). I have a signed copy here in the Historical Center. I think it was only when he decided to stop writing those columns that his identity was finally revealed.

But is Köstenberger correct in attributing this little parody to Dr.Clowney? Dr. Köstenberger certainly had the connections to be knowledgeable about the matter. Maybe someone else can fill in the story. Regardless, in its own way it is a wonderfully inventive striking at the root of the so-callled higher criticism.

Anyway, here it is:

BULTMANN READS MOTHER GOOSE
by Jack Lindquist

I-A    Hey diddle-diddle
I-B    The Cat and the Fiddle
II-A   The cow jumped over the moon.
II-B  The little dog laughed to see such sport,
III-   And the dish ran away with the spoon.

1.  Authorship and Date.  Internal evidence rejects the view that we have here an original composition by Mary (Mother) Goose of Boston (1686-1743).[1]  The phrasing of I-A is definitely late 18th century, since the Goose Period would have rendered it “diddley-diddley” (and thus “fiddley” in I-B).  Furthermore, the sequence “cat-cow-dog-dish” represents an obvious redaction and is a compilation of at least four different accounts.[2]  Thus, the author of the piece is unknown,[3] and its date is set between 1789 and 1820.[4]  The Sitz im Leben of the Depression of 1815 may be reflected in III.

2.  Text.  The received text is very corrupt.  The mythological element in II-A is typical of many other interpolations, as in the anthropomorphism in II-B.[5]  However, I-A may be original, excluding, of course, the “hey.”[6]

3.  Interpretation.  Stripped of its thought forms, the piece tells us of somethingrevolutionary as existentially encountered by three animals, two cooking implements, and one musical instrument.[7]

Footnotes :
[1.]  Discussed in F. Saurkraut, Gooses Werke, Vol. XXVII, pp. 825-906; G. F. W. Steinbanger, Gooserbrief, pp. 704-862; Festschrift fur Baron von Munchausen, pp. xiii-xx; R. Pretzelbender, Die Goosensinqer vom Boston, p. 10.

[2.]  See P. Katzenjammer in Goosengeschichtliche Schule Jahrbuch, Vol. X.

[3.]  Some attribute it to Mary’s grandson, Wild Goose (1793-1849), and others to Wild Goose’s nephew, Cooked (1803-1865).  Both views are challenged by A. Kegdrainer in the 30-volume prolegomenon, Gooseleider, Vol. XV.

[4.]  F. Pfeffernusse contends it is an English translation of a German original by the infant  Wagner.  See his Goose und Volkgeist, pp. 38-52; also his Geist und Volkqoose, pp. 27-46.

[5.] The authenticity of both II-A and II-B is poorly argued by the redactionary American Goosologist Carl Sandbag in his Old Glory and Mother Goose (see Vol. IV, The Winters in the South, p. 357.

[6.]  The meaning of the word “hey” is now hopelessly obscure.  See my articles on “Hey, that aint” and “Hey, what the” in Goosengrease, Fall, 1942.

[7.]  Perhaps an eclipse of the moon?

Our post today comes from a work concerning the Westminster Assembly, written by Dr. William S. Barker, and titled The Men and the Parties.

George Gillespie (Jan. 21, 1613 –  Dec. 16, 1648)

Like several others, the Scottish Commissioner George Gillespie also died toward the end of the Assembly’s main work, in December of 1648, being only 35.  Although the youngest of the Westminster divines, he was one of the most influential in the debates concerning church government, arguing strenuously for Presbyterianism by divine right and for the church’s right to exercise discipline.

Educated at the University of St. Andrew’s, Gillespie subscribed the National Covenant in 1638 as minister of Wemyss in the Presbytery of Kirkcaldy.  That same year, only 25 years of age, he preached at the General Assembly in Glasgow.  He became a minister in Edinburgh in 1642.  In 1643 he was appointed one of the four Scottish ministers, along with Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, and Robert Baillie, to attend the Westminster Assembly as a result of the Solemn League and Covenant.

Legends have tended to develop around Gillespie’s role at the Assembly, and while there is evidence to refute their accuracy, they nevertheless testify to the godly character of the Assembly and of Gillespie’s contributions.  Although Gillespie had departed for Scotland when the Shorter Catechism was under discussion, one story has the Assembly stymied in its producing an answer to the question, “What is God?”  Supposedly Gillespie was called upon to pray, and he began, “O God, thou who art a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in thy being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth….”

Another story makes vivid Gillespie’s role in the debate with the Erastians over the power of excommunication.  The great classical scholar of the age, the learned John Selden, Member of Parliament as well as of the Assembly, gave an impressive speech, with display of rabbinical lore, “to demonstrate that Matthew 18:15-17, the passage under dispute, contained no warrant for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but concerned the ordinary practice of the Jews in their common civil courts.”  J. D. Douglas describes the situation:

Even the most erudite and able of the divines present were in no hurry to encounter such a formidable opponent.  Samuel Rutherford, the story goes, turned to Gillespie and said:  “Rise, George, rise up, man, and defend the right of the Lord Jesus Christ to govern by His own laws, the Church which He hath purchased with His own blood.”  With every appearance of reluctance Gillespie rose, gave first a summary of the previous speech, stripping it of all its cumbrous learning and reducing it to simple language.  Then steadily, point by point, he completely refuted it, proving that the passage in question could not be interpreted or explained away to mean a mere reference to a civil court, and that the Jews both possessed and exercised the right of spiritual censures.  The effect of Gillespie’s speech was so great as not only to convince the Assembly, but also to astonish and confound Selden himself, to whom Gillespie was a veritable enfant terrible.  The Erastian leader is reported to have exclaimed in bitter mortification:  “That young man, by this single speech, has swept away the learning and the labour of ten years of my life.”[i]

What we do know is that Gillespie was a main respondent to Selden’s speech, but it was on the next day and there were others who responded as well.  What perhaps  gives us a most accurate indication of Gillespie’s ability and character is the account concerning one of his speeches, that he apparently was taking detailed notes of an opponent’s address to which he was preparing to reply.  After he had responded most persuasively, those sitting next to him, upon looking in his notebook, found nothing of the speech written but only these expressions, in Latin:  “Lord, send light” — “Lord, give assistance” — “Lord, defend thine own cause.”

Having returned from London, Gillespie was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly in Edinburgh on July 12, 1648.  He was assigned additional responsibilities, but soon fell ill and was clearly dying.  His older colleague Samuel Rutherford wrote from St. Andrew’s on September 27, 1648:  “Be not heavy:  the life of faith is now called for; doing was never reckoned in your account; though Christ in and by you hath done more than by twenty, yea, an hundred gray-haired and godly pastors.  Believing now is your last.  Look to that word, Gal. ii. 20.”[ii]  By December 17 Gillespie had died, but the work of the Westminster Assembly had been adopted by the Scottish Church to be passed on to its spiritual posterity.

Conclusion

Of Calvinism in general, but applicable also to this Puritan piety in particular, Beecher said:  ‘There never was a system since the world stood which put upon man such motives to holiness, or which builds batteries which sweep the whole ground of sin with such terrible artillery.’  As a matter of fact, wherever this system of truth has been embraced it has produced a noble and distinct type of character–a type so clearly marked that secular historians, with no religious bias, have recognized it, and pointed to it as a ‘remarkable illustration of the power of religious training in the formation of character.’[iii]  The piety of these men is worth our attention.

Of the Confession of Faith as an accurate and vital compilation of Christian truth, Warfield contended, that as such, the WCF could not betray the influence of its composers, nor lack,

spiritual quality.  It is the product of intellect working only under the impulse of the heart, and must be a monument of the religious life.  This is true of all the great creedal statements, and pre-eminently true of the Westminster Standards.  Their authors were men of learning and philosophic grasp; but above all of piety.  Their interest was not in speculative construction, but in the protection of their flocks from deadly error. . . . In proportion as our own religious life flows in a deep and broad stream, in that proportion will we find spiritual delight in the Westminster Standards.[iv]

In our own day, we would do well to note the piety and humility of these participants as they expressed their inner longings in the wording of the Solemn League and Covenant: “… we profess … our unfeigned [sincere] desire to be humbled for our own sins,… especially that we have not as we ought valued the inestimable benefit of the gospel; that we have not labored for the purity and power thereof; and that we have not endeavored to receive Christ in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of him in our lives; which are the cause of other sins and transgressions so much abounding amongst us; and our true and unfeigned purpose, desire, and endeavor for ourselves, and all others under our charge,… to amend our lives, and each one to go before another in the example of a real reformation; that the Lord may turn away his wrath and heavy indignation, and establish these churches and kingdoms in truth and peace.”[v]

The genuine devotion of the membership of the Assembly is exemplified in the speech by Philip Nye, while urging adoption of the Solemn League and Covenant.  Exhorted Nye, as a prototype of the pathos and piety of this group:

I beseech you, let it be seriously considered, if you mean to do any such work in the house of God as this is; if you mean to pluck up what many years ago was planted, or to build up what so long ago was pulled down, and to go through with this work, and not be discouraged, you must beg of the Lord this excellent spirit, this resolute stirring spirit, otherwise you will be outspirited, and both you and your cause slighted and dishonored.[vi]

This exemplar of Puritan piety, in that delicate balance of spiritual maturity, also went on immediately to charge, “On the other hand, we must labor for humility, prudence, gentleness, meekness.  A man may be very much zealous and resolute, and yet very meek and merciful:  Jesus Christ was a Lion and yet a Lamb also.”[vii]  Philip Nye concluded his exhortation to adopt the Solemn League in a fashion indicative of the divine’s devotion:

Grant unto us also, that when this life is finished, and we gathered to our fathers, there may be a generation out of our loins to stand up in this cause, that his great, and reverend name may be exalted from one generation to another, until he himself shall come, and perfect all with his own wisdom: even so come Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen.[viii]

The Assembly’s frequent staple of spiritual devotion, fasting, is well-known.  On May 17, 1644 the Assembly adjourned a controversy to fast and pray for the needs of the nation and the army.  According to Baillie, the “sweetest day ever seen in England” saw the divines begin a day of prayer with Dr. Twisse leading, followed by two hours of prayers by Mr. Marshall, confessing the sins of the Assembly in a passionate, yet prudent manner.  Two hours!  The fast continued with preaching by John Arrowsmith, succeeded by another two hour prayer by Mr. Vines.  Another sermon was offered, and yet another two-hour prayer was offered by Mr. Seaman.  If we knew more about the prayer lives and fasting of these divines, appreciation for their spirituality might be higher until we surpass these in the practice of godliness. 

Those of us who have subscribed to and been guided by the Westminster Standards have had reason to thank God for their conveyance to us of the system of doctrine taught in the Scriptures and the biblical principles of government, discipline, and worship.  The lives of these members of the Assembly make us aware of the godliness and learning, the sacrifice and labor, the prayer and submission of all things to God’s word, that produced, by God’s grace, the Westminster Standards.  All glory, praise and thanks be to the Lord!  Having begun with a reference to Hebrews 11, let us conclude there as well:

All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth….- the world was not worthy of them…. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.  God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Words to Live By:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Heb. 11:13, 38a, 39-40; 12:1-3)

Notes

[i]. J. D. Douglas, Light in the North (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1964), p. 41, citing Robert Wodrow, Analecta, 1834, III, 110.  Gillespie’s biographer, Alexander Gordon, in the Dictionary of National Biography calls the statement ascribed to Selden “incredible.”

[ii]. Reid, Memoirs, II, 282.

[iii]. Memorial Volume, pp. 261-262.

[iv]. Cited in Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed, p. 161.

[v]. A. W. Mitchell [1841], p. 38.

[vi]. Reid, 1982, p. 380.

[vii]. Reid, 1982, p. 380.

[viii]. Reid, 1982, p. 381.

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