Nineteenth Century Baptist Posts

Being away for any length of time means that, while it was relatively easy to access my blog and those I normally read, it was not as easy to be writing up new blogs. I would like to note some entries at Nineteenth Century Baptist, the blog of Nathan Finn, that are worth reading. Check out these three: More on Baptist Confessionalism I recently came a..., Elias Keach on a True Gospel Church Elias Keach w..., William Carey’s View of History When I have the p...

A Brief Reformed Look at Mediaeval Monasteries

Loving the Christian tradition is a sign of spiritual health. But we must read the past with discernment. Just as a malnourished individual must eat wholesome food and not simply anything he can lay his hands on simply because it is food, so must we be when it comes to the past. I suspect it is due to a malnourished involvement with the past that some recent authors are enthusing about some elements of Church History that our Evangelical and Reformed forebears threw overboard because of their dissonance from the standpoint of Scripture. A good example has to be this recent post, “It Takes a Monk to Save a Civilization” by Ben House. This blog is building upon Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, which is a good read no doubt—especially for someone like myself with an Irish parent—but has some definite flaws from a historiographical vantage-point. For example, House states, “For a time, about all that stood between the preservation of European civilization or its descent into a true dark age was a hardy band of Irish monks who were dedicated to copying books and evangelizing people.” But what of the entire structure of the Byzantine Empire and its libraries and scholars?

Then, at the end of the post, House cites a couple of historians of the mediæval era like Christopher Dawson about the blessings of mediæval monasteries. Reading these quotes I hardly recognized the institutions that John Wycliffe (d.1384) and the early Reformers so heavily declaimed against.

The quote from Dawson’s The Making of Europe, runs thus: “The greatest names of the age are the names of monks—St. Benedict and St. Gregory, the two Columbas, Bede and Boniface, Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, and Dunstan, and it is to the monks that the great cultural achievements of the age are due, whether we look at the preservation of ancient culture, the conversion of new peoples or the formation of new centres of culture in Ireland and Northumbria and the Carolingian Empire.”

For a Roman Catholic historian like Dawson, the list of names in this quote can remain undifferentiated. They are all heroes of the faith in the Roman pantheon. But it will not do at all for a Reformed historian to cite such a list without making differentiation between, for example, the Celts and the Anglo-Celtic supporters of the Church of Rome.

House has a good point in his post that churches must function like beacons of light in our collapsing culture as monasteries once did in late antiquity. But that point must be made with care lest we forget what the monasteries came to represent in mediæval Europe.

Travel

This past week I have been in England and N. Ireland. It was a privilege to preach at Whiddon Valley Evangelical Church in Barnstaple, Devon, attend the Westminster Conference in London, and visit Queen’s University Belfast, and most importantly, enjoy sweet fellowship with some of the people of God. And surely one of the best things about going away has got to be coming home. It’s not the journey that is so precious but the destination.

One of the other sweet things about travel is being able to read and reflect in airport lounges and on buses and so on. I thank God for a batch of a good books that I read on this recent trip.

Staying Humble & near to God

I have been reading Daniel Webber’s William Carey and the Missionary Vision (Banner of Truth Trust, 2005). It is a fairly easy read at about 50 or so pages of textual introduction to Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), a classic defense of missions, and Andrew Fuller’s The Instances, the Evil Nature, and the Dangerous Tendency of Delay, in the Concerns of Religion (1791), which played a vital role in garnering support for Carey’s vision as laid out in the Enquiry. Found this great piece of advice by Fuller to Carey when certain of their friends were clamouring for a likeness of Carey to be made. “Eight hundred guineas have been offered for Dr Carey’s likeness!,” Fuller wrote to Carey in India. Fuller rightly feared such fame might go to their heads and he gave this advice to his friend as well as to himself: “if we be kept humble and near to God, we have nothing to fear” (p.41). It is noteworthy that the first clause is in the passive. Fuller’s prayer to God for himself and Carey was: “Lord, keep us humble and near to Thee.”

Though we must use the means of grace to stay in the place of humility and use those same means to cleave to our God, ultimately this is his great work. If we are kept humble and near to him—then truly we have nothing to fear.

Benjamin Keach–Baptist Hymnwriter

Benjamin Keach (1640-1704) wrote a number of key works defending the use of hymns in worship. In arguing for this he also wrote some of his own hymns. Now, it was Charles H Spurgeon who said of Benjamin Keach’s hymnody that the less said about it the better! But Paul Martin has an example of a good hymn by Keach—and a Christmas one to boot! Many thanks for this Paul: A Good Baptist Christmas Carol! PS For a great book on Keach see the recent bio by Austin Walker, The Excellent Benjamin Keach (Joshua Press, 2004). A second edition is due out in the new year.

Early Johnny Cash & the Early Augustine

In this lively response to Scott McKnight’s take on Russ Moore’s review of the movie Walk the Line—McKnight, McLaren, and McAuthenticity—Moore compares the early Cash after his conversion to the early Augustine [presumably prior to the earth-shattering illumination that came when, in the mid-390s, Augustine realized that the entire Christian life is sheer gift] and Brian McLaren to Arius. A good read and response!

Reading Augustine

I have been immersing myself in recent weeks in Augustine’s thought—partly because of two courses I have been teaching on the North African theologian and also because of a major paper I have to give on his masterpiece The City of God (412-427) and its theology of history next week in London, England. It is exactly thirty years ago that I first read this work in detail for a Master’s thesis. It has been said that if you get into Augustine there is the possibility you will never get out. But never to have read him—that is to miss one of the Church’s greatest gems. The Ancient Church has bequeathed to the Church of Christ five treasures:

  • The canon of the New Testament
  • The doctrine of the Trinity as hammered out by Athanasius and the Cappadocians in particular
  • Chalcedonian Christology
  • The early martyrs
  • And the theology of Augustine

Read Augustine, you will never regret it. Begin with the Confessions (397-401) and then move on to his City of God. His work on Trinitarian doctrine, On the Trinity (399-413) is also a must. Of course, there will be stuff you disagree with. But you will be joining a discussion circle that has involved some of the greatest minds in the history of the Church—Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux, Luther and Calvin, Owen and Warfield, to name just a few.

Anyway if blogging is rare in the next few days it is because I am focused on finishing this paper and then away in the UK from Dec 9 to 16.

On Quotations–Some Principles

A great quote from Edmund Burke (1729-1797) has been posted here by Kirk Wellum. Reading this quote led me to think of that other famous quote often attributed to Burke, which runs something like this: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” I say “something like” because it turns out there are dozens of variants of this quote!

For a thoughful study of these variants, see Martin Porter, “ ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’ (or words to that effect): A study of a Web quotation” (January 2002; http://www.tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote.html). Porter actually concludes after an exhaustive study that Burke never said this second quote about the triumph of evil and good men doing nought! In this essay and a follow-up one (“Four Principles of Quotation: Being a follow up to A study of a Web quotation” (March 2002; http://www.tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote2.html), Porter rightly argues that for a quote to be used correctly it must be cited exactly from the source and something of the context knowable.

He therefore gives four principles regarding making quotations—this is a must for students of history and those aspiring to be historians.

Principle 1 (for readers): Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.

Principle 2 (for readers): Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source.

Principle 3 (for quoters): Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source.

Principle 4 (for quoters): Only quote from works that you have read.  

PS I would wholeheartedly affirm Principles 1 and 3. Principle 2 seems to engender too much skepticism. And Principle 4 seems to be a little narrow.

Free St. George’s–A Treasure Trove of Scottish Reformed Christianity

I love what is going on at this blog, Free St. George’s. My wife is Scottish born and I have developed a keen interest over the years in many things Scottish. I was born in England, but in my “wilder”—or should I say “saner”?—moments I have wished I had been born a Scot! But providence being what it is, I had no choice over that! But having a Scottish wife—with relatives connected to the Free Church and now the Free Church Continuing—has made me probe into my children’s rich Scottish Christian roots. And Free St. George’s is well on its way to becoming a treasure-trove of reflection on Scottish Reformed Christianity and its various highways and byways.

Keep up the good work, brother!

Scientia Est Libertas

It is almost forty years ago to the day that my family emigrated from the United Kingdom to Canada. We arrived on December 6, 1965, in Toronto at what is now Pearson Airport after a stopover in Halifax. I well recall being struck by the cold in Halifax as we deplaned and walked into the terminal. From Toronto we came through to Hamilton by taxi where we stayed for a few weeks in the old Sheraton Connaught in downtown Hamilton while awaiting the house we were going to rent in Ancaster on Lover’s Lane. We had come to Canada because my father had taken up a teaching post at McMaster University in Electrical Engineering. To be honest, I hated Canada at first. I had left two very close friends behind in England, Christopher Janaway and Harry Weinberg. We kept in touch by mail a little after I left, but I have essentially not heard from them for nearly forty years. And there were so many little things in Canadian culture I did not like. But I have grown to love Canada.

The high school I attended in Ancaster was Ancaster High and Vocational School (now simply Ancaster High School). We were there tonight, attending a performance of “Guys and Dolls” by Frank Loesser (1910-1959)—my daughter was playing in the pit orchestra.

Where my wife and I, and our son Nigel, sat in the auditorium was close to the wall on which were the pictures of the Principals from the past. The first two, Mr. Davidson and Mr. Rumball, were the ones who were Principal when I was there from 1966 to 1971. That Mr. Rumball would not have remembered me as a good student is an understatement!

Another Principal’s picture was there, whom I remember with much thanks. Mr. Richardson taught history when I was in Grades 12 and 13. Grade 12 we did “Revolutions,” which fascinated me at the time and gave me an opportunity to explore the French and Russian Revolutions in some detail. Mr. Richardson believed in getting us into the primary sources, something I have always believed makes for the best history teaching.

The motto of Ancaster High is Scientia est libertas—“knowledge is freedom.” I don’t think I paid it much attention during the time I was a student within her walls, though I was into freedom when I was there. Freedom from what I saw as the constrictions of western culture, freedoms from the rules of adults, freedom from the norms of society. But I traded one set of rules for the bondage of another conformity—conformity to the “freak” and radical student culture of the sixties.

It was not until I had left high school that I found the truth of Ancaster High’s motto: in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ there is freedom indeed!

Benjamin Beddome & Biblical Reasons for Affirming the Triunity of God

By and large the Trinitarianism of the Nicene creed remained unchallenged until the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Even during that most tumultuous of theological eras, the Reformation, this particular area of Christian belief did not come into general dispute, though there were a few, like Michael Servetus (1511-1553) in the sixteenth century, who rejected Trinitarianism for a Unitarian perspective on the Godhead. In the rationalistic atmosphere of the eighteenth century, however, the doctrine was heavily attacked and ridiculed as illogical. During this period the English-speaking world saw the re-emergence of Arianism, the heresy of the fourth century which affirmed the creaturehood of Christ, as well as the rapid spread of Unitarianism. By the early nineteenth century the doctrine of the Trinity “had become an embarrassment, and the way was open to dismiss it as a philosophical construction by the early church.” [G. L. Bray, “Trinity” in New Dictionary of Theology, eds. Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer (Downers Grove, Illinois/Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 694].

Benjamin Beddome’s catechism

Orthodox response to this attack on what was rightly considered to be one of the foundational truths of Christianity was varied. In certain evangelical circles the doctrine was an essential part of catechetical instruction. In 1752 Benjamin Beddome (1717-1795), the pastor of a Calvinistic Baptist work in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, drew up A Scriptural Exposition of the Baptist Catechism by Way of Question and Answer. This catechism basically reproduced the wording and substance of an earlier catechism written by the seventeenth-century Baptist Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), but added various sub-questions and answers to each of the questions in Keach’s catechism.

The Scriptural Exposition proved to be fairly popular. There were two editions during Beddome’s lifetime, the second of which was widely used at the Bristol Baptist Academy, the sole British Baptist seminary for much of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century it was reprinted once in the British Isles and twice in the United States, the last printing being in 1849.

Teaching the doctrine of the Trinity

To the question, “How many persons are there in the godhead?,” Keach’s catechism gave the answer, “There are three persons in the godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one, the same in essence, equal in power and glory.” Beddome faithfully reproduces this question and answer, but then adds five paragraphs of questions and Scripture texts as a further delineation of the subject [A Scriptural Exposition of the Baptist Catechism by Way of Question and Answer (2nd. ed.; Bristol: W. Pine, 1776), 23-25.].

In the opening paragraph he argues first for the triunity of God from such passages as Genesis 1:26, where we have the statement “Let us make man” (KJV). Then, on the basis of Psalm 110:1 and John 14:26, Beddome affirms the distinct personhood of the Son and the Spirit respectively. This train of argument logically raises the question “May it with any propriety then be said, that there are three Gods?” To this Beddome answers with a resounding “No,” and in support of his answer he cites Zechariah 14:9 (KJV): “there shall be one Lord, and his name one.”

The next paragraph adduces texts where both the Son and the Holy Spirit are referred to as God. “Is the Son called God? Yes. Who is over all God blessed for evermore. Rom ix.5. Is the Spirit called God? Yes. Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lye to the Holy Ghost, thou hast not lyed unto men man but unto God. Acts v.3, 4.” There are a number of texts that Beddome could have cited as proof that the New Testament calls the Son “God.” With regard to the Spirit, though, apart from this passage from Acts there is no clear attribution of the title “God” to the person of the Spirit in the New Testament.

The divine attributes and activities that the Spirit and the Son share with the Father and are the sole prerogative of a divine being are the subject of the third paragraph, which runs as follows:

“Is the Son eternal as well as the Father? Yes. Before Abraham was, I am, John viii.58. Is the Spirit eternal? Yes. He is called the eternal Spirit, Heb. ix.14. Is the Son omnipresent? Yes. Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I, Mat. xviii.20. Is the Spirit so too? Yes. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, Ps. cxxxix.7 Is the Son omniscient? Yes. Thou knowest all things, John xxi.17. And is the Spirit so? Yes. He seacheth all things, 1 Cor. ii.10. Is the work of creation ascribed to the Son? Yes. All things were made by him, John i.3. Is it also ascribed to the Spirit? Yes. The Spirit of God hath made me, Job xxxiii.4. And is creation a work peculiar to God? Yes. He that hath built all things is God, Heb. iii.4.”  

The fourth paragraph seeks to prove the deity of the Son and the Spirit from the fact that both of them are the object of prayer in the Scriptures. To show this of the Son is relatively easy, and Beddome can refer to a passage like Acts 7:59 (KJV), where Stephen, the first martyr, prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” To find a text where the Spirit is actually the object of prayer is far more difficult. Beddome cites Revelation 1:4, where the “seven spirits,” which Beddome rightly understands to be a symbolic representation of the “one holy and eternal Spirit,” are included along with God the Father and Jesus Christ in a salutation to the seven churches in Asia Minor. This passage does clearly have significant Trinitarian import.

The fifth and final paragraph gives further scriptural support for the fact that there is a plurality within the Godhead. “Are divine blessings derived from all three persons in the godhead? Yes. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all, 2 Cor. xiii.14. Have each of these their distinct province in the affair of man’s salvation, Yes. Thro’ him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father” (Cor. 14).”

Beddome would have readily confessed this doctrine is a great mystery. But he was also well aware that, despite its mysteriousness, how necessary it is that the believer affirm it with all of his or her soul.

Those Blogs with Latin Names

Have you ever wondered about the meaning of some of the Latin titles adorning not only this blog but other blogs? Mine is fairly obvious. “Church History.” When I see it, it reminds me of the great work by the Venerable Bede on the history of the English Church during the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon eras. Or those classic works by early Church historians Eusebius of Caesarea, Socrates and Sozomen. Or even the mother of all church histories: The Book of Acts by Luke the historian. As I said, though, mine is fairly easy. But what about Kevin Bauder’s blog? Have you thought, what exactly does Nos sobrii mean? Well, here is your opportunity to learn the meaning of his blog’s name, as well as learn some Latin and enjoy an excellent post on how to live in this frivolous and shallow age: What Does It Mean?