Soli Deo Gloria - 03 December 2010 08:11 PM

[You’re looking for assurance, right? Where might you look for assurance of salvation? Nate

Who said anything about ‘assurance of salvation’? I’m talking about the struggles and sinful tendencies in our saved walk with God. I’m saved. Okay...now what? Why do I keep sinning? Why can’t I seem to get victory over some sins? Why, as did Paul, do I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I should?

Simple...we are trying to make the old self do good things. We fail. We question our salvation because we musn’t be ‘doing something right’. 
The program I am going through is simply pointing out that we are looking and doing things wrong. Do we want to have a more abundant life as Jesus promised? Do we want to gain victory over those things that seem to crop up all the time? This is simply a way to show what is wrong with the way we view our sanctifying walk. It is not about assurance of salvation. That is a given. It is about not trying harder to be a good Christian and allowing God’s transformation process, this new life, to gain the foothold it should in our sanctification. Too may times we try to do it on our own thinking that the old self, our sinful nature, just has to be trained to be good while we struggle. This only resultsin a spirit crushing treadmill we will find ourselves on.

It is nothing that Paul himself has not laid out for us in scripture regarding our daily sanctifying walk.

guibox - 04 December 2010 08:49 AM

Who said anything about ‘assurance of salvation’? I’m talking about the struggles and sinful tendencies in our saved walk with God. I’m saved. Okay...now what? Why do I keep sinning? Why can’t I seem to get victory over some sins? Why, as did Paul, do I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I should?

Simple...we are trying to make the old self do good things. We fail. We question our salvation because we musn’t be ‘doing something right’. 
The program I am going through is simply pointing out that we are looking and doing things wrong. Do we want to have a more abundant life as Jesus promised? Do we want to gain victory over those things that seem to crop up all the time? This is simply a way to show what is wrong with the way we view our sanctifying walk. It is not about assurance of salvation. That is a given. It is about not trying harder to be a good Christian and allowing God’s transformation process, this new life, to gain the foothold it should in our sanctification. Too may times we try to do it on our own thinking that the old self, our sinful nature, just has to be trained to be good while we struggle. This only resultsin a spirit crushing treadmill we will find ourselves on.

It is nothing that Paul himself has not laid out for us in scripture regarding our daily sanctifying walk.

Your sinful struggles never cause you to lose assurance of salvation? That would be a first. You’re either the most exceptional believer ever in the history of Christianity or you’re presuming upon God’s grace.

You’re not seeking out a method to get your sanctification going so that you can feel more close to God?

You don’t have to explain Keswick theology to me. I know how they use Scripture. Been there, done that. They turn gospel into law, indicatives into imperatives, just like you’ve done.

You’ve traded one form of moralism for another. Notice who’s performing all the action verbs in your Keswick slogans. YOU ARE, not God. One form of striving traded in for a repackaged model.

Paul laid out no such thing. Paul was not giving imperatives when he said “you have been crucified with Christ.” Every second blessing teacher confuses law and gospel. We live in Romans 7 as Christians. Your guru is the guy who is saying that it’s possible to leave it behind, not me. To “gain victory.” Christ gained the victory, once for all, the just for the unjust, not us. The righteous for the wicked.

Anyway, like I said, I’m not expecting to convince you of anything. You’ve taken the bait. Go for it. Come back in a year and let me know how it went. Then maybe you’ll have time for the gospel, the one big enough to justify us and sanctify us.

Read the quote from Machen again. Slowly.

Nate

Soli Deo Gloria - 04 December 2010 09:39 AM

Your sinful struggles never cause you to lose assurance of salvation? That would be a first. You’re either the most exceptional believer ever in the history of Christianity or you’re presuming upon God’s grace.

I never said that. What I was saying is that you seem to think the program I’m following is a way to be assured of salvation. It is not. Assurance of salvation is already given. This is living a sanctified life, not through our own efforts through the old self. You are misconstruing my words, apparently. Something you constantly accuse me of all the time.

Soli Deo Gloria - 04 December 2010 09:39 AM

You’re not seeking out a method to get you sanctification going so that you can feel more close to God?

Feeling close to God and desiring assurance of salvation through acts are two different things. And no, I don’t believe this is simply a method of feeling more close to God. It is a way in understanding and effectively approaching the issues of the old self vs the new self and why we constantly fall and why our attempts to ‘be good’ through our actions are ineffective.

Soli Deo Gloria - 04 December 2010 09:39 AM

You don’t have to explain Keswick theology to me. I know how they use Scripture. Been there, done that. They turn gospel into law, indicatives into imperatives, just like you’ve done.
You’ve traded one form of moralism for another. Notice who’s performing all the action verbs in your Keswick slogans. YOU ARE, not God. One form of striving traded in for a repackaged model.

I don’t see it that way, but oh well.

Soli Deo Gloria - 04 December 2010 09:39 AM

Paul laid out no such thing. Paul was not giving imperatives when he said “you have been crucified with Christ.” Every second blessing teacher confuses law and gospel. We live in Romans 7 as Christians. Your guru is the guy who is saying that it’s possible to leave it behind, not me. To “gain victory.” Christ gained the victory, once for all, the just for the unjust, not us. The righteous for the wicked.

You’re not making any sense. Christ gained the victory but you still sin. What exactly is Christ’s work in us, Nate?  Did it not occur to you to think that this ‘victory Christ gained’ in relating to our sanctifying walk is God’s call to pick up our cross and follow Him? To pick up our cross means that we must die to self, that self must be crucified so He might work in us in the new self?

I will look through your Andy Neselli links against Keswick theology. In the comments below it there was a link to a pdf about Keswick being good or bad.
http://0301.nccdn.net/1_5/1a0/148/390/Good-one-or-Bad-one.pdf

Perhaps this addresses some of your criticisms of it. I for one find nothing wrong with it, nor do I see it as the ‘second blessing’ theology. It definitely isn’t part of the program I am following.

guibox - 04 December 2010 01:03 PM

I never said that. What I was saying is that you seem to think the program I’m following is a way to be assured of salvation. It is not. Assurance of salvation is already given. This is living a sanctified life, not through our own efforts through the old self. You are misconstruing my words, apparently. Something you constantly accuse me of all the time.

No, I’m not misconstruing your words. I asked you a simple question, to which you reacted defensively. The struggle with sin and struggling with assurance of salvation usually go hand in hand. That’s why I asked. Your first problem is that you see sin as what you do. Sin is who you are. It’s your identity. Every second blessing method tries to tell you that you can “gain victory” over some sin by “letting go and letting God” (or some such nonsense), which I take to mean that you can stop committing some outward act. Well, sorry, that’s not “gaining victory” over anything. It’s just modifying your behavior.

guibox - 04 December 2010 01:03 PM

Feeling close to God and desiring assurance of salvation through acts are two different things. And no, I don’t believe this is simply a method of feeling more close to God. It is a way in understanding and effectively approaching the issues of the old self vs the new self and why we constantly fall and why our attempts to ‘be good’ through our actions are ineffective.

You’re unnecessarily complicating the issue. When I said “feel close to God,” I meant the same thing as assurance of salvation. I was trying to use terminology that might be more familiar.

guibox - 04 December 2010 01:03 PM

I don’t see it that way, but oh well.

And why should your opinion be taken seriously? Is “you have been crucified with Christ” an indicative or an imperative? Your guy turned it into an imperative even in the preview video on his website. That is, he confused law and gospel. Look at every single one of the slogans that you said charactarize his teaching. ‘Let go and let God,’ ‘Start surrendering and stop trying harder,’ etc. Are those indicatives (gospel) or imperatives (law)? Do you think you can start being sanctified by following a bunch of rules? It’s moralism.

guibox - 04 December 2010 01:03 PM

You’re not making any sense. Christ gained the victory but you still sin. What exactly is Christ’s work in us, Nate?  Did it not occur to you to think that this ‘victory Christ gained’ in relating to our sanctifying walk is God’s call to pick up our cross and follow Him? To pick up our cross means that we must die to self, that self must be crucified so He might work in us in the new self?

Don’t confuse your inability to understand with me not making any sense. What I wrote was perfectly clear. Keswick people confuse law and gospel. They turn indicatives into imperatives. I said that you can’t leave Romans 7 behind, like second blessing (Keswick) people tell you that you can. They tell you that you can “gain victory.” You can’t. You might be able to modify your outward behavior for a while, but that isn’t victory.

And by the way, you can stop misusing the “take up your cross and follow Him” verse. It has nothing to do with our sanctification, which is blatantly obvious from the context.

guibox - 04 December 2010 01:03 PM

I will look through your Andy Neselli links against Keswick theology. In the comments below it there was a link to a pdf about Keswick being good or bad.

Perhaps this addresses some of your criticisms of it. I for one find nothing wrong with it, nor do I see it as the ‘second blessing’ theology. It definitely isn’t part of the program I am following.

It’s a start. You’ll find the slogans you used verbatim in the power point, probably in the pdf as well.

If you have anything to say about Machen’s book, I suggest you say it. That’s what the thread is about after all.

Nate

If you want a biblical book on mortification, try John Owen’s The Mortification of Sin, which is included with two of his other works on sin and temptation in the book I linked to.

Nate

UPDATE: Here is that same book from Owen, for free online.

Chapter 4 of What is Faith? is titled “Faith Born of Need.” As the chapter title suggests, this portion is concerned with our need for Jesus, namely, our own sin. Here is how Machen lays out the scope of the chapter:

It has been shown in the last chapter that the Jesus who is presented in the New Testament is one whom a man can trust; there are no limits to His goodness and no limits to His power. But that presentation in itself does not afford a sufficient basis for faith. No matter how great and good be the Saviour, we cannot trust Him unless there be some contact specifically between ourselves and Him. Faith in a person involves not merely the conviction that the person trusted is able to save, but also the conviction that he is able to save us; that there should be faith, there must be some definite relation between the person trusted and a specific need of the person who trusts…

... That need of the soul from which Jesus alone can save is sin. But when I say “sin,” I do not mean merely the sins of the world or the sins of other people, but I mean your sin--your sin and mine. Consideration of the sins of other people is the deadliest of moral anodynes; it relieves the pain of conscience, but it also destroys moral life. Very different is that conviction of sin which leads a man to have faith in Christ.

As a Reformed theologian, Machen locates the means by which we come to know our need (our sin) in the “principle use of the law” (as Luther would have it). This law is revealed in nature (a covenant of works), and at Sinai (a typological republication of the covenant of works). Paul states clearly in Galatians that “… the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” Machen clearly affirms that natural law is sufficient to leave the Gentiles without excuse, even though they do not have special revelation (the Bible).

... the Old Testament Scriptures make the law of God plainer than it is to other men, but all men have received, in their consciences, some manifestation of God’s will, and are without excuse when they disobey. However the law is manifested, then, whether in the Old Testament, or (still more clearly) in the teaching and example of Jesus, or in the voice of conscience, it may be a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ if it produces the consciousness of sin.

Now this affirmation clearly leads to the most basic of all distinctions in Scripture: the distinction between law and gospel. The law announces God’s judgement of our sin and our hopeless condition, the gospel announces our full deliverance from God’s impending judgement of our sin.

Machen laments the fact that this old way of coming to Christ has been sorely neglected. He describes in some detail the optimistic religion of humanity that was taking over the churches even in his day. The paganism that was taking over the churches was just this: that man is basically good, that he only does evil because of lack of knowledge, that therefore he isn’t accountable to anyone for his failures, and he (and society with him) is perfectable.

In response to this, Machen reasserts the biblical way of coming to Christ:

At the root of all true companionship with Jesus, therefore, is the consciousness of sin and with it the reliance upon His mercy; to have fellowship with Him it is necessary to learn the terrible lesson of God’s law.

And he contrasts it with the modern attitude:

“I may not be very orthodox,” says many a modern man, “but I am a Christian because I believe that the principles of Jesus will solve all the problems of my life...”

Here is how he responds to this attitude:

The most obvious objection to this way of approach to Jesus is that it will not work; an ideal is quite powerless to a man who is under the thraldom of sin…

There is, however, also another objection. Jesus, it is said, can be taken as the supreme and perfect ideal for humanity. But is He really a perfect ideal? There is one difficulty which modern men find about taking Him as such--the difficulty due to His stupendous claims… Jesus of Nazareth regarded Himself as the Messiah… the lofty meaning by which it designated the heavenly Son of Man… This Jesus of Nazareth, in other words, who is to be taken as the supreme moral ideal of the race, actually believed, as He looked out upon His contemporaries, that He was one day to sit upon the throne of God and be their Judge and the Judge of all the earth! Would not such a person have been, if not actually insane, at least unbalanced and unworthy of the full confidence of men?

There is only one way of overcoming this difficulty--it is to accept the lofty claims of Jesus as sober truth… But He can be accepted as the Saviour from sin only by those who hold the same view of sin as that which He held; and that view can be held only by those who have learned the lesson of the law.

Here is how Machen ends the chapter:

A new and more powerful proclamation of that law is perhaps the most pressing need of the hour; men would have little difficulty with the gospel if they had only learned the lesson of the law. As it is, they are turning aside from the Christian pathway; they are turning to the village of Morality, and to the house of Mr. Legality, who is reported to be very skilful in relieving men of their burdens. Mr. Legality has indeed in our day disguised himself somewhat, but he is the same deceiver as the one of whom Bunyan wrote. “Making Christ Master” in the life, putting into practice “the principles of Christ” by one’s own efforts--these are merely new ways of earning salvation by one’s own obedience to God’s commands. And they are undertaken because of a lax view of what those commands are. So it always is: a low view of law always brings legalism in religion; a high view of law makes a man a seeker after grace. Pray God that the high view may again prevail; that Mount Sinai may again overhang the path and shoot forth flames, in order that then the men of our time may, like Christian in the allegory, meet some true Evangelist, who shall point them out the old, old way, through the little wicket gate, to the place somewhat ascending where they shall really see the Cross and the figure of Him that did hang thereon, that at that sight the burden of the guilt of sin, which no human hand could remove, may fall from their back into a sepulchre beside the way, and that then, with wondrous lightness and freedom and joy, they may walk the Christian path, through the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and up over the Delectable Mountains, until at last they pass triumphant across the river into the City of God.

Nate

Nate

I’m behind you in reading Machen’s book. Hoping that I’ll not spoil your work, I’ll paste here from chapter 3.

I was told that I’m promoting some kind of theological or doctrinal kind of legalism in which faith in a theological precise formulation or creed is a measuring stick of who is or is not saved. My insistence for sticking with the trinitarian creeds, especially those related to Jesus’ divinity was perceived as intolerant and narrow-minded, even resembling a pharisaical spirit.

Yet there may be an objection. “Faith,” it may be said, “seems to be such a wonderfully simple thing. What has the simple trust which that centurion reposed in Jesus to do with the subtleties of the Chalcedonian creed? What has it to do even with a question of fact like the question of the virgin birth? And may we not return from our theology, or from our discussion of details of the New Testament presentation, to the simplicity of the centurion’s faith?

The argument is simple: since the centurion didn’t have to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or to believe in the two natures of Christ in the precise way the Chalcedonian creeds prescribed and still his faith was genuine, recognized by Christ, it follows that these theological details doesn’t pertain to saving faith.

To this objection there is of course one very easy answer. The plain fact is that we are by no means in the same situation as the centurion was with reference to Jesus; we of the twentieth century need to know very much more about Jesus in order to trust Him than the centurion needed to know.

Different contexts, different contents. The centurion faith cannot be used as a measuring stick for our faith.

If we had Jesus with us in bodily presence now, it is quite possible that we might be able to trust Him with very little knowledge indeed; the majesty of His bearing might conceivably inspire unbounded confidence almost at first sight. But as a matter of fact we are separated from Him by nineteen centuries; and if we are to commit ourselves unreservedly to a Jew who lived nineteen hundred years ago, as to a living person, there are obviously many things about Him that we need to know. 

The centurion had direct access to Jesus, we had mediate access through the Bible, through Bible’s testimony about Jesus. And the content of what the Bible confess about Jesus, the doctrinal points contained in the Bible’s testimony about Jesus is what we have to believe.

For one thing, we need to know that He is alive; we need to know, therefore, about the resurrection. And then we need to know how it is that He can touch our lives; and that involves a knowledge of the atonement and of the way in which He saves us from our sin.

Atonement, resurrection, salvation from sin = theology. Theology matters.

Men say that faith for example the faith of the centurion is a simple thing and has nothing to do with theology. But is faith really so simple a thing? The answer is not so obvious as many persons suppose. Many things which seem to be simple are really highly complex. And such is the case with respect to trust in a person. Why is it that I trust one man and do not trust another? Sometimes it may seem to be a simple thing; sometimes I trust a man at first sight; trust in these cases seems to be instinctive. But surely “instinct” in human beings is not so simple as it seems. It really depends upon a host of observations about the personal bearing of men who are trustworthy and those who are not trustworthy. And usually trust is not even apparently instinctive; usually it is built up by long years of observation of the person who is trusted. Why do I trust this man or that? Surely it is because I know himm; I have seen him tried again and again, and he has rung true.

Faith is based on observations of the person and those elements that make a person trustworthy.

In case of our salvation, when we are required to believe in Christ, we need to have our trust rooted sufficient knowledge about Him.

1.  We must trust that Jesus is willing to save us: He must have the will to save us.
2. We must trust that Jesus can save us: He must have the power to save us

No. 1 deals with Jesus moral attributes.
No. 2 deals with Jesus divine attributes.

The facts which justify our appeal to Jesus concern not only His goodness but also His power. We might be convinced of His goodness, and yet not trust Him with these eternal concerns of the soul. He might have the will to help and not the power. We might be in the position of the ship-captain’s child in the touching story, who, when all on shipboard were in terror because of an awful storm, learned that his father was on the bridge and went peacefully to sleep. The confidence of the child very probably was misplaced; but it was misplaced not because the captain was not faithful and good, but because the best of men has no power to command the wind and the sea that they should obey him. Is our confidence in Jesus equally misplaced? It is misplaced if Jesus was the poor, weak enthusiast that He is represented as being by naturalistic historians. But very different is the case if He was the mighty Person presented in the Word of God.

The problem with the Adventist Jesus is what I highlighted in another place: in this view, Jesus put aside his divinity when he performed the work of redemption. This leaves Jesus practically in the same position and with the same finite power of a simple human being who is unable to suffer God’s wrath that our sins deserved.  Practically when it comes to atonement He doesn’t differ from an Arian Jesus, as unfitted to be the propitiation for our sins as any other human finite being. We may continue to trust in Jesus’ willingness to save us, but his lack of power makes our trust in Him to be misplaced.

Theology matters. I wonder if Brinsmead had been a victim of this weak view of Jesus, and under the influence of this adventist theological heritage, he felt pressed to abandon the doctrine of atonement in favor of a kind of a liberal universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. Since he never spoke about the reasons of his current views, this remains a guess, but not an unfounded guess. Brinsmead proved a willingness to carry his ideas to their full implications. I wonder if the adventist kenosis theory was the idea he developed to the final end.

Gabriel

This is exactly right Gabriel. I meant to post more from that section of chapter 3, but it must have slipped my mind. The Heidelberg Catechism nails this when it uses the phrase “by the power of His deity.” No mere man could save anyone from their sins.

Thanks for posting this. It’s not legalism to insist on the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and of Christ. If it is then the Fathers were all legalists on this issue too, and so was Machen for that matter. Good company to be in, all things considered.

Nate

This “good company” is known under the name of traditionalists in the circles currently strong anabaptist circles.

But the position we hold in good company with Machen raises a valid objection that needs an answer.

If faith is so elaborate an intellectual affair, how could Jesus ever have said: “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” Surely a little child does not wait until all probabilities have been weighed, and until the trustworthiness of its parents has been established at the bar of reason, before it reaches out its little hands in simple trust.

“Children’s faith is not complicate, you’re making it unnecessarily complex” , the objection raises it’s head.

In the first place, in holding that knowledge is logically the basis of faith we are not holding that it necessarily precedes faith in the order of time. Sometimes faith in a person and knowledge of the person come in the same instant. Certainly we are not maintaining that faith in Jesus has to wait until a man has learned all that the theologians or even all that the Bible can tell him about Jesus; on the contrary, faith may come first, on the basis of very elementary knowledge, and then fuller knowledge may come later. Indeed that is no doubt quite the normal order of Christian experience.

The normal order of Christian experience is to begin with elementary knowledge and grow toward fuller knowledge. Even at the beginning, this beginning faith remains true faith even if it is based only on minimum knowledge about Christ.

But what we do maintain is that at no point is faith independent of the knowledge upon which it is logically based; even at the very beginning faith contains an intellectual element; and if the subsequent increase of knowledge should show the person in whom trust is reposed to be untrustworthy, the faith would be destroyed.

While not depending on fuller knowledge, faith is not independent on knowledge. Knowledge can destroy faith when the object of faith is proved untrustworthy.

In the second place, the question may well be asked whether the faith of a child, after all, is independent of knowledge. We for our part think that it is not, provided the child has come to the age of conscious personal life. The child possesses, stored up in its memory, experiences of the mother’s goodness, knows how to distinguish her from other persons, and hence smiles at her approach.

The child put his trust in her mother because of his knowledge about her acts, her character, and because she proved trustworthy she trust her and not a stranger.

Very different is the nontheological “faith” of the modern pragmatist, that can subsist independently of the opinions which may be held as to the object of faith. Whatever may be said for that pragmatist attitude, it is certainly as unchildlike as anything that could possibly be imagined. A child never trusts a person whom it holds with its mind to be untrustworthy. The faith of the modern pragmatist is a very subtle, sophisticated, unchildlike thing

Faith independent of knowing the object is trusting somebody without knowing that this person is trustworthy.

What is childlike faith?

When our Lord bade His disciples receive the kingdom of heaven as little children, was it really the ignorance of the little children to which He appealed? We think not. No, it was not the ignorance or children to which our Lord appealed, but their conscious helplessness, their willingness to receive a gift. What mars the simplicity of the childlike faith which Jesus commends is not an admixture of knowledge, but an admixture of self-trust. To receive the kingdom as a little child is to receive it as a free gift without seeking in slightest measure to earn it for one’s self. There is a rebuke here for any attempt to earn salvation by one’s character, by one’s own obedience to God’s commands, by one’s own establishment in one’s life of “the principles of Jesus”; but there is no rebuke whatever for an intelligent faith that is founded upon the facts. The childlike simplicity of faith is marred sometimes by ignorance, but never by knowledge; it will never be marred and never has been marred in the lives of the great theologians by the blessed knowledge of God and of the Saviour Jesus Christ which is contained in the Word of God. Without that knowledge we might be tempted to trust partly in ourselves; but with it we trust wholly to God. The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we trust Him; the greater be our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our faith.

Our flesh is enmity toward God, as Adam we are hiding, running away from God, we didn’t trust Him. Because our conscience, reflecting our image of God, condemns us for our sins and for the sin which is in us, we instinctively know that God’s presence is a fire for us, and shun His presence. A legal contract, in which we do our best and we are repaid with God’s acceptance and blessings, a version of the mosaic covenant, is the way in which we deal with God, when we feel that we can’t run from God. Faith is the hardest thing, impossible without a knowledge of the gospel, and the need to hear this gospel clearly and more clearly is the need to counteract the deep rooted distrust that remains in the believers because of their flesh. When people think that theology is counteracting grace and childlike faith, they didn’t have much sense of what lies in their heart. For them all is smooth and easy.

Gabriel

GABRIEL PROKSCH - 10 December 2010 08:55 AM

The problem with the Adventist Jesus is what I highlighted in another place: in this view, Jesus put aside his divinity when he performed the work of redemption. This leaves Jesus practically in the same position and with the same finite power of a simple human being who is unable to suffer God’s wrath that our sins deserved. Gabriel

Just a few of many quotes from Ellen White on Christ’s divinity and humanity:

“Christ was God essentially, and in the highest sense. He was with God from all eternity, God over all, blessed forevermore....Even when He assumed humanity, He did not cease to be God. . . He was God in human flesh.” 1SM 247;
5BC 1129;; 7BC 904

The truth about Christ’s divinity is not a mere theological tenet, but a truth of the highest importance and practical import. It is necessary for “a true conception of the character or the mission of Christ, or of the great plan of God for man’s redemption… Our salvation was an infinite work, and it could be accomplished only by an infinite Person. The life and sacrifice to save man had to be equal to the demands of an infinite law. It was Christ’s exalted Person which gave value to His work.” 7BC 904; GC 524

On the sacrifice and suffering of Christ in the cross:

“No sorrow can bear any comparison with the sorrow of Him upon whom the wrath of God fell with overwhelming force. Human nature can endure but a limited amount of test and trial. The finite can only endure the finite measure, and human nature succumbs; but the nature of Christ had a greater capacity for suffering; for the human existed in the divine nature, and created a capacity for suffering to endure that which resulted from the sins of a lost world."5BC 1103

These statements from Ellen White are isolated statements that didn’t have any significance on her overall theology. While the wording sounds great, as in the case of her employing language expressing finished atonement, it doesn’t seem to change her central theology. In the case of finished atonement, she stuck with the unfinished atonement of the sanctuary doctrine all her life and kicked out Ballenger for daring to say that the atonement was finished on the cross. She also uttered a lot of confusing statements about Jesus’ human nature that allowed for a continuing debate in the SDA circles between pre-fall and post-fall views.

The same is true regarding the specific subject of Jesus’ divinity suffering together with his humanity.

There is no one who can explain the mystery of the incarnation of Christ. Yet we know that He came to this earth and lived as a man among men. The man Christ Jesus was not the Lord God Almighty, yet Christ and the Father are one. The Deity did not sink under the agonizing torture of Calvary, yet it is nonetheless true that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 5BC 1129

Some people say that with reference to divinity, she speaks about Father’s divinity, a very weak explanation because it assumes that Father’s divinity and Jesus’ divinity are not identical, homousious, one substance, leading to tritheism. The statement “the man Jesus was not the Lord God Almighty” was explained as a way of distinguishing between the persons in the Trinity, Father and Son. This explanation is also problematic because the Bible attributes to Jesus, after his incarnation as Mighty God, Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6). The monotheistic faith is expressed here in strong terms, the first and second Persons constituting one single Being is stressed clearly. Hardly a formulation like Ellen’s is helpful in clarifying the topic, at best it muddles the water, at worst is outright denial of the oneness in being. “Deity not sinking under the agonizing torture of Calvary” had been explained as affirming no more that deity did not die, which is acceptable, but this explanation does not take into account that she spoke about Jesus’ suffering his Father’s wrath against sin without involvement of his deity.

Another element that is problematic is Ellen’s plagiarism, especially the extent of her plagiarism. The copying work of Ellen White is greater than a single person can do, bringing to attention the fact that people need to take into account the work of her literary assistants. Isolated statements about Jesus divine suffering under the load of God’s wrath on the cross may be attributed to the work of literary assistants. Ellen White or her helpers copied a lot from orthodox writers, without modifying their basic views. In this way orthodox statements that contradict her views may appear in isolated places, without modifying her previous and basic views.

It is only natural to have reservations regarding these statements quoted above as being truly representative of Ellen White. In her writings Jesus appears first and foremost as an example for believers to emulate, and this view is promoted on the basis that his earthly life was lived at the level of humanity, without help from his divine nature. He lived as we lived, with the same help we can have, nothing coming as help from his divine nature. His temptation, the argument goes, was to use his divinity in order to fight the battle with Satan, sin and the world. For him, giving in to temptation was the equivalent of letting his divinity bring the necessary help in living a victorious life. Since he refused to use his divinity, even on the cross, to save himself, to help himself, he’s our perfect Example, and we are to emulate Him, in a smaller proportion, of course.

Now we are supposed to believe on these isolated statements that she believed that Jesus’ divinity was involved in his earthly life. This runs in contradiction with her central thought that Jesus after his incarnation lived 100% at the level of his humanity, with no involvement and help from his divinity. If indeed those statements are going to be taken serious, a lot of her theology should be sent to Recycle Bin, and this is not supposed to happen. These statements seem to be good only to counteract the critics’ objections without doing the necessary work of repentance.

Gabriel

Chapter 5 of What is Faith? is titled “Faith and the Gospel.” In this chapter, he is showing us the contact that Christ has with us in our need. Here is how he explains the point of the chapter:

If what we have said so far be correct, there is now living a Saviour who is worthy of our trust, even Christ Jesus the Lord, and a deadly need of our souls for which we come to Him, namely, the curse of God’s law, the terrible guilt of sin. But these things are not all that is necessary that there should be contact between the Saviour and our need. Christ is a sufficient Saviour; but what has He done, and what will He do, not merely for the men who were with Him in the days of His flesh, but for us? How is it that Christ touches our lives?

The answer which the Word of God gives to that question is perfectly specific and perfectly plain. Christ touches our lives, according to the New Testament, through the Cross. We deserved eternal death, in accordance with the curse of God’s law; but the Lord Jesus, because He loved us, took upon Himself the guilt of our sins and died instead of us on Calvary. And faith consists simply in our acceptance of that wonderful gift. When we accept the gift, we are clothed, entirely without merit of our own, by the righteousness of Christ; when God looks upon us, He sees not our impurity but the spotless purity of Christ, and accepts us “as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.”

Machen goes on to explain that this theology of the cross is not complicated, in fact it is so simple a child can understand, but that it is inherently offensive to human pride. His main point is to show that the Cross of Christ is the basis for Christian faith. He takes a small detour by mentioning a couple objections to his explanation, and refutes them. The first objection is that this is merely “a theory of the atonement.” He easily refutes this from the use of the word “atonement” itself.

The second objection which Machen deals with is that we should have faith in a person without any particular doctrine. This is also fairly easy for Machen to refute, being the New Testament scholar that he was. The basic argument is that this attitude is an easily demonstrable break with the primitive Christian church.

A wonderful summary of this section is found on page 151:

True communion with Christ comes not when a man merely says, in contemplating the Cross, “This was a righteous man,” or “This was a son of God,” but when he says with tears of gratitude and joy, “He loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Machen says that many in his day were setting “present communion with Christ” in opposition to the gospel. In other words, they were denying the historical facts (doctrines), but still claiming to have a share in Christ. Here is how Machen responds:

They soon lose all contact with the real Christ; what they call “Christ” in the soul soon comes to have little to do with the actual person, Jesus of Nazareth; their religion would really remain essentially the same if scientific history should prove that such a person as Jesus never lived. In other words, they soon come to substitute the imaginings of their own hearts for what God has revealed; they substitute mysticism for Christianity as the religion of their souls.

That danger should be avoided by the Christian man with all his might and main. God has given us an anchor for our souls; He has anchored us to Himself by the message of the Cross. Let us never cast that anchor off; let us never weaken our connection with the events upon which our faith is based… Acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is offered to us in the gospel of His redeeming work, is saving faith.

The phrase that I have bolded brings up a question about the nature of saving faith.

We have said that saving faith is acceptance of Christ, not merely in general, but as He is offered to us in the gospel. How much, then, of the gospel, it may be asked, does a man need to accept in order that he may be saved; what, to put it baldly, are the minimum doctrinal requirements in order that a man may be a Christian?

Machen responds that he never answers this question when it is asked of him, and he has no intention of answering it in his book. He does affirm, however, that the church should endeavor to receive into its fellowship as many as are united to Christ by saving faith, and to exclude those who are not, and therefore that a profession of faith must be required from those who wish to join the church’s communion. Machen advocates what he calls a “credible profession,” which he explains to mean that the one being received into the church’s fellowship should have some knowledge of the meaning of the profession that they are making. To this end, he proposes thorough catechesis by the local church for those who wish to join. He recognizes that this does not infallibly determine one’s standing before God, but only determines “with the best judgement that God has given to feeble and ignorant men, a man’s standing in the visible Church.”

Machen ends the chapter with another reason why he refuses to answer the question about “minimum doctrines”:

There is, however, also another reason. The other reason is that the very asking of the question often betokens an unfortunate attitude with regard to Christian truth. For our part we have not much sympathy with the present widespread desire of finding some greatest common denominator which shall unite men of different Christian bodies; for such a greatest common denominator is often found to be very small indeed. Some men seem to devote most of their energies to the task of seeing just how little of Christian truth they can get along with. We, however, regard it as a perilous business; we prefer, instead of seeing how little of Christian truth we can get along with, to see just how much of Christian truth we can obtain. We ought to search the Scriptures reverently and thoughtfully and pray God that He may lead us into an ever fuller understanding of the truth that can make us wise unto salvation. There is no virtue whatever in ignorance, but much virtue in a knowledge of what God has revealed.

Nate

Until my friend Nate will come back with quotes from further chapters, I’ll stay a little longer in chapter 5.

Some time ago we debated about atonement and God’s wrath toward sinners which Jesus suffered in our behalf, and this view which we subscribe to, known as the penal substitutionary atonement was combated by a variant moral government view. It was argued that God sustains the penalty of the law, the basis of his government, but in Himself there is no wrath toward the sinner, no hate of the sinner which is dealt into atonement.

Aside from the debate itself, it was argued that our differences are not so big in order to arrive at the conclusion that we hold to two different types of atonement. Even if it was not explicitly affirmed, the implicit idea was that our particular theories or explanations for the atonement, even if they differ, should not divide us, since we all believe in some penal substitutionary atonement.

It’s interesting how Mached dealt with similar lines of thought, here he presents the view of his theological opponents:

In the first place then, the view of the Cross which has just been outlined is often belittled as being merely a “theory of the atonement.” We can have the fact of the atonement, it is said, no matter what particular theory of it we hold, and indeed even without holding any particular theory of it at all. So this substitutionary view, it is said, is after all only one theory among many.

One view among many, all having equal validity as long as atonement is affirmed.

Here Machen starts shooting, straight from the hip with a very precise accuracy, he doesn’t hesitate for a moment in going directly to the heart of the problem:

This objection is based upon a mistaken view of the ’distinction between fact and theory, and upon a somewhat ambiguous use of the word “theory.” What is meant by a “theory”? Undoubtedly the word often has rather an unfavorable sound; and the use of it in the present connection might seem to imply that the view of the atonement which is designated as a “theory” is a mere effort of man to explain in his own way what God has given. But might not God have revealed the “theory” of a thing just as truly as the thing itself; might He not Himself have given the explanation when He gave the thing? In that case the explanation just as, much as the thing itself comes to us with a divine authority, and it is impossible to accept one without accepting the other.

The argument of the opponents has at its basis the unstated assumption that “theory” is not revealed by God, but it’s only man’s attempt at an explanation. However, if God revealed not only the thing itself, but provided an explanation, must are equally authoritative and must be accepted on the same authority.

We have not yet, however, quite gotten to the heart of the matter. Men say .that they accept the fact of the atonement without accepting the substitutionary theory of it, and indeed without being sure of any theory of it at all. The trouble with this attitude is that the moment we say “atonement” we have already overstepped the line , that separates fact from theory; an , “atonement” even in the most general and most indefinite sense that could conceivably be given to the word, cannot possibly be a mere fact, but is a fact as explained by its purpose and results. If we say that an event was an “atonement” for sin or an “atonement” in the sense of an establishment of harmony between God and man, we have done more than designate the mere external event. What we have really done is to designate the ‘event with an explanation of its meaning. So the atonement wrought by Christ can never be a bare fact, in the sense with which we are now dealing.

Machen’s argument is simple: atonement is already a theory, an explanation of an event, however this explanation is formulated. It’s impossible to contrast “atonement” with “theories of atonement”, because both of them are explanations, even “atonement” is already a theory. The question becomes, which theory, which explanation we should believe, since we all agree that we should believe not a bare fact, but a fact explained.

The bare fact is simply the death of a Jew upon a cross in the first century of pur era, and that bare fact is entirely without value to anyone; what gives it its value is the explanation of it as a means by which sinful man was brought into the presence of God. It is impossible for us to obtain the slightest benefit from a mere contemplation of the death of Christ; all the benefit comes from our knowledge of the meaning of that death, or in other words (if the term be used in a high sense) from our “theory” of it. If, therefore, we speak of the bare “fact” of the atonement, as distinguished from the “theory” of it, we are indulging in a misleading use of words; the bare fact is the death, and the moment we say “atonement” we have committed ourselves to a theory. The important thing, then, is, since we must have some theory, that the particular theory that we hold shall be correct.

I’m amazed how Machen, in a short space, can be so practical: man can be brought in God’s presence only by means of what the bare fact of Jesus death means, what Jesus accomplished on the cross, the explanation found in the “theory” of atonement. Without the explanation, the bare fact is irrelevant for anybody. Explanation is as essential as the fact itself. It’s of highest important to got the explanation right, otherwise Jesus death will profit us nothing.

Gabriel

This is excellent Gabriel. You highlighted another portion that I meant to give more attention. Thanks for bringing it to the foreground with clarity. I’ll try to post on the last three chapters sometime soon.

Nate