Westminster Conference 2017 Day One

About 120 of us gathered once again at the Regent Hall in Oxford Street for the Westminster Conference. Stephen Clark kicked us off with a fairly comprehensive and persuasive exposition of Word and Spirit touching on regeneration, assurance, guidance an other matters seeking to demonstrate the independence of the Spirit with regard to God's Word. With supporting quotations from Edwards, Murray et al I was more convinced than ever that this is a biblical approach. Some found the long paper hard work and certainly anyone unfamiliar with the arguments might have struggled. Robert Striven chaired and we had a worthwhile discussion on assurance.

Dovetailing neatly with the first session we had a paper in the afternoon from Guy Davies on the felt presence of God, majoring on Thomas Goodwin but including references to Owen. I chaired. I did fear there wold be nothing more to discuss after the morning session but we were able to discuss quite profitably God's felt presence and whether it should be sought. There is some divergence among us but a general unity.

The final paper was slightly different as we went back to Calvin and Reformed liturgy with Andy Young. This was again a useful paper and a good discussion under the strict chairmanship of Jeremy Walker. Inevitably one or two exclusive psalm singers felt obliged to make their points but otherwise we seemed to be able to help one another at the end of what had been a very good day.

Here's a quote from Thomas Goodwin I enjoyed

conscience itself, which is ordained, as the urine of the body, to shew the estate of the whole, and therefore is accordingly called good or evil as the man’s state is, this is apt in such distempers to change and turn colour, and look to a man’s own view as foul as the state of a very hypocrite.” (Goodwin Works III, p. 254.)

Looking forward to day two.

Thomas Goodwin on our nothingness

After God had decreed to make thee, and to give thee an existence and actual being, yet thou wert in reality still nothing, pure nothing in entity. Thy pedigree is from nothing; thy ancestry, and that not far removed, is nothing. Job, in the view of his own rottenness and corruption, humbles himself, chap. xvii. 14 : I have said to corruption. Thou art my father ; to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister. But in rehearsing thy original from whence thou camest, I may say that nothing, pure nothing, was thy great grandmother. Thy body was immediately made of dust, that was thy next mother by that line; but that dust was made of the first rude earth, without form, and that was thy grandmother  but that earth was made purely of nothing; so then nothing was thy great grandmother. Thus of thy body.

Then for thy soul, that was immediately created by God out of nothing, and so by that line thy next mother was nothing. And what was thy soul twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, and so many years upwards? Plain nothing. It is observable how, in the Scriptures, when God's confounding the creatures is expressed, the threaten ing runs in these terms, a bringing them to nothing. So in 1 Cor. i. 28, he takes things that are not (that is, are as if they were not, as to such an effect as God useth them for), even to bring to nought things that are, that is, to nothing, as the opposition shews. In these terms the sentence of confusion, and the destruction of things that are, is penned, as thereby reminding them, how that their first root and original was nothing; and so does speak in a way of reflection upon what once they were; even as when he threatened Adam to turn him to dust: Out of dust thou earnest, says he; in a way of debasing of him, minds him of his descent and original. And in like phrase of speech Job utters their destruction: aheunt in nihilum, they go away, or vanish to nothing; that is, they perish. ... we are like those small green flies that creep upon leaves in summer; we men cannot touch them so gently but they die. The whole creation is built upon a quagmire of nothing, and is continually ready to sink into it, and to be swallowed up by it, ....

Humble yourselves therefore in the apprehension of this, and look, as in point of sanctification, although God giveth so great a measure of it to his children, and maketh them very holy, yet in the point of justifying them he would have them for ever to look upon themselves as ungodly, because once they were such, as Rom. iv. 5. And Paul, whilst he did never so much, saith, Yet I am nothing. Thus here, though he hath given us a being and existence, yet because we once were nothing, and that was the state (if a state) he found us in, he would ever have us account our selves as nothing, though now by his grace having all things, as the apostle says.

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Our second morning session was Mike Reeves on the Puritans and suffering. What was to take three Puritans (Flavel, Bunyan and Goodwin) and draw out some of their teaching on suffering and stressing (in the first two cases that they were men who knew what they were talking about).

Flavel says that

"The wisdom of God is much seen in the choice of his rods. It is usual with God to smite us in those very comforts which stole away too much of the love and delight of our souls from God; to cross us in those things from which we raised up too great expectations of comfort. These providences bespeak the jealousy of God over us, and his care to prevent far worse evils by these sad, but needful strokes. It is a good sign our troubles are sanctified to us, when they turn our hearts against sin, and not against God."

Flavel points us to Scripture, to God and to the future.

When in prison, Bunyan found comfort in Jeremiah 49:11 and in 1 Corinthians 11.

Goodwin expounded Hebrews 4:11 in his Heart of Christ in Heaven towards Sinners on Earth.