Over on one of my other blogs here I have adverts. They have done their homework matching ads to me fairly well as you can see. The knee pain advert is particularly ingenious I reckon.
A blog featuring whatever I fancy, often on the Christian faith but not exclusively
Here comes my baby
This is the Tremeloes singing the Cat Stevens number live in 1967. Great fun (though I miss the cow bell from the recorded version).
TTRMOMD 05
It was a tradition in our house to have a fry up or mixed grill on Satrudays. It was my dad's tradition. Our version featured egg, sausage, bacon, fat bread (as my dad called it ie fried white bread), black pudding, egg and beans (done in the frying pan after the bacon and sausage.
Past Diary Feb 01-03 1974
As I may have intimated the 1974 diary runs out once we hit February, where I make just three entries. As far as I can see I don't try diary writing again until January 1975. On February 1st I was still feeling unwell but able to go to school. I was still working through my list of vices and got to bad language. I note that I had given up swearing a year before but various euphemisms had begun to creep in and I was determined to quash them. We had a Mr Davies at YPF. I think that is a Richard Davies, uncle to the wonderful Irene, who gets another mention. Besides my regular reading from Matthew that day I was having a go again at 1 Samuel, conscious of my need to "gain a greater overall knowledge of the stories of the Bible".
I didn't go to Greek the next day as I was too ill. I did some Greek, though, it says, and some homework, listening to Focus. That day I reached the final one on my list of vices - worldliness. Still struggling with that one, I'd say. An interesting note says that "I spent some of the afternoon and evening writing The continuing story of Adolf Hitler's moustache in my book". This was a short story that I think I had started sometime before and was keen to include in a book of writings that I was trying to assemble for myself. I think I have it somewhere. I also read a bit more of Whyte on prayer. It was a late Saturday night as usual.
Sunday's sermons appear to have been am: John 15:11 (could be 16:11, a version had appeared in the latest church magazine too I note) pm: Revelation 22:17. The Bible Class continued through John's Gospel covering 9:1-7. In the YPF we read two of Spurgeon's Sermons from newspapers. I prayed at the well attended prayer meeting before the evening service. I also read 1 Samuel 14-16 at home as well as my regular reading from Matthew (22:23-33). Despite all that I still felt I'd been rather worldly! Perhaps I had.
Woyzek
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| Next to a poster showing "his wife" |
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| On Thespian Street! |
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| Outside the theatre (Arad Goch translates Red/Brown Furrow) |
We went up to see our eldest, Rhodri, taking the lead role in a production of Buchner's Woyzeck last Friday. An amateur production put on by the students, it was slightly strange in that you don't normally see that many women in a play but the boy done good and obviously has gifts in this area. In the same week he was made CU President so he keeps pretty busy.
As ithers see us
We didn't keep Burns night the other week here (we didn't even keep Dydd Santes Dwynwen if truth be told) but I am aware of the final verse of Burns poem "To a louse". Burns wrote it apparently on seeing a louse crawl across the fine bonnet of a lady in the pew in front. My recollection was prompted by a remark over on Refomation21 by Carl Trueman following the Affinity conference.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
("Then, there was Gary Brady, famous opponent of jeans*, surprisingly sporting smart trousers and a pair of moth eaten gym shoes, apparently in an unsuccessful attempt to fuse Reformed Baptist theology, Welsh mysticism, and an emergent ..."
[*I once remarked, obviously in Carl's presence, that jeans are a sign of teenage rebellion and so inappropriate for certain situations. I did notice that Brian Edwards wore jeans throughout so may be I have a point!])
Butterfly Ball
I remember being sat watching TV in the seventies when this came on. It had such an impact on me that I've never forgotten it although I forgot what it was called, confusing it for years with the Ugly Bug Ball. Good old Youtube.
Amazon humour
Someone at Amazon has a sense of humour (I was looking for the Eifion Evans book when I found this song by Blaenavon Male Voice and an unexpected cover).
Gatiss on Toplady
While at the Affinity Conference my attention was drawn to this relevant article by Lee Gatiss that appeared in the Gospel Magazine at the end of last year. See here.
THERE is great debate in parts of the Evangelical world at present over the inerrancy of the Bible. This was, of course, a matter of controversy several decades ago in the so-called “Battle for the Bible”. One might be forgiven for thinking, therefore, that the doctrine of the Bib1e’s utter trustworthiness had been adequately defined and defended already. Yet scholars unhappy at the traditional teaching, such as Peter Enns with his recent controversial book, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, and another book by Andrew McGowan called The Divine Spiration of Scriptare: Challenging Evangelical Perspectives, have brought the subject back onto the agenda.
The esteemed former Editor of the Gospel Magazine, the Rev Augustus Montage Toplady, held to the traditional view of God’s Word. In his day, the word “unerring” was a far more common term than “inerrancy” or “inerrant” which, while not entirely unknown from as early as the 1650s, only seem to have entered common theological use among Protestants in the l9th century. Toplady often spoke warmly of “God’s unerring oracles”, asserting plainly that “the Bible is the unerring Word of God”. For him it was the rock of faith, “an authority which cannot err”, and “that unerring standard” by which all doctrines and practices were to be judged.
Moreover, Toplady did not downplay or ignore the human aspect of the Word, as advocates of inerrancy are often accused of doing. Instead, he recognized that God worked through the human writers of Scripture. At one point he speaks of, “The Holy Spirit, making the apostle’s pen the channel of unerring inspiration”,
adding that the epistles and the Gospels were “written under the unerring influence of the same Holy Spirit”. He also used the word “infallible”, more common in British Evangelical circles.
Where did Toplady learn this allegedly rationalistic and supposedly much later doctrine? He was certainly not the only Reformed Evangelical Anglican of the 18th century to hold to such a view of the Bible. George Whitefield speaks in one of his sermons of “the unerring rule of God’s most holy Word.” James Hervey, in
his Contemplation on the Starry Heavens, speaks of the Word of God as “this unerring directory”, and of its “infallible guidance”. John Newton writes in his letters of “the unerring Word of God”; eg Letters 20 and 32 in Letters, Sermons, and a Review of Ecclesiastical History (1780).
While researching Toplady for my book The True Profession of the Gospel: Augustus Toplady and Reclaiming our Reformed Foundations (Latimer Trust, 2010), I recently discovered another possible source of his view on the Bible. It turns out that some editions of the Book of Common Prayer; including those published in Dublin in I750, 1753, and 1757 (while Toplady was a student at Trinity College), spoke of God’s “unerring Word” in their version of the Psalms; eg at Psalm l.l9:8l, 114, and 144:
My soul with long expectance faints
to see thy saving grace;
Yet still on thy unerring word
my confidence I place.
My very eyes consume and fail
with waiting for thy word;
O when wilt thou thy kind relief
and promised aid afford.
My skin like shriveled parchment shows,
that long in smoke is set,
Yet no affliction me can force
thy statutes to forget.
Did young Augustus Toplady pick up this phrase, and this confidence in the unerring Word of God, from singing Psalms in church on a Sunday?
Readers of the Gospel Magazine will no doubt be aware, however, that the thirty-nine Articles themselves indicate the confidence we can have in God’s trustworthy Word. Article 21 reminds us of the non-inerrant nature of church authorities:
General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes. And when they be gathered together (forasmuch. as they be an assembly of men, whereof will be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God), they may err; and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of/ Scripture.
The last line of the Article is most interesting here, as it appears to simply assume that alongside erring and errant General Councils, the holy Scripture itself is alone to be considered as finally trustworthy. Naturally this is because it is “God’s Word written” as Article 20 so straightforwardly puts it, and yet the implication is that the Word itself is, by contrast to human authority, without error and cannot lead us astray. This view is also shared by the Homilies of the Church of England; see for example Homily 22 which describes the Bible as “His infallible Word.” So Toplady may have learned from other Evangelicals, from Anglican tradition
and Anglican formularies to speak of God’s Word as “unerring.” But ultimately, we must acknowledge that this is in line with the Bible’s own presentation of itself. “Every word of God is pure,” says Proverbs 30:5, “he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him” (KJV). The flawless, tested, genuine, refined Word of
God is utterly trustworthy. What Scripture says, God says (as Augustine famously put it), and when we believe and trust in the Word, God Himself will be our shield, and will vindicate that trust.
This no doubt was why, when he wrote in his Journal that he “burnt with zeal, for the glory of God, and for the spiritual welfare of my flock”, Toplady declared, “I wished to spend and be spent in the ministry of the Word, and had some gracious assurances from on high that God would make use of me to diffuse His gospel, and call in some of His chosen that are yet unconverted”.
Many seem to have dropped this vital adjective, “unerring,” in recent years, perhaps embarrassed by allegations of “fundamentalism” or obscurantism in the debates over inerrancy. Have we also lost confidence in the dependability of the Word of God to bring spiritual life and growth to God’s people? May we recover once again the joy and delight of the writer of Proverbs 30, the Reformers of the Church of England, and the Evangelicals of the l8th century in the unerring Word of our unerring God.
Affinity Panel
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| Greg, Stephen, Carl, Peter Milsom, Dan, Peter, Hywel |
The very helpful conference came to an end with an opportunity to hear all the speakers answer questions. We discussed inerrancy and the current scene to some profit I trust. Good time. Foundations, we were told, is now to be a free online product. That's good too.
Kimyal New Testament
The Kimyal People Receive the New Testament from UFM Worldwide on Vimeo.
(We were shown this moving video in the final session here at Affinity).
Hodge Word and Spirit
Hywel Jones drew our attention to a letter of Charles Hodge (to a Dr Watt) preserved in the recently republished biography by Archibald Alexander.
DR. HODGE TO DR. WATTS
Princeton, October 5th, 1865,
My Dear Sir : —
Wistar has handed me your letter relating to the question raised among your brethren concerning the Witness of the Spirit. As you request an immediate answer, it is impossible for me to do more than state in a few words the view which I have been led to take on the subject, without any attempt to sustain that view either historically or exegetically. I write for you alone, as I have no idea that anything I say will be worthy of the attention of your committee.
We must, of course, renounce all hope to understand the mode of the divine operation either in nature or in grace; as we have no idea how mind operates on matter, or matter on mind, we cannot understand how God produces the effects which in the Scriptures are attributed to his agency. The fact is all we can expect to know.
1. It seems to be plainly taught in the Bible, and to be the commonly received doctrine, that in the external world God operates constantly through, with, and without second causes. Whatever in the external world, as in plants and animals, is indicative of design is to be referred to the present agency of mind, ie, to God. Matter cannot produce life, much less an immaterial, intelligent substance. Such substances, however, are constantly produced under the providential agency of God. The human soul operates in like manner through, with and independently of the functions of the body. Every time we speak or write, this threefold mode of exercise is evinced.
2. It is no less plain from Scripture and universally believed in the Church that the Spirit of God operates immediately on the soul. In the regeneration of infants this must be assumed.
3. It seems also clear that in the dealings of the Spirit with the souls of believers there is a constant exercise of His power in connection with and independent of the truth. We know not how one spirit operates on another; how evil spirits controlled the thoughts and feelings of the demoniacs, and of course we cannot pretend to know how the Holy Spirit controls the action of our minds, how He
excites our affections or gives the truth a greater power over them at one time than at another. But He is more immediately present with our souls than the soul is with the body, and constantly controls them in a way consistent with the nature of mind and the laws of spiritual intercourse.
4. We are clearly taught that saving faith rests on the witness of the Spirit and with the truth. This is represented in Scripture as something different from the evidence which the word itself contains of its own truth. It is "an unction from the Holy One." It is "the demonstration of the Spirit." The Spirit produces in our minds the infallible conviction that the Bible is true. This conviction is not the product of a process of reasoning, nor a conclusion from the facts of our own consciousness. If it were it would not be infallible, and our faith after all would rest in something human and not in the power of God.
5. In like manner the Spirit witnesses to the believer that he is a child of God. The assurance of his adoption the Apostle refers to two sources; first, the conscious filial exercises of the soul towards God, and, secondly, the witness of the Spirit, who bears witness together (summarture) with our spirits that we are the sons of God. Although compound words are frequently used in the same sense with the simple forms, this is only to be assumed under the stress of the context.
When the context admits of the full and proper force of the word it should be retained; much more when that force is required by the connection. The passage simply teaches that the Spirit produces in the mind of a believer the assurance of his adoption: as in Rom 5:5, He is said to produce the assurance that we are the objects of God's love.
There is no real ground for the charge of enthusiasm or fanaticism against this view of the subject,
(1). Because it attributes to the Spirit nothing out of analogy with the constant operations of God in the external world and on the minds of men in his providence.
(2). Because it is consistent with the constant representations of the Scriptures relating to the intercourse of the soul with God. We not only address Him and reveal or rather express to Him our thoughts and feelings, but He manifests Himself to us. We not only aver our love to Him, but He also reveals His love to us. The soul of the believer lives, or should live, in constant fellowship or intercourse with the Father of our spirits. He is at no loss for means and modes of communiating with his children.
(3). When our Confession attributes saving faith to the witness of God not only by or through but with the truth, it does not teach that God makes any new revelations. The word is true. It declares itself objectively to the reason, the conscience, and the affections to be true, and God by His Spirit affirms it to be true. There is no new revelation there. Neither is there in the witness of the Spirit to the believer's adoption. He is a child of God. He has all the filial affections of a child. The Spirit produces assurance that what is true is true. The soul is not left to deductions from its own imperfectly nderstood or partially interpreted consciousness. God gives it a peace which passes understanding.
The fanatics at the Reformation and in all times have abused the doctrine of the inward teaching of the Spirit. So they abuse the doctrine that He witnesses to the adoption of believers. But in neither case have they any just reason for their perversions. And the Reformers as you know gave up their doctrines on neither point from fear that the truth would be abused.
I fear these few remarks will not be of much service to you, but I am not able to write more.
Your friend, very truly, Charles Hodge.
Affinity Conference 6
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| Hywel Jones with Stephen Clark in the chair |
The final paper of the conference was from Hywel Jones on that old chestnut Word and Spirit. Hywel is always avuncular and now in his seventies increasingly statesmanlike. Dealing with the views of Hodge, Bavinck and John Woodhouse, we were given the typical non-Lutheran, anti-Prc Trust, pro-Lloyd-Jones line that wants to avoid an ex opere operato view of Scripture and preaching and emphasise the work of the Spirit. Always worth discussing.
Affinity Conference 3-5
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| Greg Beale |
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| Dan Strange |
So another day of it yesterday. We began with Greg Beale's paper which was a development of previous work on hermeneutics and the question of whether the NT use of the old is legitimate and to be followed. He made a good and scholarly contribution on this, focusing in the latter half of his paper on the use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2. We found it difficult to discuss the paper in our group but were glad to hear someone setting out what I think most of us agreed with.
Stephen Clark spoke next (and I chaired). This was a more practical paper on the use of the Bible in church life (originally Martin Downes was to have done a paper on use and abuse so this was a different paper to the one intended). So we said various useful things about reading the Word, preaching, personal Bible study, etc.
The third paper of the day was from Dan Strange who outlined the contrasting views held within the Reformed world over involvement in public life. On one hand, there is the more Lutheran seeming two kingdoms approach and, on the other, what Dan called a transformational approach (chiefly growing out of Van Til), the view he himself favoured. We had a lively discussion on the question of how we argue in the public sphere - from natural law or straight from the Bible. We did not come to any firm conclusions and there was some disagreement, for example, on how Christians should deal with the challenges we are currently facing in the public sphere.
Another good day then.
Affinity Conference 01/02
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| Carl Trueman Peter Naylor |
So here we are once again in High Leigh Conference Centre for the Affinity Theological Conference. The numbers are smaller than last time and the subject, hopefully, less controversial (though no doubt prompted by the Enns and McGowan books that have caused such a stir). We followed the usual format of hearing a summary of the already received paper then discussing it first in small groups and then in plenary session. We began with Carl Trueman's historical paper which had the limited aim of demonstrating that the Princetonian view of Warfield et al was not a historical novelty, which he seemed to be able to do. We discussed modes of inspiration found in Scripture among other things. The second paper by Peter Naylor looked at literary genres and evangelical hermeneutics focusing on recent commentaries on Jonah, Daniel, etc, that argue against miracles on grounds of genre. Again useful discussion followed.
Ken Brownell chaired the first session and David Green the second. The group I am in was chaired by Colin Jones from Crawley. We had Carl Trueman in the group, 2 LTS students, one of the only women here and mostly ministers.
A good start.
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