Herman Bavinck – Has Scripture Lost It’s Authority?

13 Dec

It [Scripture] has maintained its authority in the church of Christ to this day. It has prompted all believers–including the greatest minds and noblest spirits–to yield to its authority. What power in the world is comparable to that of Scripture? The testimony of the Holy Spirit is the triumph of the foolishness of the cross over the wisdom of the world, the victory of the thoughts of God over the deliberations of human beings. In this sense the apologetic value of the testimony of the Holy Spirit is second to none. Surely this is the victory that overcomes the world: our faith! (1 John 5:4).

~Herman Bavinck~




Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 600.

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Charles Spurgeon – Except by One Means

12 Dec

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WHEN THE SOUL is seriously impressed with the conviction of its guilt, when terror and alarm get hold upon it concerning the inevitable consequences of its sin, the soul is afraid of God. It dreads at that time every attribute of divinity. But most of all the sinner is afraid of God’s justice. “Ah,” saith he to himself, “God is a just God; and if so, how can he pardon my sins? for my iniquities cry aloud for punishment, and my transgressions demand that his right hand should smite me low. How can I be saved? Were God unjust, he might forgive: but, alas! he is not so, he is severely just. ‘He layeth justice to the line, and righteousness to the plummet.’ He is the judge of all the earth, and he must do right. How then can I escape from his righteous wrath which must be stirred up against me?” Let us be assured that the sinner is quite right in the conviction that there is here a great difficulty. The justice of God is in itself a great barrier to the salvation of sinners. There is no possibility for that barrier to be surmounted, nor even for it to be removed except by one means, which shall this day be proclaimed unto you through the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. It is true that God is just. Let old Sodom tell you how God rained fire and brimstone out of heaven upon man’s iniquity. Let a drowning world tell you how God lifted the sluices of the fountains of the great deep, and bade the bubbling waters spring up and swallow up man alive. /et the earth tell you; for she opened her mouth when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled against God. Let the buried cities of Nineveh, and the tattered relics of Tyre and Sidon, tell you that God is just, and will by no means spare the guilty. And direst of all, let hell’s bottomless lake declare what is the awful vengeance of God against the sins of man. Let the sighs, and groans, and moans, and shrieks of spirits condemned of God, rise in your ears, and bear witness that he is a God who will not spare the guilty, who will not wink at iniquity, transgression, and sin, but who will have vengeance upon every rebel, and will give justice its full satisfaction for every offence.

~Charles Spurgeon~




Spurgeon’s Sermons (Spokane, Washington; Olive Tree Bible Software; 2010) eBook. Vol. 5, Sermon No. 255; Titled: Justice Satisfied; Delivered on Sabbath Morning, May 29th, 1859.

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Herman Bavinck – The Triumph of the Holy Spirit in the World

10 Dec

The testimony of the Holy Spirit is not a private opinion but the witness of the church of all ages, of Christianity as a whole, of reborn humankind in its entirety. At one time the church in all of its members, like the world, was hostile to the word of God. But the Holy Spirit, working in it and with it, took up the defense of the truth of Christ. He has broken its enmity, illumined its intellect, bent its will, and keeps it in touch with the truth from century to century and from day to day. The whole testimony of the believing community is a testimony to the Holy Spirit. It is the “yes!” and “Amen!” which that community utters in response to the truth of God. It is the “Abba! Father! Your word of truth” that rises up from the hearts of all believers. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is so far from being the Achilles’ heel of Protestantism that it should rather be called the cornerstone of our Christian confession, the crown and seal of all Christian truth, the triumph of the Holy Spirit in the world. Take away the testimony of the Holy Spirit, not only in relation to Scripture, but to all the truths of redemption, and there is no more church. For the witness the Holy Spirit bears to Scripture as the word of God is but a single tone in the song he has put on the lips of the believing community. It is but a small part of that splendid divine work assigned to the Holy Spirit: to cause the fullness of Christ to dwell in his community.

~Herman Bavinck~




Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 599.

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Herman Bavinck – The Threefold Testimony of the Holy Spirit

8 Dec

This threefold testimony is one and from the same Spirit. From Scripture, through the church, it penetrates the heart of the individual believer. Still, in each of these three forms, it has a meaning of its own. The testimony of the Holy Spirit in Scripture is “the primary motive toward faith or the principle by which, or the argument on account of which, Scripture become regulative (κανονικον) and non-apodictic (άναποδεικτον).” The testimony of the Holy Spirit in the church is “the other motive or instrument though which we believe. It is introductory (εισαγωγικον) and supportive (ύπουπγικον).” The witness of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer is the “efficient cause of faith, the principle by which or through which we believe. It is originating (άπχηγικον) and effecting (ένεργητικον).”

Given these distinctions, also the charge of circular reasoning usually advanced against the testimony of the Holy Spirit is invalidated. For, strictly speaking, the testimony of the Holy Spirit is not the final ground but the means of faith. The ground of faith is, and can only be, Scripture, or rather, the authority of God, which comes upon the believer materially in the content as well as formally in the witness of Scripture. Hence the ground of faith is identical with its content and cannot, as Herrman believes, be detached from it. Scripture as the word of God is simultaneously the material and the formal object of faith. But the testimony of the Holy Spirit is the “efficient cause,” “the principle by which,” of faith. We believe Scripture, not because of, but by means of the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Scripture and the testimony of the Holy Spirit relate to each other as object truth and subjective assurance, as the first principles and their self-evidence, as the light and the human eye. Once it has been recognized in its divinity, Scripture is incontrovertibly certain to the faith of the believing community, so that it is both the principle and the norm of faith and life.

~Herman Bavinck~




Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Baker Academic; 2003) p. 597-598.

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Matthew Henry – The Difference the Holy Spirit Makes

6 Dec

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Those that are full of the Holy Spirit are fit for any thing, either to act for Christ or to suffer for him. And those whom God calls out to difficult services for his name he will qualify for those services, and carry comfortably through them, by filling them with the Holy Spirit, that, as their afflictions for Christ abound, their consolation in him may yet more abound, and then none of these things move them.

~Matthew Henry~


Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (Spokane, WA; Olive Tree Bible Software) Commentary on Acts 7:54-60

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John Calvin – A Distinction Not a Division

5 Dec

That passage in Gregory of Nazianzus vastly delights me: “I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.” Let us not, then, be led to imagine a trinity of persons that keeps our thoughts distracted and does not at once lead them back to that unity. Indeed, the words Father, Son, and Spirit imply a real distinction- let no one think that these titles, by which God is variously designated from his works, are empty- but a distinction, not a division.

~John Calvin~






The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press; 1974) 1.13.17.

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Thomas Goodwin – The Sum or Substance of Our Religion

4 Dec

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All then, that God works upon you savingly, from first to last, is a discovery of Christ, some way or other, in you. It is either the knowledge of his person, or it is a conformity to him, or it is dispositions suited to what you know of him; working upon us, and operations of God upon us suitable to what is in him; and this I call the sum or substance of our religion.

~Thomas Goodwin~




A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids, MI; Reformation Heritage Books; 2012) p. 332.
Quoted from: Goodwin, Glory of the Gospel, in Works, 4:346.

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George Whitefield – Let Our Practice Correspond to Our Profession

3 Dec

Only permit me to ‘stir up your pure minds, by way of remembrance’, and to exhort you, ‘if there be any consolation in Christ, any fellowship of the spirit,’ again and again to consider, that as all Christians in general, so all members of religious societies in particular, are in an especial manner, as houses built upon an hill. And that therefore it highly concerns you to walk circumspectly towards those that are without and to take heed to yourselves, that your conversation, in common life, be as becometh such an open and peculiar profession of the gospel of Christ, knowing that the eyes of all men are upon you, narrowly to inspect every circumstance of your behaviour and that every notorious wilful miscarriage of any single member will, in some measure, redound to the scandal and dishonour of your whole fraternity.

Labour, therefore, my beloved brethren, to let your practice correspond to your profession. And think not that it will be sufficient for you to plead at the last day, ‘Lord have we not assembled ourselves together in thy name and enlivened each other, by singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs?’ For verily, I say unto you, notwithstanding this, our blessed Lord will bid you depart from him, nay, you shall receive a great damnation, if in the mists of these great pretensions you are found to be workers of iniquity.

~George Whitefield~




The Sermons of George Whitefield (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books; 2012) Sermon 8: The Necessity and Benefits of Religious Society

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John Calvin – Against the Stoic

30 Nov

2 Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. – Acts 8:2

Surely that man which denieth that we ought to rejoice over the gifts of God is more like a block than a man; therefore, we may no less lawfully sorrow when they be taken away. And lest I pass the compass of this present place, Paul doth not altogether forbid men mourning, when any of their friends are taken away by death, but he would have a difference between them and the unbelievers; because hope ought to be to them a comfort and a remedy against impatience. For the beginning of death caused us to sorrow for good causes; but because we know that we have life restored to us in Christ, we have that which is sufficient to appease our sorrow.

~John Calvin~







Calvin’s Commentaries – Acts (Spokane, WA; Olive Tree Bible Software; http://www.olivetree.com) Commentary on Acts 8:2

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George Whitefield – The Backwardness of Not Thanking God

28 Nov

Numberless marks does man bear in his soul, that he is fallen and estranged from God. But nothing gives a greater proof thereof, than that backwardness, which every one finds within himself, to the duty of praise and thanksgiving.

~George Whitefield~




The Sermons of George Whitefield (Wheaton, IL; Crossway Books; 2012) Sermon 7: Thankfulness for Mercies Received, a Necessary Duty

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