Quote 3828
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God is not at a distance from history, uninvolved and on the periphery, an interested spectator or distant 'first cause;' rather he is governing all things by his providence and wisdom.
People treat God's sovereignty as a matter of controversy, but in Scripture it is a matter of worship.
Justification takes place by works and by faithโby the works of Christ and by our faith.
If hatred of sin is necessary to God, then penal justice is equally necessary because the hatred of sin is the constant will of punishing it.
When the apostle says that 'faith is by hearing' (Rom. 10:17), he does indeed give us to understand that the ministry of the church ought to come in as the ordinary means of producing faith in adults. He does not teach, however, that the church is clearer and better known than the Scriptures.
Good works are required as the means and way for possessing salvation. Even though they don't contribute anything to the acquisition of our salvation, they are necessary to the obtainment of it. No one can be saved without them.
We do not deny that the church has many functions in relation to the Scriptures. She is: (1) the keeper of the oracles of God to whom they are committed and who preserves the authentic tables of the covenant of grace with the greatest fidelity, like a notary (Rom. 3:2); (2) the guide, to point out the Scriptures and lead us to them (Is. 30:21); (3) the defender, to vindicate and defend them by separating the genuine books from the spurious, in which sense she may be called the ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15*); (4) the herald who sets forth and promulgates them (2 Cor. 5:19; Rom. 10:16); (5) the interpreter inquiring into the unfolding of the true sense. But all these imply a ministerial only and not a magisterial power.
The reading and contemplation of the Scriptures is enjoined upon men of all languages, therefore the translation of it into the native tongues is necessary. Since men speak different languages and are not all familiar with those two in which it was first written, it cannot be understood by them unless translated; it comes as the same thing to say nothing at all and to say what nobody can understand. But here it happens by the wonderful grace of God that the division of tongues (which formerly was the sign of a curse) becomes now the proof of a heavenly blessing. What was introduced to destroy Babel is now used to build up the mystical Zion.
It was not necessary for the apostles to write a catechism so as to deliver their doctrines professedly. It was enough for them to hand down to us those doctrines in accordance with which all symbolical books and catechisms might be constructed. If they did not formally write a catechism, they did materially leave us either in the gospels or in the epistles those things by which we can be clearly taught the principles of religion (katรฉcheisthai).
If theology takes some things from other systems, it is not as an inferior from superiors, but as an superior from inferiors (as a mistress freely using her handmaids). Theology does not so much take from others, as presupposes certain previously known things upon which it builds revelation.
Institutes of Elenctic Theology
That God is the object of theology is evident both from the very name (theologias and theosebeias), and from Scripture which recognizes no other principal object.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
Thus that all things are discussed in theology either because they deal with God himself or have a relation (schesin) to him as the first principle and ultimate end.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
But the divine dayspring from on high is adored, Christ the Lord, who is our sun and shield; the sun of every blessing, asserting the glory of religion; the shield of the most safe protection, affording an invincible and inexpugnable guard to liberty.
Effectual calling is an act of the grace of God in Christ by which he calls men dead in sin and lost in Adam through the preaching of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit, to union with Christ and to salvation obtained in him.
The liberty of reading the Scriptures does not take away either oral instruction, pastoral direction or other helps necessary to understanding. It only opposes the tyranny of those who do not wish the darkness of their errors to be dissipated by the light of the divine word.
By the beatific vision... God will be seen without end, loved without cloying, praised without weariness.Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3.612
The right of discipline belongs to the Church; those who despise this discipline are rejecting not just men, but God, who has appointed such ordinances for our edification.
Those who are always contending and disputing, rather than seeking to edify in love, do harm to the church. The truth needs no wrangling, but a firm and humble assertion.
The foundation of all true theology is humility, for when pride takes root in a theologian, the entire system of his doctrine becomes corrupted
A threefold love of God is commonly held; or rather there are three degrees of one and the same love. First, there is the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฐ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ by which God willed good to the creature from eternity; second, the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ง๐ช๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ by which he does good to the creature in time according to his good will; third, the love of ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐บ by which he delights himself in the creature on account of the rays of his image seen in them. By the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฐ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ, he loved us before we were; by the love of ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ง๐ช๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ, he loves us as we are; and by the love of ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ญ๐ข๐ค๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐บ, he loves us when we are (viz., renewed after his image). By the first he elects us; by the second, he redeems and sanctifies us; but by the third he gratuitously rewards us as holy and just. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, III.8,5
In Scripture, however, the goal of human life is to glorify God. Our dignity is to be found not in what we do, but in what God has done for us and in us. Our meaning and significance are to be found in the fact that God has created us in his image and redeemed us by the blood of his Son. The biblical writers, therefore, are not horrified, as modern writers tend to be, by the thought that we may be under the control of another. If the other is God, and he has made us for his glory, then we could not possibly ask for a more meaningful existence.Systematic Theology
Nothing is disobedient to Him. Hence not even the mosquito has its sharp sting and musical hum without God's wisdom, knowledge, and foresight.
Although the church is more ancient than the Scriptures formally considered (and as to the mode of writing), yet it cannot be called such with respect to the Scriptures materially considered (and as to the substance of the doctrine) because the Word of God is more ancient than the church itself, being its foundation and seed.
The 'seat of Moses' (Mt. 23:2) is not the succession in the place and office of Moses or the external court of a supreme judge to whom the authority in question belongs (for the seat of Moses was not in existence nor was any such privilege attached to it); rather it is the promulgation of the true doctrine delivered by Moses (as the ordinary gloss on Dt. 17 has it, 'The seat of Moses is wherever his doctrine is'), and the chair of Peter is wherever his doctrine is heard. So those who have been teachers of the law delivered by Moses are considered to have taught in Moses' seat, as Hilary observes (Commentarius in Matthaeum 24.1 [PL 9.1048]). Therefore the Pharisees teaching in Moses' seat were to be heard as far as they faithfully proposed to the people his doctrine, without any admixture of their own.
The knowledge of a thing may be confused or distinct. The church can be known before the Scriptures by a confused knowledge, but a distinct knowledge of the Scriptures ought to precede because the truth of the church can be ascertained only from the Scriptures. The church can be apprehended by us before the Scriptures by a human faith, as an assembly of men using the same sacred things; yet it can be known and believed as an assembly of believers and the communion of saints by a divine faith, only after the marks of the church which Scripture supplies have become known.
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2. Thomas Watson (119)
3. J.C. Ryle (116)
4. John Calvin (104)
5. J.I. Packer (89)
6. John Piper (86)
7. George Swinnock (74)
8. A.W. Pink (68)
9. Louis Berkhof (63)
10. John Flavel (58)
11. B.B. Warfield (58)
12. C.S. Lewis (55)
13. John Owen (53)
14. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (51)
15. Gerald Bray (50)
16. Francis Schaeffer (49)
17. Thomas Brooks (46)
18. R.C. Sproul (45)
19. Matthew Henry (44)
20. Francis Turretin (43)
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