Alan Dale Gross
Active Member
The Experience of God.
"B. B. Warfield describes Calvinism as ‘that sight of the majesty of
God that pervades all of life and all of experience'. In particular as it
relates to the doctrine of salvation its glad confession is summarized
in those three pregnant words, God saves sinners.
"Now whenever we are confronted with great doctrinal statements in Holy Scripture,
God does not leave us merely with the statement of doctrine.
"The end of God's Truth set before the minds of God's people is that,
understanding it, they might know its effect in their own personal
experience.
"So the grand doctrinal themes of Ephesians, chapters 1, 2and 3
are followed by the application of those doctrines to practical life
and experience in Ephesians, chapters 4, 5 and 6.
"The end for which God gave His Truth was not so much the instruction of our
minds as the transformation of our lives.
"But a person cannot come directly to the life and experience,
he must come mediately through the mind. And so God's Truth
is addressed to the understanding and the Spirit of God operates
in the understanding as the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge.
"He does not illuminate the mind simply that the file drawers
of the mental study may be crammed full of information.
The end for which God instructs the mind is that He
might transform the life.
What, then, are the personal implications of Calvinistic thought and
truth both in the life of the individual and in the ministry exercised
by the individual?
"By personal implications I mean the implications
of your own relationship to God without any conscious reference
to the ministry.
"Now, these things cannot be separated in an absolute sense, for as
has been well said, ‘The life of a minister is the life of his ministry'.
You cannot separate what you are from what you do; you cannot
separate the effect of truth upon your own relationship to God
personally from the effect of truth through you ministerially.
"For the sake of bringing the principles into sharp focus I am separating
them, but in no way do I want to give the impression that these two
are in rigid categories.
"I ask then, What are the implications of Calvinistic thought, this
vision of the majesty of God and of the saving truth of Scripture as it
relates to us as individuals?
"In answer let us go back to that general principle
which B. B. Warfield calls the ‘formative principle of Calvinism'.
"I quote Warfield's words:
"It lies then, let me repeat, in a profound apprehension of God in
His majesty, with the poignant realisation which inevitably
accompanies this apprehension, of the relation sustained to God
by the creature as such, and particularly by the sinful creature.
"The Calvinist is the man who has seen God, and who, having
seen God in His glory, is filled on the one hand with a sense of
his own unworthiness to stand in God's sight as a creature, and
much more as a sinner, and on the other hand, with adoring
wonder that nevertheless this God is a God who receives sinners.
"He who believes in God without reserve and is determined that
God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling and willing —
in the entire compass of his life activities, intellectual, moral and
spiritual — throughout all his individual social and religious
relations, is, by force of that strictest of all logic which presides
over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the
very necessity of the case, a Calvinist.
"Notice that when B. B. Warfield defines Calvinism and the Calvinist
he used words of a strongly experimental nature.
"The words ‘apprehension' and ‘realisation' deal primarily with the
understanding, though they go beyond that, but when we come to
words such as ‘seen God', ‘filled on the one hand with a sense of his
own unworthiness', ‘adoring wonder', ‘thinking, feeling and willing',
these are words of experience.
"Warfield is really saying that no person is a Calvinist,
no person is truly Biblical in his thinking of God,
no man is truly religious, no man is truly evangelical until these
concepts have been burned into the nerve fibres of his experience."
"B. B. Warfield describes Calvinism as ‘that sight of the majesty of
God that pervades all of life and all of experience'. In particular as it
relates to the doctrine of salvation its glad confession is summarized
in those three pregnant words, God saves sinners.
"Now whenever we are confronted with great doctrinal statements in Holy Scripture,
God does not leave us merely with the statement of doctrine.
"The end of God's Truth set before the minds of God's people is that,
understanding it, they might know its effect in their own personal
experience.
"So the grand doctrinal themes of Ephesians, chapters 1, 2and 3
are followed by the application of those doctrines to practical life
and experience in Ephesians, chapters 4, 5 and 6.
"The end for which God gave His Truth was not so much the instruction of our
minds as the transformation of our lives.
"But a person cannot come directly to the life and experience,
he must come mediately through the mind. And so God's Truth
is addressed to the understanding and the Spirit of God operates
in the understanding as the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge.
"He does not illuminate the mind simply that the file drawers
of the mental study may be crammed full of information.
The end for which God instructs the mind is that He
might transform the life.
What, then, are the personal implications of Calvinistic thought and
truth both in the life of the individual and in the ministry exercised
by the individual?
"By personal implications I mean the implications
of your own relationship to God without any conscious reference
to the ministry.
"Now, these things cannot be separated in an absolute sense, for as
has been well said, ‘The life of a minister is the life of his ministry'.
You cannot separate what you are from what you do; you cannot
separate the effect of truth upon your own relationship to God
personally from the effect of truth through you ministerially.
"For the sake of bringing the principles into sharp focus I am separating
them, but in no way do I want to give the impression that these two
are in rigid categories.
"I ask then, What are the implications of Calvinistic thought, this
vision of the majesty of God and of the saving truth of Scripture as it
relates to us as individuals?
"In answer let us go back to that general principle
which B. B. Warfield calls the ‘formative principle of Calvinism'.
"I quote Warfield's words:
"It lies then, let me repeat, in a profound apprehension of God in
His majesty, with the poignant realisation which inevitably
accompanies this apprehension, of the relation sustained to God
by the creature as such, and particularly by the sinful creature.
"The Calvinist is the man who has seen God, and who, having
seen God in His glory, is filled on the one hand with a sense of
his own unworthiness to stand in God's sight as a creature, and
much more as a sinner, and on the other hand, with adoring
wonder that nevertheless this God is a God who receives sinners.
"He who believes in God without reserve and is determined that
God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling and willing —
in the entire compass of his life activities, intellectual, moral and
spiritual — throughout all his individual social and religious
relations, is, by force of that strictest of all logic which presides
over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the
very necessity of the case, a Calvinist.
"Notice that when B. B. Warfield defines Calvinism and the Calvinist
he used words of a strongly experimental nature.
"The words ‘apprehension' and ‘realisation' deal primarily with the
understanding, though they go beyond that, but when we come to
words such as ‘seen God', ‘filled on the one hand with a sense of his
own unworthiness', ‘adoring wonder', ‘thinking, feeling and willing',
these are words of experience.
"Warfield is really saying that no person is a Calvinist,
no person is truly Biblical in his thinking of God,
no man is truly religious, no man is truly evangelical until these
concepts have been burned into the nerve fibres of his experience."