Wednesday, December 1, 2010

December, 2010 - Truth and Wisdom

Biblical Moorings

The Covenant has no new truths to proclaim. It has no claim to have discovered new truths upon which we have built our organization. We do not even accentuate new interpretations of old truths as being basic for our existence. That is typical in our Covenant, that we abstain from all that.

There is nothing distinctively new in the whole organization. We proclaim and cling to the old biblical truths, and we say with Paul: “All is yours.”

The principles of the Covenant are historical. They have been tested through history, and they are just as valid today as they were in the New Testament time.

Nils Heiner (1868-1958), “Covenant Characteristics,” from Covenant Roots: Sources and Affirmations, Glenn P. Anderson, ed. (1980), pp. 235,236.

The consequences of truth are not a matter of choice. Caiaphas attempted to engineer the truth so that he could dictate the consequences; but the truth itself was not subject to change. Jesus was committed to truth, and Caiaphas was not; so when Caiaphas asked, “Are you the Christ?” Jesus answered, “I am.” We cannot quite imagine him saying at this point, “Why do you ask?”

They all condemned him as deserving death. But it is quite clear that, if this was a real trial in any sense, it was not Jesus in the dock. It was all humankind who, in attempting to put truth to the test, found itself instead under the judgment of truth.

Everett L. Wilson (1936- ), Christ Died for Me (1980), p. 40.

Christ at the Center

Christianity is first and foremost a person. It is not primarily a t
heological creed, a system of philosophy or an ethical code, but rather the eternal truth of God personified. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Christ did not say that he pointed out the way, but that he is the way. He did not claim merely to speak the truth, but that he is the truth. He is not only the giver of life, but is life itself.

T. W. Anderson (1889-1972), “The Great Certainty”
From The Covenant Pulpit, ed. G. F. Hedstrand (1954), p. 11.

The assumptions of wisdom are the gifts of God, and apply to the universal study of humans and their world. But the assumptions of wisdom are proud; in them humankind is the judge and the doer. The sights of wisdom are set too high to find God or know him. Wisdom may search the heights for God, but there he is concealed by his own glory. Where God may be found in the world is on a cross, shamed and humiliated beyond our experience; and we dare to declare that the crucified Jesus is the revelation of the almighty God. While wisdom searches the heights, faith looks into the depths. Never, in the wildest imaginations of the wise of this world, would humankind have devised a scheme as foolish as the cross.

Everett L. Wilson (1936- ), Christ Died for Me (1980), p. 80.

As necessary and exciting as [the] task of interpreting the faith in the light of the circumstances and environment of today may be, it is also fraught with great danger. Translating the Gospel into a contemporary idiom may easily slip into simple accommodation of the Gospel to the values and perspectives of our culture. Then, instead of hearing the Word of God, people hear a somewhat Christianized version of their own wisdom.

Donald C. Frisk (1911- ), “To Teach the Faith”
From Bound to Be Free: essays on being a Christian and a Covenanter (1975), p. 59.

We do not teach people to build on feelings. We tell those seeking salvation to have faith in the Word of God without waiting for feelings. A warm heart is not the basis of salvation. It is the fruit of salvation. Blessed are they who do not see and yet believe. “Did I not say that if you believed, you should see?” These truths were both spoken by the Lord Jesus. Let us not lose sight of either of them. As long as Jacob did not believe his sons, his heart remained cold. When he believed them, his spirit was restored.

Gustaf F. Johnson (1873-1959), “Hearts Aflame”
From Gustaf F. Johnson, Hearts Aflame, trans. Paul R. Johnson (1970), p. 15.

...We must continue to believe in the power of the Word of God to awaken, convert, and nurture men and women to Christian maturity. We ought never, as alas now often happens, replace the Word of God in the pulpit with piquant causeries. Nor should we lard the message with more or less equivocal stories, whether they be humorous or dramatic. If we care to recall them, we can surely remember tales we have heard that have been just as preposterous and unreal as A Thousand and One Nights, and much less entertaining. Our whole message must be sound and filled with a deep sense of concern for the congregation, for the preacher is a shepherd of souls who is accountable to God for souls.

There will certainly come times when strong temptations will come to us to be something other than proclaimers of the Word. A superficial and thoughtless public will want to be entertained when it comes to church. Influential members of the churches, who are themselves just as superficial and thoughtless and without an appreciation of deeper spirituality, will want to impose their ideas on the congregation. They measure progress in the congregation by counting the heads at the worship services. They will gladly forgive the pastor for anything as long as he fills the pews.

It is important for us to know these temptations and their source, and by the help of God to oppose them. If we cannot preach with joy and a sense of victory, let us then in the name of the Lord preach with tears and heartache. For it is stated in the psalm, “He that goes forth, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” God will answer our sowing of tears with a harvest of joy. In these times of drought, when we are offered so much piquant in place of the earnest Word we formerly believed and trusted, we need to lay these warnings to heart. There has never yet come a harvest that did not have its beginning in sowing. We do not need to discard all that which we have learned during these...years of Covenant history in the matter of message, organization, and methods.

If we continue to trust in the Lord and do not grow weary in awaiting his answer, and if we continue to rely on the power of the Gospel to transform human hearts--faithfully and quietly fulfilling our task in the church as before the Lord--the harvest will not be lacking. For here that word is true, says Jesus, that one sows, and another reaps. Just as the first disciples were sent by the Lord to reap where they had not labored, so perhaps others will reap from our labor. God's program is not confined to one short generation. When this becomes clear to us, we will not soon or easily be carried away by this nervous tendency of our time, which must have immediate visible results. We shall sow in faithfulness, and God will water the seed in his time. He will restore us again, as he does the watercourses in the southland.

Nils W. Lund (1885-1954), “Restore Us Again, O Lord”
From Herbert E. Palmquist, The Word Is Near You (1974), pp. 186,187.

You know, if Christ really is risen, the Christian for whom this is real does not need to become neurotic with fear that his neighbor is a stooge for Communism, or that a redeemed brother in some other denomination or country is a threat to his security in Christ. Has there ever been an age in which Christians have had more social security and less security in the Lord of the church? Let me remind you, my worried Christian friend, that there is no other power on earth or in all of space like the power which raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. Why, of all people, should we be so anxious?

C. Milton Strom (1911-1972), Holy Curiosity (Board of Publications of the California Conference,1966), p. 102.

Faith and Learning

“Sunday school? ...What's in it for you?

First, the Sunday school provides you with an opportunity to discover the bask structure and content of the Bible, the textbook for understanding our faith. Whether you are a child or an adult, replace weekly classes are provided within the curriculum plan. This is important, because Sunday school makes the opportunity for biblical instruction available to all. True, the rich treasures within the Bible require extended study opportunities led by those who are specially trained. Yet within the context of a particular Sunday school class, you can acquire--if you want to--both the foundation and the desire for further study.

Second, Sunday school offers you a climate of caring. One of its main goals should be to foster friendship with those in your unique age or circle of interest. Your presence or absence week after week will be noted by others. Ideally, each class becomes a small community of persons sharing their lives hn prayer, service, and caring--like the early church in Acts.

Third, a Sunday school class should help you relate God’s Word to daily experience and help establish a basis for your moral life. The regular biblical input offered by the Sunday school is a needed thing if we are to cultivate the seed of God's Word and allow it to mature in us. Without such exposure to the Scriptures in the content of the Christian community, how can we possibly find our way in a world of decaying personal and social morality?

Fourth, Sunday school provides a place where you can bring your non-church friends and relatives, regardless of their age, and feel confident that they will be led in a simple way into the whats, why, and hows of the Christian faith. Here is one of its chief benefits. Sunday school cannot be equaled as a special entry point for new persons.

Fifth and last though not finally, the Sunday school provides us all with a wonderful opportunity to serve. Jesus said, “You are my witnesses!” Sunday school is a place where lay people have a unique opportunity to articulate the Christian faith and share it with others. If you have confessed your personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and are growing in your relationship with him, it is important to begin sharing that faith in a structured way with others. You will also learn and grow more quickly when you yourself prepare to share with others.

So what’s in it for you? A port of entry and a place of passage. It may seem awfully simple but it’s true. Understanding and experiencing the Christian life is somehow tied with regular Bible study and sharing. That’s what a live Sunday school program offers every believer.

Evelyn M. R. Johnson (1941- ), “Sunday School? What’s in It for Me?”, Covenant Tract (1987).

The chief purpose of the Public School is to train the mind and incidentally the character.
The chief purpose of the Church School is to develop Christian character and incidentally to train the mind.

The Public School ideal is capable citizenship. The Church School ideal is Christian discipleship. Educationally speaking, the Church School work should be the crown of the work of the Public School, and both schools should be provided with teachers whose work will measure up to their task. When the day comes that we shall find the Church School as well equipped to teach Scripture truth as we find the Public School equipped to teach the cultural secular studies and their application to living, and educational equilibrium will be established.

A high school boy said to his father one day: “If the Bible is as important to my education as you say it is why doesn't my Sunday School teacher make the Bible as interesting to us boys as our everyday school teacher makes our everyday school subjects interesting?"

...What common sense is there then for a minister to give as little as eight percent of his [or her] time and thought (as is the case at present, according to a recent statistical report) to a field which yields eighty percent of harvest in souls? Or, for a church and its workers to spend dollars and a major effort on rescue mission work, and only the pennies and a slipshod attention on its Sunday School and its allied activities?

Olga Lindborg (1889-1945), “Conscience and Character”
Manuscript, Covenant Archives, Record Series 2-1-14, Box 1.

...One law of education is that we have to be educated not according to our pleasure but according to our measure.... Education means, in the domain of [humankind], all that culture implies.... Only one kind of education even pretends [to concern itself with the whole person]. And that is Christian Education. Therefore, as a matter of fact, Christian Education is the only one existing worth the name.... To further the cause of Christian Education is the high aim of this institution of ours, this North Park College. It is the ambition of every teacher here to see that all the studies and all the methods of studying are of the highest choice. A Christian school is a bank where every single piece of money, be it [great] or small, should be of just the numerical value which stands engraved upon its face. To falsify the smallest truth is as much a high treason as to falsify the greatest truth or all the truth, just as to counterfeit a dime is as much a felony as to counterfeit one of the golden eagles.

David Nyvall (1863-1946), “Some Plain Facts about Education,” Linnea, 1898.
Quoted in Scott E. Erickson, David Nyvall and the Shape of an Immigrant Church (Acta Universitatis Upsallensis, Uppsala, 1996), p. 264.

It is important in the church and in our common fellowship in the body of Christ to be as clear as we can with each other about our understandings of God in Christ, the rock on which we place our faith, and of our doctrinal formulations. It is also crucial to remember that the Church has been attempting to do this for two thousand years and has not yet succeeded in finding a formulation that is wholly adequate to express the fundamental mystery to which it points. While it may appear to he intellectually sloppy, it is a matter of wisdom to adopt the position of early Covenanters in their debates about communion, atonement, last things, and so on. [Erik August] Skogshergh [1850-1939] said, “It is not always so important to know everything. It is always tremendously important to preach the gospel. So whether I am free or whether I am bound, I may be either and yet preach the gospel. So let us try and stop being omniscient, and get on with the work of planting.” And, I think he would have added, in its appropriate way, of church building, and necessarily of fencing. The thing at all costs we have to avoid is the state of mind and the kind of movement that begins to insist that the Christian life is fundamentally a life of doctrine, that that is what the life is. Most Covenanters have not and will not take that position.

Zenos E. Hawkinson (1925-1997), “Fencing” (1978)
From Anatomy of the Pilgrim Experience: Reflections on Being a Covenanter, Edited by Philip J. Anderson and David E. Hawkinson (2000).

In our understanding of the Christian school we begin with the assumption that there is a vital relation between the Christian faith and our intellectual discipline. Whatever faith means to us, it does not mean merely that vague, emotional, or mystical atmosphere which hangs like an iridescent mist over our intellectual activities.... North Park is not a Christian school because it has Christian teachers, Christian worship services, and compulsory courses of religion in its curriculum. It is Christian because it has believed from its very beginning that the Christian faith forms a necessary presupposition for all meaningful intellectual activity.

Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), Address to the Faculty, 1959
Quoted in The Covenant Companion, September 1, 1968, p. 6.

Importance of Listening

Spener [1635-1705] proposed, “We must beware how we conduct ourselves in religious controversies with unbelievers and heretics.” He reacted against the common belligerent mood of theological debate. The most effective manner of engaging the heterodox was to pray for them; to set a good example before them; to make a modest, but firm, presentation of the truth; to practice heartfelt love toward them; and to champion unity where possible between Christian confessions. Theological debate is necessary for the defense of truth and for the refutation of false positions. However, since all glory is due God alone, such debate must never be entered into for the achievement of self-glory, but to convert opponents by encountering them with the brotherly spirit of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37).

It is to Spener's credit that he maintained this personal style, refusing to stoop to sarcasm or personal insinuation when combating opponents whose zeal often was bound by no such rules....

K. James Stein (1929- ), Philipp Jakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch (1986), p. 100.

...You who always boast that you like the truth spoken directly to your face, you became so angry at the preacher recently when he touched some of your sore boils that with a great show of piety you informed another church member that a change of preachers would further the cause of Christ among us. Still you dare to believe that you are awaiting Jesus. May God help you.

You are not awake, my friend, but you may soon be awakened. Then you will pray, not with the usual flow of words, but with a heart cry--after the birthright is lost.

Gustaf F. Johnson (1873-1959), “Heavenly Lights in the World’s Night”
From Gustaf F. Johnson, Hearts Aflame, trans. Paul R. Johnson (1970), p. 173.

About Me

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Nearly seventeen years into retirement, I am enjoying the opportunity to share thoughts and life experiences on a regular basis. This blog is part of a larger personal website at www.rootedwings.com. Your comments, thoughts, and life experience responses are not only invited but welcome!