Selected Reading, October 17, 2020

 

A few suggestions for your weekend reading and listening.

Defining Terms

Worse Than We Think: What Total Depravity Is (and Is Not)
Robert Letham explains total depravity: “The reality of total depravity leaves no possibility of salvation by our own efforts. It points to our dire condition from the fall and the sovereign work of God in rescuing us. Only the Holy Spirit can change us and transform us into the image of Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.”

Semper Reformanda in Context
What was the original meaning of the phrase reformed and always reforming? What did Jodocus van Lodenstein mean when he used it way back in 1674? 

Self-Promotion

Women’s Hope: Delighting in Doctrine
Here’s an interview I did with Dr. Shelbi Cullen and Kimberly Cummings for the Women’s Hope podcast. We talked about how I became interested in doctrine, what obstacles women face when they want to learn theology, and how to live out our theology, among other things.

Theological Term of the Week: Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit

internal testimony of the Holy Spirit
A work of the Spirit that overcomes the noetic effects of sin and produces the belief that the Scriptures are the word of God; also called testimonium spiritus sancti internum (Latin).

• In scripture:

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:27 ESV)

• From Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof:

  The Testimony of the Holy Spirit is simply the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the sinner, by which he removes the blindness of sin, so that the erstwhile blind man, who had no eyes for the sublime character of the Word of God, now clearly sees and appreciates the marks of its divine nature, and receives immediate certainty respecting the divine origins of Scripture. Just as one who has an eye for the beauties of architecture, in gazing up into the dome of the St. Peter’s Church at Rome, at once recognizes it as the production of a great artist, so the believer in the study of Scripture discovers in it at once the earmarks of the divine. The redeemed soul beholds God as the author of Scripture and rests on its testimony with childlike faith, with a fides divina. It is exactly the characteristic mark of such faith that it rests on the testimony of God, while a fides humana merely rests on a human testimony of on rational arguments. Of course, rational arguments may be adduced for the divine origin of Scripture, but these are powerless to convince the unrenewed man. The Christian believes the Bible to be the very Word of God in the last analysis on the testimony which God Himself gives respecting this matter in His Word, and recognizes that Word as divine by means of the testimony of God in his heart. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is therefore, strictly speaking, not so much the final ground of faith, but rather the means of faith. The final ground of faith is Scripture only, or better still, the authority of God which is impressed upon the believer in the testimony of Scripture. The ground of faith is identical with its contents, and cannot be separated from it. But the testimony of the Holy Spirit is the moving cause of faith. We believe Scripture, not because of, but through the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

• From Canon Revisited by Michael Kruger:

  The reason some refuse to believe the Scriptures is not that there is any defect or lack of evidence in the Scriptures … but that those without the Spirit do not accept the things from God (1 Cor. 2:10-14)

  Jesus himself affirmed this reality when he declared, “My sheep [i.e., those with the Spirit] hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). Likewise, he said of his sheep, “A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers” (John 10:5). Put simply, canonical books are received by those who have the Holy Spirit in them. When people’s eyes are opened, they are struck by the divine qualities of Scripture—its beauty, harmony, efficacy—and recognize and embrace Scripture for what it is, the word of God. They realize that the voice of Scripture is the voice of the Shepherd.

Learn more:

1. Apologetics 315: Terminology Tuesday: Internal Testimony of the Spirit
2. Michael Kruger: No Holy Spirit, No Scripture
3. Stephen Upthank: Warfield and Inspiration: Testimonium Spiritus Sancti 
4. Sam Storms: The Theology of John Calvin (see section B2, Calvin on the Testimonium Internum Spiritus Sancti).

Related terms: 

• authority of scripture
• canon of scripture

Filed under Scripture

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What Did Moses See?

“Scripture is boring!” I’ve heard people say this, and I’ve probably even thought it myself. But the more I learn about scripture, and the more familiar I become with it, the more interesting I find it. I am always learning something new.

While studying Hebrews 8 recently, I saw something I’d never noticed before. I’m not sure how I missed it, because it’s right there in plain writing. 

Let me show you. Here’s Hebrews 8:5:

[The levitical priests] serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain” (Hebrews 8:5 NIV).

The sanctuary in the Old Testament tabernacle was meant to be a copy and shadow of God’s heavenly dwelling. God’s home in heaven was the real deal, and the sanctuary of the tabernacle was only a temporary earthly replica of the heavenly reality.

What caught my attention was something in the quote from Exodus 25:40. God commanded Moses to construct the tabernacle like “the pattern shown you on the mountain.” When Moses was on Mount Sinai, God gave verbal intruction about how to build the tabernacle. But the verbal instructions, which are written down for us in Exodus 25-31 and 35-40, weren’t all God gave Moses. God showed Moses something that served as a pattern for tabernacle. This is what I hadn’t noticed before. Moses actually saw something he was supposed to replicate (See also Exodus 25:9; 26:30; 27:8).

Which brings up the question that kept my mind busy for a while: What exactly did Moses see? Did God show him a model of the tabernacle? A blueprint? A picture?

It could be any of those, I suppose. F. F. Bruce thinks there’s even a possiblity Moses was permitted to see “the heavenly dwelling place of God.”1 We know Moses saw “the form of the Lord” (Numbers 6:8), and God talked to him face. If anyone would be permitted at glimpse of God’s home, why not Moses?

It’s an intriguing thought, but it’s only conjecture. We just can’t know for certain what it was God showed Moses.

What we can know is that Jesus, our high priest, has not just seen God’s true dwelling place, but has entered it. What Moses (maybe) caught a glimpse of is the place where Jesus “always lives to make intercession for [us]” (Hebrews 7:25). He is “seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man” (Hebrews 8:1–2). He now “dwells in God’s presence and ministers in the heavenly realm where God dwells.”2

And there’s more. Moses went to Mount Sinai, a place that made him tremble with fear (Hebrews 12:21), and God showed him something. But because of Jesus’s sacrifice of himself for us, believers “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem …” (Hebrews 12:22). Because Jesus is our high priest, we are already citizens of the city God has built. And our hope, our inheritance, is to one day dwell with God in this city. Unlike Moses was, we will not be afraid in God’s presence. We will be part of “a joyful assembly” (Hebrews 12:22) because Jesus, our high priest, has cleansed us from sin. 

1 F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, page 184.
2 Thomas R. Schreiner, Commentary on Hebrews, page 243.