Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Heb. 4:11-14, ESV
“Since I observe your earnestness and that of those who desire this thing with
you, out of love and pious zeal, I will try to the best of my ability with the assistance of God
and your prayers, which, when making this request, you have often promised me, not so
much to make plain what you inquire about, as to inquire with you” Anselm
With these two quotes, the former from the Bible, the latter from Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, I set both the purpose and the tone (respectively) of this blogsite.
Christ is at work through His power and His Word to this day. Contrary to modern beliefs, He is not at work today to create modern updates to His Word, so that the spiritual teachings given in a lost cultural setting are not lost to us in our modern culture. He is not telling us that a six day creation was a good way to tell us about God’s power and divinity in a “pre-scientific” culture, but that we now have to adopt a new paradigm to teach the same thing, a power and divinity against a billion year evolutionistic setting. He is at work, rather, so that we can “hold fast our confession.” He enjoins us to remember His covenant and His works (Ps. 111).
God is not so limited in His knowledge that He did not foresee our day when He first had His revelation made through the Scriptures. In the time of the Reformation the Bible was touted as a “once for all time” authoritative source for doctrine and for life. This “for all time” did not cease with the rise of modern sciences and philosophies.
It takes a very careful, and prayerful, and an humble effort to lay hold of that confession. Again contrary to common contemporary belief, we do not search it and weed it out of the many and various claims and statements of belief, sorting and selecting as we go according to our personally pre-disposed set of self-attesting values: the confession we are to hold to has been safeguarded by the Holy Spirit, even right down to our present day. It is not laid hold of by proud wisdom, but in humble submission and piety.
Anselm was very reluctant to write about something so wonderful and yet so plainly and visibly evident as the incarnation of Jesus Christ to reclaim sinners from the grasp of death. We too ought to be very, very careful about what we say to others about this confession that has been bequeathed to us. The sorting we would be mostly involved in is not what to keep but rather what to throw away; and for what reasons. We might throw out an article of faith from our own confession, but the Holy Spirit will yet safeguard it for the next generation. What we need to throw away is our own foolish additions and amendments we make to God’s infallible Word to appease our sense of relativity. For the Word is living and active even today, and this is plainly the case even in a Post Christian Era such as ours.
The purpose of this blog, then, is to hold fast to the confession in the face of the seemingly overwhelming counter claims, and to be intellectually honest and humbly open to the truth that is still so plainly visible to our minds in the midst of all this din. I want to put my ponderings down in a public journal, so to speak, and invite any comments which might be of mutual benefit. If someone can correct me then I am the one who has gained by being “put down”. If my thoughts help others in their time of need, then also I gain in being a servant to someone, which is my true place in this life.
I put Belgic Confession, article I in the heading of this blogsite, as companion to The Quiet Corner so that I, and any readers who might stumble onto this site, and those who might wish to add a comment or two (you’re welcome to interact), may always be reminded that in any conversation there is always the Unseen Guest hearing our words and reading our thoughts. And it is His perfect being that we contemplate together.
