Life After Our Resurrection

We should think far more than we do about what life will be like after our resurrection and how we're preparing for it:

"The importance of clarity about what lies at the end of the Christian pilgrimage seemed to [Richard] Baxter incalculable….The more strongly one desires an end, the more carefully and diligently one will use the means to it. [Baxter:] 'The Love of the end is the poise and spring, which setteth every Wheel a going.' But an unknown end will not be loved. 'It is a known, and not merely an unknown God and happiness, that the soul doth joyfully desire.' Such desire will then give wings to the soul. 'It is the heavenly Christian that is the lively Christian. It is strangeness to heaven that makes us so dull. It is the end that quickens to all the means; and the more frequently and clearly this end is beheld, the more vigorous will all our motion be….We run so slowly, and strive so lazily, because we so little mind the prize.'" (J.I. Packer, cited here)

JIP and WCF

Paul Helm on J.I. Packer and the Westminster Confession of Faith. (There seem to be more than a few spelling and punctuation errors.)

Helm on Packer

Paul Helm's tribute to J. I. Packer, whom Helm calls "the most talented man that I ever met".

Likewise Helm's older piece on 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God is worth a read. By the way, 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God is currently about $3 on Kindle.

J. I. Packer (1926-2020)

Tributes:

• Randy Alcorn
• Sam Allberry
• Dustin Benge
• Wallace Benn
• Hans Boersma
• Gerald Bray
• Don Carson
• Grant Castleberry
• Glenn Davies
• Philip De Courcy
• Jamie Dean
• Jason DeRouchie
• Mark Dever
• David Dockery
• Ligon Duncan
• John Frame
• Lee Gatiss
• Michael Haykin
• Paul Helm. Also see Helm's older piece on Packer's 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God.
• John Hendryx
• Bruce Hindmarsh
• Rick Holland
• Chris Humfrey
• Peter Jensen
• Terry L. Johnson
• Mike Licona, Paul Copan, Dan Wallace, Gregg Monette
• David Mathis
• Conrad Mbewe
• Stephen McCaskell
• Ivan Mesa
• Al Mohler
• Tom Nettles
• Marvin Olasky
• Ray Ortlund
• Timothy Padgett
• Gavin Peacock
• Nate Pickowicz
• Peter Pike
• John Piper
• John Piper redux
• Regent College
• Leland Ryken
• Tom Schreiner
• David Short, Ben Kwashi, Leslie Thyberg, Joel Scandrett
• George Sinclair
• John Stonestreet
• Sam Storms
• Owen Strachan
• Don Sweeting
• Justin Taylor
• Erik Thoennes
• Mark Thompson
• Carl Trueman
• Carl Trueman redux
• James White
• Paul S. Williams
• Peter Williams
• Stephen Witmer

In addition, Crossway has some material about and from Packer. This includes a free ebook titled Weakness Is the Way.

Is it wrong to want damnation to be true

I commented once before on a post by apostate Randal Rauser (defending hopeful universalism), but I'd like to make an additional observation. He quotes J. I. Packer's statement that:

“No evangelical, I think, need hesitate to admit that in his heart of hearts he would like universalism to be true. Who can take pleasure in the thought of people being eternally lost? If you want to see folk damned, there is something wrong with you!”

There are three problems with appealing to Packer's statement:

i) It's a bogus argument from authority. Packer's opinion doesn't make it true. His opinion creates no presumption that it's true. 

ii) Whether or not I want to see folk damned is a red herring. The real issue isn't what I happen to think is best, but what God thinks is best. 

iii) Suppose there is something wrong with me. But if universalism is true, so what? Universalism takes the sting out of Packer's disapproval, as well as Rauser's disapproval. 

Justice is done

J. I. Packer:

Christian fairy tales, with savior heroes and plots that end in what Tolkien called a eucatastrophe – whereby things come right after seeming to go irrevocably wrong. Villains are foiled, people in jeopardy are freed, justice is done, and the ending is happy...The gospel of Christ is the archetype of all such stories. Paganism unleavened by Christianity, on the other hand, was and always will be pessimistic at heart.

Roger Nicole:

Mysteries represent a tremendously optimistic outlook on the place of justice in life. In mysteries the guilty are always brought to justice, which is not always the case in life at this level. It will be the case at the last judgement. But at this level there are people who escape the tentacles of the law. But the mystery situation demands there be a sleuth to bring the criminal to justice. That is the thing that is so deeply satisfying. Every time the force of justice wins.

Introductory Essay to John Owen’s Death of Death in the Death of Christ

https://www.monergism.com/introductory-essay-john-owen’s-death-death-death-christ

If private revelations agree with Scripture, they are needless

Some cessationists cite a statement attributed to John Owen. Commenting on Owen, Packer says:

He is quick to deploy against them the old dilemma that if their ‘private revelations’ agree with Scripture, they are needless, and if they disagree, they are false. J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Crossway, 1994), 86.

That has epigrammatic clarity and concision. However, it's unclear to what extent Packer is quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing Owen. As it stands, the statement, while pithy, punchy, and quotable, poses a simplistic and fallacious dilemma.  

I assume "agree" is synonymous with "consistent". To "agree with" is to be consistent with. Put another way, to agree with means it doesn't contradict it. If so, the statement is deceptively appealing.

It's like saying, if medical science is consistent with Scripture, then it's needless; and if it's inconsistent with Scripture, it is false. The latter clause is true, but the former is false. 

To say something "agrees" with Scripture just means that it's consistent with Scripture. But that doesn't make it redundant. Something can be consistent with Scripture, but add to our fund of knowledge–like medical science. 

To take a hypothetical case: suppose I have a premonition or dream that if I board that plane tomorrow, it will crash. I reschedule. The plane I missed explodes in midair, killing everyone on board.

That "private revelation" doesn't contradict anything in Scripture. But it's not superfluous or needless. 

The statement attributed to Owen makes the mistake of attempting a quick and easy refutation of a position that isn't that simple. Whatever your position on cessationism, this gambit is a nonstarter. 

My Take on the Reformation in England: Owen, Packer, Hooker, Puritans, Anglicans, and Worship

Over on Facebook, in response to my recent blog article on John Owen, “Political Defeat was the Condition of Cultural Achievement”, an old [conservative Anglican] friend of mine commented:

the reformed Anglican judgment is that Puritanism (especially its more radical expression) constituted a perversion of the English Reformation, not its teleos. There were Calvinists among the supporters of High Church Anglicanism (e.g., Whitgift). They were the heirs of Cranmer et al., not the Puritans, whose radicalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.

I responded:

I don’t know that “seeds of its own destruction” was an entirely fair characterization. I’ve been looking at this period a bit (the theological aspects which were called “Reformed Orthodoxy”). This period was characterized by “precise theological formulations”, among other things.

While it’s true that “Reformed Orthodoxy” seemingly came to an abrupt halt at one point, there were a lot of things that went into it:

Running the race

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/j-i-packer-on-living-to-the-end-flat-out

Weakness is the way

(Source)

I likewise appreciated Carl Trueman's post about the book.

The sovereignty of God and the “whosoever will” promise

I’m following up on some of the line of questioning that took place in the wake of my blog post “Double Predestination”?.

Several commenters pointed out, for example, that the WCF says: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined unto eternal life, and others foreordained to everlasting death” (WCF III.3). And another commenter on the Lutheran thread pointed to a statement that Calvin made in the Institutes:

“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or death.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:21:5)

I understand about the decrees of God. And I understand that nothing occurs outside of the purview (and outside of the decree) of the Sovereign Lord.

“Double Predestination” is in quotes, however, because that’s not what the teaching is. That terminology is not precise, and it is not helpful in discussion with Lutherans (for example, much less among the Reformed), which I alluded to. Note that the WCF quote uses two different words: “predestined” and “foreordained”. What’s happening in both cases is similar but not precisely interchangeable.

* * *

We have the means and the ability in our day to avoid the kinds of misunderstandings that the early Reformers succumbed to. We have the benefit of hindsight. In many cases, we know precisely where the misunderstandings occurred, and we have the ability to re-frame them in more precise terms. This may not solve all the problems, but it will help to foster discussions that are based on honest disagreements and to avoid having discussions that are informed by prejudices.

And second, we have the Internet, a means by which correct information can be disseminated all over the world, immediately, rather than, as was the case in the 16th through the 18th centuries, the need to write and publish a pamphlet or book, and the months or years it would take for the knowledge to be disseminated.

I think that’s the case here.


What follows is taken from J.I. Packer’s lecture series, “The English Puritans”, from Lecture 5, “The Bible in Puritan Theology – 1”, beginning at 28:00. I think this is tremendously helpful in understanding “the background of [a] Puritan teaching that needs to be understood” and one that is “rarely understood”.

Bible reading habits

From J.I. Packer:

Reading the Bible

Let us read the Bible then — if we can. But can we? The truth is that many of us have lost the ability to read the Bible. When we open our Bibles, we do so in a frame of mind which forms an insuperable barrier to our ever reading it at all. This may sound startling, but it is not hard to show that it is true.

When you sit down to any other book, you treat it as a unit. You look for the plot, or the main thread of the argument, and follow it through to the end. You let the author's mind lead yours. Whether or not you allow yourself to "dip" before settling down to the book properly, you know that you will not have understood it till you have been through it from start to finish, and if it is a book that you want to understand you set aside time to read it in full. But when we come to Holy Scripture, our behaviour is different. In the first place, we are in the habit of not treating it as a book — a unit — at all, but simply as a collection of separate stories and sayings. We take it for granted before we look at the text that the burden of them — or, at least, of as many of them as affect us — is either moral advice or comfort for those in trouble. So we read them (when we do) in small doses, a few verses at a time. We do not go through individual books, let alone the two complete Testaments, as a single whole. We browse through the rich old Jacobean periods of the Authorised Version, waiting for something to strike us. When the words bring to our minds a soothing thought or a pleasant picture, we feel that the Bible has done its job for us. It seems that the Bible is for us not a book, but a collection of beautiful and suggestive snippets, and it is as such that we use it. The result is that we never read the Bible at all. We take it for granted that we are handling Holy Writ in the truly religious way; but in truth, our use of it is more than a little superstitious. It is the way of natural religiosity, perhaps, but not of true religion.

For God does not mean Bible-reading to function simply as a drug for fretful minds. The reading of Scripture is intended to awaken our minds, not to send them to sleep. God asks us to approach Scripture as His Word — a message addressed to rational creatures, men with minds; a message which we cannot expect to understand without thinking about it. "Come now, and let us reason together," said God to Judah through Isaiah (Isa. 1:18), and He says the same to us every time we take up His book. He has, indeed, taught us to pray for divine enlightenment as we read — "open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law" (Ps. 119:18); but this is a prayer that God will enable us to think about His Word with insight, and we effectively prevent its being answered if after offering it we make our minds a blank and stop thinking as we read. Again, God asks us to read the Bible as a book — a single story with a single theme. We are to read it as a whole, and as we read, we are to ask ourselves: what is the plot of this book? What is its real subject? What is it really about? Unless we ask these questions, we shall never reach the point from which we can see what it is saying to us about our own individual lives.

When we do reach this point, we shall find that God's real message to us is more drastic, and at the same time more heartening, than anything that human religiosity could conceive.