C. S. Lewis was right, and we are not surprised. He spoke about the importance of reading old books and said:”Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook – even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny.”
Of late, I have had the blessing of reading from several of older theologians. As usual, there was not a rhyme or reason for venturing into the older seas of theological discussion. I am, as usual, guided by whim. And yet, I do have books that I read because I have acquired them as review books.
The Suffering Savior: A Series of Devotional Meditations by Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher is published by The Banner of Truth Trust. Krummacher’s dates were 1796-1868. He was German and “a leader in an evangelical revival among the German Reformed Churches of the Rhineland in the 1830s and 40s.”
I began reading this book sometime back around Easter (just before or after–I can’t remember which). The work has been praised by many and reprinted by various publishers, but I always prefer the Banner editions, especially the hardcover ones, when possible.
Because Easter comes at a different date each year, I have trouble fixing in my mind a particular time to read about Christological topics related to the Passion Week, the Death, and then the Resurrection of Christ. I have, particularly in the past, pulled out the works by Michael Licona and N. T. Wright on the Resurrection or glanced at part of three volume set by Klaus Schilder. But I decided this year to visit with this volume I had neglected.
Here is my plan of action: I read only a few of the opening chapters during the Easter season this year. Next year, I will try to start earlier (somewhere in the midst of Lent) and read another good chunk of the book. If I opt to go back to the beginning, that is not a problem. But I will try to keep digging into these most rich chapters.
Human Nature in Its Fourfold State by Thomas Boston is published by The Banner of Truth Trust.
I have had this classic theological study for about 30 years. Being a Banner book, it is still in like-new condition. Last spring, I read From the Marrow Men to the Moderates: Scottish Theology, 1700-1800 by Donald Macleod, published by Mentor.
Few people knew this, but the whole time that I was reading this second of two fine volumes on Scottish theology, I was blushing in embarrassment. Thomas Boston and Human Nature in its Fourfold State were central to the discussion about the Marrow Controversy.
It was an epic fail on my part because I had owned Boston’s book for many years, but had never read it. I determined that I needed to at least give it a try. My initial goal was to read about the first 50 pages, and then I pushed on to somewhere past the first 100 pages. My plan is to return to the book and read another section. Hopefully, I will get back to this book soon.
This book lays out the critical overview of the condition of mankind from beginning to end. The first state of the human race was the state of innocence or integrity. Commonly, we deal with this under the topic of The Fall of Man, or the Fall of Adam. But the Fall is stage two. Having a worldview or mindset that recognizes the original innocence from sin is monumental in understanding human nature.
Sadly, that initial state was short lived and “in Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” Sin is the most easily defended and proved doctrine of Christianity, in terms of looking at empirical evidence. But part of the nature of sin is to deny, minimize, lessen the extent, etc. of sin. Boston is, although a Scotsman who came along later than the era, a Puritan-type theologian. He doesn’t just address a topic, but he brings it up, dissects it, puts it under the microscope, and digs into it until it seems there is nothing else to say.
I eagerly anticipate reading about Redemption, the third state of human nature. And I hope to read about Glorification here on this terrestrial planet before I experience it.
The picture below shows what my older copy of the Banner book look like.
Jehovah-Jireh: A Treatise on Providence by William S. Plumer is published by Sprinkle Publications.
Plumer was an old time Southern Presbyterian. He wrote a weight-lifter commentary on Psalms (published by Banner of Truth), which I have had and used profitably through the years. Some of his other books were reprinted by Sprinkle Publications, including a volume about Christ, titled Rock of Our Salvation, and one about the law, titled Law of God.
Plumer is not or was not a cutting edge theologian. He didn’t deal with cultural issues of his time with timeless insights, like Robert L. Dabney. He did not have the style of Charles Hodge, who reinforced the parameters of Reformed theology. He did not confront the tides of unbelief drifting across the pond from Germany (from my limited reading of him). He was a nuts and bolts, Confessional, and very Biblical theologian whose main task was in preaching to his congregation sitting in the pews or reading his books.
This book was a refreshing return for me to the Calvinistic groundings I was deep into during the mid-1970s to the 1990s. (I’m still there theologically, but have not been as exposed to the baseline Reformed distinctives as much in recent years.) Providence is an awe-inspiring topic. It brings us to the foot of a mountain, the top of which we cannot see. Plumer walks through different aspects of God’s purposes and directions in our lives. He even navigates the tricky waters of human responsibility.
I found lots of reassurance and many reminders in this book. I feel the need to pull another Plumer volume from the shelves soon and read some more of this man.
The next two books are both “new” old books; meaning, that they are books that have only recently been reprinted or translated into English. One takes a foundational, bedrock doctrine, and historical teaching of the Christian faith and explains and defends it. The other delves with a field of thought that was still relatively new at the time (circa 1920), psychology, and examines it from a Biblical perspective.
At some point many years ago, I prided myself on knowing the names of authors and the books they wrote in the field of Reformed theology. I knew of the Hodges, Edwards, Warfield, Machen, and many others. Now I realize that I had passed kindergarten. Until last spring, I had not heard of Francis Cheynell (1608-1665).
Cheynell was a member of the august group who met and compiled the Westminster Standards. He was at one time the president of Oxford College and had served as a chaplain in Cromwell’s New Model Army. His main ‘military service” was in combatting the heresy of the Socinians and any other teachings that slighted the doctrine of the Trinity.
This book is a thorough and exacting description of the Trinity and a refutation of deviations from it. A couple of years ago, I read Vern Poythress’s The Mystery of the Trinity, published by P&R Publishing.
Poythress, as a current day Trinitarian defender, and Cheynell, as a defender from the past, both recognize the complexity of the persons of the Trinity. When the reader starts getting a headache, he is advised to 1. Refill his coffee, and 2. Sing the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
There are a number of attack quips regarding this doctrine (1 +1+1= 3, not 1) and a number of misleading illustrations defending the doctrine (“The Trinity is like this: I am a father, a son, and a husband” which teaches Modalism, not Trinitarian Christianity).
Cheynell cites theologians from the Reformation back to the Early Church with astounding zeal. As the back of the dust jacket affirms, “Cheynell draws from across church history, citing Augustine, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and others, as well as more recent Reformation-era authors such as John Calvin, Theodore Beza, John Jewel, and James Usher.”
But it is not just that he had a good command of the theologians of his past and present time. Cheynell continually grounds his message in Scripture. Certainly, there are a few key passages that are our best go-to verses dealing with the fact that the One God is in Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But there are countless passages that ascribe attributes of One Person to another. The Trinity is sighted here and there across the landscape, like a rare bird. Rather, the Trinity is the landscape.
Don’t approach this book without being geared up for some serious heavy reading. I would need to read this one twice before even beginning to study it with a group (where I would read it again and again).
One further note: I was initially drawn to this book, not because of the author or the subject, but because the preface is written by a friend, Stephen Carr. I am in the southern part of Arkansas, while he is in the northwest corner, and together, we are trying to hold the whole state together.
A further note about Berith Press: This is a relatively new publishing company that seeks to “republish some of the finest works of the First and Second Reformations.” As a result, some of the books, like The Divine Triunity, are heavy weighted with Latin citations, but for such modern-day lightweights as me, the Latin is mainly relegated to the footnotes, while the text is translated into English.
For a number of years now, Herman Bavinck has been emerging to rock star status in Reformed and evangelical circles. He lived from 1854-1921. Much of the delay in his works being written in Dutch. Within Reformed circles, a number of budding theologians hastened to Amsterdam in times past and struggled to learn the language, but their goal was to gain the content. This would have been the times when G. C. Berkouwer was the Reformed theological counterpart to Karl Barth.
G. C. Berkouwer
(1903-1996)
Perhaps another reason for Bavinck’s lack of attention is that he was overshadowed by his contemporary fellow theologian, Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper has been a big name and key player in Reformed theology and in issues related to Christian Worldview, but Kuyper was not alone in his time.
Over the past decade, Herman Bavinck’s magnum opus, Reformed Dogmatics, has been translated and published in a four volume set. (The most recent printing has featured a beautiful leatherbound edition.) And these four volumes have been condensed into a one volume summary edition, but even that has a rival, which is a work titled The Wonderful Works of God.
These are just a few of the many works of and about Bavinck that are now available. I reckon that if Bavinck’s grocery list is somewhere in his archives, someone is hoping to find it and translate it into English.
Bavinck, as is characteristic of other Dutch theologians, was a broad-thinking man. He was grounded in the Bible and theology, hence his works on dogmatics. But he was also familiar with the philosophical, political, and social currents of his time.
This work, Biblical and Religious Psychology, shows that he was on the cutting edge of this field. Quite a few secularists and non-Christians have dominated the field of psychology throughout the centuries. And, sometimes Christians who have waded in have simply bought the bill of goods from the unbelievers and tried to change the flavor with a few Scripture verses added on. (I know I am oversimplifying a serious topic.)
But Bavinck, recognizing that all truth is God’s truth, studied and wrote on the topic.
I am still too early in this book to give it a more thorough review, so I will close out with a couple of lengthy selections:
“This principle of the incarnation governs the whole of special revelation. This incarnation is always from above and yet is organically united with the world and humanity and makes itself an ineradicable part of cosmic life.
It is from this standpoint that judgment can be made concerning with a Scripture say of heaven and earth, the kingdom of plants and animals, and the world of people, of parents and children, men and women, masters and servants, magistrates and subjects. It always brings a word of God to us, but always through the words of man, and therefore it always has a human, historical, local, temporal character.
This holds true, even for the highest truths in the religious and moral sphere, which we therefore do not learn to repeat word for word or literally in confession and doctrine; but after having received them in our consciousness, and having thoughtfully appropriated them, we reproduce them freely and independently in the language of our time.”
And
Herman Bavinck gives three reasons or rather a three-fold benefit from the Bible for psychology:
“In the first place, it teaches us to know man as he is, and as he will always remain in his origin, essence, and destiny.
“It follows in the second place, that the study of the holy Scripture introduces us to man’s soul-life in a way that no other book does or can do.
“And finally, it never does all this in abstract conceptions, but it makes us see everything in the full reality of life. It brings before us, persons, each of whom is worthy of studying in his own right and who together form a gallery that cannot be seen anywhere else. And among them, or rather, high above them, Christ stands, the only one among men, full of grace and truth.”
The Heavy Laden Bookshelf 
