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The Staunch Calvinist

"Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God." - Jonathan Edwards

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1689 Baptist Confession Chapter 2: Of God and of the Holy Trinity - Commentary

...these things as merely baby-talk—God communicating to us in ways which we could understand, and not describing the reality of what He truly is. In the last verse, Paul says that God is immortal. In 1 Timothy 6:16, Paul says that God “alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.” Immortality is the quality of being unable to die. God has this by virtue of His nature, on the other hand, humans have immortality by virtue of God granting them that. See Chapter 31 for a little bit more on this. God alone, by virtue of being God, has no possibility of either not existing or ceasing to exist. God, by virtue of His being and nature, must exist and He cannot not exist.

Divine Impassibility is defined by Samuel Renihan as “God does not experience emotional changes either from within or affected by His creation.” Webster defines it as “Incapable of pain, passion or suffering; that cannot be affected with pain or uneasiness. Whatever is destitute of sensation is impassible.”[22] This is a subject which I still have to read on, but the idea is basically that just like God uses physical and human things to describe Himself, so likewise He uses human emotions and feelings to describe Himself to us. In many ways, we humans, are controlled by our passions and feelings, but God is not like us. His “emotions” or “feelings” are nothing like ours, but since God wants to communicate with us, He uses the vocabulary of feelings and emotions which we are familiar with, just like He does that when speaking of His hand, eyes, mouth, feet, wings, Him being a husband, a father, etc. God is incapable of suffering since He is all-sufficient and all-glorious. This should not be confused, as it is often done, with the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is God and man. Since the Son became man in Jesus Christ, He also shared in “flesh and blood” (Heb. 2:14) and partook of our nature, including our feelings, passions, and emotions, not to mention other things which are excluded from God including hunger, tiredness, sleep, physical form, pain, blood, etc. There are some good resources on impassibility that have recently come from Samuel Renihan which I have not studied.

The Infinity of God

The infinity of God is asserted in the words “who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute”. The attributes of God are to their utter perfection with God. Although we are holy, He is most holy; although we are wise, He is most wise; although we are free, he is most free; although we are finite, He is infinite and so on.

To say that God is immense is to declare that He fills heaven and earth as the Scriptures say (Jer. 23:24). There is not an inch in the Universe that the Lord of heaven and earth does not fill. He is immeasurable and unlimited not only in His being but also in His perfections. Solomon, after building the Temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, admits that even “heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built” (2 Chron. 6:18). His greatness is immeasurable and unlimited. To say that God is immense is also to say that He is Omnipresent. Louis Berkhof defines the immensity of God as “that perfection of the Divine Being by which He transcends all spatial limitations, and yet is present in every point of space with His whole Being.”[23] Since He fills heaven and earth, this means that He is everywhere at ...


A Review of O. Palmer Robertson's The Israel of God

The Israel of God:

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

By O. Palmer Robertson

O. Palmer Robertson. The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Pub. 2000)

For those who have come out of Dispensationalism or want to know what covenant theologians believe about Israel, this is the book. This is a book which deals with the place and identity of Israel in the plan of God. In six chapters Dr. Robertson discusses different topics regarding Israel from its identity to its future.

Overall, I found this to be a very helpful and edifying book. The Bible and the truths of the New Covenant were the interpreting lens for everything. We do not look to outside events and force those within the Bible.

The Occasion for the Book

In the Introduction Dr. Robertson begins with a quotation from Bill Clinton when he was the president of the USA, about Israel:

“'If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you' ... it is God's will that Israel, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue for ever and ever.” So spoke the President of the United States in a speech delivered before the Israeli Knesset assembled in Jerusalem. He was recalling with apparent approval the words of his desperately ill pastor. He concluded the speech by saying, “Your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always.” (p. 1)

It seems that this and such mindset was the driving force behind writing this book. The book is not polemic, but rather, it simply presents what the Bible as a whole teaches on some topics related to the Israel of God. It is obviously against Dispensationalism by its adherence to Covenant Theology, but it does not attack Dispensationalism directly. Its purpose is to set a positive case on what the Bible says without really engaging with the other side.

Its Land

The first chapter is dedicated to the Land of Israel. This is a hot issue nowadays. I will be the first to tell you that I hate politics and I don’t want to do anything with it and there is a lot of politics involved with Israel in the Middle East. I am not interested in political discussions. I am a theology nerd. I am interested in the theological claim of the land and God’s plan with the Jews.

Dr. Robertson argues that the “concept of a land that belongs to God’s people originated in Paradise” (p. 4). Adam was told to work the land and multiply. That was the original ideal plan if the Fall had not taken place. Then the whole earth would have been God’s land and God’s temple. The land being a sanctuary is another aspect. This is why the Lord God tells Israel that “I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. 12 And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Lev 26:11-12). God places His sanctuary among His people like He did with the Tabernacle and Temple. This concept of the sanctuary of God among His people had its fulfillment in Jesus Christ of Whom it is written that He “tabernacled” among us (John 1:14). But it will also have its ultimate fulfillment on the New Heavens and New Earth (Rev 21:1-5).

An important aspect which Dr. Robertson highlights is the fact that the land actually belongs to the Lord. As Leviticus 25:23 puts it, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.” The land is the Lord’s and the people of Israel are merely strangers and sojourners in the land with Yahweh. He gives...


1689 Baptist Confession Chapter 32: Of the Last Judgment - Commentary

...means for a person to suffer unceasingly in Hell, but we simply cannot. The doctrine is very hard and terrifying, but the reason that it has received the prominence it has in all strands of Christianity throughout history is because it was a doctrine often taught by our Lord. It has been commonly observed that the Lord Jesus spoke more about Hell than about Heaven, and therefore, it is important to listen to His words. Indeed, no other person is capable of explaining Hell than the One Who made it, and Who really knows its nature. As we noted in Chapter 31, the wicked at the present time go into Hades, which is Hell without the body, but after the Resurrection and the Judgment, the wicked will be sent to Hell in body and spirit. Therefore, technically speaking, Hell does not yet exist, but it will come after the Resurrection and Judgment (cf. Rev. 20:14). That being noted, we now move to consider what Scripture teaches us about Hell.

The Nature of Hell

Something that is directly connected with Hell is fire. Hell is described as a place in which fire burns the wicked (Matt. 5:22, 29-30; 18:9); a place in which the wicked are present both in body and soul (Matt. 10:28). In Mark 9:43, Hell is identified as “the unquenchable fire” (cf. Luke 3:17; Matt. 3:12). In other places, Hell is described although the name is not mentioned. John the Baptist said that Christ will burn the chaff “with unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:12). It is said to be “the eternal fire” (Matt. 18:8; 25:41). Matthew 13:40 says that the “the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.” The judgment of the wicked in Hell will take place at the end of the age and it will be by fire. Hell is described as “the fiery furnace” (Matt. 13:42, 50). In Revelation 20:15, Hell is called “the lake of fire.” It is described as a place in which the worm does not die (Mark 9:48). It is called “the outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30) and “the gloom of utter darkness” (Jude 1:13). The wicked are said to be “tormented with fire and sulfur” (Rev. 14:10; 19:20); weeping and gnashing their teeth (Matt. 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28); and they “suffer the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9). Basically, it is a place of torment where the wicked will be in (e.g., Rev. 21:8).

Some think that the way in which Scripture speaks of Hell, as fire and outer darkness, is meant to be taken in a metaphorical way. I’m not sure, it may be so, but there are basically two groups who do this. One is the group which believes that saying that fire is metaphorical does not imply that Hell will be better than the traditional picture of Hell, rather, the reality is much stronger than the image. In other words, Hell is more terrible than you can imagine. Even if the worst thing that you can imagine is being tormented in fire forever, well, Hell is worse! The other camp tries to remove the idea of eternal suffering in body and soul. It may well be that the pictures of fire are meant to be taken in a metaphorical way, but this will not make Hell “less” endurable, but it will only make it more terrifying.

Endless Punishment

Now the question before us is simply, “How long will the suffering in Hell go on?” Historic Christianity has answered that question with “forever” until recent times when attempts have been made to teach that the wicked will not suffer eternal torment, but will be annihilated. Forms of Annihilationism have existed from ...