Dr. Lloyd-Jones on Secondary Truths.

In Dr. Lloyd-Jones' lectures to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students he outlined several general characteristics of the definition of an evangelical. The following is the last of excerpts regarding foundational and secondary truths necessary in an Evangelical.

SECONDARY TRUTHS NOT ESSENTIAL TO UNITY

That brings me to my next heading. I have been dealing so far with the essentials. I am still left with what I have called the non-essentials.

What do we mean by non-essentials? We are clear about these matters with which we have been dealing. We have been defining our evangelical position. But I have left unmentioned many other things outside our basis. What about them? I put them in the category of non-essentials. When I say that they are not essential, I do not say that they are not important. They are very important, and they must be discussed by evangelical people, but we must discuss them as brethren. As Calvin said, on such matters we ought not to divide but to try to help one another. We recognize our limits, our defects, our ignorance. We believe that promise of Paul's in Philippians 3 that even in these other matters, light will be given to us if we are patient and if we seek it together.

But we call them non-essential because they are not essential to salvation. This seems to be the test. Another reason I give for calling them non-essential is that they cannot be proved one way or the other. I do not say the Scriptures are equivocal, but there are matters upon which the Scriptures are not so clear that you can say this must be believed.

Then there is another reason for calling some of these things non-essential. Sometimes it is a question of understanding or lack of understanding, and we must always remember that we are not saved by our understanding. This is a most important point. Our danger as evangelicals is to fall into the trap of thinking that we are saved by our understanding; but we are not. Thank God, we are saved in spite of ourselves, in spite of our ignorance and everything else that is true of us. And sometimes the difference between evangelical people is entirely due to a difference of understanding. I will give you an illustration of it in a moment.

There is also a difference between a defective understanding and a positive denial of truth by able people. What I mean is this. You may have certain simple Christian people, not over-gifted with intelligence, who find it very difficult to understand some matters, but there are other men, able men, gifted men, highly intelligent men, who deliberately reject the same truths which the first group finds difficult to accept and understand. Those two positions are very different. While we are patient, sympathetic, and lenient with the first, we must condemn and separate ourselves from the second.

Our object in all this, as I say, is to safeguard the gospel, to keep the evangel clear, to be concerned about the salvation of men and women and the spread of the Christian church. Let that be our only motive. Let us have a single eye to the glory of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us realize always that we are all of us saved in spite of ourselves, that none of us is perfect in understanding or in any other respect, that not to be in fellowship with those who are born again is to be guilty of schism, which is sinful, that we are therefore called upon, as the apostle exhorted the Philippians, to stand in rank together, whatever the cost, whatever suffering may be involved, but always with this one idea that God may be over all, that God may be glorified, and that the name of Jesus Christ our Lord may be magnified among the peoples of the earth.

From the book, "What Is An Evangelical" by D.M. Lloyd-Jones, publ by Banner of Truth Trust, 1971.

posted by john d.

Interrupting With An Important Message

I'm interupting my Lloyd-Jones articles to bring you an important and timely message from Dan Phillips who posts regularly at TeamPyro. I have followed his postings for a couple of years and aside from some secondary issues I may have with him biblically he is usually on target and especially so with this post.

The post is titled, "Porn and Paper Pastors"....now that ought to get your interest. (It's not what you think.)

Click here to view.


Please take the time to view it.....and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

john d.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones on Foundational Truths - Part 3

In Dr. Lloyd-Jones' lectures to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students he outlined several general characteristics of the definition of an evangelical. The following are excerpts regarding foundational and secondary truths necessary in an Evangelical.

Then we must go on to assert that man is spiritually dead, and that he is totally incapable of any spiritual good, `dead in trespasses and sins' not merely slightly defective and that it is not true to say that he has it in him, if he only applies himself, to believe in God and to arrive at God. We must assert, as the Scriptures do, that man is totally dead, that the advances of science make no difference whatsoever to the fact that all men are `by nature the children of wrath, even as others' (Eph. 2:3 ),that `all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God' (Rom. 3:23).

ONE WAY OF SALVATION

When we come to the doctrine of the atonement, we must underline in a very special way the substitutionary aspect and element of the atonement, the penal, piacular aspect. These are things that I find are most indicative of a man's position. An evangelical may say, Well, of course, I'm not a great theologian; I simply accept, I simply repeat the Scriptures' statements. And he does not want to tie himself down to the fact that there is this penal element in the atonement. He may say, All I know is that Christ's work, his sacrifice, puts me right with God. I suggest this is not enough. He is really excluding the whole of the Old Testament teaching with regard to sacrifice if he speaks in that way, let alone the particular and explicit statements made in the teaching of the apostle Paul. So we have to underline and emphasize this substitutionary element.

We must also assert in a very special way justification by faith alone, faith only. We have got to assert that justification is not the result of regeneration, nor does it depend upon our regeneration. That is the Roman Catholic teaching, that we are justified because we have been regenerated as a result of our baptism. This error can come in, and is coning in today in very subtle forms, but we must assert that God `justifieth the ungodly' (Rom. 4:5), that it is entirely a forensic action, a legal pronouncement by God, and that we play no part whatsoever in it. This is the traditional evangelical teaching which we must assert.

THE CHURCH: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES

When we come to the church we must again make certain specific statements. I personally would assert that no evangelical can possibly believe in a state or territorial church. We know that these institutions came into being solely as the result of certain events in history. There is no suspicion of a suggestion of it in the New Testament, and how could there be? What is there about being born in a certain country which makes anybody a Christian? Why should the church be merely the spiritual aspect of the life of the state? It is remote from the teaching of Scripture and we know that of all elements in the history of the church, perhaps nothing has been productive of greater confusion than this whole notion of the state or territorial church. We believe in the communion of saints, and a church consists of saints; it is a communion of saints.

.... we must believe in discipline. There is no purpose in having a basis or a confession of faith unless it is applied. So we must assert the element of discipline as being essential to the true life of the church. And what calls itself a church which does not believe in discipline, and does not use it and apply it, is therefore not a true church.

There, as I see things, are the additions and the elaborations which we must make today in view of the situation in which we find ourselves. This present basis of faith, as it is, is not enough; neither is any other. We have got to ask these specific questions. We have got to make sure that we are clear about these particular matters.

From the book, "What Is An Evangelical" by D.M. Lloyd-Jones, publ by Banner of Truth Trust, 1971.

posted by john d.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones on Foundational Truths - Part 2

In Dr. Lloyd-Jones' lectures to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students he outlined several general characteristics of the definition of an evangelical. The following are excerpts regarding foundational and secondary truths necessary in an Evangelical.

SCRIPTURE: THE ONLY AND FULL AUTHORITY

The first is the doctrine of Scripture. The basis of faith says: `We believe in the divine inspiration and entire trustworthiness of holy Scripture as originally given, and its supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.' I contend that it is not enough just to say that; we have got to go further.

....we have to say some specific things such as that the Scripture is our sole authority, not only the `supreme' authority, but our sole authority, our only authority. I say this to emphasize that we do not accept tradition as an authority in any sense of that term. We reject the Roman Catholic teaching with regard to tradition which is, as you know, that tradition is equal in authority with the Scriptures. Roman Catholics do not deny the authority of the Scriptures, but they give to tradition, the tradition elaborated in and by the church, an equal authority with the Scriptures. And in that tradition they would claim to have received revelation subsequent to the end of the New Testament canon.

Furthermore it seems to me that we have got to spell out much more clearly the whole notion of revelation. The basis speaks of `the divine inspiration and entire trustworthiness', but we must go beyond that. We have got to assert today this category of revelation. We have got to exclude the notion that men have arrived at the truth as a result of searching and thinking, or by means of philosophy. We must affirm that it is entirely given, that `holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost' (2 Pet. 1:2 I), or, as Paul is constantly reminding his readers, that his gospel is not his own, `For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ' (Gal. 1:12).

In the same way we have got to assert today that we believe that Scripture contains propositional truth. This has often been the dividing line between evangelicals and pseudo-evangelicals.

Likewise we have to assert particularly the supernatural element in the Scripture. What do I mean? Well, we have got to emphasize that we believe in prophecy in the sense of foretelling. The emphasis today is on `forthtelling'. We admit that we agree that prophecy is forthtelling but, over and above that, it is foretelling. To me one of the profoundest arguments for the unique inspiration of the Scriptures is the truth of prophecy, the fulfilment of prophecy. We have got to emphasize this extraordinary manifestation of the supernatural.

We have also to insist upon a belief in the literal truth and historicity of the miracles of the Old and the New Testament, because there are people who say that they can still subscribe to our general statement about the inspiration and the authority of the Scriptures, who increasingly are denying the historicity of many of the Old Testament miracles, and indeed are trying to explain away some of the New Testament miracles in terms of science or psychology. We must assert the historicity of these manifestations of the supernatural.

Then the next thing to be said under this heading of Scripture is that we must believe the whole Bible. We must believe the history of the Bible as well as its didactic teaching. Failure here is always an indication of a departure from the true evangelical position. Today there are men who say, Oh yes, we believe in the Bible and its supreme authority in matters of religion, but, of course, we don't go to the Bible for science; we go to it for help for our souls, for salvation and help and instruction in the way to live the Christian life. They are saying that there are, as it were, two great authorities and two means of revelation: one of them is Scripture and the other is nature. These, they say, are complementary, they are collateral, and so you go to the Scriptures for matters concerning your soul, but you do not go to them to seek God's other revelation of Himself in nature. For that, you go to science.

We accept the biblical teaching with regard to creation and do not base our position upon theories of evolution, whichever particular theory people may choose to advocate. We must assert that we believe in the being of one first man called Adam, and in one first woman called Eve. We reject any notion of a preAdamic man because it is contrary to the teaching of the Scripture.

We must therefore hold to the vital principle, to which I have referred earlier, of the wholeness and the close interrelationship of every part of the biblical message. The Bible does not merely make statements about salvation. It is a complete whole: it tells you about the origin of the world and of man; it tells you what has happened to him, how he fell and the need of salvation arose, and then it tells you how God provided this salvation and how He began to reveal it in parts and portions. Nothing is so amazing about the Bible as its wholeness, the perfect interrelationship of all the parts.

We go on to assert that we must underline the fact of the historical fall of the first man, and that it happened in the way described in the third chapter of Genesis. Whether we can understand it or not is not the question. That is what we are told, and the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians i I :3 reminds the Corinthians that `the serpent beguiled Eve'. You cannot play fast and loose with these facts without involving the inspiration of the apostles, and, ultimately, the person of our Lord. You will soon be saying that He was a child of His own age, that He was ignorant in certain respects, and that He had simply the scientific knowledge of His own times, and so on. You begin to query and to question His statements, and ultimately you will have no authority at all.

Not only must we accept the historicity of Genesis 3 and its account of the fall. If you do not accept that as history, you are going to exclude from your belief one of the most amazing and comforting facts in connection with our faith, the proto-evangel of Genesis 3:15, the glorious promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, the first prophecy concerning the virgin birth of Christ and how He was going to bring us this great deliverance. There is the first glimpse of the work, of the blessed work of the cross, all concretely stated in the historical account.

General statements are no longer enough. We must insist upon knowing what people believe in detail. We must test their statement that they accept the supreme authority of the Scriptures, and their trustworthiness in all these matters of faith and conduct.

From the book, "What Is An Evangelical" by D.M. Lloyd-Jones, publ by Banner of Truth Trust, 1971.

posted by john d.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones on Foundational and Secondary Truths

In Dr. Lloyd-Jones' lectures to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students he outlined several general characteristics of the definition of an evangelical. The following are excerpts regarding foundational and secondary truths necessary in an Evangelical.

We clearly regard certain truths as being essential; there are others which, while we would say that they are important, and very important, we would not lay down as being essential. What we have to do, therefore, is to draw a basic distinction between truths and doctrines which we insist are essential or foundational, and others concerning which there can be a legitimate difference of opinion.

I am going to start with those truths which we regard as being essential; but my whole emphasis, and the case I am trying to present to you, is that it is not sufficient any longer merely to take these statements as they are. We have to elaborate them, we have to define them in greater detail, and we have to do this because of recent changes, and because we are confronted by the phenomenon of people subscribing to a basis of faith with what they call mental reservations.

Take any confession of faith that has ever been drawn up in the past. You will always find that in addition to making statements of the truth as believed by truly Christian people, they have in addition gone beyond that, and they have defined these truths in the light of certain problems and circumstances that obtained at that time, in their day and generation.

Now I suggest that we have got to do the same thing. That is why I have been asserting that we must not merely slavishly adopt, subscribe to, and continue to defend, the confessions and the creeds that have come down to us. We must go beyond that and show the relevance of these statements to our own day and generation.

The moment you state the basic and essential truths, you divide yourself off from people who are heterodox or who have virtually no belief at all, who merely say, perhaps, that they believe in God, while they do not even define what they mean by that. The moment you do this, you are confronted by a further problem. Having separated yourself from unbelievers, or from false professors of the Christian faith, you are now confronted by the problem of maintaining unity among yourselves. As I have tried to show, when people take doctrine seriously, a tendency develops in them, not perhaps to take it too seriously, but to become so particular and rigid that they demand too much, and put into the category of essential what should be regarded rather as non-essential. We have got to be careful that we do not fall into that error. While we must elaborate the meaning of essential truths even though it may cause division, it is also very right that we should establish this distinction between things which are essential and things which are not essential. If evangelicals do not do this, we shall be atomized and divided up in such a manner that we shall cease to count and cease to bear a corporate witness in this needy modern world.


In the light of the position in which we find ourselves I suggest that it would be a very good thing for us to state plainly and clearly that we are anti-ecumenical. Why do I start with a negative like this? For the reason that today we have to assert and defend the position that doctrine is really vital and essential. The ecumenical movement, while paying lip-service to a very minimum amount of credal statement, is merely based on doctrinal indifferentism.

You cannot have an ecumenical movement of the contemporary kind without such indifferentism. Even if ecumenists try to claim that they have a general subscription to a belief in Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, according to the witness of the Scriptures, we cannot regard this as sufficient, because they refuse to test subscription among themselves. In other words, they refuse any element of discipline, and this, it seems to me, is immediately something which proclaims indifferentism. There is no purpose in having a credal test unless you insist upon it, and unless you test people's subscription to it. We cannot admit this category of `mental reservation'. Indeed, we are driven to say this by the notorious fact that there are men in the ecumenical movement who, in their own books and articles and statements, clearly show that they deny what we would regard as many of the essentials of the Christian faith.

From the book, "What Is An Evangelical" by D.M. Lloyd-Jones, publ by Banner of Truth Trust, 1971.

posted by john d.

In Response......

The following is my shorthand version of answering those who rail against the truth of the Scriptures and play on a one-stringed instrument disallowing God's Sovereignty in salvation. They often use the argument that God says in His Word that Christ came to save the "world" therefore everyone will be saved, and then they pull out the "John 3:16" clause, often out of context and unaware of it's real meaning. This ignorance from those professing to follow a Jesus of their own imagination has reaped the ineffective evangelism and ignorant "almost Christian" that populate America and should be repented of.

Another interesting tidbit to me is that people who deny the doctrines of grace and God's Sovereignty often try to own the writings or quotations of men who believed and taught the opposite of what our present day religious friends espouse. They quote from Spurgeon to Pink and many in between without realizing these men held to the view of the Biblical doctrines of grace often referred to as "calvinism". If they were honestly trying to understand God's Word they would abandon their personal agenda and seek diligently to find the Truth instead they sing the tune of 2 Timothy 2:15 without understanding the words....much as a child recites a poem without understanding it's meaning.

In response I offer the article below which was written as a short pamphlet by A.W. Pink and titled, "The Meaning of "KOSMOS" in John 3:16" and can be viewed on-line at www.pbministries.org.

THE MEANING OF "KOSMOS" IN JOHN 3:16

by A. W. Pink

It may appear to some of our readers that the exposition we have given of John 3:16 in the chapter on "Difficulties and Objections" is a forced and unnatural one, inasmuch as our definition of the term "world" seems to be out of harmony with the meaning and scope of this word in other passages, where, to supply the world of believers (God’s elect) as a definition of "world" would make no sense. Many have said to us, "Surely, ‘world’ means world, that is, you, me, and everybody." In reply we would say: We know from experience how difficult it is to set aside the "traditions of men" and come to a passage which we have heard explained in a certain way scores of times, and study it carefully for ourselves without bias Nevertheless, this is essential if we would learn the mind of God.

Many people suppose they already know the simple meaning of John 3:16, and therefore they conclude that no diligent study is required of them to discover the precise teaching of this verse. Needless to say, such an attitude shuts out any further light which they otherwise might obtain on the passage. Yet, if anyone will take a Concordance and read carefully the various passages in which the term "world" (as a translation of "kosmos") occurs, he will quickly perceive that to ascertain the precise meaning of, the word "world" in any given passage is not nearly so easy as is popularly supposed. The word "kosmos," and its English equivalent "world," is not used with a uniform significance in the New Testament. Very far from it. It is used in quite a number of different ways. Below we will refer to a few passages where this term occurs, suggesting a tentative definition in each case:

"Kosmos" is used of the Universe as a whole: Acts 17: 24 - "God that made the world and all things therein seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth." is used of the Universe as a whole: Acts 17: 24 - "God that made the world and all things therein seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth."

"Kosmos" is used of the earth: John 13:1; Eph. 1:4, etc., etc.- "When Jesus knew that his hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world He loved them unto the end." "Depart out of this world" signifies, leave this earth. "According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world." This expression signifies, before the earth was founded—compare Job 38:4 etc.

"Kosmos" is used of the world-system: John 12:31 etc. "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the Prince of this world be cast out"— compare Matt. 4:8 and I John 5:19, R. V.

"Kosmos" is used of the whole human race: Rom. 3: 19, etc.—"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

"Kosmos" is used of humanity minus believers: John 15:18; Rom. 3:6 "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you." Believers do not "hate" Christ, so that "the world" here must signify the world of unbelievers in contrast from believers who love Christ. "God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world." Here is another passage where "the world" cannot mean "you, me, and everybody," for believers will not be "judged" by God, see John 5:24. So that here, too, it must be the world of unbelievers which is in view.

"Kosmos" is used of Gentiles in contrast from Jews: Rom. 11:12 etc. "Now if the fall of them (Israel) be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them (Israel) the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their (Israel’s) fulness." Note how the first clause in italics is defined by the latter clause placed in italics. Here, again, "the world" cannot signify all humanity for it excludes Israel!

"Kosmos" is used of believers only: John 1:29; 3:16, 17; 6:33; 12;47; I Cor. 4:9; 2 Cor. 5:19. We leave our readers to turn to these passages, asking them to note, carefully, exactly what is said and predicated of "the world" in each place. is used of believers only: John 1:29; 3:16, 17; 6:33; 12;47; I Cor. 4:9; 2 Cor. 5:19. We leave our readers to turn to these passages, asking them to note, carefully, exactly what is said and predicated of "the world" in each place.

Thus it will be seen that "kosmos" has at least seven clearly defined different meanings in the New Testament. It may be asked, Has then God used a word thus to confuse and confound those who read the Scriptures? We answer, No! nor has He written His Word for lazy people who are too dilatory, or too busy with the things of this world, or, like Martha, so much occupied with "serving," they have no time and no heart to "search" and "study" Holy Writ! Should it be asked further, But how is a searcher of the Scriptures to know which of the above meanings the term "world" has in any given passage? The answer is: This may be ascertained by a careful study of the context, by diligently noting what is predicated of "the world" in each passage, and by prayer fully consulting other parallel passages to the one being studied. The principal subject of John 3:16 is Christ as the Gift of God. The first clause tells us what moved God to "give" His only begotten Son, and that was His great "love;" the second clause informs us for whom God "gave" His Son, and that is for, "whosoever (or, better, ‘every one’) believeth;" while the last clause makes known why God "gave" His Son (His purpose), and that is, that everyone that believeth "should not perish but have everlasting life." That "the world" in John 3:16 refers to the world of believers (God’s elect), in contradistinction from "the world of the ungodly" (2 Pet. 2:5), is established, unequivocally established, by a comparison of the other passages which speak of God’s "love." "God commendeth His love toward US"—the saints, Rom. 5:8. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth"—every son, Heb. 12:6. "We love Him, because He first loved US"—believers, I John 4:19. The wicked God "pities" (see Matt. 18:33). Unto the unthankful and evil God is "kind" (see Luke 6:35). The vessels of wrath He endures "with much long-suffering" (see Rom. 9:22). But "His own" God "loves"!!

posted by john d.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones on Evangelism and Philosophy

In Dr. Lloyd-Jones' lectures to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students he outlined several general characteristics of the definition of an evangelical. The following are excerpts from that lecture regarding especially human reason and philosophy:

"I am coming increasingly to the opinion that the way in which a man thinks tells you as much about him as what he actually says. His whole method of thinking is one which is of supreme importance. So I would call attention here to certain general characteristics of the evangelical person. First of all, the evangelical is one who is entirely subservient to the Bible.....He is a man of one book; he starts with it; he submits himself to it; this is his authority. He does not start from any extra-biblical authority.

The next thing about the evangelical is that he uses this term as a prefix and not as a suffix. What I mean by that is that the first thing about the man is that he is evangelical. The particular denomination to which he belongs is secondary; it is not primary. In other words, there is all the difference in the world between talking about an evangelical Baptist and a Baptist evangelical.

Another characteristic of this evangelical is that he is a man who is always watching. Now all these things have to be said very carefully because there is a right and a wrong way to watch, but the evangelical is a man who is always watchful, and he is always watchful, of course, because the Scripture teaches him to be so. John comforts the Christians, confronted as they were, even then, by antichrists and false teachers, that they 'have an unction from the Holy One' (1 John 2:20) and that they are to exercise this. They are to be discriminating; they are always to be examining; they are always to be watchful. And so when a man ceases to be watchful, he, to that extent, ceases to be an evangelical. The person who says, 'It is all right; you need not bother; we are all Christians and having a marvellous time together' - and is not watchful, is already departing from the biblical position.

Then I come to another characteristic. This may very well be a highly controversial one, but in my estimate it is extremely important. Is is, and I put is dogmatically and bluntly, that the evangelical distrusts reason and particularly reason in the form of philosophy.....I suggest to you that nothing is more important, in our present situation than just this one particular point. Philosophy has always been the cause of the church going astray, for philosophy means, ultimately, a trusting to human reason and human understanding.

The sum of all I am saying is that the evangelical distrusts scholarship and is watchful of it. That does not mean that he is anti-intellectual; it does not mean that he becomes obscurantist [opposition to the advancement of knowledge - ed.]; but it does mean that he keeps reason and scholarship in their place. They are servants and not masters. Reason must never determine what we believe. The business of reason is to teach us how to believe. it is an instrument....in other words, instead of submitting themselves to the Scripture, they turn to science, to philosophy, or to one of a number of other disciplines, and their position is determined by these things. They allow reason to determine what they believe instead of how they believe and how they think. Not what you think, but how you think.... My contention is that the evangelical, while he realizes the danger of reason and scholarship, is not afraid of them. He does not run and hide, and just turn in on himself and the enjoyment of his own feelings. It is not surprising that the so-called great philosophers are sceptics and infidels. We should expect them to be.....

...when the church has gone down into the trough, in her deadest periods, it has invariably been when she has become subservient to philosophy....the real damage to the life of the church in the last two centuries has been done mainly by theological seminaries....It has not arisen in the churches....Men who have felt called to the ministry and been recommended by churches for ministerial training have gone into the seminaries as evangelicals and true evangelists, and they have come out denying everything, sometimes even departing from the faith altogether. Therefore, if an evangelical is not distrustful of reason and of scholarship, he is not only failing to understand the teaching of Scripture; he is blind to this clear testimony of the history of the Christian church through the centuries. "

Taken from the book, "What Is An Evangelical" by D.M. Lloyd-Jones, publ by Banner of Truth Trust, 1971.

posted by john d.

Benjamin Franklin and His Religion

In a letter to Reverend Ezra Stiles, dated March 9, 1790, Benjamin Franklin dismissed any doubt as to his firm adherence to Deism as he gives what he calls "my Creed". Franklin lived less than a month after writing the letter having died on April 17, 1790, at the age of eighty-four.

Franklin writes, "I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him is doing so to his other Children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever Sect I meet with them.

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth and with less Trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that Belief has the good Consequence, as probably it has, of making his Doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive, that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the Unbelievers in his Government of the World with any peculiar Marks of his Displeasure."

This extract was from "Benjamin Franklin: the autobiography and other writings" by L. Jesse Lemisch, publ. in 1961 by Signet Classics. This particular letter to Reverend Stiles is from "The Writings of Benjamin Franklin: Collected and Edited with a Life and Introduction", 10 vols. by Albert Henry Smyth, publ. in New York: 1905-1907. (Reverend Stiles was a Congregationalist and president of Yale College.)


posted by john d.

Dr Lloyd-Jones on 'What Is An Evangelical?'

I recently listened to a podcast of a Phil Johnson lecture at the Shepherd's Conference titled "What Is An Evangelical?". You can read part 1 of the transcript here: Shepherd's Conference. (It's in two 2 part postings.)

Reading through Phil's lecture stimulated me to re-read Dr. Lloyd-Jones' lectures at the 1971 Conference of the Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Those lectures were published in a small book titled "What Is An Evangelical", published by Banner of Truth Trust.

In the first chapter of the book Dr. Lloyd-Jones recognized that there has been a change in the term "evangelical". What the term used to mean is no longer true. We must be sure of what the term means before we can apply it to ourselves and others and then respond to how this change occurred.

Another observation he makes is that the life of the church is not static. There is always a process of change and development and it is generally one of degeneration because of sin. This process of change is usually subtle and begins on the periphery not at the center of church doctrine. He cites examples such as the change that ocurred at the beginning of the 19th century as a result of the "higher criticism" movement that led to the Downgrade controversy in Great Britain.

The change brought about in America is popularly called the "new" evangelicalism. A change of emphasis and belief in regard to certain fundamental truths. The term "evangelical" has become to mean everything and therefore nothing. It has to have some meaning. It has to be defined and to define the term is to limit it's meaning.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones suggests there are two main dangers in defining the term. One is a too narrow definition which leads to schism in the body. In other words, dividing and separating over matters which are not essential to salvation. The other danger is that of being so broad and inclusive that in the end we have no definition.

He closes his first chapter with the following: "What has been said of the church in the past is true today. The church, though she has been reformed, must be constantly re-formed. The church is always to be under the Word. You must not assume that because the church started correctly, she will continue so. Every generation has got to examine this for itself. You cannot receive these things by tradition alone. So it behoves us in our day and generation to examine this term evangelical anew and afresh in the light of the Scripture and of history, and especially in the light of the dangerous tendencies that surround us at this present time."

posted by john d