Vol 20 Issue 07

(Continued from page 150, earlier in this same issue) Let us examine the other excerpts from the works of the authorities quoted by my opponent. Hodge is quoted to the effect that “there are certain things prescribed, to which every church ought to conform, and many things as to which she is at liberty to act as she deems best to God’s glory.” So far Hodge. This sentence, certainly, contains not a shred of evidence in proof of the affirmative proposition. The “certain things prescribed to which every church ought to conform, are of course, the articles of the Church...

The subject assigned to the undersigned is far more interesting than the title might suggest. As a rule an article which contains comparisons of two or more things does not make pleasant reading. Yet a comparison of the two versions of our English Bible is both interesting and profitable. It is interesting because of the history back of these two versions but also and above all because it deals with different versions of the Word of God. As Reformed people we are interested in pure doctrine and are zealous to know the real meaning of Scripture. Therefore we are also...

That is: why is it necessary that a minister of the Gospel acquire an education and be a graduate from a seminary? Perhaps if we put it in conversational form, letting the first speaker each time present the objections to an educated clergy, and the second speaker represent the view of the undersigned in answer thereto, we could make the matter clear. First Speaker: I believe that if God singles out someone to preach the Gospel, He puts the message into their hearts. For we read in Mark 13:11, “Take no thought what ye shall speak, neither do ye pre-meditate,...

The Bible has been received by the church of Christ from the first ages as the Word of God, the great fountain of truth. As such it has been the object of wider, deeper, more earnest, and more assiduous meditation and study than any other book whatever; yea, even more than all other books combined. Thousands upon thousands of works have been written, to unfold its truths and apply them to the hearts of men. The amount of Biblical literature during the four centuries since the Reformation is prodigious. The labor of a lifetime would not suffice for a bare...

I shall now argue on the negative side of the positive proposition: Resolved that a local consistory has the right to act contrary to the Church Order in submission to Classis and Synod. I want to prove also this proposition false. According to Joh. Jansen, though fundamentally and in the final analysis, a local consistory does not have the right to act contrary to the Church Order, it does have this right tentatively, for the time being, until classis meets, better said, until the synod meets, (which is every one or two years), for it can be expected that a...

The final paragraph of my introduction reads: “Now I believe that I have discovered all the issues in this disputation. If my opponent knows of others, let him advance them and I will be only too glad to consider them. If he knows of no others, he and I must keep ourselves strictly to these issues. Not doing so, we sidestep the main issue which is whether or not a local consistory has the right to act contrary to the Church Order, i.e., the private right to revise its articles.” The argumentation of my opponent does present issues which do...

(Resolved that a Local Consistory has the Right to Act Contrary to the Church Order) In answering my opponent I first of all wish to state very emphatically that the statement made by him, that the origin and immediate cause of this debate was an action taken by the Consistory of Hudsonville. And the fact that he brings up this action in this debate is very unethical. In this debate I am not, and neither do I have the right to speak for my consistory. The truth is that the sole origin and the immediate cause of this debate is...

This, then, that God, the Creator of the universe, is omnipresent, not only in His power, but also in His essence; that as the transcendent One He is immanent in all things, and that, too, as the living and. ever active God, Who continues to speak the Word that once creatively proceeds out of His mouth, and Who thus upholds all things by the Word of His power, is the basic idea of the providence of God. From moment to moment, therefore, God is the Lord, and remains strictly and absolutely sovereign with relation to the world He created, not...

Recently The Banner editorially put up a defense of the Reformed truth that salvation is by grace only, over against what the editor evidently considers manifestations of Arminian tendencies in the Christian Reformed Churches. The first editorial on this question was written in connection with and as a criticism of the hymn: “Let Jesus come into your heart.” The editor finds that this hymn expresses a “thoroughly Arminian sentiment.” For “where does the Bible teach that we can let Jesus into our hearts? The phrase implies that Jesus wants to come in but is unable to do so as long...