Author: Jason Goroncy

Justice the True and Only Mercy – A Review

Justice the True and Only Mercy: Essays on the Life and Theology of Peter Taylor Forsyth by Trevor Hart.

A review by John J. Friesen.

This volume consists of thirteen articles written for a P. T. Forsyth colloquium in June 1993, convened by the department of theology and church history, University of Aberdeen. A fifty-page bibliography of works by Forsyth and a twenty-five-page bibliography of studies about Forsyth are appended, both compiled by Leslie McCurdy. The purpose of the publication is to draw attention to an important modern British theologian who, the editor maintains, has generally been neglected. To indicate the significance of Forsyth, Hart in the preface quotes Emil Brunner, who referred to Forsyth as “the greatest of modern British theologians” (p. ix) .

Both Trevor Hart in his article on Forsyth’s theology and John Thompson in “Was Forsyth Really a Barthian Before Barth” argue that the significance of Forsyth’s theological contribution lay in his critique of liberalism. Forsyth studied under Ritschl and in his early theology was thoroughly shaped by a Ritschlian liberalism. The influence of Ritschl’s thinking was evident in one of Forsyth’s early speeches which he entitles “Mercy the only and true Justice.” According to Hart, in this phase of his theology Forsyth focused on the human response to God; it was centered on love. Both Hart and Thompson show the change which occurred in Forsyth’s thinking over the years. From an emphasis on love he moved to grace. His focus became “Justice the true and only Mercy.” It was in this change from love to grace the authors argue, that Forsyth not only anticipated but helped to create theological shift in Europe away from liberalism.

Forsyth’s theology of grace, according to another article by Alan P. F. Sell, was founded on his understanding of the cross. The cross became increasingly central for Forsyth. It shaped his understanding of the gospel, his view of ethics, and his view of the relationship of church and state. Sell suggests that it was Forsyth’s grounding of the gospel in the cross that allowed him “to give to his students a gospel to preach” (p. 145). The centrality of the cross in Forsyth’s thinking provides Sell with the key to Forsyth’s significance. Forsyth’s significance, Sell maintains, was not that he provided a well-thought-out systematic theology-because he did not do that. What Forsyth did was to provide theological “footing” (p. 144). In this sense, Sell claims, Forsyth could be called “a systematic theologian par excellence” (p. 145).

Other writers in this volume develop different dimensions of Forsyth’s wide-ranging interests. Keith W. Clements probes Forsyth’s political theology, in particular his critique of the church’s response, or lack of response, to the horrors of World War I. Clyde Binfield pursues Forsyth’s role as Congregational minister. Although Forsyth had a deep love for the sacraments and ceremonies of the church, he was committed to being a Congregationalist and declined an invitation to join the Anglican Church. The eclectic nature of Forsyth’s interests are probed in articles on Forsyth’s view of prayer, his understanding of teleology, and his use of tragedy. The article about his view of the arts probes his interests outside of the area of theology.

The picture that emerges in this volume is that of a person who, although he stood tall in the church of his day, has been largely forgotten. No major monograph has been published about Peter T. Forsyth since 1948. [We have now McCurdy’s excellent work]. This excellent volume of articles is designed to remedy this situation, and bring the profile of Forsyth contribution to the church and to theological discourse into clearer focus.

This review first appeared in Church History, Vol. 66, No. 3. (Sep., 1997), pp. 643–4.

Losing justification

‘The article of justification lost its commanding place in Lutheran theology because it gave way to a preoccupation with the subjective conditions required to motivate God’s decision to justify sinners. When regeneration is placed logically and causally prior to justification, the focus of interest shifts from God’s unmotivated decision to justify the ungodly to the restoration of their human capacity to apply themselves to grace, to repent and believe, and thereupon to be justified. The priority of regeneration over justification removes the article of justification by faith alone from the center to a marginal role in the doctrine of salvation.’ Carl E. Braaten, Justification: The Article by Which the Church Stands or Falls (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 22.

Versus Technology

Sometimes I think that the Moltmann/Polkinhorne/Binfield types reveal a fantastic wisdom in their decision to live email-, and even computer-, free. Of course I only think that because I read it somewhere online. I don't need to use my own brain anymore ... except when my computer crashes. And I'm most happy when my RAM is least clogged.

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Biography in Brief – Augustine

‘Biography … is more than information; it is commentary and key’. So wrote James Orr in reference to Augustine. So what is the premiere commentary we have on Augustine? For many, Peter Brown’s Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1967, revised edition 2000, tops the list. Though I am not qualified to suggest what might be the most helpful biography on Augustine, and I haven’t read O’Donnell’s latest offering, certainly Brown has done us a great service with this revised biography, assisting us (with brief chapters and tonnes of great quotations) to enter into the thought and sitz im leben of Hippo’s most famous citizen.

The book also includes an epilogue dealing with some of Augustine’s unearthed new writings (re)discovered since the first (1967) edition of this work. It is encouraging to see that interest in Augustine continues, perhaps more than ever, not least because the last time Augustine was taken seriously we had a reformation.

Book excerpt:

‘Not every man lives to see the fundamentals of his life’s work challenged in his old age. Yet this is what happened to Augustine during the Pelagian controversy. At the time that the controversy opened, he had reached a plateau. He was already enmeshed in a reputation that he attempted to disown with characteristic charm: “Cicero, the prince of Roman orators,” he wrote to Marcellinus in 412, “says of someone that ‘He never uttered a word which he would wish to recall.’ High praise indeed! – but more applicable to a complete ass than to a genuinely wise man . . . If God permit me, I shall gather and point out, in a work specially devoted to this purpose, all the things which justly displease me in my books: then men will see that I am far from being a biased judge in my own case . . . For I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress – by writing.”‘

Improving preaching

“Given the importance of the Word of God, the quality of homilies needs to be improved … Generic and abstract homilies should be avoided.” — Pope Benedict XVI, in Sacramentum Caritatis, a 130-plus-page apostolic exhortation on liturgy released in March. (Source: Vatican.va)

What is Benedict really calling for here?

U2 and Schleiermacher

Yesterday, I referenced a forum where a discussion on religious experiences at U2 concerts is happening. This morning, I have been reading Schleiermacher’s autobiography (as you do) and came across this related entry to Henriette von Willich to Schleiermacher:

I cannot tell you what a strange state of mind I was in while at church; how vividly you were present to me, although my whole soul was full of devotion; how, in the moments of profoundest worship in the sanctuary, I was so conscious of my love for you, that the feeling of the divine character of this love penetrated me anew, and filled me with rapture. One doubt, however, arose in my mind, and I determined to speak to you at once about it. It is whether I am wrong in calling those feelings religious which are awakened in me by the music in church? For I must confess that I feel quite differently when the service is not accompanied by music. I cannot describe to you how my soul is borne aloft, as it were, by the tones; what a feeling of freedom is developed in me, what a consciousness of the holy and the infinite seems to pervade me.

Now I’m trying to imagine the young Friedrich at a U2 concert.

Breakin’ up

Today, a friend of mine sent me this wee list of break up lines, the content of which is amusing enough to warrant a post here. (Apologies to those who have seen it before.)

Atheist: The burden of proof is on you to establish the existence of this so-called “god” but I believe that if there was any such divine entity “it” would not want us to continue dating.

Intelligent Design Theorist: Our relationship bears the marks of irreducible complexity making it too difficult to explain by way of natural causes. Therefore, there the most reasonable conclusion is that we were designed to break up since things have gotten so complicated.

Calvinist: We were predestined before the creation of the world to break up according to God’s good pleasure. I am, on my own power, unable to break up with you apart from the irresistible draw of God’s sovereign grace which leads me to end this relationship. Those that truly break up will not get back together in the end.

Arminian: While you love me and have a wonderful plan for my life, I have the power to resist your will. If I did not, love would not be possible. For our relationship to be loving it needs to include the possibility of breaking up – something I am doing right now.

New Perspective on Paul Scholar: Rather than earning God’s blessing, it is established on the basis of our covenant courtship (I asked your dad to date you didn’t I?) which requires the proper response of an intentional and deliberate pursuit of marriage. Yet there is no such pursuit, therefore God’s blessing on or relationship is no longer maintained.

Open Theist: I am not really sure if we are supposed to be together, because neither is God.

Theistic Evolutionist: The beauty and rhythm of random variation and natural selection over long periods of time has presented us with a world where God has shown us that our relationship is too biologically expensive to maintain and is destined for extinction.

Young Earth Creationist: No, I do not believe we have been going out for that long. Our relationship is only six days old and the on the seventh God rested. I think we need a rest too.

Emergent: The question if whether we are in relationship or not is mired in Modernity’s obsession with propositional truth. A better a way to look at this is to enter into God’s story about how he led us together and is now leading us apart.

Catholic: Honey, I think the Virgin Mary is leading us in different directions. I think it is her will that we break up.

Lutheran: I want our relationship to continue, but first there are a few things about you that God wants to change. Here is a list of 95 that I made. What? OK, then, I guess we’re done.

Fundamentalist: You have tarnished the pure nature of our love by incorporating such heathen elements as ‘dating’ and ‘fun’. I am afraid I can no longer court you – yea, even speak to you – until you repent of this apostasy.

Mennonite: At that holiest barn raising two weeks prior to this conversational exchange I realised, as I drove you home at sunset in my best carriage, that there are other falsettos in the choir; some that art willing, with all fervent spirit, to trimmest my beard and even my eyebrows on such special occasion, and would, though it hurts me to spake this, make a more holy match.

U2

‘The Holy Spirit is so present’. So said one U2 fan reflecting upon a recent U2 concert. Over at Interference.com, there’s a forum on spiritual experiences at U2 concerts – a nice postmodern mix of experientialism and religiosity. As one fan said, ‘I can’t say for sure whether there such a thing as God, or Holy Spirit, but if there is I swear that it must feel like how I feel at a U2 concert!’ There it is … I knew God liked U2.

Being addressed

In his A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, Helmut Thielicke warns us that the person ‘who studies theology … might watch carefully whether he increasingly does not think in the third rather than in the second person … This transition from one to the other level of thought, from a personal relationship with God to a merely technical reference, usually is exactly synchronized with the moment that I no longer can read the word of Holy Scripture as a word to me, but only as the object of exegetical endeavours’.

Although the Scriptures are addressed to communities, they are also addressed to me, and they come anticipating a response (Heb 3:13-15; 4:13). They do not come permitting me to impose the question, ‘How can I use this in a sermon?’ or ‘How can I find something here for my current projects?’. I recall that the first time someone spoke of God and his word in the third person, that is, about God and not with God, was when the question was posed, ‘Did God say?’ (Gen 3:1).

Vogel warned of coming ‘to the point where we no longer hear what they (the Scriptures) have to say but delude ourselves in the fatal self-deception of listening to the echo of our own way of thinking about God and the world and ourselves’. And I would add, about the nature and forms of ministry.

We would do well to take Forsyth’s advice: ‘Our aim must be an ever fresh immersion in the Bible, an immersion both scholarly and experimental’. And again, ‘Now the ideal ministry must be a Bibliocracy. It must know its Bible better than any other book’. It was said of James Denney that ‘He never reads Scripture as if he had written it: he always reads as if listening for a Voice’. May it be so for us.

One Kneeling, One Looking Down

Part of my meditation on this Good Friday has been focused around a poem by Australian poet Les Murray. The poem, One Kneeling, One Looking Down, was inspired by an aboriginal legend in which a man was killed, and then raised from the dead by his two wives. In order for this ‘resurrection’ to happen, both wives had to agree on it. Murray’s poem depicts a moment of engagement between the two wives: the older wife wanting to have her husband back and the younger one resisting. Apart from the obvious echoes of the Easter narrative (not least the two women, the many impossibilities, freedom through death, etc), Murray’s piece also invites the reader to experience something of the fear and hope, sense of betrayal and renewed possibilities, that the Easter narrative explores. Of course, one does not want to push the echoes too far. Part of my meditation today was on ‘seeing’, even re-writing, the poem’s episodes as a Trinitarian event in the life of God. In this, we not only have one kneeling (in faithful obedience) and one looking down (in pained delight), but also one holding him up in that kneeling posture. But again, one does not want to push the echoes too far …

Anyway, here’s the poem:

ONE KNEELING. ONE LOOKING DOWN

Half-buried timbers chained in corduroy
lead out into the sand
which bare feet wincing Crutch and Crotch
spurn for the summer surf’s embroidery
and insects stay up on the land.

A storm engrossing half the sky
in broccoli and seething drab
and standing on one foot over the country
burrs like a lit torch. Lightning
turns air to elixir at every grab

but the ocean sky is troubled blue
everywhere. Its storm rolls below:
sand clouds raining on sacred country
drowned a hundred lifetimes under sea.
In the ruins of a hill, channels flow,

and people, like a scant palisade
driven in the surf, jump or sway
or drag its white netting to the tide line
where a big man lies with his limbs splayed,
fingers and toes and a forehead-shine

as if he’d fallen off the flag.
Only two women seem aware of him.
One says But this frees us. I’d be a fool –
Say it with me, says the other. For him to revive
we must both say it. Say Be alive. –

But it was our own friends who got
him with a brave shot, a clever shot. –
Those are our equals: we scorn them
for being no more than ourselves.
Say it with me. Say Be alive. –

Elder sister, it is impossible. –
Life was once impossible. And flight. And speech.
It was impossible to visit the moon.
The impossible’s our summoning dimension.
Say it with me. Say Be alive again. –

The young wavers. She won’t leave
nor stop being furious. The sea’s vast
catchment of light sends ashore a roughcast
that melts off every swimmer who can stand.
Glaring through slits, the storm moves inland.

The younger sister, wavering, shouts Stay dead!
She knows how impossibility
is the only door that opens.
She pities his fall, leg under one knee
but her power is his death, and can’t be dignified.

From Les Murray, New Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 2003), 450-1.

Dylan Thomas

My introduction to Dylan Thomas came from reading his famous poem, ‘Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London’. The poem was penned during WWII after a German V-2 rocket attack killed a child in London. In this poem in which art and death embrace, Thomas deals with the question of whether death is permanent or temporary. If, because of the resurrection, death is temporary, then it is acceptable, Thomas proposes, for us to mourn, for this process of temporary grief is commensurate with the temporary death.

But if death is permanent, then, according to Thomas, grief must be repressed by refusing to mourn. The poem’s final line reads, ‘After the first death, there is no other’. Its meaning is perhaps deliberately ambiguous. Does it point to a second death? Or does it betray a more pessimistic belief about death’s permanency? Little wonder that Thomas doesn’t know whether to grieve or not. Perhaps the best insight we have of Thomas’ own hope is in the first line: ‘Never until the mankind making’. Is there a suggestion here that Thomas will mourn, but not yet; that he will mourn when God’s word spoken at time’s beginning is heard again, ‘Let there be light’?

Thomas goes on to both affirm and enrich the movement of life and death by sowing his ‘salt seed’. He can do this because although he is journeying and mourning through the valley of the shadow of death, he maintains an uncertain hope that the mourning will end. Moreover, Thomas’ poem suggests that were it not for the resurrection, ‘the stations of the breath’, to come, then all humanity has been betrayed.

For those living in or near St Andrews, The Byre is hosting ‘Dylan Thomas; Return Journey’. More information here.

NT Wright on the goodness of creation

Taken from an interview with N. T. Wright from CT.

You say that the Hebrew bible is not largely concerned with what happens to people when they die. That might surprise many Christians.

Yes, but it is not actually controversial. You can search the Old Testament from end to end, and even if you take a maximal view of passages like the “I know that my redeemer liveth” bit in Job, you’re still left with a very small selection over against the vast mass of the Old Testament in which the question is not even raised.

What is the point then?

I grew up with the view that in the early Old Testament period, there was no interest in life after death. In a middle period, represented by some of the Psalms, there were the beginnings of an interest in life after death. And then finally, with Daniel, you get resurrection, as though that’s a progression away from the early period.

The view that I came to is that the main thing the whole Old Testament is concerned with is the God of Israel, as the Creator God who has made a good creation, and that what matters about human life really is that it’s meant to be lived within God’s good, lovely, created world. That is equally emphatic in the early period, where you get agricultural festivals that celebrate Yahweh as king over the crops and the land. It’s equally emphatic there and in the doctrine of resurrection. From that point of view, the idea of a disembodied, nonspacio-temporal life after death appears as a rather odd blip in between these two strong affirmations of the goodness of the created order and the wonderful God-givenness of human bodily life within that created order.

So, instead of resurrection being a step away from the early period, it is a way of reaffirming what the early period was trying to get at: the goodness of creation.

Ulrich on preaching

One of the highlights of the recent SST Conference was Hans Ulrich‘s paper on preaching. Here’s how he started:

Preaching is one of the significant and constitutive practices of the Christian Church. Where there is preaching, there is the church, and vice versa. Otherwise there would be no church at all. This is the key to ecclesiology as we find it in the theologies of the Reformation, at least in its Lutheran shape. It is an ecclesiology which is related to the political character of God’s economy, to God’s cosmic, global and particular regimen as it is always related to His word. To think about preaching is therefore finally not to think about the church or (in a different perspective) about Christianity and its place or conditions in this world, rather it is to think about God’s very own way of being and becoming present for us human beings. The church and Christian practices are not what we have to reflect upon; rather, we have to reflect upon what happens with the Church, why these practices are given – and this is a theo-logical question, a question about God. To talk about God means to talk about a God who has decided to communicate with somebody, with his Son, the Spirit and – included in this communication – with us human beings, his creatures. He is the God who therefore has to be encountered, not imagined; he is the God who has to be heard and listened to.’

Calvin on salvation in Christ

It’s good to be back home after holidaying and conferencing. I found SST helpful for four reasons: 1. It was a good insight into the state of the theology academy in England; 2. Great opportunities to meet people who are engaged in the doing of theology; 3. I heard some great short papers. Ones by Oliver Crisp and Angus Paddison were highlights for me. Angus’ was on Forsyth, so how could he go wrong!; 4. I always enjoy giving a paper.

Today has been a day of getting back into thesis work. The quote of the day goes to Calvin: ‘We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ [Acts 4:12]. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him’ [I Cor. 1:30]. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects [Heb. 2:17] that he might learn to feel our pain [compare to Heb. 5:2]. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross [Gal. 3:13]; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment; in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from the fountain, and from no other.’ – Institutes 2.16.19.

Galavanting and conferencing

I haven’t posted for while. I would like to say that this is because I’ve been flat out working on my thesis and that I have just gone through a particularly productive spurt. In truth, I’ve just spent 10 days galavanting around Germany and Poland (Wittenberg and Krakow were definitely the highlights for me), and now I’m off to Cambridge for the SST Conference. Reading through some of the papers (and I particularly appreciated Ben Quash’s) to be discussed has been accompanied by the usual anticipation of the coming discussions.

I’m also planning to give a paper on ‘The Elusiveness, Loss, and Cruciality of Recovered Holiness: Some Biblical and Theological Observations’. My paper arises out of my observation that while holiness is one of the motifs in theological discourse that can legitimately be said to entwine many others, the coinage it receives for such honour is being largely exiled from discussion. Thus, any contribution that could be made by considering Jesus Christ as the defining revelation of holiness is sidelined. Beginning with some biblical observations, and proceeding with some help from Scottish Congregationalist P T Forsyth (who else!), the paper seeks to encourage a reclaiming of holiness vocabulary as a distinctly christological reality and gift.

Last night, I also started reading Gockel’s book on Barth & Schleiermacher on the Doctrine of Election. So far, I’m thoroughly enjoying it and am looking forward to reading more, and to posting on it when I get back. I also hope to post some thoughts about SST, and some reflections from my recent trip to ‘the continent’.

Goodwin on election – 2

Some more Goodwin on election (with some helpful words for kids … and parents):

‘Glory in nothing, but only in this, that you are in Christ. For God chose you in him; the being you had was in him before the world was.’ Ephesians – Sermon V‘Value God and his love more than all the world, though there were millions of them. He valued you before the world, and therefore is beforehand with you in his love. He not only loved you from everlasting, (whereas your love is but of yesterday,) but in the valuation of it, he loved you before all worlds, and preferred you to all worlds: though you loved the world first, before you loved him.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

‘God ordained our being and condition of living in this world, in subordination to that other world … we were chosen to salvation, and then God allotted or destinated the several times we should live in, who should be our parents, and what our conditions; and all as means subordinate to election, so to illustrate his grace the more. And therefore care not what thy parentage or what thy condition is here. Thou wert by God considered as that which he meant to make thee, even a brave and glorious creature, ere ever the consideration of what thy condition here should be came in; this estate of thine here being but the way unto that thy country and inheritance.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

‘God must not only take us to be his, but keep us to be his, and continue to be merciful to us, according to this his great name, or we shall be utterly lost and undone.’ The Object And Acts Of Justifying Faith

‘As God in his decrees about the creation did not consider the body of Adam singly or apart from his soul, nor yet the soul without his body, (I speak of his first creation and state thereby), neither should either have so much as existed, but as the one in the other; so nor Christ and his Church in election, which gave the first existence both to Christ as a Head, and to the Church as his body, which each had in God’s decrees. And holiness, which is the fruit of election here, is the image of God, and a likeness unto him, which makes us capable of communion with him.’ Ephesians – Sermon VI

Goodwin on election – 1
The following quotations reveal that Goodwin’s understanding of election is much more consciously christological than that of most puritans:

‘There is a great deal of difference between God’s doing a thing in Christ and through Christ… God redeemeth through Christ, justifieth through Christ, and saveth through Christ; but he chooseth in Christ.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

‘What is the cause of all God’s purposes towards us? Himself. There is no other cause.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

‘Yes, both Christ and we too were distinctly and particularly thought of, and so individually elected.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

‘As in the womb, head and members are not conceived apart, but together, as having relation each to other, so were we and Christ, as making up one mystical body unto God, formed together in that eternal womb of election.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

‘Our salvation had a sure foundation given it in election, not only in God’s eternal love and purpose, (the foundation of the Lord remains sure, he knows who are his) but further also, this his first choice of us was a founding us on Christ, and in and together with choosing us, a setting us into him, so as then to be represented by him… Other men, as likewise the angels that fell, were ordained to be in themselves — to stand or fall by themselves — but we were, by a choice act of God’s, culled out of the lump, and chosen in Christ, and not in ourselves apart.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

‘And were you so chosen in Christ, as that God never purposed you a being but as in Christ, and then gave you this subsistence in Christ, never casting a thought upon you out of him; then reckon of no other being but what you have in Christ. Reckon not of what you have in honours, or what you are in greatness or parts, but reckon of what you were in him before this world was, and of all the spiritual blessings wherewith he then blessed you; and likewise of what you are now in him, by an actual union, as then by a virtual and representative one.’ Ephesians – Sermon V

NB: The painting is Rembrandt’s Pilgrims at Emmaus. 1628-29. Oil on panel. Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, France.

More Forsyth online

Paul Moser over at Idolaters Anonymous has just done one of the most beautiful things a human being can do: post some more Forsyth articles on his site. Thanks Paul. He tells me that he plans to add some more of Forsyth’s (lesser known) books soon, so keep a look out for that. His latest uploads are:

Goodwin on God’s mercy

My next few posts will be some thoughts from Thomas Goodwin (1600 – 1679). Goodwin was a co-pastor with John Owen at a time of severe persecution of the Puritans. His courageous refusal to comply with the Church of England after the issuance of the Act of Uniformity is one of the many reasons that he was so admired by Forsyth.

‘The mercies of [God’s] nature, thus joined with the declarations of his gracious willingness to shew mercy to us men, is now become a just and meet ground and object for a sinner’s faith.’ The Object And Acts Of Justifying Faith

‘God’s shewing, or his actual exercising of mercy, dependeth upon an act of his will, and is not a mere, sole, single effect of his nature. For if it were solely and act of his nature, it would have been, and would still be necessary, for him to shew mercy on the devils … so some revelation or manifestation of his good will (at least indefinite to mankind) is necessary to our faith, and not merely the knowledge of the mercy in his nature.’ The Object And Acts Of Justifying Faith

‘All our faith for forgiveness may at any time be readily and finally resolved into the mercies of God, as the ultimum objectum in quod, as the ultimate object or foundation.’ The Object And Acts Of Justifying Faith