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By Faith Alone Publishing released its latest title:
"God Speaks: Revelation, Justification and Regeneration in the Theology of Eduard Böhl and his Critique of Albrecht Ritschl" by Dr. Meine Veldman
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What do we mean by “Further Reformation”?
Some Historical Observations About the Second Reformation
There is no doubt that a movement like the Reveil, or later what is called a second Reformation was necessary for its time; a time in the Netherlands and in the rest of nineteenth century Europe, which was marked by dead orthodoxy and liberal rationalism. Particularly, liberalism had greatly made its influence felt in the Dutch Reformed State Church. The need for a return to the doctrines and practices of the Reformation was apparent. During this time and spiritual climate Herman Friedrich Kohlbrügge was born, lived, preached and sought to hold the banner high of the Reformers.
However, at the same time I observe that, even though Kohlbrügge was originally part of the theologians and revivalists of the Reveil who desired to go back to the Reformation, and wished a second Reformation, he could not go along with those of its proponents who began to focus more on the experience of grace in the order of salvation than on the grace of the experience of every true believer. By focusing much on regeneration and sanctification, many began to be more concerned about the experiences of the believer and the steps, or marks of salvation in believers, than about the eternal faithfulness and mercy of God. This Kohlbrügge saw as a wrong concentration and, therefore, distanced himself from this way of second Reformation rooted in seventeenth century scholasticism and English Puritanism (Gisbertius Voetius and William Teelinck, respectively).
However, at the same time this did not mean that Kohlbrügge was contrary to any teaching and preaching of the experiences of grace and of the necessity of conversion. This is proved in his little work on, ‘I Believe in the Holy Spirit,’ in which Kohlbrügge delves deep into the way of God with His Church in an experiential biblical way. So, to give readers an insight into Kohlbrügge’s understanding of the law and sanctification and his experiential theology and understanding of further reformation, let us take a look at this little unknown work on the Holy Spirit which was recently published by “By Faith Alone Publishing”.
Introductory Remarks
In a work published after his death, to which I will refer below more extensively, Kohlbrügge posed the question as to how one can know that he or she is converted; a question also prevalent in the time of the second Reformation. His answer: “A man should not inquire about himself, — what he is or is not, but should continually turn himself from all perverted being and without presupposition seek after God, who has pleasure in man.” Like I noted, Kohlbrügge himself had moved around in circles in which much was said and written about the experiences and progress of grace and sanctification. He himself had attempted to find rest in his own experiences and works even, after grace, however he had become only more knowledgeable about his own sinful flesh. His whole being was corrupt, totally and definitively. Upon his discovery of Romans 7:14, “The Law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin,” as Paul’s confession as a converted person, Kohlbrügge began to understand the untruth, or the lie he lived, or tried to live as a believer. He began to understand that regeneration and sanctification ought not to be understood as a subjective process of doing good works, or at least of trying to do good works (the specter of legalism). Or that these two realities ought to be understood in terms of instilling certain new qualities in man, as if flesh sold under sin could ever be converted, or transformed, or improved (the specter of mysticism)! No, he had discovered and experienced that sanctification was not a process, subject to physical or psychological analysis, but that it was itself a reality ‘in Christ,’ ‘in faith’ as worked out by the Spirit of God in the life of the believer. It was never to be possessed by man, but men were to be possessed by it, that is, by God, in Christ, who had promised to sanctify His own children by the Holy Spirit in faith and not by works, or sight. In his sermon on Romans 7, Kohlbrügge wrote:
“So may everyone of us say frankly on the strength of the truth of God and the witness of his Spirit in us: ‘I am holy and righteous’ — even though our conscience accuses us that we are still continually inclined to all evil.’ This last statement sounds strange to many a one; for he would like to be holy and pious and become a bit aware of this holiness in him. — And among us there are many such, for self-righteousness is lodged deep— very deep, and the old monk knows of no death, as long as we live.”
What Kohlbrügge had begun to realize was that in the circles of the second Reformation, as rooted in Reformed scholasticism and English Puritanism (William Ames) God’s work of salvation was beginning to be analyzed to such an extent that what God thinks and works together was actually being separated! What God has done for the believer, in Christ, came to be regarded as virtually separable from what He does in the believer. In other words, the scientific distinction between what is objective and subjective, internal and external, was scholastically introduced (by way of Aristotelian categories) into Christian experiential theology: as if one can divide the work of God, as if one can divide grace, as if one can divide the person and work of Christ and the Spirit, as if grace were one thing in Christ and another in the Spirit, as if the work of the Holy Spirit were not to witness to Christ, as if the ‘Christ in us’ did not mean living in the knowledge and the comfort of ‘Christ for us!’ This Kohlbrügge began to see more as de-formation than as a second Reformation.
For Kohlbrügge the witness of the Spirit is not that we can live as ‘Christians,’ but that as sinners we must die yet nevertheless live by the grace of God in Christ. Therefore, as well, the work of the Holy Spirit is not the creation of a new man in the sense that a man can now look at himself, by himself, and discover a ‘new man’ essentially different from the old. The Holy Scripture knows only two men: Adam and Christ. In our carnal birth we are all under the first Adam. Jesus Christ is the other man, under whom, and in whom we are in a new reality – in accordance with the new birth from above. New life outside of Christ is unthinkable, in fact, impossible. Therefore, Kohlbrügge also began to oppose the idea of the gradual slaying of the old man and the gradual rising up of the new. He writes:
“In this false teaching one is no longer concerned about either-or, nor about the sovereignty and omnipotence of grace alone, nor about true conversion. There one can very well transgress God’s commands in secret and openly, there one has life in his own hand, there one comforts himself with a gradual improvement, and things continually get worse. That is not according to the Scripture.”
Rather, sanctification is living as old man, that is, as flesh sold under sin, as born and conceived in sin, by faith in the Christ for me, and in the Christ in me, that is, in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit respectively. In Christ the believer both has a complete salvation and will find it applied by His Holy Spirit. And it is the Holy Spirit who so takes me by the hand and fulfills in me and for me what the law demands and promises, in judgment and in grace, all testifying to the eternal faithfulness of God Triune alone.
A Short Summary of the content of “I Believe in the Holy Spirit”
Kohlbrugge once wrote that the way of salvation can be expressed under these three headings: 1) that I am a man and no more 2) that God is God, 3) and that He also fulfills His promises to me (Kohlbrügge, De Leer Des Heils, 2). I knew of no better way to summarize this article, “I Believe in the Holy Spirit” than under these three thoughts, albeit in a slightly different formulation and order to express the nature and character of true further reformation against false ideas of second Reformation, which can rather be described as de-formation.
That the Holy Spirit is God
In the first part of this article, Kohlbrügge provides us with the important biblical thought that against many misconceptions the Holy Spirit must first and foremost be seen as a Divine person and as such should never be confused with what He does, that is, with the effects He works in the life of all the elect. Kohlbrügge has sharp words for those who deny this, calling such denials simply, “their blasphemous procedure . . .”. Why is it so important and necessary to believe this?
Emphasizing that the Holy Spirit is very God of very God and as such His own person (one of the persons of the eternal Triune God) Kohlbrügge hits the centre of the biblical doctrine of salvation. It is God alone who created out of nothing and so it is God alone who accomplished His work in and through Jesus Christ, as He sustained the man Jesus in His life and work by himself as the eternal Holy Spirit. And so it also God as Holy Spirit who brings the elect to a knowledge of himself and breaks his or her will, gives them faith in the only Way unto salvation and leads them into a life and path pleasing in His own sight.
Emphasizing the divine person of the Holy Spirit in this way, God is left to be God, and His work His work, which includes the entire work of salvation for and in the elect person: his/her calling, justification, sanctification and complete redemption. How else could we cry out, Kohlbrügge writes, “Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God! thou God of my salvation . . . had He not urged us to cry for grace and mercy, and given us by His personal operation in our soul, while lying in the depths of our misery – a ray of hope and deliverance, . . . . how could we ever have acquired any certainty of salvation? How could we have had assurance of eternal life? How should we have been willing with our whole heart, and ready, thenceforward, to live only to the Lord?” It is only God who can do such things, and it is God only who does these things, namely, God the Spirit.
That I am a Man and No More
What is also most important to note is, that in all of this, Kohlbrügge stresses that the justified human being remains ungodly, even while walking in the holy commandments of God. Again I quote: “What remains in us of the image of God is sufficient for our condemnation: what we still perform therewith is nothing else but a proof of our unrighteousness, impotency, and unholy will; . . . He (the Holy Spirit) finds among, and in men, nothing but a singular combination of opposition and inconsistency; nothing but perverseness and resistance; nothing but what is in His eyes hateful and detestable; yet, according to His own grace, He will make His abode in men; and even in such men, He will glorify the work of the Lord, and accomplish in them the complete salvation obtained by Christ on their behalf.’ Yes, even in the life, perhaps, especially in the life of sanctification, this is felt and acknowledged by all those who walk by the Holy Spirit. In fact, according to Kohlbrugge, this makes the “soul ardent, replete, and strong, as often as its quickening call is heard (that is, of the promise), however empty, impotent, and dead the individual may find himself to be.” And thus, it is by the person and work of the Holy Spirit, for and in man, that the great paradox of the believer being entirely holy, yet completely sinner and unholy, is experienced and realized.
And That God also Fulfills His Promise to Me
Finally I note that Kohlbrugge, in spite of all the critique he has received of being an antinomian, or of having no theology of sanctification, or as playing only on one string, namely, that of justification, was as much if not more so a theologian of the law, a theologian of sanctification! Kohlbrügge, in the tradition of Calvin, emphasized no less than this Reformer, that the law ought to be fulfilled and will be fulfilled, also in the life of the believer, yes, even as a rule in and of the covenant of grace. Kohlbrugge, writes, in the ten words of the Law we find, “the everlasting and sole rule of the covenant [of grace].” And it is according to this rule that “the Holy Ghost sanctifies the elect, . . .” (p.38).
Further Reformation: A Faithful Understanding of the Law, Christ and the Holy Spirit
And so, with this his theology of the Holy Spirit, Kohlbrügge stands in the great biblical tradition of the spiritual theology of all those who followed the Reformers Luther and Calvin. In fact, one could make the case that, with his theology of the Holy Spirit, Kohlbrügge furthers the Reformation in terms of sanctification by clearing it of all de-formations as we can find expressed in the mystical and/or legalistic theologies of the 17th century, in those theologians who again began to confuse and mix flesh and Spirit, God and man. To elucidate this important point let me finally just turn again to the words of Kohlbrügge himself.
Kohlbrügge asks, “How does the Holy Spirit sanctify the elect by way of the ten words of the Law as the rule of the covenant?” He responds that the Holy Spirit does this by reminding them that it is God who spoke these words, whereby the flesh is repressed, and the understanding put a bridle on, that is, flesh is recognized for what it is before God as simply ungodly and without strength. Yet, at the same time the poor soul rejoices that, and this is the point, “He who has spoken all these words, and who is concerned to see that the rule of the covenant of grace shall be observed, will also assuredly take care that they, though in themselves without power, shall observe these words and do them in virtue of the promises of the covenant!”
The absolutely important and perhaps unique point here is, that Kohlbrügge interprets the law not only as strictly commandment, which condemns, but also as promise. The believer rejoices that the law may also be seen as a consolation. That is, in the very structure of the ten words of the law there may be found consoling promises for the future. How? Precisely, because, by the very words of God the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who convinces of sin also announces, taking the first commandment as example, “as a promise . . . . they ’shall have no other gods before his face, nor worship any graven image; . . . . ‘” What does Kohlbrügge mean? This: God Himself will make it so that when they believe and trust in His Word, and in the righteousness of Christ, while remaining in themselves incapable and ungodly sinners. God will fulfill the law as promise in and for their lives. In other words, to stay with our example, it is God who will make it so that His children who trust in Him alone will no longer have other Gods before them! And so they may also “experience rest and assurance that how much soever they may be filled with idolatry, and the worshipping of idols, they shall be, notwithstanding, cleansed from all the pollution of idols, and be excited to the real worship of God, which is in Spirit and in truth” (p.40). See here, “that God will also fulfill His promises to me,” yes, without mixing flesh and Spirit, and without confusing the works of man with the works of God, yet maintaining the law as eternal norm in and for the life of every believer for further reformation!
Dr. M. Veldman
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