Mr. (Rev.) S. G. De Graaf: "How To Tell Bible Stories" (Promise and Deliverance)

De Graaf, S.G. Promise and Deliverance: From Creation to the Conquest of Canaan, Vol. 1 (trans. H.E. Runner). St. Catherines, ONT: Paideia Press, 1977. http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Deliverance-Creation-Conquest-Canaan/dp/0888150024/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379980056&sr=8-1&keywords=degraaf+promise+and+deliverance

The "foci and loci of the stories" as told in these stunningly simple, well-oriented, theocentric, covenantal, and redemptive principles is...well...recalibrative. These volumes, four of them, ask how to tell Bible stories. They don't teach elementary or secondary education in seminary. We are used to complex and complicated issues (in the solid seminaries). But, here, two Reverends take a refreshingly simple, basic, and most helpful posture. I own Volumes 1 and 2 (on the OT), but plan to get Volumes 3 and 4 (on the NT). It would not be an overstatement to say this has challenged by hermeneutic of daily reading.

That challenged today's tour through Deuteronomy, e.g 18.9ff. To wit, that the Living Mediator of the gracious covenant spoke with thundering clarity, as the Living Being, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Covenant-Head of Israel, IN HIS SELF-REVELATION OF DEUTERONOMY...NO PRAYING TO DEAD PEOPLE...END OF THE DISCUSSION. (For non-Anglican readers, let this be known: a breed of "saints invokers" has been tolerated for the last 100 years and it violates the English Reformed heritage of the Thirty-nine Articles; these men have no place in Anglicanism; more could be said.) Not my word, but the "Word of the Ever-Living Redeemer" under the Older and Newer covenantal administrations. No prayers to dead people. That means today, 24 Sept 2013.

But back to the introduction.

Translator’s preface

Misters (Revs.) S. G. De Graaf (1889-1955) and J. C. Sikkel (1850-1920) both were clerics in the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN). The former was influenced by the latter. Both belonged to the “Doleantie” movement, an effort to call the GKN back “to greater faithfulness to the Word of God” (11). The effects of their teaching influenced Sunday Schools, Christian public schools, and inner-city boys’ and girls’ clubs.

Both believed the Word of God “illumines and enlightens us.” The Word of God “sets our lives in the light of the truth.” As such, we live “before the face of God.” As such, “we are not rational beings of autonomous freedom as Rousseau, Kant, and modern Humanism right down to Sartre would have us believe” (12).

Psalm 25.14: “The secret of the LORD is with those who fear Him, And He will show them His covenant.”

Preface

The focus was on Sunday School teachers in the GKN churches. The teachers would meet on Saturday nights to review the Bible lessons for the following day. (Remember, the GKN had catechetical sermons on Sunday evenings’ divine worship—the Heidelberg Catechism, but this was Sunday mornings).

The issue: "How does one tell Bible stories to children?" In "evangelism clubs?" Yes, there is a way to address non-covenantal children. Or, how does one tell Bible stories in the Christian public schools (e.g. such as have been long-known amongst Dutch Calvinists)?

Introduction, 17-26

It’s about “telling a story.” Not a lecture and not a sermon. The goal is to make the story live and to make the children “see it.” Get them involved. Create “mental pictures” and stir “the imagination,” not getting lost in the details, but sticking “to the main point.”

Aim: create, invoke, evoke, strengthen and broad children’s beliefs and faiths.

The purpose is the same as “God’s,” because all Scripture is inspired and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness.” Even St. Paul notes that the Scriptures were powerful unto salvation for Timothy since his early youth.

Content: “…the entire Holy Scripture is nothing more and nothing less than the Self-revelation of God” (18). The entire Scripture (e.g. Esther included) “reveals His grace only in the Mediator.” It is about “Him,” both the Old and New Covenants.

“Every story has God as the prime agent revealing Himself through His acts as the Redeemer” (19). This is staggeringly basic. The simplicity might incline a hubrist away.

For example, the story about Joseph (Gen. 37-50). One might focus on Joseph’s perseverance or the wickedness of the brothers—important, but not the organizing and central point. The story is about God bringing it all to pass and to preserve the life of a great people.” “God and His people become the main concern” (19). Joseph is important, but is a secondary concern. It is about God, “the Alpha and Omega,” the center of every story.

“The typical sin of the child is putting himself first.” He or she, like adults, have room for God “as long as” he or she is first.” This is a sinful inclination. Telling the Bible stories theocentrically rescues the child from “egoism.”

And these are the "foci and loci of the stories" as told in these stunningly simple, well-oriented, theocentric, covenantal, and redemptive principles.

Lord willing, more as this hermeneutical shift is reformed, enlightened, and transformed.

Mr. (Dr. Prof.) Horton Davies: English Reformation, Scripture, Justification by Faith Alone, & Praying to Saints

Davies, Horton. Worship and Theology in England From Cranmer to Hooker, 1534-1603, Vol. 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996. http://www.amazon.com/Worship-Theology-England-Book-1534-1690/dp/0802808913/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378172769&sr=8-2&keywords=horton+davies


This book is worth the purchase, if but only for the bibliography.

Cranmer draws a “curious medieval” allusion of the Bible to the system. “…The worde of God, the most precious Juel and moost holy reyque that remayneth upon the earth” (12). We would add that justification by faith alone, tied to a sober Christology (a real Nicene Christology), with definitive redemption (hint, hint, Dordt), ripped into the fibre, marrow and muscle of Rome. Rome's been defending their busted and broken Nicene Christology ever since too, truth be told.

Mr. Davies advises that it would have “been impossible to attack the international power and authority of the Roman Catholic Church, with its immense prestige and immemorial traditions, unless it was believed that the Scriptures were the very Word of God” (13). The close study of the Bible exposed the vulnerabilities of a Roman Anglicanism; but they were willing to confront that international prestige with the Word of God.

We would add the following. During the court trials of the Reformers--for treason and heresy--Reformers who were arrested by the 1.0 Anglicans, or the Papal Anglicans, this was the constant refrain: You Reformers or Evangelicals have gone against the “faith held everywhere.” Over and over and over. And then some.  And then some more. Over and over. That was the claim put against the docketed Reformers: the immensity and prestige of the Papal church. Over and over, the Reformers kept answering with the Bible.

Mr. (bp.) Jewel:

• The Word of God “guides the restless heart”

• Contained all that was “necessary to salvation”

• Was “the sure and infallible rule whereby may be tried whether the church doth stagger and err and whereunto all ecclesiastical doctrines may be called to account…”

Much, much more could be said.  For further development of this theme, Mr. (Rev. Dr. Prof.) Philip Edgcumbe Hughes' The Theology of the English Reformers is a handy volume. (Oh how I miss my old Professor, Dr. Hughes! Upon return from deployments, he was always willing to meet privately and talk!)

Otherwise, Mr. Davies notes that “vast efforts to train” ordinands “in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek” are inexplicable. Well, in some places, that no longer is an issue. Exegesis actually mattered to these Reformers.

Mr. Davies comments on Latimer.  For example, Latimer’s famous “Sermon of the Plough” on the Parable of the Sower: God’s Word is the seed, the congregation is the field, and the Preacher is the ploughman.

And Mr. Davies notes that Mr. (Canterbury) Edmund Grindal was of the same mold as Latimer. He did not believe the homilies were adequate. He supported the “prophesyings.” The "prophesyings" were essentially, a local/regional presbytery or group of Church of England Presbyters, gathering to discuss the Bible and theology. She disliked that. He liked that. She closed him up in his palace and suspended Mr. Canterbury's ministry. It's a blotch on the Church of England's history.

He wrote Ms. (Elizabeth) Tudor that ministry could not be done alone “by homilies:" rather, he wrote her, "exhortations, reprehensions, and persuasions are uttered with more affection, to the moving of the hearers, in sermons than in homilies” (14). Tudor obstinacy prevailed over Mr. Canterbury.

The Church of England’s Reformers were also, self-consciously, looking at the first six centuries of theology and practice “before the establishment of Papal primacy.” They wished to avoid the private “idiosyncracies” of the interpreter, what Romanists rightly called “dangerous subjectivity.” They accepted the first four Councils insisting that they were “not innovators, but renovators” (16). In this regard, Cranmer insisted that the “Saxon forefathers had their Saxon translations” and that Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus insisted on lay consultation and literacy in the Bible.

Cranmer, Jewel and Whitgift possessed “the great patristic erudition of the leaders of the Anglican church in Tudor times” (17). On the other hand, they were not slavish either.

Mr. Davies raises the great question of “justification by faith alone.” No longer was salvation “on the installment plan” (17). The Roman Anglicans, as well as Continental ones, believed that these Evangelicals were “rude iconoclasts” who were advocating for “antinomianism” (17). The “Protestants,” or “Evangelicals” as they were commonly called in England, were careful about the distinction between justification and sanctification. Robert Barnes, a very early Reformer, got the point exactly right as did Cranmer in his Homily on Salvation. We could add more on this point. The Westminster Larger Catechism has probably the finest succinct statement in English theological literature on the distinction...priceless, but little known.

Once the English Protestants and Evangelicals asserted the “sole mediatorship of Christ the Justifier and Redeemer” (in the Edwardian and Elizabeth versions, 3.0 and 5.0 versions), there was “the reduction of statues and the role of the Virgin Mary and saints” (20).

Cranmer’s chaplain, Thomas Becon, another victim of the 1.0/4.0 Papal Anglicans in England, wrote that “the humble laymen” were living as “practicing polytheists:”

• “Fast the blessed saints’ evens and worship them with a Paternoster, Ave, and Creed, they will do for us whatever we ask” (20)

• St. George—will save you from battle

• St. Barbara—from thunder and lightning

• St. Agasse—from the house catching afire

• St. Anthony—keeping the swine

• St. Luke and St. Job—from the pox

• St. Nicholas—from drowning

• St. Loye—cures for the house

• St. Apolline—from bad teeth

• St. Sweetland and St. Agnes—to send along good husbands

• St. Peter—greeter at the “heavenly gates”

• “…with a thousand such-like”

For those of us who have travelled widely in Italy, Greece, and elsewhere, don't let the slick palaver of phony ecumenists fool you. 

These intercessors are everywhere including shrines and more. Same idea. Same issues.

There is a standing reason that Reformers still are abused by these non-Reformed voices in the so-called Anglican world.

We have a Tractarian in town here who routinely invokes saints during the ACC service. Mr. (bp.) Roy Grote's son (REC) was busy invoking Mary during Holy Communion. Mr. (bp.) Leo Riches defends it too. Misters. (bp.) Iker and Ackerman advocate this. Good grief! We could say more. 

We'll say this: no peace with these atavistic voices, none. 

They are Non-Papal Roman Anglicans. They are not Reformed Anglicans.  They, as Mr. (Rev. Dr. Prof.) James Packer once averred, are "Roman Trojan Horses."  We are not sure he believes that any more.

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) allows it. All the Continuing churches permit it (UECNA, ACC, ACA, etc.).  And they ask for trust?  Sorry.

History is on our side even if abandoned by the so-called ecumenists.