TI I WE T DITIO

I For the General Assembly of the PCA Seminar Chattanooga, TN May 13, 2005 Douglas F. Kelly

The Westminster Assembly has been celebrated on various occasions. The Presbyterian Church, US, devoted lectures to it at its General Assembly in Charlotte in 1897 (in remembrance of the 250th anniversary of the closing of the Westminster Assembly). Robert L. Dabney, among others gave an address. Later, the faculty of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia produced a very fine symposium on important aspects of the Westminster Assembly (its doctrine of Scripture) in 1943 in The Infallible Word. This was to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the convening of the Assembly in Westminster Abbey.

and nuclear structure, the entire cosmos could be explained as essentially self-sufficient, not needing (nor even allowing for) a divine agent. This trickled down to the pop culture by World War 1. Soon thereafter, particularly in Europe, the churches largely emptied and most Christian influence was lost on the wider culture. Thus, materialism seemed the wave of the future, and many mainline Christian churches capitulated to the anti-supernaturalism of materialist secularism by the time the 19th turned into the 20th century.

But again, roughly speaking, I would say that from approximately

In neither of those excellent collections of memorial lectures, would anyone have seriously thought of dealing with the question: is mysticism to be found in the Westminster standards and in its general tradition? So why am I dealing with such a subject today?

I sincerely believe that the culture to

the 1960s till today in the early 21" century, something else has supplanted materialism (or is supplanting) materialism as the atmosphere

Has our traditional Westminsterian theology changed since then? If

which we seek to take the unchanging truth

confronts us - if our eyes are open - to questions raised by various forms

of mysticism.

of thought and core aspiration of multitudes: both amongst intellectuals and in the masses. Since the 1960s we have been confronted with a popular thirst for some kind of spirituality, unseen since the 18th century Enlightenment. we are orthodox, certainly our core

commitments have not changed. But what has changed profoundly is this: the Western culture in which all of us must minister. I sincerely believe that the culture to which we seek to take the unchanging truth confronts us - if our eyes are open - to questions raised by various forms of mysticism. Let me explain what I mean. Roughly speaking, from about 1700 to the 1950s (owing to the influence of the secularist, post-Newtonian Enlightenment) our culture seemed to have become captive to various forms of materialism. Especially after Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, our intelligentsia tended to assume that given electro-magnetism, gravity

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I do not know all of the reasons for this shift from materialism as the basis of life to an urge for spiritual experience. Only last week I read an article by Catherine H. Crouch on "Quantum mechanics & the Creator" (from The Lutheran website) discussing the implications of the strange questions raised about so-called materialist cause and effect relationships of Quantum physics. She made reference to John Polkinghorne of Cambridge and N. David Mermin of Cornell University on how the relationality of Quantum Mechanics may in some sense point to the relationality within the Holy Trinity. I cannot

Dougltu F. Kelly further explore this topic today for our purposes. I only mention it to show that even within physics, the old post-Newtonian materialist, closed-causal nexus theory of all reality is not the reigning paradigm.

But even apart from the higher intellectual register, the hearts of millions of ordinary men and women could never rest satisfied with blind, empty materialism. St. Augustine had it right: 'Lord, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.' For whatever combination of reasons, the public today is not where they were a century ago on this question. As evangelical churches seek to reach out with the Gospel of Christ, most people are not really materialist. They are far more likely to be trying to get hold of some kind of spiritual experience. I see that as a profound cultural change in my own lifetime of 61 years. And the church must take this changed aspiration of the multitudes into account as we seek to win them to the Lord.

who is still popular with many Protestants, would serve as a prime illustration ofthis. Some years ago, I read his biography. He was a brilliant and a sensitive soul, and it is impossible not to appreciate much of his writing. But by the time he died accidentally in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, if! understand properly his biography, he had in a certain sense gone over to Buddhism. Instead of professing Christ as the way, he began to speak of 'the mystic center' which is the final aspiration of the various world religions. Certainly, we can be sure that Pope Benedict XVI would not agree with him.

There are also forms of mysticism in both Shiite and Sunni Islam ... I would make this prediction (which I hope will tum out to be wrong): religious leaders will probably not be long in urging Christians - for the sake of world peace and the removal of terrorism - to begin thinking that Muslim mysticism makes available the same road to true spirituality: i.e. to God and salvation, as do Christian forms of it. We will wait and see.

To say the least, there is mysticism That at last brings me to our subject for this seminar: Mysticism and the Westminster Tradition. The essential point of depaliure for us today is this: yes, a keen observer of our Western culture already knows that people are hungering and thirsting for spiritual experience. Most of your hearers in areas where you are seeking to plant churches are not really materialists. But, let us carefully note - and this

But I wonder if the loss of some Reformed intellectuals to Roman

aplenty in Hinduism. Some years ago, Dr. John Devries wrote Satan's Evangelistic Strategy for the West. By that title he meant that Hindu spirituality was coming into the Western world through the New Age, and that if successful, it would supplant true Christianity.

is our theme today - there are many kinds of spirituality. Not all of

Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy is part of this broader aspiration in our

culture for deeper spiritual experience?

Recently at a conference, the father of a former student came up to speak to me. I asked about his son who went on to earn a PhD at a

them are right and good. I John 4: 1 commands us: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world." I believe that evangelical churches today are called to be discerning and realistic about false spirituality that is so widespread in our culture, and to offer something infinitely better, that will cause people to live their lives in the very presence of God.

Mysticism is an important aspect of many kinds of spirituality. More people (of every educational level) are into it than you would ever know. Just go to your local Barnes & Nobles or Books a Million and contrast the number of bookshelves devoted to New Age Spirituality with those given to orthodox Christianity. .

A Roman Catholic monk and writer, Thomas Merton,

prestigious university some years ago. The father said: he is going to the Orthodox Church: I replied: "Do you mean the OPC?" He hung his head and answered: "No, the Eastern Orthodox Church." When he saw the look on my face, he all but tearfully said: "Pray for him." I did not have the heart to ask any more questions of his father. But I wonder if the loss of some Reformed intellectuals to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy is part of this broader aspiration in our culture for deeper spiritual experience? Are our Reformed churches failing to answer questions many are almost unconsciously raising about spiritual reality in the daily life? Could this be the reason that the "Sonship" movement has attracted so many hearts in American conservative Presbyterianism?

This search for spirituality among so many of our contemporaries is no cause for discouragement. On the

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contrary, I wish to encourage all of us to re-appropriate our true Calvinist and Westminsterian spirituality as a vital, transforming legacy to be offered to the needy public at this time. It is not enough to show where false spirituality and mysticism lead (though that is necessary); we must offer something infinitely better. And what we must offer is wonderfully expressed in the writings of John Calvin and in the documents of the Westminster Confession of Faith. In my opinion, the Westminster theology has truly come to the kingdom for such a time as this. If only we will practice it ourselves, and then gladly offer it!

But ere I lay before you the true Christianity spirituality of the Westminster tradition, it is necessary 'to clear the ground' somewhat by thinking of other forms of spirituality; or, in particular of self-proclaimed mysticism. Certainly within the broader Medieval Catholic tradition, there were streams of Christ-centered mystical experience (that are not totally removed from experimental Calvinism), and there were also clearly heretical forms of it from N eo-Platonic paganism, which especially influenced elements of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

A French scholar of notable erudition in these questions, Louis Bouyer, wrote in his Orthodox Spirituality: " ... the hot-house mysticism that seems to many people a characteristic essential and proper to post-Tridentine Catholicism ... was nevertheless widely shared in the spiritual world of the Puritans." (Bouyer, Orthodox Spirituality, 134, 135.) Indeed, Bouyer goes on to allege that one of the leading members of the Westminster Assembly, Dr. Thomas Goodwin's The Heart of Christ in Heaven towards Sinners on Earth could be seen as the earliest example of what has often been regarded as a quintessentially Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart. b With all due respect, I feel that none would have been more surprised by this identification than Dr. Goodwin!

But before we glance superficially at the alleged mysticism of Goodwin and other Puritans of the Westminster tradition, we must first take a more general look at mysticism itself in Western religious thought. I quote briefly an article from Volume X of The Catholic Encyclopedia by George M. Sauvage:

"Mysticism, according to its etymology, implies a relation to mystery. In Philosophy, Mysticism is either a religious tendency and desire of the human soul towards an intimate union

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with the Divinity, or a system growing out of such a tendency and desire. As a philosophical system, Mysticism considers as the end of philosophy the direct union of the human soul with the Divinity through contemplation and love, and attempts to determine the processes and the means of realizing this end. This contemplation, according to Mysticism, is not based on a merely analogical knowledge ofthe Infinite, but as a direct and immediate intuition of the Infinite ... It may be ... orthodox or heterodox, according as it agrees with the Catholic teaching."

Perhaps the broadest and deepest stream of mysticism into both Eastern and Western churches flowed from the Neo-Platonic philosophy by way ofPseudo-Dionysius (a fifth century Syrian writer, who passed himself off as the convert of St. Paul on Mars Hill). He taught (in his De Divinis Nominibus c. vii) that while ordinary Christians know something of God through/his created works, special Christians - without the necessity of Scripture - can contemplate directly with immediate intuition the mysteries of the divine light. This direct mystical contemplation he calls theosis and mystike enosis.

No doubt, so-called Dionysius the Aeropagite is drawing from the Enneads of the pagan philosopher of the third century, Plotinus. This philosophy taught a sort of pantheistic Monism. According to it, we come from the One and the All, and if we free ourselves from the sensuous world by purification and contemplation, our souls can ascend by to God by stages, and shrink into the One. This is the state of ecstasy.

The concept of' divinization' (or theosis) was strongly developed in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Theologians such as Symeon the New Theologian and above all, Gregory Palymas, wrote extensively on this kind of Christian mysticism, and it is still widely practiced in their monasteries across the world.

In the Western Church in the 14th and 15 th centuries, just at the time the theology of the Roman Church was going Nominalist (and thus, more dead than ever), there was a reaction: a seeking of new life, by an outbreak of mystical thought and practice. Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) in his Opus Tripartitum teaches a deification of man and an assimilation of the creature into the Creator through contemplation. The Catholic Church later

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condemned Eckhart for such heretical propositions as " ... God created the world together with the Son, and that the world existed from eternity. "e

In the words of Copleston: "The features of Eckhart's mystical doctrine which arrest the attention are his statements about the total transformation of the soul into God and his assertion that there is in the soul something 'uncreated' ... the intellect. Thus in a German sermon he says that in mystical union the soul is changed into God in the way that in the eucharist the bread is changed into the Body of Christ. It becomes one with God. Old

There were more Orthodox men after this time who also desired devotional renewal (such as John Ruysbroeck) but who strongly criticized the heretical mystics who claimed to have become literally one with God. One of their later number was possibly the most popular devotional writer of all times: Thomas A Kempis (of the 'Brethren of the Common Life', which produced Erasmus). His Imitation of Christ was read every day in the refectory during the midday meal when John Calvin was at the College of Montaigu in Paris. Both T. F. Torrance (in The Hermeneutics of John Calvin)e and R. S. Wallace (in Calvin, Geneva and the ReformationY convince me that this devotional of A Kempis lies in the background of some of John Calvin's profoundly Biblical teaching on cross-bearing, self-denial and meditation on the future life (in Institutes III, chapters 6 -11). But A Kempis is a world away from the mysticism of the monist, pantheistic theologians. (See F. C. Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy, 281. 4 Ibid., 282.)

But many years before A Kempis, however, was another Christian monastic figure, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who also deeply marked Calvin and the whole Puritan tradition of spirituality. His Sermons on the Song of Songs is frequently quoted by John Calvin. Ford Lewis Battles in his translation of The Institutes listed nearly fifty references to Bernard; about one third of them to the Song of Songs. A recent study of this relationship by Dennis E. Tamburello drew this wise conclusion:

" ... I wonder if sometimes the word "mysticism" may not get in the way of understanding their thought. Neither Bernard nor Calvin was caught up in arguments about definitions of mysticism. Rather, both authors were ultimately concerned about the unity of the believer with God, rooted in faith

and expressed primarily through love and service of God and others. "g

The best theologians of the Western mystical tradition (such as Bernard and A Kempis and Gerard Groot) definitely labeled as heretical the denial of the Creator/ creature distinction, and the bypassing of written Revelation with its focus on Christ for some sort of self-exalting, vague mystical experience. Along these lines (critical of much of Western mysticism), Samuel Rutherford (another of the Westminster divines; a commissioner from Scotland). Because of his well-loved Spiritual Letters, some have denominated him as a mystic. But you will not call him that if you read his Survey of Spiritual Antichrist, where he slates the self-deification of the soul that he finds in much of the Theologica Germanica. To quote John Coffee's recent PhD on Rutherford, Rutherford strongly denied "the absorption of the human personality into the divine, or direct access to personal revelation which bypasses Scripture."h

Indeed, though John Calvin spoke of mystical union with Christ (meaning that it is mysterious to our human minds - see Institutes III. 1. 1), he did not fail to condemn strongly the sacramentalist teaching of the Lutheran professor, Osiander, who -according to Calvin - taught that "God pours himself into us as a gross mixture, just as he fancies a physical eating in the Lord's Supper ... " (Institutes III. xi. 10). A century later, the great Puritan, John Owen, attacked the Quaker subjectivism of the inner light. As Michael Haykin wrote in his chapter on "John Owen and the Challenge of the Quakers," Owen believed that the inner light teaching "tended to exalt the Spirit at the expense of the Word," and "failed to grasp the Trinitarian nature of the work of redemption." Owen considered this mysticism to have been "the work of deception carried on by Satan, who has used the 'mask of pretended revelations and interior inspiration' throughout history to ensnare human beings."i

Thus, I would say that no serious scholar of Calvin and of the Puritans could maintain that any of them were mystics as defined above. Yet they did teach something that modern Presbyterians (and the rest) have tended to forget: mystical union with Christ in the profoundest love relationship, lying at the basis of all else in the Christian life and program. These good men often spoke of this as 'heart knowledge' of Christ. Richard Sibbes, who influenced many of the men of Westminster, does so most eloquently.

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Let me briefly quote Dr. Mark Dever's published PhD dissertation on Sibbes on this point: " ... what strikes the reader of his [Sibbes'] sermons is his affectionate language. For Sibbes, Christianity was a love story. God was essentially a husband to his people: "with the same love that God loves Christ, he loves all his" [Works I. 12] ... At the core of Sibbes' "affectionate theology" is what we might call "heart knowledge of God in Christ." Sibbes wrote: "By heart, I mean especially, the will and affections ... " [Works II. 368]. Elsewhere, Sibbes says: "It is the heart, not reason, that is the determining (not judging) faculty of the soul" [II. 219]. Elsewhere, "It is the fountain oflife" [II. 227]. "Love is the weight and wing of the soul, which carries it where it goes" [II. 129].i

Standards (for Rutherford was one of its prominent drafters). Now let us briefly look at only a few sample spots in the Westminster Confession of Faith for the true and healthy alternative to other forms of mysticism. The Westminster Standards are pervaded by the underlying sense of a vital spiritual knowledge of God in Christ that transforms earthly life into the very atmosphere of heaven; than which nothing could be better.

For this purpose, let us take a paragraph from ten different chapters of our Confession so that we can go down to the foundations of true Christian spirituality. In Chapter I ('Of the Holy Scripture') we find these wise words in Paragraph V: " ... yet notwithstanding [our

corifidence in the incomparable

Sibbes' emphasis on heart knowledge of God in Christ was richly filled out as to specifics in the life of sanctification by the power of the Holy Spirit in the theology of John Owen. Volume II of his Works (,Of Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost') and Volume VI (where he

The Westminster Standards are pervaded by the underlying

sense of a vital spiritual knowledge of God in Christ that transforms earthly life into the

very atmosphere of heaven; than which nothing could be better.

excellencies of the Word of God written] our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the w()rd in our hearts. " The Westminster Fathers were at one with Calvin in holding together both objectively true written Word

painstakingly and helpfully specifies the duties of our loving union with Christ in terms of 'mortification' and 'vivification'), have - in my view - never been surpassed as classics of truest Christian spirituality. For Calvinist Puritanism, the center of all is heart knowledge of God in Christ that issues in a transformed life that loves God and others.

Owen writes (II. 87): "That which lies hid in Christ, and is revealed from him is full of love, sweetness, tenderness, kindness, grace. It is the Lord waiting to be gracious to sinners; waiting for an advantage to show love and kindness, for the most eminent endearing of a soul unto himself, Isa. xxx. 18 ... "

Samuel Rutherford writes in Letter LXXXII to John Gordon of Car do ness (in 1637): "I dare say that angels' pens, angels' tongues, nay, as many worlds of angels as there are drops of water in all the seas and fountains and rivers of the earth, cannot paint him out to you. I think his sweetness, since I was a prisoner, hath swelled upon me to the greatness of two heavens. Oh for a soul as wide as the utmost circle of the highest heaven that containeth all, to contain his love! And yet I could hold l 'ttl ,f"t "k I e OJ I ...

This is the background of the piety of the Westminster

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and the subjectively true personal appropriation of it by the Holy Spirit. When these are separated (i.e. Word and Spirit) the church is devastated (whether in the direction of a sort of dead, nominalistic Orthodoxy or a wild-headed, heretical spirituality).

In Chapter VIII ('Of Christ the Mediator'), paragraph VIII: 'To all those for whom Christ hath purchased redemption, he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same: making intercession for them, and revealing unto them, in and by the word, the mysteries of salvation; effectually persuading them by his Spirit to believe and obey; and governing their hearts by his word and Spirit ... '

The great Charles Hodge of Princeton made an interesting remark in his book, The Presbyterian Church and its Polity, on the difference between what it takes to become a communicant member of the Dutch Reformed Church and a member of the Presbyterian Churches in the Scottish, Westminster tradition. According to his assessment, two things were required to become communicants in the Dutch Reformed Churches: a true profession of faith and lives free from scandal. But he believed that the Scottish and American Presbyterians had a third element: some kind of definite, personal experience of knowing God in Christ. It is this third

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element (if Hodge is right) that we find so pervasively throughout the Westminster standards.

Certainly that is the emphasis in Chapter XI ('Of Justification'), as in paragraph II: "Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. " How much a self-centered, individualist, loveless world needs to see multitudes of Christians whose lives are marked by 'faith working by love.' Jonathan Edwards saw that as the major accompaniment of the 1738 revival in Northhampton, when he wrote: 'Never was the town so full oflove ... ' That kind oflove flowing from liberated, justified hearts is the context to effectiveness for all of our preaching and witnessing to the secularists.

I am not aware of any other Reformed Confession which has an entire chapter devoted to 'Adoption' (chapter XII). Among other affirmations, it lists these for the elect, once they are effectually called: " ... [they] have his name put upon them; receive the Spirit of adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness; are enabled to cry, Abba, Father; are pitied, protected, provided for and chastened by him as a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation. "

What a happy life! Is that why so many tribesmen in Sudan have been willing to die most cruel deaths over the last twenty years, rather than renounce Christ? Truly, their blood is the seed of the future expansion of Christianity in Africa. Is this reality of a victorious life here and hereafter the reason why so many in China are being converted every day in the thousands? Did you read an aliic1e a few days ago in The Wall Street Journal on how many of the newly rich and influential young leadership of China are coming to faith in the Lord, and on how persecution in a number of provinces is moving backwards? A vital experience of God in Christ; the spirit of adoption, will eventually win over all else. Let the Presbyterian Church never forget this!

Chapter XIII, paragraph I, ('Of Sanctification') shows how knowing God in Christ transforms the entirety of life on earth: "They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ s death and resurrection, by his word and Spirit dwelling in them;

the dominion of the whole body ofsin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and . strengthened, in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. "

Professor John Murray showed what this means for ethics in his Principles of Conduct, where he calls spiritual union with Christ 'the dynamic of the Christian life.' Christian living is not a mere matter of external imitation (though that has its place, as the Apostle shows us in I Peter 2: 21), but it is a supernatural power within, that operates on the basis of the infinite power of the death and resurrection of Christ imparted to his people. But how is it imparted? Chapter XIV ('Of Saving Faith') speaks to that in paragraph I: "The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts; and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the word: by which also, and by the administration of the sacraments, and prayer, it is increased and strengthened. ' In other words, the main blessing our Reformed churches have to offer to the world is a vital ministry of the ordinmy means of grace ... That is where it happens!

Godly lives in some sense (always imperfect in this life, but nonetheless substantial enough to be real) reflect the beauty of Jesus. That is who the world needs to see more than any other, for he alone can change them, as we are told in II Cor. 3: 18 ... To be like God is to love his moral standards; it is to seek to honor his moral law. That is the emphasis of Chapter XIX ('Of the Law of God'), paragraph VII: "Neither are theforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do sweetly comply with it; the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law requireth to be done."

What a wonderful way of explaining the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31: 33, 34 - "But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more evelY man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

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Chapter XXI ('Of religious worship and the Sabbath Day') relates one of the greatest regular opportunities for renewing our vital union with Christ in his death and resurrection, and 'the stirring up of all implanted graces', thus enabling us to reflect the beauty of Jesus. Notice paragraph VIII: "This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words and thoughts,

a disastrous substitute for knowing Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. The human soul - like nature itself-abhors a vacuum. It is either the real Triune God, or else it is a phony god (who mins your soul in the bargain). Which will it be for your children? Now you and I are ordinary people; we cannot do everything. But this is something we can do. We owe it to the Lord; we owe it to our children; we owe it to God's church, and we owe it to the secularists around us who have lost touch with God. That glorious God

is available to be met through about their worldly employments and recreations; but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy. "

I do not believe for a moment the means of grace given to his church, including the holy Sabbath.

It is sad to see so many American evangelicals (including conservative Reformed ministers and elders) rejecting the Sabbath principle wholesale! Do we

that American society would ever have gone so far in a selfish and

immoralist direction if the millions of Church people had continued to

keep the Sabbath holy.

Especially do we meet this most wonderful God, without whom life is nothing, in his church! Thus, Chapter XXVI ('Of the Communion of the Saints') makes this clear in paragraph I: "All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head, by his Spirit and by faith, have fellowship with him in

not know that honoring one day out of seven is a major way of restoring some sense of transcendence in our secularist society? I do not believe for a moment that American society would ever have gone so far in a selfish and immoralist direction if the millions of Church people

Keeping the day holy is a quiet way of proclaiming (as surely as with a

silver trumpet of redemption): pod exists; He matters to our family above all else; earth is not all there is; heaven is real and even of more

pressing importance than

his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection and glory; and being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other s gifts and graces, and are obliged to the this passing world.

had continued to keep the Sabbath holy. Keeping the day holy is a quiet way of proclaiming (as surely as with a silver tmmpet of redemption): God exists; He matters to our family above all else; earth is not all there is; heaven is real and even of more pressing importance than this passing world. On this day (a memorial of Christ's resurrection on the first day of the week), it is our delight as church people to come together with the expectation of meeting the risen Jesus; of being like the Apostle John, 'in the Spirit on the Lord's day'! What a practical difference a renewed Sabbath observance could make in this 21" century, if we will do it!

Let me say this to ministers and elders above all (and I am one of you): if you do not joyfully keep the Sabbath holy, your own children are likely to lose the vital sense of the reality of God's transcendence over all; they may well decline into soulless materialism; or - as is more likely in today's atmosphere - after they eventually jettison the emptiness of material success, they may get into some kind of detrimental spirituality that serves as

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performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man. "

This is also the emphasis of Chapter XXIX ('Of the Lord's Supper'). In paragraph VII we read: "Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all the benefits ofhis death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are, to their outward senses. "

Philip Doddridge's noble hymn: 'My God, and is thy table spread' has one verse that is a prayer. I regularly pray it when I go to administer the Lord's Supper, as I stand behind the table:

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"0 let thy table honoured be, And fumished well with joyful guests; And may each soul salvation see, That here its sacred pledges tastes."

Sometimes at the Lord's table, in my mind I can go back to early childhood in First Presbyterian Church of Lumberton, North Carolina, sitting on the pew beside my parents at communion. I can see my mother again, quietly weeping as the elements of the Lord's Supper were distributed to us needy sinners. And then I know that this is where I want to be until we are all together once more above, seated at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. With the good old Puritan, John Bunyan, let me frequently visit this 'palace beautiful' -'until the day break and the shadows flee away.'

In summalY, the Westminster Standards do not offer our transcendence-starved populace a vague, irrational or immoral sort of self-centered mysticism as the way to God. It is not a wordless self-absorption, but a clarion call to step out by faith on the promises of the Word of God written. These grand old standards call us to something infinitely more beautiful than all the fancy counterfeits of Satan: they call us to a vital knowledge of God in Christ; to a loving and outward-looking, active piety; without which all of the church's program is nothing more than 'sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. ' In a word, the Westminster tradition at its best believes that the basic task of the church is always to make available to all the world the divinely-ordained means of grace. For in these humble means, the Lord of glory has a way of shining f01ih streams of his glory, and making everything different. This is precisely the reason why a small church does not have to be a dead church. Most of our PCA churches are small. But they don't have to be dead. I ought to know. I generally preach in a little countlY church which on a big Sunday has 25 people present! The risen Lord so regularly meets us in that old wooden building under the shady oaks through the means of grace, that I can hardly wait from one Sunday to the next to be back, for HE is there! What else do you need? What else does the world need? When we have him, we have it all. That is the message of Holy Scripture and of this Confession. May it be the song of your own heart and that of the church you serve. Then your life and efforts will never have been in vain, for He shall be glorified!

(This lecture is available in audio format from the PCA)

(Endnotes)

a Dr. Douglas Kelly is the J. Richard Jordan Professor of Systematic Theology at RTS/Charlotte. He is a scholar with a pastor's heart, exemplified by volumes such as If God Already Knows, Why Pray?, Preachers with Power: Four Stalwarts of the South, and most recently, Creation and Change: Genesis 1.1 - 2.4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms. His most recent book is Carolina Scots: An Historical and Genealogical Study of Over 100 Years of Emigration. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, he preaches at churches and conferences frequently. Degrees: University of North Carolina, BA, University of Lyon, Diplome, Union Theological Seminary, B.D., University of Edinburgh, Ph.D.

b Ibid., 140-142

c See F. C. Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy, 281

d Ibid., 282

e T. F. Torrance, The Hermeneutics of John Calvin, 73-79.

f R. S. Wallace, Calvin, Geneva and the Reformation, 191.

g D. Tamburello, Union With Christ ... (1994), 110.

h John Coffey, Politics Religion and the British Revolution: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge University Press, 1997),94.

M. Haykin in Robert W. Oliver, John Owen: the Man and his Theology (2002), 140,142.

j Mark Dever, The Affectionate Theology of Richard Sibbes (Cambridge), 143-146.

k Andrew Bonar, Letters of Samuel Rutherford With a Sketch of his Life (1891), 173.

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