On Arminianism

Arminianism, because it obscures the glory which belongs solely to the grace of God, comes under apostolic condemnation and is, therefore, an error sufficiently serious for there to be no room for compromising.  We may have fellowship with brethren who are under the influence of these errors but, in the preaching and teaching of the church, there can be no wavering or indistinctness on such an issue.

From: The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain H. Murray; 2nd edition (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1973 [1966]), p. 81.

 

John Murray’s Introduction to Princeton Seminary

On September 30, 1924, Princeton Seminary opened its one hundred and thirteenth session.  The first events, as announced in the Seminary Bulletin, were “the matriculation of new students in the parlor of Hodge Hall and the drawing for the choice of rooms by entering students at three o’clock in Stuart Hall.”  The student accomodation – which generally consisted of two rooms, made up of a bedroom and a study – was divided between the original Alexander Hall, built of a tan-colored stone to the height of four floors, and the two more recent halls, Stuart and Brown.  In all three, the amenities had recently been improved.  The Bulletin reported that, during the summer, “bathrooms have been installed on the third floor of each of the three dormitories.”  Probably, John Murray was little concerned about the outcome of the ballot for rooms on that last day of September.  His historic surroundings were full of new interests.  We may be sure that he paid an early visit to the Seminary library, with its 118,566 volumes, including the recently added 1,241 books which had been the property of the late Benjamin B. Warfield.  He would also have explored the nearby University, with its original Nassau Hall building still standing from the 1750s and the old graveyard beside Mercer Street, which contains the dust of Princeton’s past leaders.  The Scots names on not a few of the tombstones in that quiet spot were reminders of the many who had made the same journey before him.

The student body, this year, was 225 strong and Murray saw them gathered, for the first time, as the new session “formally opened” with a service in Miller Chapel on the morning of October 1.  The young congregation, which included 70 juniors, united to sing: “Faith of our fathers, holy faith/We will be true to thee till death,” and listened to Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer, of Cairo, speak on “The Determining Factor in the Fight for Character.”

From: The Life of John Murray by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), pp. 17-18.

John Murray (1898-1975) was Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1937-1966).  As an author, two of his most important publications are Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics (1957) and Commentary on the Book of Romans, 2 volumes (1959-1965).

 

Using Fiction to Undermine Christianity

A most potent attack on Christianity in modern times has been little recognized.  Most of the writers to whom I will refer used fiction to present something they believed to be better than the Christian life.  Their presentations were to become the accepted wisdom of succeeding generations, and they have powerfully affected society down to the present day.  Yet, it can be shown that their motivation did not spring from the finding of something better; it came, rather, from a dislike of the evangelical truth which most of them knew in their childhoods.  I shall argue that their claim to have arrived at a better knowledge, when tested by the evidence of their lives (now fully documented by many biographers), will be found to be fraudulent.  The truth is that it is unbelief, rather than Christianity, that depends upon the irrational for its survival.

From: The Undercover Revolution: How Fiction Changed Britain by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), pp. 6-7.

 

On the Church

The visible church is glorious to the extent to which she corresponds with the invisible.  For her spiritual glory does not lie in the possession of anything external – not buildings, nor numbers, nor place, nor succession of bishops.  Wherever such external things are accounted highly, spiritual life has gone.  As John Owen says, where men are unable “to discern the glory of spiritual things and, through their carnal, unmortified affection, do cleave unto and have the highest esteem for worldly grandeur, it is no wonder if they suppose the beauty and glory of the church to consist in them.”

A church which supposes she can impress the world is no church at all, for she is denying a first principle of the gospel.  Just as “no one can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3), so no one can see the glory of the church until his eyes have been opened to spiritual things; which is what Luther meant when he wrote: “It is not written: ‘I see a holy church,’ but ‘I believe,” for it does not have its own righteousness but Christ’s, who is its head.”

From: Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000 by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), pp. 275-276.

 

Jonathan Edwards – Part 7

From Princeton, Edwards’ physician wrote to Sarah Edwards [Jonathan's wife] on the same day, March 22, 1758: “This afternoon, between two and three o’clock, it pleased God to let him sleep in that dear Lord Jesus, whose kingdom and interest he has been faithfully and painfully [that is, carefully] serving all his life.  And never did any mortal man more fully and clearly evidence the sincerity of all his professions, by one continued, universal, calm, cheerful resignation and patient submission to the divine will, through each stage of his disease, than he…Death has certainly lost its sting, as to him.”…

When the news reached Stockbridge, Sarah Edwards was suffering so much from rheumatism in her neck that she could scarcely hold a pen, but brief lines written to Esther [the Edwards' daughter] on April 3 epitomize the spirit in which she had sought to live with her husband for more than thirty years: “What shall I say?  A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud.  O, that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths!  The Lord has done it.  He has made me adore His goodness, that we had him so long.  But, my God lives; and He has my heart.  O, what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us!  We are all given to God; and there I am, and love to be.”

From: Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), pp. 441-442.

 

Jonathan Edwards – Part 6

In the mid – and later – 1740s, difficulties were only a part of Edwards’ experience.  Simultaneously, he had two of the greatest encouragements of his ministry, both of which were to lead to the writing of major books.

The first of these encouragements began in the form of correspondence from across the Atlantic.  While Edwards’ Faithful Narrative had been reprinted in Scotland in its first year of publication (1737), it was only in 1742 that his reputation as a theologian was established in that country.  In the latter year, John McLaurin of Glasgow and James Robe of Kilsyth, two of the leading evangelical preachers in the Church of Scotland, wrote to him and received replies.  In 1743, Edwards extended the correspondence to William McCulloch of Cambuslang.  Thomas Gillespie of Carnock became a correspondent in 1746 and, most significantly of all, John Erskine, in 1747.  Erskine, belonging to a family of Scottish nobility, was destined for the legal profession when he was converted during his student days in Edinburgh.  In opposition to family opinion, he entered the ministry at Kirkintilloch in 1744, moving to Culross in 1753 and, finally, to Edinburgh in 1758.  In the Scottish capital, he was to exercise great influence till his death in 1803.  John Erskine was some twenty-six years of age when he first wrote to Edwards.  The correspondence was not only to be lifelong but, continuing with one of Edwards’ sons, and then a grandson, it extended through a period of fifty-six years.  Erskine was also to become the first editor of Edwards’ books in Britain and, certainly, the most dedicated overseas promoter of his writings.  It was through Erskine’s influence that William Carey carried an Edwards volume with him to India in 1792, for he was to be a key link between Edwards and the missionary movement, which commenced in Britain before the end of the eighteenth century.

From: Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), pp. 291-292.

 

Jonathan Edwards – Part 5

The first three biographers of Edwards were all men who, like their subject, had pastoral experience in the Christian ministry.  Only the first, Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), whose Life and Character of the Late Reverend Jonathan Edwards was published in 1765, knew Edwards personally and could write as an eyewitness.  While an essential sourcebook, it is much too short to be a definitive Life.  The next biography, while far the most important to be published to date, tends to the opposite extreme.  Sereno Edwards Dwight (1786-1850), great-grandson of Edwards, gave “many years” to the preparation of his Life of President Edwards (1829).  All subsequent biographers are dependent upon it, and it is still in print, but the ponderous size of Dwight’s Life, with many long unabridged letters and documents, prevents it from ever being a popular introduction to Edwards.

Perhaps it was for this reason that Jared Sparks asked Samuel Miller of Princeton to produce a new Life of Jonathan Edwards in 1839.  Miller’s work, long out of print, is largely an abridgement of Dwight, with some useful observations by Miller himself.

From: Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), p. xxvii.

 

Jonathan Edwards – Part 2

In the first twelve months of his Christian life, however, the emphasis begins to change.  He still thought and studied, pen in hand, as his father had early trained him, but a new and very different series of manuscripts were now commenced.  In 1722, he is writing his first sermons, his “Resolutions,” and his theological “Miscellanies,” the last-named consisting of papers and folders to which he was to be constantly adding throughout his life.  His manuscripts on scientific themes (the themes upon which he was tempted to make a name for himself in Europe) became left behind in Connecticut when he went to New York – and only temporarily resumed later – while his biblical writings became, for the first time, the all-absorbing interest of his life.

Nothing shows more clearly the new prevailing bent of Edwards’ mind and heart than his seventy “Resolutions.”  Of these, the first twenty-one were all written at one sitting (probably while was still at New Haven in 1722); others followed, and a total of thirty-four was reached before December 18, 1722.  Thereafter, further additions were made until the last resolutions, the seventieth, was written on August 17, 1723, two months before his twentieth birthday.

From: Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), p. 42.

 

Jonathan Edwards – Part 1

No contemporary accounts exist of the first impression which Edwards made at Northampton.  He was quieter than his grandfather, both in the pulpit and elsewhere.  If he read his sermons, as he seems to have done at this date, there were no complaints.  The people noticed that, unlike many ministers, he did not intend to be a part-time farmer, yet, even so, he seemed to have no time on his hands.  From the outset, it was not his custom to pull up his horse and pass the time of day with his many parishioners.  The world of crops and cattle was, clearly, not his principal interest.  He lived somewhat apart and, socially, he was clearly related to the men who wore white shirts rather than the common chequered ones.  Yet, judging by Timothy Edwards’ letter of September, 1729 already quoted, the people were well-pleased three years after Edwards’ settlement.  Sarah’s brother, Benjamin, was often in Northampton at that time, and it was he who supplied the news to the family at East Windsor that the people of Northampton “take great content in his ministry.”

From: Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), p. 95.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is still regarded as North America’s first important (and, possibly, stilll most important) preacher and theologian.

Iain H. Murray (born in 1931) is an ordained minister who served briefly under D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel.  He has long been associated with The Banner of Truth Trust and has been a prolific author for it.  He is now retired.

 

The Early Ministry of Arthur W. Pink

But, difficulties of a more serious nature now confronted the Pinks.  It is clear that, after 1910, there was a great deal more than the Scofield Reference Bible which occupied the twelve hours he would, often, give daily to study.  Books of a different kind had crossed his path, with teaching which could, in no sense, be easily accommodated within the existing structure of his thought.  As we have already said, Pink had no doctrinal reservations about Moody Bible Institute when he went there in 1910.  With thousands of others, he assumed “that the faith of Fundamentalism simply reflected traditional Protestantism,” and to be brought to question that idea was, for him, almost as difficult as doubting the law of gravity.  Yet, doubt irresistibly had set in and the instrumental cause appears to have been the writings of leaders of historic Christianity in former centuries.

One of the first of these “new” authors to unsettle him was Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).  Writing to a friend in October, 1936, he says: “Jonathan Edwards’ writings are very searching and they were much blest to me almost twenty-five years ago.  His Religious Affections is one of his best.”  Other authors of the same school, both before and after Edwards, further drew Pink’s attention, including Augustine, Calvin, Ralph Erskine, Andrew Fuller, and Robert Haldane; and, the more he read, and went back afresh to his Bible, the more convinced he became that it was not only liberalism which was endangering the Christian faith.  Fundamentalism itself, preoccupied with man-centered programs for “soul-winning,” was also adrift.  The implications of his “discovery” were nothing short of staggering.  He had never accepted the customary American practices of “altar-calls” and appeals for immediate public decisions as a part of evangelistic preaching, but now he began to understand the doctrinal error which lay behind the innovation which Finney and Moody had made so popular.

From: Arthur W. Pink: His Life and Thought by Iain H. Murray (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1981), pp. 17-18.