The education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. To it, all politics, all war, all literature, all money-making ought to be subordinated. And, every parent, especially, ought to feel, every hour of the day that, next to making his own calling and election sure, this is the end for which he is kept alive by God – this is his task on earth. – Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898), American Reformed theologian, churchman, and author.
Category Archives: Robert Lewis Dabney
Justification and Pardon
No intelligent believer, then, speaks of being pardoned by Christ’s passive obedience and justified by Christ’s active obedience. Pardon is a part of justification. The whole, complete, inseparable change, from condemnation to sonship, is made by the imputed merit of a whole imputed righteousness, which righteousness includes all Christ’s acts in His state of humiliation, by which He fulfilled the law, penal and preceptive.
From: “Theology of the Plymouth Brethren” by Robert Lewis Dabney, in Discussions: Evangelical and Theological by Robert Lewis Dabney; reprint (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), p. 189. This entire volume was originally published in 1891. Dabney’s article was originally published in The Southern Presbyterian Review (January, 1872).
Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) was a major conservative Reformed theologian and author.
Calvinism
We Presbyterians care very little about the name “Calvinism.” We are not ashamed of it, but we are not bound to it. Some opponents seem to harbor the ridiculous notion that this set of doctrines was the new invention of the Frenchman, John Calvin. They would represent us as, in this thing, followers of him instead of followers of the Bible. This is a stupid historical error. John Calvin no more invented these doctrines than he invented this world, which God had created six thousand years before. We believe that he was a very gifted, learned and, in the main, godly man who still had his faults. He found substantially this system of doctrines just where we find them, in the faithful study of the Bible, where we see them taught by all the prophets, apostles, and the Messiah Himself, from Genesis to Revelation.
From: The Five Points of Calvinism by Robert Lewis Dabney; reprint (Birmingham: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2007), pp. 6-7. Originally published: (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1895).
Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) was the great Southern theologian, educator, and author.
On Faith
Dabney week (6)
The special object of saving faith is Christ the Redeemer and the promises of grace in Him. By this, we do not mean that any true believer will willfully and knowingly reject any of the other propositions of God’s Word. For the same habit of faith or disposition of holy assent and obedience to God’s authority which causes the embracing of gospel propositions will cause the embracing of all others as fast as their evidence becomes known. But we mean that, in justifying faith, Christ and His grace are the objects immediately before the believer’s mind and that, if he has a saving knowledge of this but is ignorant of all the rest of the gospel, he may still be saved by believing this. The evidences are that the gospel is so often spoken of as the object of faith (but this is about Christ), e. g. Mark 16:15-16; Ephesians 1:13; Mark 1:15; Romans 1:16-17, etc. That believing on Christ is so often mentioned as the sole condition, and that to men who must probably have been ignorant of many heads of divinity, e. g. Acts 16:31; John 3:18; 6:40; Romans 10:9, etc.
The same thing may be argued from the experiences of Bible saints who represent themselves as fixing their eyes specially on Christ (1 Timothy 1:15, etc.), and from the two sacraments of faith, which point immediately to Jesus Christ. Still, this special faith is, in its habitus, a principle of hearty consent to all God’s holy truth as fast as it is apprehended as His. Faith embraces Christ substantially in all His offices. This must be urged as of prime practical importance. Dr. [John] Owen has, in one place, very incautiously said that saving faith, in its first movement, embraces Christ only in His priestly, or propitiatory, work. This teaching is far too common, at least by implication, in our pulpits. Its result is “temporary” faith which embraces Christ for impunity only instead of deliverance from sin. Our Catechism defines faith as embracing Christ “as He is offered to us in the gospel.” Our Confession (14.2) says: “the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.” How Christ is offered to us in the gospel may be seen in Matthew 1:21; 1 Corinthians 1:30; Ephesians 5:25-27; Titus 2:14.
The tendency of human selfishness is ever to degrade Christ’s sacrifice into a mere expedient for bestowing impunity. The pastor can never be too explicit in teaching that this is a travesty of the gospel, and that no one rises above the faith of the stony-grounded hearer until he desires and embraces Christ as a deliverer from depravity and sin, as well as Hell.
Robert Lewis Dabney, Systematic Theology, p. 601.
I have divided what was one paragraph in the original into three, having mercy on the reader’s eyesight.
Mediator of the Covenant of Grace
Dabney week (5)
No mediator was necessary in the Covenant of Works between God and angels or God and Adam because, in unfallen creatures, there was nothing to bar direct intercourse between them and God. Hence, the Scripture presents no evidence of Christ’s performing any mediatorial function for them. On the contrary, the Bible implies, always, that Christ’s offices were undertaken because men were sinners (Matthew 1:21; Isaiah 53; John 3:16). But, man being fallen, the necessity of Christ’s mediation appears from all the moral attributes of God’s nature: His truth (pledged to punish sin), His justice (righteously and necessarily bound to requite it), His goodness (concerned in the wholesome order of His kingdom), and His holiness (intrinsically repellent of sinners). So, also, man’s enmity, evil conscience, and guilty fear, awakened by sin, call, though not so necessarily, for a mediator.
It has been objected that this argument represents God’s will as under a constraint; for, else, what hindered His saving man by His mere will? And that it dishonors His wisdom by making Him go a roundabout way to His end, subjecting His Son to many humiliations and pangs. The answer is: the necessity was a moral one, proceeding out of God’s own voluntary perfections. Note: To sustain our argument, we must assert that God’s mere will is not the sole origin of moral distinctions. See Lecture 10 on that point.
Robert Lewis Dabney, Systematic Theology, 464-465.
Personal Existence After Death
Dabney week (4)
It may be well to note that the immortality of the Bible is that of the whole man, body and soul; and, herein, God’s Word transcends entirely all the guesses of natural reason. And this future existence implies the continuance of our consciousness, memory, mental and personal identity; of the same soul in the same body (after the resurrection). There must be, also, the essential and characteristic exercises of our reasonable and moral nature, with an unbroken continuity. For, if the being who is to live and be affected with weal or woe by my conduct here is not the I who now act, and hope, and fear, that future existence is of small moment to me.
Robert Lewis Dabney, Systematic Theology, p. 822.
The Consequences of Repentance
Dabney week (3)
The Scriptures command us to “bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” These fruits will, in general, include all holy living, for repentance is a “turning unto God from sin, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience.” But there are certain acts which are essentially dictated by repentance and which proceed immediately from the attitude of penitence.
1. Sincere penitence must lead to confession. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.” See Proverbs 28:13. The highest form of this duty is the confession of all our sins to God in secret prayer. True repentance will, always, thus utter itself to Him. Then, if our sins have scandalized the Church, we must also make public confession of the particular sins which have produced this result. Again, if our sin is immediately aimed at our fellow man, and known to him, repentance must lead to confession to him.
2. The next consequence of repentance will be to prompt us to make reparation of our sin, wherever it is practicable. He who truly repents wishes his sin undone. But, if he truly wishes it undone, he will, of course, undo it, if in his power.
3. The next fruit of repentance must be holy watchfulness against its recurrence. This is too obvious to need proof. See 2 Corinthians 7:11 as admirably expounded by Calvin (Institutes 3.3.15).
The worthless distinction of Rome between attrition and contrition, and the assigning of a religious value to the former, are sufficiently refuted by what precedes. Nor does the duty of auricular confession, so-called, find any Scriptural support plausible enough to demand discussion. As to the ascetical exercises of penitence, they are the inventions of fanaticism and spiritual pride. The mortification which Scripture enjoins is that of the sins, and not of the unreasoning members.
Robert Lewis Dabney, Systematic Theology, pp. 659-660.
Images
Dabney week (2)
To worship the true God by an image is, then, the very thing forbidden because such representation is necessarily false. For God, being a spiritual, immense, and invisible being, to represent Him as a limited material form, is a falsehood. To clothe Him with the form of any of His creatures, angelic, human, or animal, is the most heinous insult to His majesty. God is a Spirit, cognizable by no sense. To represent Him by a material, visible, and palpable image or picture is a false representation. He is omnipresent. To draw or carve Him as bounded by an outline and contained in a local form belies this attribute. He is self-existent and has no beginning. To represent Him by what His puny creature made and what, yesterday, was not belies His self-existence and eternity. He delares Himself utterly unlike all creatures and incomprehensible by them. To liken Him to any of them is both a misrepresentation and [an] insult. Hence, a material image of the Godhead, or of any Person thereof, is an utter falsehood. Papists used to be fond of saying, “Images are the books of the unlearned.” We reply: they are books, then, which teach lies only. The crowning argument against them is that the Scriptures expressly forbid them; and, equally plainly, base their prohibition on the fact that no image can correctly represent God (Deuteronomy 4:15-16; Isaiah 40:12-18; Acts 17:29). “Take ye, therefore, good heed unto yourselves (for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire) lest you corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image,” etc.
Robert Lewis Dabney, Systematic Theology, pp. 363-364.
Defining Theology
Dabney week (1)
It is justly said: Every science should begin by defining its terms, in order to shun verbal fallacies. The word Theology (theou logos), has undergone peculiar mutations in the history of science. The Greeks often used it for their theories of theogony and cosmogony. Aristotle uses it in a more general form, as equivalent to all metaphysics; dividing theoretical philosophy into physical, mathematical, and theological. Many of the early Christian fathers used it in the restricted sense of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity: (SCIL. Iowanneis ho theologos). But now it has come to be used commonly, to describe the whole science of God’s being and nature, and relations to the creature. The name is appropriate: “Science of God.” Th. Acquinas: “Theologia a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit,” God its author, its subject, its end.
The distribution of Theology into didactic, polemic, and practical, is sufficiently known. Now, all didactic inculcation of truth is indirect refutation of the opposite error. Polemic Theology has been defined as direct refutation of error. The advantage of this has been supposed to be, that the way for easiest and most thorough refutation is to systematize the error, with reference to its first principle, or proton pseudos. But the attempt to form a science of polemics, different from Didactic Theology fails; because error never has true method. Confusion is its characteristic. The system of discussion, formed on its false method, cannot be scientific. Hence, separate treatises on polemics have usually slidden into the methods of didactics; or they have been confused. Again: Indirect refutation is more effectual than direct. There is therefore, in this course, no separate polemic; but what is said against errors is divided between the historical and didactic.
Theology is divided into natural and revealed, according to the sources of our knowledge of it; from natural reason; from revelation. What is science? Knowledge demonstrated and methodized. That there is a science of Natural Theology, of at least some certain and connected propositions, although limited, and insufficient for salvation at best, is well argued from Scripture, e. g. Psalm 19:1-7. Acts 14:15; or 17:23. Romans 1:19; 2:14, etc.; and from the fact that nearly all heathens have religious ideas and rites of worship. Not that religious ideas are innate: but the capacity to establish some such ideas, from natural data, is innate. Consider further: Is not this implied in man’s capacity to receive a revealed theology? Does revelation demonstrate God’s existence; or assume it? Does it rest the first truths on pure dogmatism, or on evidence which man apprehends? The latter; and then man is assumed to have some natural capacity for such apprehension. But if nature reflects any light concerning God (as Scripture asserts), then man is capable of deriving some theology from nature.
From: Syllabus and Notes of the Course of Systematic and Polemic Theology Taught in Union Theological Seminary, Virginia, Second Edition, by R. L. Dabney (St. Louis: Presbyterian Publishing Company of St. Louis, 1878), pp. 5-6. First edition: 1871. Republished: (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1985). Hereinafter referred to as “Dabney, Systematic Theology.
Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) was a Reformed and Presbyterian theologian, churchman, educator, and author. He taught at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia (when it was a conservative institution) for many years and, in his later years, was instrumental in the founding of the Austin School of Theology at the University of Texas.
