Running the Race set before Us

Been at the Oak Hill Summer School of Theology today - a fancy title for what was simply a set of four lectures by Prof. Thomas Schreiner from the US, on Perseverance and Assurance.

When he started the first lecture with a lengthy quote from Herman Bavinck's four volume Reformed Dogmatics (only just translated from the Dutch original), I thought we might be in for a long day. But having heard mp3s by him, I should have had more faith (!) that he would be both interesting and not merely academic but applied too. And of course he was both.

He had some interesting things to say, especially on the warning passages in Hebrews. I think I will most clearly remember his example of the warning label on poisonous liquids. He made the point that the warnings on bottles 'do not drink this or you will die' don't cause me to suddenly start worrying about whether I am going to die, because I don't want to drink the poison. In a similar way, the warning passages in Scripture aren't there to cause worry and introspection as to whether I am failing them. They give me even more reason for not wanting to do (and therefore not doing) the things I don't want to do. Or something like that...

Good stuff too about the necessity of works as the evidence of faith for justification without their needing to be a basis for justification - including a sustained bit on his view of the identities of the groups in Romans 2. And he let slip that he is writing a commentary on Galatians - I'll be waiting...