Michael Horton on the Sacraments

b-host-wi.jpg I first came across Professor Horton’s classic work: Putting Amazing back into Grace several years ago in Pennsylvania while attempting to come to some conclusion on the debated topic of Predestination. Horton’s comments and humor were the perfect antidote to my synergistic background. It has been almost 6 years since then and I have now read articles and a few books by Dr. Horton on a host of issues. My growth into the Reformed tradition has led me to appreciate much of Horton on some issues (critique of modern evangelicalism) and to find some serious disagreement with his ideas on culture and kingdom. However, I have yet to find a troublesome comment on Horton’s view of the Lord’s Supper. I offer you some fascinating quotes from Horton on his contribution to the book: Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy:

“Too often, we see especially in modern American evangelicalism an individualistic and, frankly, gnostic piety that abstracts the soul from the body, the person from the church, and the church from the world. Despite our official theology (I speak here again as a Reformed Christian), in practice we have often downplayed ecclesiology (including the sacraments) in the interest of a one-sidedly inward, subjective piety that not only ignores the objectivity of Christ and his saving work but divorces the Spirit from the Father and the Son. The Reformers, I believe, would have found most of this entirely foreign or would have identified it with the ‘enthusiasts’ against whom they wrote so many treatises” (p. 166).

“As for the charge that in Reformation theology ‘Grace comes from God alone, not via anything earthly or man-made,’ the author [Vladimir Berzonsky] is grossly misinformed. Martin Luther and John Calvin spilled a great deal of ink against this spiritualist error of the radical Anabaptists. For the Reformers, God uses ordinary earthly means to deliver his grace. . . . God’s use of earthly elements as a means of grace is a major emphasis of the Reformers” (p. 186).

“Denial of the sacraments as efficacious ‘vehicles of grace’ is condemned by every Lutheran and Reformed confession. It may be that the author is judging magisterial Protestantism and subsequent evangelicalism by his own experience with various contemporary evangelical groups, especially Baptists . . . It is true, of course, that the Reformers did not regard the sacraments as occasions of synergistic cooperation leading to justification. It is precisely because they are God’s acts that they are means of grace and not means of human moral endeavor” (p. 188).

“While rejecting any univocal identification of the sign and the thing signified in the earthly elements, Calvin and the Reformed confessions developed a highly eschatological and pneumatological account of the union of sign and reality. . . . Calvin openly rejects Zwingli’s view, which separates the sign from the reality. . . . Regardless of whether one agrees, Calvin and his successors argued their case from the logic of Chalcedon and the reality of the distinct integrity and full hypostatic union of the two natures. . . . Calvin’s view, which became that of the Reformed and Presbyterian confessions, was what many have called ‘instrumentalism.’ In other words, the Reformed hold that the sacraments are not merely occasions for subjective faith and piety to act but were principally means of grace. The Westminster Larger Catechism calls them ‘effectual means of salvation’ (Q. 161)” (pp. 262, 263, 264).

Quote, R.J. Rushdoony.

Five Point Calvinism represents an important development of the implications of God’s sovereignty and is in this respect in the mainstream of theological development. However, contemporary Five Point Calvinism has reduced the faith too often to these abstractions and lost all the power and vitality of Calvinism on the social scene; it does not speak to the problems of the day. (Rushdoony, Systematic Theology Vol. II, p.669)

David Wells On Modernization

“I have spoken of the emergence of the global cliché culture as the birthmark of Our Time. Until modernity was ushered into our world, cultures were always local. They were, by definition, sets of meanings and morals, beliefs and habits that arose in specific contexts of history and religion, a people’s social organization and place in the world. Thus we have traditionally spoken of Indian culture as being discernibly different from European culture, or African from Hispanic. But today, modernization is producing comparable ways of thinking, wanting, and being in countries that are very different in terms of their histories, religion, and organization. Today, what is modern can be found, and found in about the same way, in both Tokyo and Canberra, New Delhi and New England, Paris and Cape Town. To stretch this far, to span the globe in this way, modernity must necessarily be culturally thin.” [David Wells, God in the Wasteland (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), p. 9.]

Quote, Edwards on God’s Love


God’s love is primarily to Himself, and His infinite delight is in Himself, in the Father and the Son loving and delighting in each other. We often read of the Father loving the Son, and being well pleased in the Son, and of the Son loving the Father. In the infinite love and delight that is between these two persons consists the infinite happiness of God. –Jonathan Edwards
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Quote, Calvin on the Supper


“I say then, that in the mystery of the Supper, by the symbols of bread and wine, Christ, his body and his blood, are truly exhibited to us…”
Book 4, Chapter 17, Section 11

Quote, Suckled by a wolf

Quotation comes from Reformedcatholicism.com

There are religious people about, who, I have no doubt, were born of a woman, but they appear to have been suckled by a wolf . . . Some warlike men of this order have had power to found dynasties of thought; but human kindness and brotherly love consort better with the Kingdom of Christ. We are not to be always going about the world searching out heresies, like terrier dogs sniffing for rats, and to be always so confident of our own infallibility that we erect ecclesiastical stakes at which to roast all who differ from us.

Spoken by Charles Spurgeon in an exhortation to pastors.

Keith Mathison on Why Evangelicals Must Recover sola Scriptura

The Evangelical church has not awakened readily to a fact that many Roman Catholic apologists have been quick to notice. The simple fact of the matter is this: the modern Evangelical doctrine of Scripture-solo Scriptura-is self-contradictory and fundamentally absurd. If applied consistently it is fatal to Christianity. A growing number of Evangelicals are realizing this, and because they have been told that solo Scriptura is the Reformation and Protestant doctrine, they are flocking to Rome and Constantinople in an attempt to maintain a coherent faith.If Evangelical Protestantism is to survive, if it is to regain its calling, it must reject the essentially man-centered doctrine of solo Scriptura. The Evangelical church cannot call Christendom to reform and to a return to apostolic Christianity by rejecting one of the fundamental tenets of apostolic Christianity. Why should we expect or even want those within Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy to reject institutional autonomy in favor of individual autonomy? Solo scriptura cannot result in anything other than doctrinal chaos.Instead of advocating chaos, the Evangelical church must regain an understanding of the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura, which is essentially nothing more than the early Church’s doctrine of Scripture and tradition framed within a different historical context. The Church must affirm that Scripture is the sole, final, and infallible norm of faith and practice. And the Church must affirm that Scripture is to be interpreted in and by the communion of saints within the theological context of the rule of faith. Only by rejecting all forms of autonomy, institutional or individual, can any branch of the Church be in obedience to Jesus Christ the Lord. (Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura [Moscow, ID: Canon, 2001], pp.346-47)

John Newton’s rebuke

“And I am afraid there are Calvinists, who, while they account it a proof of their humility that they are willing in words to debase the creature, and to give all the glory of salvation to the Lord, yet know not what manner of spirit they are of. Whatever it be that makes us trust in ourselves that we are comparatively wise or good, so as to treat those with contempt who do not subscribe to our doctrines, or follow our party, is a proof and fruit of a self-righteous spirit. Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines, as well as upon works; and the man may have a heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with unorthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature and the riches of free grace.”*

Perhaps this rebuke should cause most of us who unashamedly call ourselves “Calvinists” to tremble. We have at times ( and I guilty of it) elevated ourselves so high, that instead of exalting the doctrines of God’s Grace we have made it a stepping stone for the enhancement of our intellect, pride, and even, our self-righteousness.

We lose the beauty and majesty of grace when we reduce it to mere abstract theological jargon used to bring glory to ourselves. Remember Paul says that we are the “weak vessels” that bring a great message, not a great vessel that brings a weak message. The message of Grace is lost when presented by one who shows no grace. Sadly, most of us Calvinists have done just that. We have turned our focus on ourselves, our logic, and our abilities instead of stooping low to reveal the giver of Grace.

It is our highest aim to proclaim a doctrine that so diminishes us, as to make us look insignificant to the rest of humanity. And it is our highest aim to make God look so significant and glorious so as to make him the desire of nations. Let us not turn the purpose of Calvinism on its head by missing the goal.
* The Works of John Newton (quoted on pg. 30 of “Reformed is not Enough” by Douglas Wilson.