Just in Case You Were Feeling Too Smart

Always Reformed is the new book edited by R. Scott Clark and Joel Kim in honor of Robert Godfrey. I started reading the book this week. There are a lot of interesting chapters (e.g., Hart on Machen's Warrior Children, Clark on Aimee Semple McPherson, Horton on Always Reforming, Van Drunen on "Christian Culture," Riddlebarger on the Lord's Supper).

One chapter which is interesting, but also has the effect of making you feel a bit dumb is Richard Muller's chapter, rather breezily entitled, "God as Absolute and Relative, Necessary, Free, and Contingent: The Ad Intra-Ad Extra Movement of Seventeenth-Century Reformed Language about God." This is actually an important topic about God's decree and in what ways God operates according to necessity and contingency. But the prose is not for the uninitiated:

Thus, God is said to be both immense and omnipresent, both infinite and eternal, to have a voluntas arcana or beneplaciti and a voluntas revelata or signi, a voluntas immanens and a voluntas transiens, a scientia necessaria and a scientia voluntaria, and a iustia absoluta et in se and a iustia relata, respectu exercitii. (58)

Indeed.

It's truly the case that I couldn't have said it better myself. I have to confess my Latin is a bit rusty (and there wasn't much to rust). All I can recall for certain are the immortal words passed down through the ages: sepmer ubi sub ubi.

You may want to check out the book. And you'll certainly want to follow the aforementioned advice.