Okay, we come today to Carthus Voss. We've called him the biblical theologian of Princeton. I come from a denomination that was very influential in my becoming a Christian, where I first worshipped as a new believer. and they actually, this group had split off from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the first year of the founding of the OPC. Thirty-six found Machen being kicked out and several others being defrocked and so forth and that's when the OPC was formed and then a year later, actually less than a year later, the Bible Presbyterians split. The Bible Presbyterians had several criticisms of the OPC and several criticisms of Westminster Seminary, and one of them was this, that there was too much Dutch influence at Westminster. And, boy, that's just bogus. We should be glad for the Dutch influence in the roots of our denomination. Men like Voss, others who came after him. Think of, who are some of the other ones that are from a Dutch descent? Van Til, you have Kuyper, you have R.B. Kuyper. Ritter Voss never taught at Westminster. He definitely is one that we would look to as one of our fathers. Gaffin? Does Gaffin have a Dutch background? I thought he did. Well, he wasn't around at the time. No, he wasn't. He was in the 90s. He was in the 90s? Well, I was thinking of his dad. Okay, so this is a vein then of theology that is coming into Princeton at this time. You have Warfield who already had some connections with Bobbink and Kuiper in the Netherlands, but this gentleman brings that forthrightly. In fact, it was through Voss' influence that got Kuiper to come and give the Stone Lectures on Calvinism in 1908, I think it was. and then 10 years later of having Bobby come and deliver his lectures on the philosophy of Revelation, which is a book that's still in print to this day. Both of those, by the way, are in print. So let's do a brief overview of the life of Voss. I need a... Do you have an outline? An extra outline here? Or are they sitting in the back? Let me just grab this back here. Because what I've got is different. Vos was born March the 14th, 1862 in Heerenveen, Friesland, the Netherlands. Apparently Friesland is a separate section. Van Til also came from this area and both of them had fond memories of of this background in their lives. He died August the 13th, 1949 in Grand Rapids. Voss was the eldest child of four to Reverend Jan Hendrik, and I don't know how to pronounce that, Aljay, Aljay, Aljay Buker Voss. But he was of German descent, perhaps there is some question the name Voss seems to have a French root to it and some have thought and suggested that there was some tie in with the French Huguenot background. You can learn this in a preface that William Henry Green wrote to one of the smaller volumes that Voss had written. His father had these German reformed roots then. Remember, in Germany you had the Lutherans, of course, but you also had a segment that were Reformed. German Reformed. The R.C.U.S. comes from a German Reformed background. So, when we think of Reformed, we think of Reformed coming from the Netherlands, or they're coming from Scotland, or England, or Wales, or perhaps the French a French influence, but the Germans also had a reformed church and he was influenced in his upbringing by this. He was part of the movement called the Ausscheidung I used to know what this meant a long time ago, but there was a split in the 1840s in the Dutch church from the state church to the free church, and it had to do with liberalism. So they had already had their fights going on a hundred years before the American Presbyterians had. Vos grew up with several languages then. Remember, the Netherlands are right across the border from Germany. In fact, Dutch and German are very close in their dialect. Somebody has said that Dutch is like German with a cold or something like that. So they're very close. He grew up with those two languages and later added English and French So here's a man who is very linguistically adept, that's going to come out later. He attends three different public schools and then is privately tutored before graduating from the gymnasium in Amsterdam in 1881. For some reason they call their education gymnasium. We tell our kids that we're going to gymnasium today, they'll have a totally different understanding of that. He graduates one month before moving to the United States. I need to say here his dad was a pastor and he pastored six different churches between 1858 and 1881 before moving to Grand Rapids where a longer pastor was found. So on average his dad only stayed in a single church on average four years. And so you can see them moving around a lot. And that's something that kind of comes into play, I think, in Voss's personality and his outlook and so forth. You see him moving around different schools and then he graduates and one month later they immigrate to Grand Rapids, which is like the Mecca of Dutch Reformed theology and churches and so forth in America. His dad is installed in a CRC church, Christian Reformed Church, First CRC, which back then was called Spring Street, a congregation of 1,700 members, and labored for them for 20 years. Some of the influences in his life, in Voss's life, one of the things that impacted him was he had a great love for language and for learning, but he especially had a love for poetry. Poetry figured greatly into his thinking and outlook, and in fact he wrote like six or seven small little volumes of his own poems. So 1881, Voss enters a theological school in Grand Rapids, which would later be called Calvin Theological Seminary. Within a short span of time, a mere two years, he is asked to be an instructional assistant to the only professor at the school at that time. At the ripe age of 20, here he is lecturing in a seminary already. So they're recognizing his gifts and his talents quite quickly. But he scoots off to Princeton. He doesn't stay there and graduate from there. He finishes his seminary education at Princeton. He comes to Princeton and asks if he can skip the first year, because he's already had several years at this other school. And so he comes in as a middler. And then the following year, he is He graduated from that school. He graduates in 1885. After that, like many of the Princeton teachers, he went abroad to study. He first goes to Berlin University for PhD studies that same year. He is studying Assyrian, Akkadian, Arabic, and several other languages that I have listed in there, and overviews of philosophy. So think about this. You see that these are some of the qualities that go into excellent theological teachers. If a person is a teacher at a seminary or in university and is a teacher of theology, they need more than just theology. You need to have solid theology, but you also need to have an ability in the languages. You need to be able to exegete the scriptures which are in Hebrew and Greek. And it's good for you to have a broader base of understanding when it comes to languages as well. You also need a sense of philosophy. of where in the world the church is and the drifts that have happened in the past and in the present. What kind of unhealthy thinking are people holding to in any given time period? And so he's studying philosophy. He's seeing first-hand the liberalism that is just decimating the church in Europe. And the fourth quality is the historical There are some people who just don't have a sense of the historical, and Voss had all of these qualities in his makeup. So, he is there briefly, he doesn't like Berlin University, it's too big. Classes are huge. It's just too busy. And so he decides to transfer. He writes a letter later. I think it was to Bob Inc. or somebody. He says, I wish I had just gone straight to Strasburg. It's smaller. He spends a lot more quiet time in the library. He has more access to his teachers. He's sitting at the feet of some of the premier liberal teachers of that day. And so he does well there, he gets his PhD, but he's also sick. His health is broken down. It takes him considerably longer than anticipated to get through his studies. In spring of 1886, he's contacted by Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper at this time is coming into his own. He's got his free university in Amsterdam, And he needs an Old Testament professor. He comes and knocks on the door of Gerhardus Voss and says, would you please come and teach? And Voss declines. Later, Kuyper would go on to become the prime minister in the Netherlands and his whole gamut of serving the Lord there in Holland. In the fall of 86, that's when he moved to the University of Strasbourg, and it is in the spring of 88 that he is awarded his PhD. His thesis was in Arabic, a very dull piece about two Muslim worldviews in the 15th century doing battle with each other. Higher criticism of these Muslim texts is what he did. He chose that, no doubt, because if he had gotten into the biblical side of things, he probably, like some evangelicals have found in university, they won't pass their thesis because they don't adopt all of the liberal approaches that are mandated within some of these institutions. So, he returned at that time to Grand Rapids to be appointed a a docent, and I'm not sure what that is. I want to say it's some sort of a probationary licensure, sort of equivalent to what we have in Presbyterianism. But then later on he's appointed rector, which is a higher position in 1891, to teach at what would later become Calvin Theological Seminary. The very first year he teaches 23 hours. And for somebody who's just stepping into that role, that's just... Think about even an elementary school teacher who's just starting out after school and all that they would have to do to prepare for each of the various classes. It's very difficult to get all that stuff up and running. He's teaching 23 hours, which is just a crazy amount of instruction. In fact, Kuyper referred to his teaching there, he said that it's a form of academic murder, that this is going to kill him if he stayed there. So, he's teaching, and during that time he writes a five-volume series on reform dogmatics. a total of 1900 pages which are just now being put into print. I don't understand why they have not been put into print earlier than now. He's writing reviews of various Dutch volumes for the Presbyterian Review at that time, which is under Warfield. This is the time now when Briggs is coming on the scene and the great fight within the Presbyterian Church over revising the Confession of Faith. You have the liberals who are criticizing the Princeton viewpoint of Scripture being inerrant and infallible. And here he is teaching in Grand Rapids. It's at this time that he starts coming under fire. He holds to a strange view of election. Tim, you'll be interested in this. He holds to some sort of a joint view of supra and infralapsarianism following in the footsteps, in some ways, of Kuiper. He said that God passed over the reprobate when they were undifferentiated regarding sin. There was no sin yet, there was no iniquity, so it's before the Fall. He passes them over, but then when it comes to choose the elect, the elect already, the decree to allow them to fall into sin comes in between. So you have an elect, the decree to reprobate and then comes the decree to allow the fall, and then comes the decree to choose the elect, to choose the predestined. That's a hokey view. It really is a hokey view. He came under fire for it, and rightly so, but... Dave, you're free to come on up here and show your brother out here. We'll talk about that later. Speaking about hoax abuse. He also got into some hot water over another issue. Again, following Kuyper, the whole issue of presumptive regeneration. Kuyper believed in the presumptive regeneration of the children of the church. We presume them to be regenerate until they show themselves otherwise. And Voss had questions about that. He wasn't sure. He actually asked Warfield and others, what is the reformed view on this matter? What is our attitude towards the young in the church? And so here he's kind of playing with presumptive regeneration. He's got this unique approach to the decree of election And the newspapers in Grand Rapids had some fellow who just sunk his teeth into Voss and was just writing all sorts of nasty things against him. So he's got this huge workload, he's trying to write as much as he can, and he's got all this pressure, and it's at this time that Princeton comes knocking. Here comes William Henry Green, who was his professor, his Old Testament linguistic professor in Princeton, and wants him to come and to teach. And he's like, well, I would really disappoint my parents. His parents lived there. He had a real tie to his folks. He really bounced a lot of things off of them, even as an adult, and wanted their approval in what he was doing. But Princeton was patient and persevering, and eventually Voss took the call to come to the newly created chair of biblical theology in Princeton in the early 1890s, I believe it is. In 1893 is when he began September. You see the inauguration of his chair the following spring, and he gives this famous lecture called The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and a Theological Discipline. So, off he moves to escape this academic murder. that Kuiper called it, and it heads off to the smaller class sizes, easier teaching load, the opportunity to read and to write more in Princeton, as well as a larger field of influence and impact. That was the main thing that William Henry Green was just putting his finger on his chest and saying, you're doing a fine work where you are. But think about it, you're trying to deal with the flood right in that local arena. They used a nice Dutch illustration because they always had the waters and the dikes and so forth. You're there putting your finger in the dike but we have a much greater flood that is taking our whole nation in and Princeton is there at the front with that fight. You're much more needed here then you are there, and that apparently won the day. So, he heads off to Princeton and is dealing with the important topic of biblical theology. Remember, biblical theology already was in place, but it was liberal biblical theology. And when we talk about biblical theology, we'll talk about this in a minute, biblical theology is not saying systematics that are biblical. You have exegetical theology, which looks at the text itself. You can have historical theology and say, you know, what does Calvin or Augustine or Aquinas, what do they believe about something? You have systematic theology that gathers together all of the material in the scripture and systematizes it into a boiled down and more accessible body of truth for us. But biblical theology is kind of in between exegetical theology and systematic theology. It follows the flow of redemptive history. It recognizes where we are when we're studying the book of Leviticus, or when we're studying the book of Isaiah, or when we're studying the Gospel of Mark, or when we're studying the book of Revelation. These things are in the flow, and how God has placed and put that together historically, and being sensitive to not just the fact that the Bible is a historical book, but that flow of history in which God has unfolded his plan of redemption to mankind, and particularly to his church. But what was happening is the liberals were taking this and they were chopping the Bible to pieces and calling that biblical theology. And so there had to be an answer, Princeton felt, to that attack. And Dr. Voss was the right choice for that service. He saw the battle for inerrancy tied into this very discipline. And so he comes, he is ordained in the PCUSA, Presbytery of New Brunswick, April the 24th, 1894. During that same year, during the summer, during the break from school, he returns to Michigan to visit his parents that summer. And there he takes a wife, Catherine Frances Smith. whom he had known when he was there teaching at Grand Rapids. She was an elementary teacher at first and then took a job at a public library as a librarian. And here is Dr. Voss who is kind of a recluse. He spends a lot of time in the library and here is this girl that catches his fancy and they are married that summer. She was 29 when they wed, he was 32. She bore the family four children, two boys, one girl, and then another son at last, the last child was a son, Gerhardus Voss Jr., who went by the name Jerry. This is the author, Catherine Voss, is the author of what? Children's Story Bible. Very good. She wrote that largely in the 1920s when she was here in California because she was sick. Apparently her, along with her siblings, were afflicted with TB. And so for her health, for her respiratory system and so forth, she came and stayed for a while in Redlands. Stayed at a place, she called it the Orange Grove. And that's where she wrote most of her children's story Bible. Her story Bible, far more in print and sold than all of Voss's books combined. Maybe we should have a lecture on her. But yeah, this is a wildly popular volume. So Voss continues in his service at at the school as they head back to Princeton. I've listed for you, you know, most of his work was not, you know, he had no great debates or any pizazz, really. He's just a really intelligent, godly man. You know, John Murray and Van Til, both of them, just looked at Voss as probably the most influential teacher in their lives. They recognize the depth and soundness. And so Voss is writing. He's doing some smaller works. He does some critiques of books and so forth. But not to the volume that Warfield was doing. I think we have a total of 100 book reviews from Voss. And at one point in his life, when he hits about the age of, I think, in his mid-50s, 57 or so, he just stops. He doesn't do anymore. a total of maybe a hundred, where Warfield did over a thousand book reviews. But here are his major works, and I have a copy of, I think, most of these. He has The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church. That's this small volume here. This looks like it was printed in that year. This is an old copyright, 1903. Original, first edition. Remember what was going on with the Kingdom of God then? You had Albert Schweitzer, the quest for the historical Jesus. You had the social gospel that says that we're bringing the Kingdom in by what we're doing. There was an attack upon the Bible saying that Jesus thought that his return would take place within that generation and so forth. So, those are some of the things, the liberal views of the Kingdom that he addresses here. This is an outstanding book, mostly because of his understanding that the idea of the Kingdom is not very easily defined. You look at how the Bible uses the term the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, and it has a lot of facets to it. And for instance, he talks about understanding the kingdom, for instance, in these three different ways as number one, as the supremacy of God in the sphere of saving power. In other words, you and I are in the kingdom by the grace of God. God's saving us is a quality that is a kingdom quality. He goes on and talks about the kingdom in the sphere of righteousness. The kingdom comes and would make people holy. It's not just saving us by grace, but making us godly. Both of those things are involved in the kingdom of God. And then likewise, the kingdom as a state of blessedness. Thy kingdom come. There's a present and a future quality to the kingdom. There were dispensationalists who said that the kingdom is entirely future. But there are many passages that speak about the kingdom of God now, in the present. So, excellent book on the topic of the kingdom. There's a collection of his sermons. You know, again, this is probably Voss's weakness, is his preaching. He rarely preached in churches. In fact, all of these are lectures taken from his chapel services, sermons that he gave at Princeton Seminary. And so being an orator was not his strongest suit, and yet writing was. And so there are some wonderful, rich material in this. It's not the best model for preaching. I think I agree with what, who's the professor of homiletics at Greenville? Carrick, and I think he is one of the finest homileticians, and he's the one who made that critique, that these are not what you really want to have in regular pulpit as regular pulpit fodder. But the content is outstanding. It's rich. It's just top shelf. And then, in 1926, he wrote the volume, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus, dealing with Christ's own messianic consciousness. When did Jesus, in his humanity, know that he was the Savior? You ever thought about that question? Roman Catholics have a very strange view of that. They believe that his humanity was greatly exalted, like at the age of a week. He could be sitting as a tiny little infant in Mary's lap and expounding upon superlapsarianism and infralapsarianism. So there's no development, you see. But you see a development in Christ's boyhood, his consciousness. Did you not know that I should be about my father's business, he says, when he's, what, 12 years of age? And so he deals with that important topic. Again, liberals were saying that the Messiah Jesus is a fabrication of the Church. That Jesus was just a man. He never even taught that he was the Messiah. And so, I mean, when you just posit that kind of a presupposition, and then start opening the Bible where he says that he is, then what do you have to do? You have to cross that off and say, well, that's just the Church's idea. So you've left an infallible Bible at that point. You've left the inerrant Word of God. as opposed to receiving it as it is, the written word for God's people. Remember, that's another thing that his philosophical background was so helpful in, was the fact that philosophy had won the day in the church. Kant's idea, Hegel's idea, that our thoughts are not, are really not in connection with the reality outside of us. The term, it's all in your head, is exactly what they believed. The idea that you can know something in itself, the German phrase is the ding on stick, the thing in itself, you cannot know that. So, I mean, you're just lost at that point then. Your knowledge is a great big nothing. Our communication right here, it's just what evolutionists would say later, it's just the synapses going off. There's no reality about it. So he's addressing that with the attack upon the Bible and the attack upon Christ. 1930 sees probably his probably this is probably his most popular work, the Pauline Eschatology, where he does present his amillennialism. So this is our brother's favorite book. It's interesting that Vos, Vos coming from the Netherlands, he wasn't raised in an American church. Pre-millennialism has been around since really the beginning of church history. It's not something that just propped up, that came up with Darby or Schofield or somebody. But when he first, he was in seminary, I think teaching seminary, and premillennialism was almost new to him. He was like, what is this weird view? I don't understand this. And yet he's writing on eschatology, and he comes out with a strong Amil viewpoint. Some have placed him in the postmillennial camp. He writes an article in an encyclopedia on postmillennial He once quipped that post-millennialists make too little of eschatology and pre-millennialists make way too much. So that kind of, I think that kind of puts him then into the on-mill camp. Yeah. So the work of the boss who calls and pre-Milan and post-Milan is the church and quit third thing. Is that in Warfield's writings, or is that a book? You've never heard that? I've never heard that, no. So I can't remember which of those two Princeton theologians. It's in collective writings, which Barnabas mentioned here. Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation and Shorter Writings of Laws. Right. It's funny, I mean, you guys know my proclivities here, I'm pre-mill, but I'm not strongly pre-mill. And I see things that pre-mill and aw-mills have in common. And I see things then that the aw-mill and the post-mill have in common. And I see things that the post-mill and the pre-mill have in common. And you can get those dogs to chase their tail. You know? Both the post-mill and pre-mill believe in, like you said, a third thing, a millennium, that's not now. And there's where they would say we're different than the aw-mills. the Amil and Post-Mill both look at the Pre-Mill and go, you don't have the judgment happening when Jesus returns? The full judgment doesn't happen then? What is wrong with you? So they both see that Christ is coming at the very end. When he comes, that's it. And then Amil and Pre-Mills have a different, generally a different viewpoint of history. They tie in with the mixture of the the wheat in the tares, and this idea of what the post mills are teaching, that things are going to get better and better, they tend to go, no, we don't see that. Although there are, as Henry Crovendam likes to call himself, an optimistic amillennialist. And then there are others who are really pessimistic amillennialists. And there's optimistic and pessimistic pre-mills. And I've seen some... The sensational pre-mills in your history books. Right. Covenantal. Right. That's right. So anyway. So this is his most popular work, I believe. Although I'm really surprised by that, because I thought that this book here, self-published, just before he dies, and becomes a textbook at the two Westminsters. So perhaps that is the most used. I would think so. Yeah. That is a seminarian textbook. It is. And we use it in seminary as well. The teaching of the Epistle of the Hebrews in 1944 is just a small monogram, but just rich stuff on understanding the book of Hebrews, its relationship to the Old Testament. You know, one of the most important things that Voss does is to demonstrate that the reality of our redemption, God saving sinners, has been present with us from the very beginning. It's not something that just pops up like the dispensationalist says after Jesus ascends into heaven. And he does a great job of defending that. Sometimes the Reformed are not so good at doing that. We become more, what's the word, proof-testing in trying to defend that proper position. And I think Dr. Voss does a great job of speaking about the history in these matters in a better way. Let's finish up his life before making some observations on his teaching. He retired to the fair land of California. He did, yeah, in beautiful Santa Ana in 1932. His son already lived here at 1212 Sycamore Street, which is six miles down the road right off of McFadden. It is interesting, you know, towards the end of his life, if he's moving here in 1932, he had retired from Princeton at that point. What happened in 1929? That happened, yeah, so he had to move to an easier place to live. Machen left Princeton and formed Westminster Seminary. And Voss didn't join him. he continued teaching for the next two or three years or whatever. And in this book, James Dennison's Letters of Gerhardus Voss, he puts a very interesting biography, short biography in the beginning, which I've relied upon fairly heavily in our presentation today. But he goes into some detail talking about why he did that. and I'm not sure I'm ready to follow where he goes. The explanation given to me was simply that he was two years away from retiring and if he were to quit, he'd lose his pension and things like that. Someone chided him for that and said, well, you should have left. But remember, the reorganization of the seminary would not have brought full-blown liberalism across the board immediately. that victory of reorganizing Princeton by the liberals along with the evangelicals, it would take a while before that school would become just teaching rank out-and-out heresy. Dr. Voss was there teaching, continuing to teach solid orthodox material. He wasn't hindered in doing that. So I don't think you should chide him so much for that. after they move here in in 32 Catherine about that time begins to show signs of dementia probably Alzheimer's she dies of pneumonia September the 14th 1937 and she is buried near, the Vosses bought a summer home in a place called Roaring Branch Pennsylvania which is north central PA Where was Ken? I'm wondering if this isn't near where? Right. He bought a home there. It's a small town and he moved the house. He wanted it further out of town. Just to show how reclusive this guy was. People have a hard time understanding who this guy is because he just wasn't open. He was very withdrawn in that regard. He moved the house? He moved the house. He didn't move to a house, he moved the house. He moved to the house and then he moved the house. He moved it like, I don't know, five miles or something like that? Oh, the whole town came out to watch. He bought it in the first decade of the century. They came out in droves to watch, wow, they're going to move a house. They pulled it by horses. They jacked it up, put it on wheels, and moved it by horses. You could do that, that's right. You didn't have all that nonsense. Well, he stays out here for a while, but his health begins to decline. He has to move to Grand Rapids in order to be cared for by his daughter, who lived in Grand Rapids. And he dies on August the 13th, 1949. He's buried, I want to say he's buried in Roaring Branch as well. Denison brings up the fact that just a very small group came to his funeral. Something like 47 to 49 people were there. Including Cornelius Vantill was the only one from the seminary who was there. No, not from Vinson. Nobody from Vinson showed up. Oh, right, right. Well, they were from, you're right, from Westminster. And a minister from Memorial OPC in Rochester. John DeWaard was there. I think that he served in some way. Van Til preached from 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 1. Warfield called Vos the greatest exegete Princeton ever had. And in many ways he is something of a connector then between Warfield and to Machen and to Murray and Van Til and so forth. in his teaching. He is that kind of a link in the chain that we've been following here in the life, the rise and fall of Princeton Seminary. A couple of things I want to bring out regarding his teaching and highlight for us in the brief time that we have remaining. I just want to demonstrate a couple things for you of his outlook his exegetical prowess. We read Romans chapter 1 earlier. If you open your Bible again to that passage, this has been a proof text for most of church history to show both the humanity and the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can see why it's drawn from this passage. Speaking of Jesus, he was promised beforehand this gospel of God regarding the bondservant regarding Christ Jesus which he promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son who is born of a descendant of David according to the flesh who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead according to the spirit of holiness Jesus Christ our Lord So here you have very clearly taught Jesus is a man. He is a descendant of David. He is according to the flesh. But He is also fully God. He is the Son of God. He is raised from the dead according to the Spirit of Holiness. But you look more closely at the passage and it's not really talking about the distinction between Christ's humanity and His deity as much as it's speaking about His humiliation and His exaltation. And his boss, who is the one that brings this out, he shows the parallelisms. If we had the time to write it up on the board, you have who was born, is parallel with, was declared the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead, and you have a parallel of according to the flesh and according to the spirit of holiness. In other words, Jesus comes as a descendant of David according to the flesh. There's his humiliation. And then he comes and shows himself by the spirit of holiness in which he was raised from the dead and is declared to be the Son of God. Notice the verb declared. You see, if you really come out and say that verses 3 and 4 are talking about humanity and deity, you could almost say that he wasn't the Son of God until after his resurrection. But notice he's declared to be, he was the Son of God in humility. Philippians chapter 2, another passage is speaking about his deity. But it's in the resurrection and it's by the Spirit of holiness that he is so richly, manifestly made known to be the Son of God. That plays into where we are in Acts chapters 2, 3, and 4, where Peter says to those who crucify Jesus, we know that you did this ignorantly. You knew that there was some sin involved, obviously, but He was not the Son of God in His majesty yet. in that way. So that's a wonderful insight that Dr. Voss has found for the church and very helpful in preaching through that portion of God's Word. Another benefit that he has done, if you want to read something deeper on the topic of the covenant, read his volume. This was done early on in his ministry on the Reformed Doctrine of the Covenant. The Doctrine of the Covenant and Reformed Theology. That article was just so refreshing and life-changing for me. That was just so helpful Somebody coming at the... I mean, people will go through the Covenant very line by line with a guy like O. Palmer Robertson and his book, Christ of the Covenants. But here, Dr. Volkis is bringing together both the historical side of things, of how it developed in the Reformation Protestant movement, and tying it in with Scripture, the text that they were going to pull these things out. Just a magnificent article. So it's in that book? It's in this book, and I'm not sure if you can get it online. What's that book called? This is called A Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, The Shorter Writings of Gerhardus Voss, and it is edited by Richard Gaffin, Jr. Another great article that he wrote that I thought was just outstanding was The Eschatological Aspect of the Pauline Conception of the Spirit. how the Holy Spirit has this eschatological bent about him. We really don't learn the fullness of who and what the Spirit is about until we come to the New Testament, until Christ is risen and ascended. What does that mean for the Reformed faith? What does that mean regarding the Spirit in the Old Testament? That's included in a collection of Princeton They had like a 100th anniversary volume, and each of the faculty contributed these large articles for that work. And that was Voss's submission at that point. Excellent article. He also has done some great work in the Gospel of John. His article on true and truth in the Gospel of John is just mind-blowing. Because when we think of true or truth, we think of true or truth against what is false, what is an error. But he demonstrates clearly that true and truth is being used in the Gospel of John, not as opposed to what is false, but as opposed to what is temporary. The genuine, in other words. When Jesus says, I am the true bread that came down from heaven, he's not saying I'm the true bread over against the false bread that Moses gave you. Moses truly gave them bread. But it was just typological bread. It was a type, that's right, looking forward to Christ. Christ is the genuine, the true bread. And that comes into play too in a really awesome way in John 4, where it says that we worship in spirit and in truth. So many exegetes in that passage say, we're worshiping God genuinely. truthfully, you see, as opposed to falsely. My heart's in it. That's not really the idea there. The idea, rather, is that we are worshipping in the reality. We are in the Kingdom. That which the Old Testament looked forward to, we have. And that's where, because remember, it's talking about where we are worshipping, not the how within. We will not worship in Samaria or in Jerusalem. but the Father will be worshipped in spirit and in truth. That whole concept is a whole new meaning to metaphor, because then it takes everything and points to Christ. Everything points to Christ, because everything is true, but He is a genuine. So we can see the truth in all things, and Christ is always pointing to Him, and He is genuine, He is reality. It's just a new meaning to metaphor. Great stuff. And then the last section, of course, is his contribution regarding biblical theology. I've handed out just a... I just don't have the time to get into all the detail on the topic of biblical theology. Let me say that I think that there have been men who have taken some ideas from Voss and have run in a lot of different directions. And I keep on having in the back of my mind schools of thought within reformed history, recent reformed history, who say that they're coming from Voss. Voss is the one who's the pioneer in this and we're looking to him. And yet, at the same time, I'm not finding exactly the same things in Voss. So, some of Voss' children are doing things that I would go, nah, scratch my head about. But Voss himself, when it comes to Biblical theology, is very sound. I've handed out, this is just from the brief summary from Calhoun's book on the topic of Biblical theology. What page is that? In his inaugural address, The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline, Dr. Voss provided a clear, fully developed discussion of the idea of biblical theology and its place among other theological disciplines. It is certainly not without significance that God has embodied the contents of Revelation, not in a dogmatic system, Voss said, but in a book of history, the parallel to which, in dramatic interest and simple eloquence, is nowhere to be found." Voss believed that Reformed theology had, quote, from the beginning shown itself possessed of a true historic sense in the apprehension of the progressive character of the deliverance of truth. Its doctrine of the covenants on its historical side represents the first attempt at constructing a history of revelation and may justly be considered the precursor of what is at present called biblical theology, unquote. In the preface to Witsius' two volumes on the covenant, J.I. Packer makes that same observation, that all covenant theology prior to Voss was a precursor of biblical theology. So in some ways it's not new. In other ways it is new because Voss was more sensitive to the ins and outs of this discipline. Biblical theology, a part of exegetical theology, applies no other method of grouping and arranging the contents of the Bible than is given in the divine economy of Revelation itself. Systematic theology is concerned with the contents of this same revelation, but as materials for the human work of classifying and systematizing according to logical principles. Both are essential and can be truly biblical," the Princeton professor maintained. Now here again, there are children of Voss who would insist that they downplay systematics now. We don't really need systematics. Biblical theology is all we're going to do. And that's not what Voss said. Biblical theology sets forth the inherent organic structure. That word organic is very important. These things are connected. They're not like these disjointed dispensations. It is like a seed that is developing. It's growing. And that's how we should be reading our Bibles. That these things are connected. It wasn't like God gave a covenant to Abraham and went, I wonder what I'm going to do next. Oh, let's go ahead and get Moses and rescue all the people out of Egypt. All of this was planned from the very beginning. It sets forth the inherent organic structure of the history of redemption, revealed in the scriptures, whereas systematic theology presents the redemptive and revelatory activity of God as a completed project. As Voss put it, biblical theology draws a line of development. Systematic theology draws a circle. Voss urged Christians to learn from the critical school to place greater emphasis on the historical development of the scripture without making the mistakes that the critics had. He said biblical theology, which can only rest on the basis of revelation, began with a denial of this basis and a science whose task it is to set forth the historic principles of revelation was trained up in a school notorious for its lack of historical sense. Voss believed, however, that a proper understanding of biblical theology would provide a most effective antidote to the destructive critical views now prevailing, enable the seminary students to become, in the highest sense, householders, bringing out treasured things new and old, prepare them for the study of systematic theology, and finally grant them a greater vision of the glory of God. And Princeton, a new professor of biblical theology, added his fresh insights into scripture to B.B. Warfield's great doctrinal and historical emphases, and William Henry Greene's learned defenses of the Bible. It's a nice summary. I wish I could go into more depth, but we're out of time. Any thoughts or questions as we wrap up? I want to say, Oliver and I had a well-seen moment in the mountains just a few years ago. We were studying one of the Grace and Glory Sermons, which is quite hard to study. So we did it together, the group, just going paragraph by paragraph. And it's called The Wonderful Tree, and it's a picture from Hosea of God, the cypress tree that provides all the fruit that you need. abundant tree, filled with berries and greenery, and then right in the center, behind it, was this dead pole sticking up a tree that had died. It was right out of the sermon, a comparison between the astral pole, the astral pole, false worship, or the living tree that God presents himself in Isaiah. It's really quite amazing. If I were to recommend a book of his, where would you start? How readable is he? It's tough. It is a little tough. He's condensed. He's also got a Dutch style about him. So you've just got to go slow, and you'll be well rewarded. Marcy, for her 21st birthday, she suggested that you get a copy of Grieving Laura, because I had lent you her mind, and she knew I wanted it back. Yeah, maybe that's the best bite-sized place to begin. Even though it's not the best form of preaching, I don't think, it's still the content is just marvelous. In Dinglish? Nice. All right, let's close with prayer. Our Father, again, we thank you for your mercies to us, and we pray that we would be enabled to learn these things, not as an end in themselves, but Lord, to drive us all the more to your precious Word. We thank you for the revelation of your Son in this historical way of unfolding the kingdom, unfolding the covenant of grace in this manner for your people. We thank you, Lord, so much that you've placed us in this new covenant era. these last days. We thank you for Jesus, who is the king and ruler over all, who is the great priest, who is the temple, who has fulfilled the types of the Old Testament. And Lord, we look forward now to worshiping in your mighty name. Lord, meet with us, we pray, as your people gather together to serve you. We thank you for this hour and watch over us through this day. In Christ's name, Amen.