Geerhardus Vos > Quotes

“The best proof that He will never cease to love us lies in that He never began.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Redemptive History & Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos

“Legalism lacks the supreme sense of worship. It obeys but it does not adore.”
― Geerhardus Vos

“Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his god to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments

“The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide to contemplative prayer. "Be willing to be blind, and give up all longing to know the why and how, for knowing will be more of a hindrance than a help." This 1912 edition was edited by Evelyn Underhill, and contains her introduction.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory

“The necessary consequence of this life of the Christian in hope is that he learns to consider the present earthly life as a journey, a pilgrimage, something necessary for the sake
of the end but which does not have any independent value or attraction in itself. This is a thought which pervades and colours the entire epistle. Peter in the very opening words addresses the readers as sojourners of the dispersion – two terms which strikingly express that they are away from home, a colony with regard to heaven, scattered in a strange world as truly as the scattered Jews were a diaspora to the holy land and Jerusalem. He tells them to gird up the loins of their minds as befits a traveller journeying through. And again he says: ‘Pass the time of your sojourning in fear’ (1:17). Once more: ‘Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts which
war against the soul’ (2:11). Without a certain detachment from this world, other-worldliness is not possible. Hope cannot flourish where the heart is in the present life.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory

“What is envisaged is a point or stretch lying at the end of history; it forms part of what are called “days”; that thereafter there shall be no more days, but something of a different nature is not implied.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“The heaven in which the Christian by anticipation dwells is not the cosmical heaven, it is a thoroughly redemptive heaven, a heaven become what it is through the progressive upbuilding and enrichment pertaining to the age-long work of God in the sphere of redemption.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“All temporal, partial experience of God inevitably leaves a sense of dissatisfaction behind.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“Man belongs to two spheres. And Scripture not only teaches that these two spheres are distinct, it also teaches what estimate of relative importance ought to be placed upon them. Heaven is the primordial, earth the secondary creation. In heaven are the supreme realities; what surrounds us here below is a copy and shadow of the celestial things. Because the relation between the two spheres is positive, and not negative, not mutually repulsive, heavenly-mindedness can never give rise to neglect of the duties pertaining to the present life. It is the ordinance and will of God, that not apart from, but on the basis of, and in contact with, the earthly sphere man shall work out his heavenly destiny.
Still the lower may never supplant the higher in our affections. In the heart of man time calls for eternity, earth for heaven. He must, if normal, seek the things above, as the flower's face is attracted by the sun, and the water-courses are drawn to the ocean. Heavenly-mindedness, so far from blunting or killing the natural desires, produces in the believer a finer organization, with more delicate sensibilities, larger capacities, a stronger pulse of life. It does not spell impoverishment, but enrichment of nature. The spirit of the entire Epistle shows this. The use of the words "city" and "country" is evidence of it. These are terms that stand for the accumulation, the efflorescence, the intensive enjoyment of values. Nor should we overlook the social note in the representation. A perfect communion in a perfect society is promised. In the city of the living God believers are joined to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, and mingle with the spirits of just men made perfect. And all this faith recognizes. It does not first need the storms and stress that invade to quicken its desire for such things. Being the sum and substance of all the positive gifts of God to us in their highest form, heaven is of itself able to evoke in our hearts positive love, such absorbing love as can render us at times forgetful of the earthly strife. In such moments the transcendent beauty of the other shore and the irresistible current of our deepest life lift us above every regard of wind or wave. We know that through weather fair or foul our ship is bound straight for its eternal port.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’ God had mercy upon us because he
saw us leading a life without hope. And therefore by a new birth he radically changed our world for us so as to make it a world of hope. The peculiar way in which the apostle
expresses this fact ought to be carefully noted. He might have said, ‘God gave us a new hope,’ or, ‘God brought us into a new hope.’ But what he says is, ‘God begat us again unto a living hope.’ Undoubtedly this representation is chosen in order to emphasize the comprehensiveness and persuasiveness of the hope which the Christian obtains. It means a change as great as the crisis of birth, a transition from not being to living, when the hope of the gospel breaks upon our vision. The change is not partial. It does not affect our life in merely one or the other of its aspects. It revolutionizes our whole life at every point. What this means is a total regeneration of our consciousness, a regeneration of our way of thinking, a reversal of our outlook upon things in their entirety.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory

“El contraste se plantea así: las obras muertas se oponen a la adoración del Dios verdadero.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“The Spirit’s work in the renewal of things proceeds according to a fixed, systematic method, in certain distinct stages.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“que la muerte haga las cosas invariables, sino que las hace efectivas. En segundo lugar, si aplicamos esto a Cristo, veremos que la idea es incongruente. Cristo es el testador. ¿Pero nos enseña la Epístola que Cristo es inoperante? No, todo lo contrario; su actividad no fue afectada por la muerte. Fue precisamente muriendo como Cristo actuó, como se hizo sacerdote para siempre. Entonces encontramos estas dos ideas en el pasaje (1) la muerte de Cristo; y (2) mediante la muerte la cosa se hizo ipso facto operativa.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“Estaban interesados en la escatología hasta el punto de la incredulidad, y ésta se debía al aplazamiento del día que ellos esperaban. La característica especial de la escatología es que siempre trae algo nuevo. Descubre el lado eterno de las promesas de Dios. El autor instruye a los lectores en el sentido de que deben confiar más en el cumplimiento que en la promesa. Lo que ellos necesitan es una escatología de fe, no una escatología de imaginación o de fantasía. Este es el defecto de toda falsa escatología, que trata de descubrir el cumplimiento de las promesas con detalles realistas.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“Puede decirse, claro está, que el autor ha actuado aquí simplemente de manera diplomática, no para despreciar el Antiguo Testamento sino más bien para demostrar la superior bondad del Nuevo Testamento.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“Cuando el autor establece una comparación entre el Antiguo y el Nuevo Testamento, nunca lo hace en el sentido de advertir a los lectores en contra del Antiguo Testamento. Sólo pretende demostrar la superioridad del Nuevo Testamento;”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“Redemption reconstructs the relation of man to God.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“Now in this sense also, I take it, Peter affirms that believers have been begotten again unto a living hope. In all probability the representation, while applicable to all believers, was influenced to some extent by the apostle’s memory of his own experience. There had been a moment in his previous life when all at once, in the twinkling of an eye as it were, he had been translated from a world of despair into a world of hope. It was when the fact of the resurrection of Christ flashed upon him. Under the two-fold bitterness of his denial of the Lord and of the tragedy of the cross, utter darkness had settled down upon his soul. Everything he expected from the future in connection with Jesus had been completely blotted out. Perhaps he had even been in danger of losing the old hope which as a pious Israelite he cherished before he knew the Lord. And then suddenly, the whole aspect of things had been changed. The risen
Christ appeared to him and by his appearance wrought the resurrection of everything that had gone down with him into the grave. No, there was far more here for Peter than a mere resurrection of what he had hoped in before. It was the birth of something new that now, for the first time, disclosed itself to his perception. His hope was not given back to him in its old form. It was regenerated in the act of restoration. Previously it had been dim, undefined, subject to fluctuations; sometimes eager and enthusiastic, sometimes cast down and languishing; in many respects earthly, carnal and incompletely spiritualized. Apart from all of these defects, his previous hope had been a bare one, which could only sustain itself by projection into the future, but which lacked that vital support and nourishment in a present substantial reality without which no religious hope can permanently subsist.

Through the resurrection of Christ, all these faults were corrected; all these deficiencies supplied. For Peter looked upon the risen Christ as the beginning, the firstfruits of that
new world of God in which the believer’s hope is anchored. Jesus did not rise as he had been before, but transformed, glorified, eternalized, the possessor and author of a transcendent heavenly life at one and the same time, the revealer, the sample and the pledge of the future realization of the true kingdom of God. No prolonged course of training could have been more effective for purifying and spiritualizing the apostle’s hope than this single, instantaneous experience; this bursting upon him of a new form of eternal life, concrete and yet all-comprehensive in its prophetic significance. Well might the apostle say that he himself had been begotten again unto a new hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And, of course, what was true of him was even more emphatically true of the readers of his epistle, who, if they were believers from the Gentiles, before their conversion had lived entirely without hope and without God in the world.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory

“Por lo general, la teología se ha dividido en cuatro ramas: la teología exegética, la teología histórica, la teología sistemática y la teología práctica.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“there is already wrapped up a judging-process, at least for believers: the raising act in their case, together with the attending change, plainly involves a pronouncement of vindication.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“El autor habla allí de los primeros principios sobre los cuales han sido instruidos los lectores cuando primeramente se convirtieron en cristianos. Estos primeros principios son: arrepentimiento, fe, bautismo, imposición de manos, resurrección y juicio eterno. Ahora bien, los judíos no tenían que ser instruidos en estos asuntos elementales puesto que los conocían desde el comienzo.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“El contenido interior de la mente de Dios solo puede llegar a ser posesión del hombre a través de una revelación voluntaria por parte de Dios.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“Our Lord occupies historic ground from the outset. From first to last he refers to “the kingdom of God” as a fixed conception with which he takes for granted, his hearers are familiar. In affirming that it is “at hand” he moreover ascribes to it the character of something forming part of that world of prophecy, which moves onward through the ages to its divinely appointed goal of fulfilment.”
― Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church

“The Man-of-Sin is the irreligious and anti-religious and anti-Messianic subject par excellence.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“El punto de separación entre el antiguo y el nuevo diatheke es la muerte de Cristo. El fin del viejo pacto y el principio del nuevo radica en la muerte, o tal vez sería más correcto decir en la ascensión de Cristo”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“The resurrection constitutes, as it were, the womb of the new aeon, out of which believers issue as, in a new, altogether unprecedented, sense, sons of God: “They are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection,” therefore they neither marry, nor are given in marriage (Lk. xx. 35-36).”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“Gálatas 4:24 se parece mucho a 2 Corintios 3 en cuanto se introduce un contraste. Aquí Pablo usa una alegoría contrastando las dos madres, Agar y Sara, y las dos localidades, el Jerusalén que está aquí en la tierra y Jerusalén que está en los cielos. La primera adoración conduce a la esclavitud y la otra a la libertad. La primera representa particularismo y la segunda universalismo.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“The first resurrection, then, takes place at the parousia, the second when Christ abdicates his kingdom.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Pauline Eschatology

“Pablo presenta así una bisección de la historia universal, con la resurrección de Cristo como punto de separación. En Hebreos, sin embargo, la vieja época es el Antiguo Testamento.”
― Geerhardus Vos, La Enseñanza de la Epístola a los Hebreos (Estudios de Dogmática Reformada nº 3)

“we are not received by Jesus into a school of ethics but into a kingdom of redemption.”
― Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory