Monday, January 07, 2008

We Want a Spiritual Body

DesiringGod Blog Post by John Piper on 1/4/08

James Henley Thornwell, the Southern Presbyterian theologian who died in 1862, got somethings very wrong, like slavery. But this he got right and it is amazingly up to date:

Our whole system of operations gives an undue influence to money. Where money is the great want, numbers must be sought; and where an ambition for numbers prevails, doctrinal purity must be sacrificed. The root of the evil is the secular spirit of our ecclesiastical institutions. What we want is a spiritual body; a Church whose power lies in the truth, and the presence of the Holy Ghost. (B. M. Palmer, Life and Letters of J. H. Thornwell, p. 291).


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