Dear Forum members:
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In my last installment, I introduced our readers to Dr. Abraham Kuyper’s success in bringing into Reformed theology a novel view of common grace.
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I call this view of common grace “novel”, because Kuyper himself, in his three-volume treatment of the subject, speaks of his view as being new; he insists that nothing like it could be found in Reformed writings since the time of the Reformation.
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However, in spite of Kuyper’s claim to novelty, there had been, for a long time, those within Reformed circles who frequently spoke of the “good deeds” of the wicked. My own paternal grandmother, a basically uneducated member of the churches of the Secession, but an unusually godly and pious woman, and one who lived through the controversy over common grace in 1924, but stayed with Rev. Hoeksema, could never quite understand why it was not a good work for an unbeliever to help a man who had fallen into a creek or river and could not save himself. She was from the Churches of the Secession and reflected in her thinking a stream of thought in these churches that inclined towards common grace. She had, however, no use for Kuyper, and it is doubtful whether she ever fully understood what he was saying.
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I offer here a brief sketch of Abraham Kuyper’s views on common grace. (For a detailed description of Kuyper’s views on common grace [his three-volume work has never been translated] see Henry Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture [Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1959], and, Henry Danhof and Herman Hoeksema, Sin and Grace, tr. by Cornelius Hanko [Jenison: RFPA, 2003].)
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While Kuyper rejected the idea of a gracious and well-meant gospel offer, he held strongly to another kind of grace common to all men that restrained sin in such a way that men were enabled to do good works. By good works Kuyper meant works pleasing to God and of use by the church.
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Kuyper spoke of common grace as first of all a major dose of some antitoxin administered to Adam immediately after the fall (the figure is Kuyper’s). He claimed, without a smidgeon of Biblical support, that had God not intervened with His common grace, Adam would have, after the fall, become a beast and the creation a chaotic wasteland. In fact, according to Kuyper, Adam would have fallen dead at the foot of the tree. (Kuyper is not clear here on whether man would actually have died a physical death or whether he would become a beast; both are claimed to be true. Sometimes he even speaks of Adam becoming a devil if common grace had not been administered to him.) The result of his sin was that, although a deadly and fatal dose of poison was administered to Adam because of the fall, by giving Adam common grace, God gave Adam, so to speak, a dose of an anti-toxin, which resulted in Adam’s vomiting out some of the poison he had imbibed. The result is that while Adam came close to death and retained consequences of his brush with death, he did not actually die in the fullest sense of the word. While he became depraved, he was not as depraved as he would have been had not common grace been administered. While he would have become a beast without the antitoxin administered to him, he now retained his rational and moral nature and continued to be a man. While he would have become utterly incapable of doing any good if God had not intervened, he now retained the ability, apart from saving grace, to do some good in this world.
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Kuyper spoke of this common grace as being the work of the Holy Spirit. By the power of the grace that the Holy Spirit worked, the full effects of sin were avoided. Apart from that common grace man would have become a devil, vicious, corrupt, depraved, beyond the possibility of being saved.
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But, since common grace was given to Adam, and through Adam, to his posterity, and since by means of that common grace, unregenerate man is capable of doing good, a wide area of “neutrality” is created in this world, in itself neither good nor bad but morally neutral, in which the wicked and the righteous are able to cooperate in many works of mutual interest, particularly in making this world a better place to live. An example of this neutral ground would be the shop in which believers and unbelievers work together on assembly lines in a manufacturing plant. Because working conditions were frequently dreadful in the 19th and early 20th centuries, believers and unbelievers could and did join in “neutral” labor unions to fight together for improvement in working conditions. And here in this morally “neutral” area in which the unbeliever could, by his good works, contribute significantly to the well-being of mankind and the church, Kuyper found his justification for forming a coalition with Roman Catholics to work together to spread the Reformed faith throughout the world.
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This cooperation, in Kuyper’s thinking, would begin in the Netherlands where all the citizens, under the auspices of a State Church, could promote the Reformed faith and from the Netherlands would come a great revival that would spread throughout all the world and make this world a better place to live. This thinking has been carried on in many places where, under the supposed banner of the Reformed faith, labors are put forth to improve this world. And, to be a genuine Reformed believer in this world, it is said, means to be busy in winning all institutions of society, and society itself for the cause of Christ. If one does not hold to this sort of common grace and himself join in the crusade to save the world from itself, he is an Anabaptist, and guilty of world-flight.
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The movement led by Kuyper began in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The interesting and important aspect of this movement is that immigrants from the Netherlands came to America, now not only from the Churches of the Secession of 1834, but also from Kuyper’s new movement. The result was tension in the Christian Reformed Church, which church most of the immigrants joined. Some within the CRC promoted the views of the Secession Churches with its emphasis on piety and from which came the common grace of the gospel offer, and some promoted the views of common grace developed by Kuyper. There was bitter enmity and antagonism between the two movements, both of which were found within the Christian Reformed Church.
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I had a Dutch teacher while studying in Calvin College, himself a devotee of Kuyperian common grace, who frequently in class would speak to us of the bitter in-house conflicts between these two wings in the CRC, and who would say to us that the half of what went on had not been revealed, but that he was going to write a book about it someday in which the whole story would be told. He never wrote the book, so far as I know.
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The conflict between these two wings in the church threatened to split the church. If this had happened, it would not have been surprising, for the same doctrinal and ecclesiastical split occurred in the Netherlands. Although the Churches of the Secession and the Kuyperian churches in the Netherlands did unite in 1892, the union was a shot-gun marriage that was, from the start, doomed to failure. An effort was made in 1905 to heal the divisions, but nothing worked. Finally, the split became reality in 1944, when Dr. Klaas Schilder was deposed from office and began what is now known as the Liberated Churches.
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(Right: Dr. Klaas Schilder)
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Interestingly, many who left the Reformed Church under Dr. K. Schilder were of the Secession of 1834 and, therefore, leaned toward the common grace of the offer, the same idea appeared among the people of the Liberated Church. It took, however, a slightly different form. It was connected with the sacrament of baptism instead of the preaching. The Liberated, therefore, instead of speaking of a general offer in the preaching, spoke of a general promise to all baptized children in the sacrament of baptism. Instead of the common grace that comes through the preaching, the Liberated speak of a common grace that comes through baptism. Instead of emphasizing the grace of the offer that enables a man to choose for or against the gospel, the Liberated speak of a grace that comes through baptism enabling all baptized children to accept or reject the promise. And so, both the gracious offer of the gospel and the gracious promise of the covenant are conditional, so that both depend upon the fulfillment of the condition of faith in order to have salvation realized fully.
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But the division of 1944, while it included many issues, involved also the differences over common grace: Kuyperian common grace vs. the common grace of the well-meant offer of the gospel.
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That nearly brings the history of common grace to the origin of the Protestant Reformed Churches. But we will wait with that part of the story till the next installment.
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With warmest regards,
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Prof. Herman Hanko
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