Dr. Abraham Kuyper and Common Grace (11)

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Dear forum members,
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In my last installment, I discussed the basic concessions to Amyraldianism made by the men who sparked the so-called Marrow controversy. I also pointed out that the whole idea of a gracious and well-meant gospel offer came to the Netherlands from Scotland and, more particularly, from the Marrow men.
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I must trace the development of this error in the Dutch churches and its subsequent spread to America.
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During the long period of deterioration in the Dutch churches after the great Synod of Dordt, the people who were dissatisfied with the modernistic preaching in the State Church met in homes in small groups, in which groups the Scriptures were studied, religious books were read and discussed, and prayers were made for a reformation of the church. These house meetings were called gezelschappen, or conventicles. These conventicles were instrumental in bringing about the so-called “Later Reformation”, and the influences of Scotland were especially strong among the people who attended these house meetings. The “Later Reformation” is to be distinguished from the reformation that came about through the Secession of 1834. It was a return to Christian piety in opposition to the cold and sterile religion of the State Church. The result of Scottish influences was that the whole idea of the gospel offer was found among many of these people of the “Further Reformation”. Being impressed with the spirituality of the writers from the ranks of the Marrow men, many of the Dutch people, themselves, thirsting for spirituality, became persuaded that the offer of the gospel played a crucial role in the cultivation of genuine piety.
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Because of the apostasy in the Reformed Church (the State Church), reformation was needed to preserve the truth among the Dutch people. God sent such reformation through the work of a rather insignificant minister in the small village of Ulrum, in the province of Groningen. His name was Henry De Cock. After De Cock’s conversion to Calvinism and the Reformed faith, he and his consistory voted to secede from the apostate State Church to form a new denomination, orthodox in its theology and free from State control. Most of those who had been worshipping in conventicles saw the secession as an answer to their prayers. And thousands joined the Secession Churches so that the new denomination grew rapidly, even though it was severely persecuted by the government. The year of the Secession was 1834.
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Six ministers went along with the Secession in its first stirrings: De Cock, Van Velzen, Gezelle-Marburg, Scholte, Van Raalte and Brummelkamp. But there was not unity of doctrine among them. Basically, there were two groups, both of which had been found earlier in the conventicles. The one group, composed of De Cock, Van Velzen and Geselle-Marburg, were soundly orthodox, while Brummelkamp was a strong defender of the gospel offer, and Van Raalte was not a strongly orthodox man. Scholte was something of a maverick and had little influence on the development of the churches of the Secession. He immigrated to Pella, Iowa and set up an independent congregation there. Van Raalte immigrated to Holland, Michigan, and his band of settlers, with the arrival of additional immigrants, formed the beginning of the Christian Reformed Church.
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Roughly, the two camps in the churches of the Secession were also geographically divided. Brummelkamp led a faction that was predominantly to be found in the southern part of the Netherlands, while the more orthodox men had influence in the north. Brummelkamp was professor in the theological school in Kampen, the Netherlands, where he influenced many of the ministers of the Secession.
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With Van Raalte occupying a moderate position, it is not surprising that when the Christian Reformed Church was begun in 1857 the well-meant gospel offer was imbedded in the thinking of many preachers and members of the church. It became a part of the doctrinal position of the Dutch Reformed churches, though it was not officially adopted until 1924.
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It is at this point that a major development in the doctrine of common grace, not related to the gracious offer of the gospel, took place, which we shall have to consider. In 1886, Dr. Abraham Kuyper led another reformation in the Netherlands that resulted in another denomination. His movement was called the Doleantie or “Aggrieved Ones”. The movement took that name because Kuyper and his followers insisted that, rather than form a church free from government control, they were the true continuation of the State Church and that, therefore, they had never really left the State Church, but simply represented it as it ought to be. They were “aggrieved” at the apostasy of their brethren and fellow members within the State Church. In this respect they differed sharply from the Churches of the Secession of 1834, which established a church free from government control.
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Kuyper was a man of many gifts and one born to a position of leadership. However, when he entered the ministry he was unconverted and found a cozy home in the apostate State Church. But through a series of events, not the least of them a sharp reprimand from a simple farm lady in his congregation for preaching modernism, Kuyper was brought to the conviction that the Reformed faith, developed since the days of Calvin and Dordt, was indeed the truth of the Scriptures. He gave himself over to the defense of this Reformed faith and, to the utter dismay of his modernistic colleagues, began to do battle with them. His desire was to bring the church of the Netherlands back to its original strength when the Synod of Dordt scored a smashing victory over the Arminians.
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Kuyper’s major writing in this period was a book with the title Dat God’s Genade Particulier Is, translated into English under the title “Particular Grace.” (The translation is by Mr. Marvin Kamps, and is published by the Reformed Free Publishing Association.) In this book Kuyper argued against the universalism of the modernists in the Reformed Churches and defended particularism in all areas of salvation, especially in the atoning work of Christ.. The interesting part of this book, as far as we are concerned, is Kuyper’s repudiation of the gracious and well-meant offer of the gospel. In fact, the texts commonly quoted in support of the offer of the gospel (II Peter 3:9, I Tim. 2:4, etc.) were all explained by Kuyper in a particularist way as referring to the elect only. Kuyper was, at this stage in his life, soundly Reformed.
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(Right: Dr. Abraham Kuyper)
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But Kuyper underwent a change. He came out with a three-volume work entitled Gemeene Gratie or, General Grace. In this work, Kuyper, without ever repudiating his rejection of the free offer of the gospel, now, strangely, steered the church in the direction of another aspect of common grace, namely, a grace given to all men that restrained sin and produced in the unregenerate the ability to do good works.
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This change in Kuyper’s thinking came about because Kuyper committed the grievous sin of resigning from the active ministry of the Word in order to enter politics. He formed a political party, ran for and won a place in the Lower Chamber and became the head of his party. He aspired, however, to the office of prime minister, but could not get sufficient members of his party elected to the Lower Chamber to thrust him into the prime minister’s office. And so he formed a coalition with the Roman Catholic party to secure enough votes to gain the prime minister’s seat.
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But in Netherlands where sentiment could be as strong against Roman Catholics as it was in England, Kuyper had to justify theologically this strange and unnatural coalition. This he did with his theory of common grace.
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In turn, Kuyper saw it as important that he lead the country as prime minister, because he held a view of the Netherlands, which sounds strange to our 21st century ears, but was not unusual in the days when the church was still a State Church.
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Kuyper considered the Reformed Church of the Netherlands to be the true church, because it was the State Church. Now, it was characteristic of a State Church that that denomination, technically, is responsible for the spiritual welfare of all the citizens, even if they were not attending members of the one state-approved denomination. Usually every baby had to be baptized by the church, all the marriages had to be in the church, and funeral services and burials were conducted within the precincts of the church. Kuyper considered the Netherlands to be a genuine Reformed country with a genuine Reformed Church supported by a Reformed government. He saw a future in which the Netherlands would become the fountain-head of a mighty stream of the Reformed faith that would flow throughout all the world and make of the entire world a Reformed community, with every sphere of life subordinated to the rule of Jesus Christ. It was essential to Kuyper that a Reformed man be in a position of authority in the government to realize this dream. But he could gain leadership only by way of a coalition with Roman Catholics; and some theological justification for putting these two historic enemies in the same bed had to be made. That theological justification was common grace.
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That brings us to a discussion of Kuyperian common grace, but that must wait till next time. We notice in passing that Kuyper’s dream of a world where every country and every institution of society are subordinated to the one rule of Jesus Christ has become the goal of many post-millennial movements, of many theologians found in Reformed and Presbyterian circles, and of many colleges and universities. Today we have the strange and inexplicable situation in which thousands speak of the Kuyper of common grace and regularly travel to his shrine to be renewed in their thinking, while almost no one remembers the Kuyper of sovereign and particular grace. The Kuyper gone wrong is the idol of many; the Reformed Kuyper has disappeared from the earth.
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With warmest regards,
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Prof. Hanko

The Westminister Confession and the "well-meant gospel offer" (8)

Dear forum members,
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In our discussion of the history of common grace, we have come to the Westminster Assembly and the teaching of the Westminster Confession of Faith on the subject of the gracious, well-meant gospel offer. On the question of common grace in general, the Westminster Confession of Faith (henceforth, WC) has nothing to say. We may limit ourselves, therefore, to the one question of whether Westminster teaches a gracious, well-meant gospel offer.
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We must discuss two aspects of the question, both of which are treated in the WC. The two belong together. These two are: Is God gracious to all men in the preaching of the gospel, when He expresses His desire and intention to save all men? And, secondly, is the atonement of Christ a sacrifice for the elect only, or is it also, in some sense, a sacrifice for all men? The two belong together, for, if the gospel is a proclamation of God’s desire to save all men, and if therefore, salvation is freely and graciously offered to all men on the condition of faith, then a universal atonement must of necessity stand behind this general expression of God’s love for all. God cannot, without making a mockery of the gospel, offer to all men a salvation that Christ has not earned by His suffering and death on the cross. Nor can God love all men without there being a judicial basis for that love in the cross of Jesus Christ.
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History has also shown that the two are inseparably connected. The Marrow Men, who emphatically taught a gracious gospel offer, were forced to hold to the position that “Christ is dead for all,” although they attempted by a verbal slight of hand to distinguish between a Christ who died for all and a Christ who is dead for all.
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The Amyraldians, as we have seen, attempted to escape the inevitable connection between the two by speaking of a hypothetical universal atonement, which was to be distinguished from a particular atonement actually accomplished by Christ 2000 years ago when He died on Calvary.
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The same issue was really the downfall of a strong Calvinism in Wales after the work of George Whitefield and the establishment of a Presbyterian Church there. Some wanted an approach to preaching that was warmer and more expressive of the desire of the church to bring sinners to repentance than what they considered to be the cold, dispassionate approach of Calvinism. In order to satisfy such clamoring for more compassionate preaching, these men introduced the idea of a gracious, well-meant gospel offer. But shortly after its general acceptance, the question of the extent of the atonement came up and the church was compelled. by the logic of its position, to introduce the general notion of a certain universality to the atonement. (See Hanko & Engelsma, The Five Points of Calvinism [The British Reformed Fellowship, 2008] p. 54).
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The same was true of the history of the doctrine of a gracious and well-meant gospel offer in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). In 1924 the CRC adopted a theory of common grace that included a gracious well-meant gospel offer. Although the Synod that adopted this theory did not address the question of the extent of the atonement, the church was forced to consider the question in the mid-‘60s. The Synod that made the final decision clearly approved of the extent of the atonement as being universal, although it was careful to limit the universality of the atonement so as to exclude efficacy. The universality of the atonement was said to be universal only in sufficiency, availability and as an expression of God’s intention. It is interesting that on the floor of the Synod, during the debate, opposition to a universal atonement, even in the limited sense of sufficiency, availability and intention, was expressed, but this opposition was quickly silenced by a reminder that, after all, the CRC had officially adopted the gracious offer of the gospel, and that, therefore, the atonement had to be universal.
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This same relationship between the extent of the atonement and the approval of a gracious, well-meant gospel offer was a source of tension at the Westminster Assembly.
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One could characterize the Westminster Assembly as being divided into two camps with respect to the truths of Calvinism. (On the question of church polity, three camps were present: Presbyterians, Erastians, and Independents.) Staunchly orthodox defenders of the system of Calvinism developed by John Calvin himself and made explicit at the Synod of Dordt were led by such men as Rutherford and Gillespie, while a “moderate” group of men defended a milder form of Calvinism. (“Moderate” is really a generous assessment of these so-called Calvinists, for in fact, they were Amyraldian in their thinking, and they defended a position on the Synod that was only a slight modification of the Amyraldian heresy.) The position of Amyraut was defended on the floor of the Assembly especially by Seaman, Vines, Marshall and Calamy.
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We may say, without hesitation, that the orthodox view prevailed in the entire confession and the Amyraldian view was rejected..
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I am aware of the fact that many in the past and today claim to be within the teachings of the WC even though they hold to a gracious and well-meant gospel offer. Perhaps their defense is that the WC itself uses the term “offer” (as does the Canons of Dordt). Perhaps they are more honest and claim, as the Amyraldian Richard Baxter claimed, that there was room in the confession for his Amyraldian views. He wrote: “Chap III, sec. 6, and chap. VIII , sec 8 (of the WC, HH) which speak against universal redemption, I understand not of all redemption, and particularly not of the mere bearing the punishment of man’s sin, and satisfying God’s justice, but of that special redemption proper to the elect, what was accompanied with an intention of actual application of the saving benefits in time. If I may not be allowed this interpretation, I must herein dissent.” (Robert Shaw, An Exposition of the Confession of Faith [Philadelphia, 1847] p. 71.)
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In other words, Richard Baxter refused to sign the WC unless he was permitted to make a distinction between a special redemption that included the application of Christ’s benefits to the elect, and a more general redemption that was a “mere bearing the punishment of man’s sin, and satisfying God’s justice.” Baxter admitted that the latter was not taught in the WC, but that it was permissible to make the distinction because the WC did not condemn it. Baxter argued his case from the silence of the WC, not from its teachings. (We may note that Baxter later did sign the WC.) It would help matters considerably if present day defenders who hold to a gracious well-meant gospel offer and claim faithfulness to the WC would tell us whether their claim to be faithful to the WC is based on the mere use of the word “offer” in the confession, or whether they argue from silence, as Richard Baxter did; or, whether perhaps they have some other argument.)
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We will discuss the actual teachings of the WC in our next installment.
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With warmest regards,
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Prof. Herman Hanko