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Dear Forum members:
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Before I take up an investigation of the proof texts for the aspect of common grace I am investigating, namely, God’s attitude of love, favor, kindness and blessing to all men without distinction, I must treat objections that have been raised against the view of grace defended in these articles and which was sent to me; they involve important questions and demand an answer. I do so gladly, for they really bring us to the heart of the whole issue that confronts us.
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I am going to summarize the argument here and perhaps take a few quotes from the letter. Before I do this, however, it should be noted that the correspondent asks questions and makes observations, not so much because he differs with what I write and wants to defend common grace, but because he hears these objections made against our position and is interested in a correct answer.
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* * * *
In general, a major concern of the writer is a negative attitude that many take towards the PR position that their viewpoint does not do justice to God’s attributes of mercy, love, kindness, etc., but tends to present God as tyrannical and possessing attributes at odds with His goodness.
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Although without his approval, the writer refers to one acquaintance as saying, I like my God a lot more than the God of the PRC. The explanation of this remark, in the writer’s own language is: “He wanted to preserve the view that God’s attitude to the sinner undergoes development. God gives a period of probation in which the sinner is tested. As the sinner grows older and goes on in the course of sin, God reacts accordingly, until the sinner is eventually ripe for judgment. God was prepared at the beginning of the sinner’s life to give him the leeway to repent that eventually he takes away.”
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The writer goes on to describe those who disagree with the position I outlined as “involving a negative and malicious view of God: Hoeksema at one point used the analogue of a farmer fattening up cattle for slaughter for God’s dealings with the non-elect. God almost seems to want to trip them up, and in a cruel and malicious sort of way to place them in circumstances he knows very well will simply add to their eventual misery, talking delight in this misery in an almost Satanic way.”
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There were other questions that need to be addressed, but I want to comment on these remarks, first of all. While I think these matters are extremely important and these questions raised need to be answered, I am struck by the fact that some of these same objections were raised against the fathers at Dordt by the Arminians. You can find a list of these objections in the Conclusion of the Canons of Dordrecht. I cannot quote the entire conclusion, but do quote a few statements that reflect the same position that is described above. After setting down the doctrines of sovereign grace, including the truth of sovereign and double predestination, the Conclusion says of these doctrines, “And this is the perspicuous, simple, and ingenuous declaration of the orthodox doctrine respecting the five articles which have been controverted in the Belgic churches (that is, the churches found in the Lowlands including Belgium and the Netherlands, HH), and the rejection of the errors, with which they have for some time been troubled. This doctrine the synod judges to be drawn from the Word of God, and to be agreeable to the confessions of the Reformed churches.”
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Then turning to the Arminians and their unprincipled attacks against the Reformed faith, the Synod calls attention to their distortions and slanders of these doctrines: “Whence it clearly appears that some whom such conduct by no means became (that is, such conduct was not becoming to the Arminians, HH) have violated all truth, equity, and charity, in wishing to persuade the public:
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“That the doctrine of the Reformed churches concerning predestination, and the points annexed to it, by its own genius and necessary tendency, leads off the minds of men from all piety and religion; … that it makes God the author of sin, unjust, tyrannical, hypocritical; … that, if the reprobate should even perform truly all the works of the saints, their obedience would not in the least contribute to their salvation: that the same doctrine teaches that God, by a mere arbitrary act of His will, without the least respect or view to any sin, has predestinated the greatest part of the world to eternal damnation, and has created them for this purpose; that many children of the faithful are torn, guiltless, from their mother’s breasts and tyrannically plunged into hell … and many other things of the same kind, which the Reformed churches not only do not acknowledge, but even detest with their whole soul.”
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The fact of the matter is that the objections raised against the position that God is always good to His elect, but is always filled with wrath against the reprobate has been a doctrine criticized throughout the history of the church. Augustine, the venerable bishop of Hippo (d. 430 AD) faced and answered the same charges that were raised against his doctrine by the Pelagians. Calvin repeatedly answered those who objected to His views with equally scurrilous objections. He answered these objections most clearly in his booklet on predestination and providence. (This has recently been republished under the title “Calvin’s Calvinism: A Treatise on Predestination and Providence” and is available from the Reformed Free Publishing Association. It contains Calvin’s answer to such objections raised especially by Georgias, Pighius and Bolsec, all opponents of the doctrine of sovereign predestination.) These objections have been repeatedly raised since the time of Dordt against those who taught the same truths.
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But this historical fact does not release us from the responsibility of answering these objections again.
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One remark needs to be made at the outset about the view that God reacts to man’s faith or unbelief and gradually develops in His opposition to them. This view is currently being taught by the “Process Theologians” who have abandoned the doctrines of sovereign grace. To hold to such a view as Process Theology teaches is not only to deny the immutability of God (and thus His eternity), but it is also to make predestination conditional; that is, God only reacts to man’s acceptance or rejection of the gospel. The Canons of Dordt were specifically written against the same Arminian rejection of the sovereignty of God in predestination. Let anyone who holds this view be aware of the fact that he is taking a position contrary the doctrines of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches as set forth in the Canons and the Westminster Confession of faith. And let it also be understood that if God can and does change His divine mind over against the wicked, He can change His mind also about His people and cast them into hell, after all. Such a view is too awful to contemplate.
The fundamental and underlying error of those who want a kinder, more merciful, and more gracious God than seems to be the case with a God who is sovereign in all that He does is a definition of kindness, mercy, and grace that is learned more from human relationships than from Scripture’s revelation of God in all His perfections. We may not and do not dare define God’s grace and mercy in terms of our own ideas of such attributes. We must let God Himself define His own attributes and we have no choice but to bow – whether we like it or not. God must remain God and He cannot be defined in our terms. Doing such a foolish thing is to construct an idol.
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One of the chief fallacies of such definitions of God is an almost total disregard for God’s holiness and justice. So broadly are grace, mercy, kindness, etc., defined that they swallow up to the point of disappearance the great truths that God is the Holy One and is just and righteous in all He does. In His holiness God hates sin and cannot tolerate sin’s presence even for a moment. To tolerate, overlook, or make light of, sin to any degree is to make God less holy than He is. Holiness by definition is not only pure unblemished freedom from sin, but it is also a terrible abhorrence of sin. This abhorrence of sin is so complete that punishment of the sinner is necessary to retain God’s holiness intact. If, in any way, punishment of sin is minimized, holiness is lost. The more kind, merciful and gracious men want to make God, the less holy and just God becomes.
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Herman Hoeksema is correct in his Reformed Dogmatics when he makes all God’s communicable attributes subordinate to and manifestations of the one essential attribute of holiness. (Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics [ Grand Rapids, Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2004] 96-98, 135-144.) It ought to be clear that kindness, benevolence and mercy are not more important than wrath against sin and God’s just anger against the sinner. Nor can mercy and kindness be set over against justice so as to modify justice, mitigate the severity of it, or even swallow it up or push it into oblivion. God’s attributes are all one in Him.
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Mercy and justice must and do agree with each other. This agreement between mercy and justice is fully revealed in the cross. Mercy is and can be shown to sinful man only on the basis of Christ’s meritorious sacrifice. Sin has to be paid for, or God is no more just. If God reveals His mercy (grace, love, compassion, kindness) to man, it can only be done through the payment and satisfaction of the debt sinful man owes God. Christ pays that debt.
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This necessity of atonement is what pushes the defender of a general and common grace or mercy to universalize the cross of Christ. Any man with any sense of the atonement must realize that the atonement of Christ is the only possibility of any mercy at all towards men.
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This fundamental truth is the reason why the Belgic confession speaks of election as the manifestation of God’s mercy and reprobation as the manifestation of God’s justice (Article 16). But this does not mean that God’s justice is not revealed in His favor and love towards His people. His justice is revealed in the cross, for the terrible suffering of our Savior was God’s exclamation mark behind the importance of His justice in showing grace to a sinner. Kindness and grace to the sinner without the cross is divinely impossible
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With warmest regards,
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Prof Hanko
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The Distinction Between Gifts to the Righteous and Gifts to the Wicked (18)
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Greetings to all our forum members:
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Before I continue with our discussion of God’s dealings with the human race, I must turn to a question sent in by one of our forum members. He writes that although he agrees with the sharp antithetical teachings of the Psalms, he is puzzled by Psalm 68:18: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.”
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Psalm 68 was written by David at the time the ark was brought to Jerusalem. The event was a type of the ascension of Christ 40 days after His resurrection, and of Christ’s exaltation to the glorious position at God’s right hand. It speaks especially of the blessings that come to the church from the exalted Christ, but it also speaks of Christ’s sovereign rule of the wicked for the benefit of the church. Concerning this sovereign rule of the wicked, the Psalm says three things: 1) The exalted Christ shall destroy in His fury these wicked (verses 1); 2) the exalted Christ shall so use His sovereign power over the wicked to further the cause of His own church. He leads captivity captive; that is, He uses those great powers of darkness that held His people in the captivity of sin and death to serve His own purpose (verse 18); and He saves His elect from all these nations. The perspective is, of course, Israel, God’s people, the church of the Old Dispensation. But this salvation of a catholic church is the idea of the expression in verse 18 and is one of the blessings of the exalted Christ: “Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” This same truth is mentioned again in verses 31 and 32. All these are the mighty deeds of the ascended Christ. A part of the work of the ascended Christ is the gathering of a church from every nation.
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* * * *
In my last letter to you, I spoke of the fact that while all men, believers and unbelievers alike, have everything of this creation and everything that happens in this creation in common, nevertheless, God’s attitude towards the wicked and righteous is essentially different. God is favorable towards the elect, but is angry with the reprobate.
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All God’s favor and love can be bestowed only in strictest justice. I have emphasized that God is inherently and essentially good. That is, God is good in Himself and therefore, to Himself. His absolute holiness cannot allow Him to be anything but angry with anyone who is a sinner. To love or look with favor on a wicked person is to deny Himself as the only good. He must hate sin if He is to be God. He must defend holiness, for it is an attribute of His own being. Sin must be punished if God’s goodness is absolute.
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Because it is true that God’s goodness prevents Him from being anything but wrathful towards the sinner, it is possible for God to be favorable to some only in the cross of Christ. The cross, planted on Calvary, now nearly 2000 years ago, was the central act of God in all history. It is as if God planted the cross, on which His own Son hung, right in the middle of the stream of history. From the beginning of history to the end, the stream of the human race rushes towards Calvary and flows past the cross. The cross makes division between men. It divides the human race into two streams: the stream of the wicked and the stream of the righteous. This fact was true already on Calvary itself where the cross brought division between two thieves, equally sinners, but divided by the power of Christ’s atoning sacrifice.
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The cross of Christ means judgment upon the wicked. Shortly before He died, Christ Himself described His imminent death on the cross as judgment: “Now is the judgment of this world: now is the prince of this world cast out” (John 12:31; see also John 16:11). But while His cross brings judgment upon all the wicked, at the same time it brings blessings upon the righteous. For, as the judgments of God fall upon sinful men because of their wickedness, these same judgments become in the cross, not God’s fury, but God’s love upon the righteous. God’s judgments are, so to speak, changed for the righteous from wrath, which all men deserve, to blessing, from curse to favor, and from hatred to love, for Christ bore the fury of God’s wrath, the curse and God’s punishment for sin, in Himself, by atoning for all the sin and guilt rightfully belonging to the people of God.
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To teach a love of God for all men, no matter what kind of love that may be (if, indeed, there are different kinds of love in God), is to deny the judgment of the wicked by means of the death of Christ. It is to say that Christ died for all men as atonement for sin. Such an unbiblical conclusion is forced on those who teach universal love. And so proponents of common grace are compelled to resort to a universal atonement in support of their position.
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It is true that defenders of common grace who want to retain a semblance of being Reformed talk of two different ways in which Christ died. He died fully and completely for His people, earning for them salvation. But He died partially for the reprobate wicked earning for them only a non-saving love. This partial atonement of Christ for all men is said to be an atonement for all in intention, sufficiency and availability, but not in efficacy. (The terminology I use here is one way of explaining a partial atonement; other terminology is sometimes used. We will discuss this whole concept in connection with the gracious offer of the gospel, in connection with which it is usually used.) As anyone who has any knowledge of Scripture knows, there is nothing like this in the Bible. And I challenge any man to demonstrate from God’s holy Word that Christ’s death is, in any non-saving way, for all men.
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That sharp antithesis that happened on Calvary is revealed in history. The judgment of wrath and the curse is always on the wicked, while God’s favorable judgment of love and mercy is always on the righteous. Everything God does to the human race for its sin expresses God’s attitude towards both parts of the human race as this attitude is mediated through the cross. Because the wicked hate God, they are cursed; but in Christ there is only blessing for the righteous, for they are made righteous through Christ’s work.
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Prosperity is also, therefore, the expression of God’s judgment upon the wicked (Psalm 73:18, 19). But so is sickness, suffering, loss brought by earthquakes, drought and pestilence. Prosperity for the righteous is blessing, but so is poverty, disease, suffering and disappointment. The latter God uses to chastise His people and work in them His salvation. The cross of Christ is the great divider.
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* * * *
Behind all that happens in history is the eternal purpose of God. What took place on Calvary is the realization of God’s eternal decree of election and reprobation. One could even say that the cross of Christ is the historical realization of election and reprobation. It is not strange that one hears less and less of sovereign predestination from the lips of those who promote common grace. I must call attention to this crucially important truth. Without predestination one is at a loss to understand things properly – that is, if one wants to maintain with Scripture, a sovereign God. I probably will get at what I want to say in what some might consider a roundabout way; but it is, I think, the best way.
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From our human and earthly point of view, sin is always the reason for God’s hatred of the wicked. The wicked do that which is contrary to the will of God, deliberately defy Him who holds their very lives in His hand, turn their backs to Him in loathing, spit in His face and crucify His Christ. Can God do anything else but punish such glaring wrong? To do good to such people, I say again, would only mean that God is, after all, not good to Himself, not good in revealing His own divine being in all its pristine holiness – including his just and righteous punishment of the ungodly in this life and in the life to come. The searing wrath of God and the horrors of hell are justly given to the wicked as retribution for the monstrous evil of which they are guilty.
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To teach that it is otherwise is to do dishonor to the name of God. You understand what I mean. If God can indeed be good to the wicked, love them, be kind towards them, then God is not God any longer: just, righteous and pure in all His actions. It seems to me that this point is part of the abc’s of justice. If a man tortures and kills a father and mother with a new born baby in their home by forcing entry, and if when tried for his crime, the judge says to him: “I see your sin as terrible, but I am going to forgive your sin and show you mercy and kindness; I will let you go free,” is that judge good? And if the brute commits a yet more terrible crime and appears before the judge a second time; and if the judge says to Him, “I will be yet kinder towards you and more merciful than the last time you stood in the prisoner’s dock; I will let you go free, and furthermore, I will give you $1000.00 a week for all your expenses,” do you not think that the citizenry of that area will plead for the removal of such a merciful judge? Is such a judge showing goodness and mercy? People will say, “Deliver us from the mercy of this judge, or we will all perish.”
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That God gives good gifts is true. This creation, though nothing compared to the new heavens and the new earth, is still a very beautiful and verdant earth. Anyone who cannot see the goodness of God in the corn fields ripe for harvest, in the deep blue of the sky against which stands the rugged profiles of the mountains, or hear it in the song of the meadow lark and small wren and in the rippling of the sparkling clean waters of a mountain stream, is blind and deaf to God’s goodness because he has set himself against God and despises the One who made it all. He is guilty of the most heinous crime, for he sneers at the goodness of God; he is worthy of God’s just judgment.
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From God’s point of view, however, God is accomplishing an eternal purpose. Behind all that happens in this world is a sovereign God who reveals all His virtues throughout history; not only His goodness and grace in the salvation of His elect, but also His justice and deep wrath against the sinner in His decree of reprobation. Article 16 of the Belgic Confession reads in part: “. . . God then did manifest himself such as he is; that is to say, merciful and just: merciful, since he delivers and preserves from this perdition all whom he, in his eternal and unchangeable council, of mere goodness hath elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, without any respect to their works: just, in leaving others in the fall and perdition wherein they have involved themselves.” The Westminster Confession follows the same thought. In 3/3 the confession states: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.” After defining election more fully, the Confession says: “The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice” (3/7). “To ordain them to wrath.” Not, “to ordain them to love.”
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It is a contradiction of the confessions to say that God takes an attitude of favor towards the reprobate, for an attitude of favor towards the reprobate is totally incompatible with that eternal decree to “pass them by” and to “ordain them to dishonor and wrath.”
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Yet, some effort to salvage their precious error goes like this. The evident contradiction between God’s decree of eternal predestination is said to be explained by the difference between God’s secret will (His eternal counsel) and His revealed will (His desire for the salvation of all). This distinction has the sound in it of desperation to try to justify that which cannot be justified. But because this distinction is the paper fort behind which defenders of common grace hide in defense of every doctrine that forms a part of common grace (including the gracious and well-meant gospel offer), we will defer treatment of it for some later date.
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The sovereign and eternal decree of God is carried out in history in the way of the sin of the wicked. I am, of course, aware of the fact that the workings of God in His sovereign execution of the decree of reprobation are mysterious and beyond our understanding. Reformed people have always confessed the mystery of God’s decree. But at the same time, they have repudiated the Arminian conception of reprobation (and election for that matter) that unbelief is the basis or ground of the decree of reprobation, while faith is the basis or ground of election. That is, God reprobates those who do not believe. Reprobation is the punishment for man’s sin.
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With the same discernment, the Reformed people have also rejected the idea that reprobation is the cause of sin. That is, that man sins because God reprobated them. (See, for example, Canons 1/5 and the Conclusion to the Canons.)
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God is, therefore, according to our Confessions, neither the cause of sin nor is sin the cause of God’s rejection. Rather, our fathers and spiritual forebears spoke of God as reprobating in the way of sin. This expression is important. It means on the one hand that man is himself responsible for all the sins that he commits. He may not and cannot blame God for them. They all arise out of his depraved will. But this careful expression means, on the other hand, that reprobation is the eternal decree of a sovereign God.
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It is not surprising that in those ecclesiastical circles where common grace is taught, reprobation is either minimized or denied. Those who appeal to a hidden will and a revealed will of God cannot really maintain sovereign reprobation. The hidden decree is finally so well hidden that no one remembers that it exists. The result is that the sovereignty of God is compromised and eventually lost. To lose God’s sovereignty is to lose God.
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With warm regards,
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Prof. Hanko
Greetings to all our forum members:
.
Before I continue with our discussion of God’s dealings with the human race, I must turn to a question sent in by one of our forum members. He writes that although he agrees with the sharp antithetical teachings of the Psalms, he is puzzled by Psalm 68:18: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.”
.
Psalm 68 was written by David at the time the ark was brought to Jerusalem. The event was a type of the ascension of Christ 40 days after His resurrection, and of Christ’s exaltation to the glorious position at God’s right hand. It speaks especially of the blessings that come to the church from the exalted Christ, but it also speaks of Christ’s sovereign rule of the wicked for the benefit of the church. Concerning this sovereign rule of the wicked, the Psalm says three things: 1) The exalted Christ shall destroy in His fury these wicked (verses 1); 2) the exalted Christ shall so use His sovereign power over the wicked to further the cause of His own church. He leads captivity captive; that is, He uses those great powers of darkness that held His people in the captivity of sin and death to serve His own purpose (verse 18); and He saves His elect from all these nations. The perspective is, of course, Israel, God’s people, the church of the Old Dispensation. But this salvation of a catholic church is the idea of the expression in verse 18 and is one of the blessings of the exalted Christ: “Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” This same truth is mentioned again in verses 31 and 32. All these are the mighty deeds of the ascended Christ. A part of the work of the ascended Christ is the gathering of a church from every nation.
.
* * * *
In my last letter to you, I spoke of the fact that while all men, believers and unbelievers alike, have everything of this creation and everything that happens in this creation in common, nevertheless, God’s attitude towards the wicked and righteous is essentially different. God is favorable towards the elect, but is angry with the reprobate.
.
All God’s favor and love can be bestowed only in strictest justice. I have emphasized that God is inherently and essentially good. That is, God is good in Himself and therefore, to Himself. His absolute holiness cannot allow Him to be anything but angry with anyone who is a sinner. To love or look with favor on a wicked person is to deny Himself as the only good. He must hate sin if He is to be God. He must defend holiness, for it is an attribute of His own being. Sin must be punished if God’s goodness is absolute.
.
Because it is true that God’s goodness prevents Him from being anything but wrathful towards the sinner, it is possible for God to be favorable to some only in the cross of Christ. The cross, planted on Calvary, now nearly 2000 years ago, was the central act of God in all history. It is as if God planted the cross, on which His own Son hung, right in the middle of the stream of history. From the beginning of history to the end, the stream of the human race rushes towards Calvary and flows past the cross. The cross makes division between men. It divides the human race into two streams: the stream of the wicked and the stream of the righteous. This fact was true already on Calvary itself where the cross brought division between two thieves, equally sinners, but divided by the power of Christ’s atoning sacrifice.
.
The cross of Christ means judgment upon the wicked. Shortly before He died, Christ Himself described His imminent death on the cross as judgment: “Now is the judgment of this world: now is the prince of this world cast out” (John 12:31; see also John 16:11). But while His cross brings judgment upon all the wicked, at the same time it brings blessings upon the righteous. For, as the judgments of God fall upon sinful men because of their wickedness, these same judgments become in the cross, not God’s fury, but God’s love upon the righteous. God’s judgments are, so to speak, changed for the righteous from wrath, which all men deserve, to blessing, from curse to favor, and from hatred to love, for Christ bore the fury of God’s wrath, the curse and God’s punishment for sin, in Himself, by atoning for all the sin and guilt rightfully belonging to the people of God.
.
To teach a love of God for all men, no matter what kind of love that may be (if, indeed, there are different kinds of love in God), is to deny the judgment of the wicked by means of the death of Christ. It is to say that Christ died for all men as atonement for sin. Such an unbiblical conclusion is forced on those who teach universal love. And so proponents of common grace are compelled to resort to a universal atonement in support of their position.
.
It is true that defenders of common grace who want to retain a semblance of being Reformed talk of two different ways in which Christ died. He died fully and completely for His people, earning for them salvation. But He died partially for the reprobate wicked earning for them only a non-saving love. This partial atonement of Christ for all men is said to be an atonement for all in intention, sufficiency and availability, but not in efficacy. (The terminology I use here is one way of explaining a partial atonement; other terminology is sometimes used. We will discuss this whole concept in connection with the gracious offer of the gospel, in connection with which it is usually used.) As anyone who has any knowledge of Scripture knows, there is nothing like this in the Bible. And I challenge any man to demonstrate from God’s holy Word that Christ’s death is, in any non-saving way, for all men.
.
That sharp antithesis that happened on Calvary is revealed in history. The judgment of wrath and the curse is always on the wicked, while God’s favorable judgment of love and mercy is always on the righteous. Everything God does to the human race for its sin expresses God’s attitude towards both parts of the human race as this attitude is mediated through the cross. Because the wicked hate God, they are cursed; but in Christ there is only blessing for the righteous, for they are made righteous through Christ’s work.
.
Prosperity is also, therefore, the expression of God’s judgment upon the wicked (Psalm 73:18, 19). But so is sickness, suffering, loss brought by earthquakes, drought and pestilence. Prosperity for the righteous is blessing, but so is poverty, disease, suffering and disappointment. The latter God uses to chastise His people and work in them His salvation. The cross of Christ is the great divider.
.
* * * *
Behind all that happens in history is the eternal purpose of God. What took place on Calvary is the realization of God’s eternal decree of election and reprobation. One could even say that the cross of Christ is the historical realization of election and reprobation. It is not strange that one hears less and less of sovereign predestination from the lips of those who promote common grace. I must call attention to this crucially important truth. Without predestination one is at a loss to understand things properly – that is, if one wants to maintain with Scripture, a sovereign God. I probably will get at what I want to say in what some might consider a roundabout way; but it is, I think, the best way.
.
From our human and earthly point of view, sin is always the reason for God’s hatred of the wicked. The wicked do that which is contrary to the will of God, deliberately defy Him who holds their very lives in His hand, turn their backs to Him in loathing, spit in His face and crucify His Christ. Can God do anything else but punish such glaring wrong? To do good to such people, I say again, would only mean that God is, after all, not good to Himself, not good in revealing His own divine being in all its pristine holiness – including his just and righteous punishment of the ungodly in this life and in the life to come. The searing wrath of God and the horrors of hell are justly given to the wicked as retribution for the monstrous evil of which they are guilty.
.
To teach that it is otherwise is to do dishonor to the name of God. You understand what I mean. If God can indeed be good to the wicked, love them, be kind towards them, then God is not God any longer: just, righteous and pure in all His actions. It seems to me that this point is part of the abc’s of justice. If a man tortures and kills a father and mother with a new born baby in their home by forcing entry, and if when tried for his crime, the judge says to him: “I see your sin as terrible, but I am going to forgive your sin and show you mercy and kindness; I will let you go free,” is that judge good? And if the brute commits a yet more terrible crime and appears before the judge a second time; and if the judge says to Him, “I will be yet kinder towards you and more merciful than the last time you stood in the prisoner’s dock; I will let you go free, and furthermore, I will give you $1000.00 a week for all your expenses,” do you not think that the citizenry of that area will plead for the removal of such a merciful judge? Is such a judge showing goodness and mercy? People will say, “Deliver us from the mercy of this judge, or we will all perish.”
.
That God gives good gifts is true. This creation, though nothing compared to the new heavens and the new earth, is still a very beautiful and verdant earth. Anyone who cannot see the goodness of God in the corn fields ripe for harvest, in the deep blue of the sky against which stands the rugged profiles of the mountains, or hear it in the song of the meadow lark and small wren and in the rippling of the sparkling clean waters of a mountain stream, is blind and deaf to God’s goodness because he has set himself against God and despises the One who made it all. He is guilty of the most heinous crime, for he sneers at the goodness of God; he is worthy of God’s just judgment.
.
From God’s point of view, however, God is accomplishing an eternal purpose. Behind all that happens in this world is a sovereign God who reveals all His virtues throughout history; not only His goodness and grace in the salvation of His elect, but also His justice and deep wrath against the sinner in His decree of reprobation. Article 16 of the Belgic Confession reads in part: “. . . God then did manifest himself such as he is; that is to say, merciful and just: merciful, since he delivers and preserves from this perdition all whom he, in his eternal and unchangeable council, of mere goodness hath elected in Christ Jesus our Lord, without any respect to their works: just, in leaving others in the fall and perdition wherein they have involved themselves.” The Westminster Confession follows the same thought. In 3/3 the confession states: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.” After defining election more fully, the Confession says: “The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice” (3/7). “To ordain them to wrath.” Not, “to ordain them to love.”
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It is a contradiction of the confessions to say that God takes an attitude of favor towards the reprobate, for an attitude of favor towards the reprobate is totally incompatible with that eternal decree to “pass them by” and to “ordain them to dishonor and wrath.”
.
Yet, some effort to salvage their precious error goes like this. The evident contradiction between God’s decree of eternal predestination is said to be explained by the difference between God’s secret will (His eternal counsel) and His revealed will (His desire for the salvation of all). This distinction has the sound in it of desperation to try to justify that which cannot be justified. But because this distinction is the paper fort behind which defenders of common grace hide in defense of every doctrine that forms a part of common grace (including the gracious and well-meant gospel offer), we will defer treatment of it for some later date.
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The sovereign and eternal decree of God is carried out in history in the way of the sin of the wicked. I am, of course, aware of the fact that the workings of God in His sovereign execution of the decree of reprobation are mysterious and beyond our understanding. Reformed people have always confessed the mystery of God’s decree. But at the same time, they have repudiated the Arminian conception of reprobation (and election for that matter) that unbelief is the basis or ground of the decree of reprobation, while faith is the basis or ground of election. That is, God reprobates those who do not believe. Reprobation is the punishment for man’s sin.
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With the same discernment, the Reformed people have also rejected the idea that reprobation is the cause of sin. That is, that man sins because God reprobated them. (See, for example, Canons 1/5 and the Conclusion to the Canons.)
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God is, therefore, according to our Confessions, neither the cause of sin nor is sin the cause of God’s rejection. Rather, our fathers and spiritual forebears spoke of God as reprobating in the way of sin. This expression is important. It means on the one hand that man is himself responsible for all the sins that he commits. He may not and cannot blame God for them. They all arise out of his depraved will. But this careful expression means, on the other hand, that reprobation is the eternal decree of a sovereign God.
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It is not surprising that in those ecclesiastical circles where common grace is taught, reprobation is either minimized or denied. Those who appeal to a hidden will and a revealed will of God cannot really maintain sovereign reprobation. The hidden decree is finally so well hidden that no one remembers that it exists. The result is that the sovereignty of God is compromised and eventually lost. To lose God’s sovereignty is to lose God.
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With warm regards,
.
Prof. Hanko
Friday, June 12, 2009
Are Riches a Blessing? or Sickness a curse? (17)
.
Dear Forum members,
.
In my last letter to you, I discussed the contention of those who hold to common grace, that the favor and grace of God towards a person can be seen in the possession of material and physical gifts. Wealth is equated with God’s favor and health is equated with God’s love. God shows His favor towards all and His enduring love to all men by giving them material and physical abundance. This view is very commonly held throughout the church world, by cleric and layman alike.
.
It ought to be obvious, however, that earthly good things, though given by a good God, cannot, in themselves, be indications of God’s favor, for God also sends poverty, starvation, cancer and death. On what grounds ought we to say, therefore, that earthly well-being is to be explained as evidences of favor, and yet deny that poverty and suffering are evidences of anger, hostility and hatred? To tie God’s favor to the possession of an abundance of material things and to interpret health as an indication of God’s love gets one into all sorts of difficulties and ultimately ties God’s favor to our own personal desires, carnal though they may be. We all would like to have more money. None of us enjoys cancer. To cater to our earthly covetousness would be for God to bless sin and to despise holiness. God’s holy saints are frequently very poor. We must not be so foolish; nor does Scripture give us any ground for interpreting life in such a fashion.
.
The Bible does show us the direction we ought to go as we interpret the things of this world as things which God sends. We do well to pay close attention to this instruction from the Word of God, for we are prone to fall into the same error as those who teach common grace. How often is it not true that when some calamity befalls a child of God, his first reaction is, What have I done wrong to deserve this? Of what sin am I guilty, because God has sent this trouble upon me? Why do I have to suffer in this way? Questions like these are our natural reaction to life’s trials. We frequently come perilously close to agreeing with the basic premise of common grace. .
But there is no hope for us if we go that direction to solve the problems that adversity brings. We get caught in a muddle of questions to which there are no answers. We are lead by such thinking into dead-end paths that have no outlet. We trouble the tender consciences of God’s beleaguered saints in the midst of their woes of life. We take away the one hope and comfort they have and leave them with nothing to lighten their gloom. All they know is that material prosperity and physical well-being are indicative of God’s favor. But I am dying from cancer and have just lost my only son in an accident. What now?
* * * *
God’s works are quite different. Scripture is very clear on the whole matter.
.
In this life we and all men live in the world. God gives all men without exception the things of the world. Without distinction, all men receive from God rain and sunshine, warmth and cold, money and homes, automobiles and television sets, automatic washers and clothing to wear. God disposes of all these gifts as it suits Him. To some He gives much, to others little. Some have health and strength all their life, others are sick from the date of birth. Some have cancer, others have Lou Gehrig’s Disease. God may and does give to His creatures as He pleases. No one gives Him advice on the matter. He consults with no one and seeks no one’s opinion. He pays no attention to outward appearance, rank, prestige, honor, nobility of birth or any other consideration. From the day an individual is born until the day he dies, God determines with absolute wisdom the entire pathway of a man’s life and what of the things of this earth he may have.
.
This is true of all men. The wicked and the righteous receive all things in common and share all the bounties of this earth as well as all its calamities. A tornado destroys the home of an ungodly prince, but also a believing pauper. Cancer strikes without discrimination. Wealth is sometimes given to the wicked, but sometimes to God’s people. Poverty stalks pagan lands where the name of God is not mentioned, but Christian communities are not immune to starvation. My wife and I have been in Myanmar (Burma) and seen the lodging places of the people there. I have eaten with them of their paltry handful of rice. I have been in their huts and shacks. I found godliness there – perhaps beyond our own, if godliness includes contentment. I have heard pastors in Myanmar tell of holding their dying children in their arms, because medical help was beyond their means. Shall we stand in the doorway of such a shack and tell grieving parents who are ready to bury their child that God’s favor is shown in the material bounties of life as well as in health?
.
To possess or to be deprived of the things we desire here in the world is no indication of God’s favor or disfavor. These things, in themselves, have nothing to do with grace and love or anger and hatred. They must not and cannot be interpreted in terms of God’s love or hatred, God’s blessing or wrath, God’s kindness or vengeance.
.
All that I have said does not, however, mean that God’s disposal of all that belongs to this life in this present world is arbitrary. We must not look on this divine disposal as being done willy-nilly, without reason or design, on the basis of spur-of-the-moment opinions. Nothing God does is done without the very best of reasons and as means to accomplish ends known only to the mind of God and belonging to His unsearchable ways. Whether we know God’s purpose or do not know it, makes no difference. Most – indeed, nearly all God’s ways are beyond anything we would think or imagine. God does not take us into His counsels, nor does He explain to us why He does what He does. He is not answerable to us nor are we permitted to summon Him with a subpoena that we may put Him in the dock and force Him to give an account to us of what He does.
.
God is not accountable to man for anything He does. This is the great lesson of the book of Job. Job was afflicted as few men are afflicted. His friends thought to solve the problem of Job’s sufferings by pointing to the fact that Job had sinned a great sin and was being punished by God for his sin. Job rejected that charge, for, although he knew that he was a sinner, yet he clung to the righteousness of Christ as his own (Job 19:25-27) and confessed repeatedly his trust in God’s sovereign control of his life. But Job did have one question. He wondered why all this evil had come upon him and admitted that if God would only tell him the reasons for his suffering, he would bear his anguish with patience. (Job 23:3-10). But God’s answer, when He spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, was, “Job, I am God. I do as it pleases me. No one may question my ways nor challenge my actions. No one may bring me into the witness stand and force me to give an account of what I have done. What I do is my work alone even if you do not understand it.” God’s ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts (Is. 55:8, 9).
.
God’s purpose in giving all things to all men in common is to show, on the one hand, His justice in His just punishment against sin, and on the other hand, to show the riches of His grace and love to His people whom He has redeemed in Christ. Thus, though all men have all the things of this creation in common, God’s attitude towards the wicked is different from His attitude towards His elect. God is never gracious, or loving, or kind, or filled with compassion to the wicked. Because He is sovereign, He sends them all that they receive; but all is His just judgment on those who hate Him. Equally, He is sovereign in all He gives to the righteous, but all that He sends them is blessing. We must understand this and confess it; it is the teaching of Scripture. Poverty but also riches are curses on the wicked. Strokes and diabetes but also health and strength are curses on the wicked. Riches but also poverty are blessings to the righteous. Health and long life but also heart failure and genetic illnesses are blessings to God’s people.
.
The key text here is Proverbs 3:33: “The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just.” The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked. That is, the curse of the Lord is with the wicked in everything that happens to them. They eat and drink the curse of the Lord. The curse accompanies them into their sitting room and bedroom and is upon all they do in these rooms. The curse of the Lord comes along with the husband when he brings his wages home. The curse of the Lord is in the work of the mother, going about taking care of the house and preparing to satisfy the needs of her husband and children. If they live in a castle or in a hut, the curse is there. If their home is turned into a hospital ward or a palace, the curse of the Lord is there. All the experiences through which the wicked pass are curses. All they possess and use in their daily lives are curses. Nothing but curse is upon them, for the curse of the Lord is in their house.
.
But the opposite is true of the righteous. Always blessing is in their habitation. If they are prosperous, it is the blessing of God. If they are poor, their poverty is sent because God loves them. If the family returns sorrowing from the cemetery, their grief is the direct fruit of God’s tender care of them. If trouble and sickness come their way, God’s blessing is not only in spite of the trouble, but through and by means of the trouble. All is curse for the wicked; all is blessing for the righteous. All this is taught us in the sacred Scriptures and we must take hold of it by faith.
.
It can be said without exaggeration that Proverbs 3:33 sums up the entire Scriptural teaching on this matter of our pathway in life. All Scripture testifies of the same truth. Read, for example, Psalm 1; and as you read the sharp antithesis between the wicked and the righteous, read it aware of the fact that Psalm 1 is the first Psalm in the Hebrew Psalter, because it defines the one theme that runs like a thread through all the songs. One does well to read meditatively this ancient Psalter of the church, The one constant refrain is the sharp contrast between the rich blessings bestowed on God’s people and the dreadful judgments God in His anger pours out on the wicked. My wife and I just finished reading the Psalms (our favorite book of the Bible) once again. We were struck by this repeated contrast. We tried to find a passage where Zion’s songs speak of God’s love towards His people and the wicked. We could not find one. I recommend to anyone to whom a common love of God towards all men seems a viable doctrinal option to read these delightful songs and try to find just one place where the church happily sings of a universal love or mercy or grace of God. One may start with Psalm 3:7, 8, go on to Psalm 5:4-7, pause for a moment at Psalm 9:5-9 and move carefully through the Psalter until he comes to the end in which concluding songs the Psalmist calls upon the entire creation to join with the church in praises to God who alone is worthy of all praise. But even then, with heart full of praise, the Psalmist reminds us that part of God’s great works for which He alone is to be praised, is God’s two-edged sword, “to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute upon them the judgment written; this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the Lord” (Psalm 149:6-9). It is our honor to praise God for His judgments upon the wicked? Indeed it is. Then what is it to the defenders of common grace to speak of love towards the wicked and grace towards them that hate God? It can only be their condemnation.
.
There is more that must be said on this point, but I will wait with that until my next letter.
.
With warmest regards,
.
Prof Hanko
Dear Forum members,
.
In my last letter to you, I discussed the contention of those who hold to common grace, that the favor and grace of God towards a person can be seen in the possession of material and physical gifts. Wealth is equated with God’s favor and health is equated with God’s love. God shows His favor towards all and His enduring love to all men by giving them material and physical abundance. This view is very commonly held throughout the church world, by cleric and layman alike.
.
It ought to be obvious, however, that earthly good things, though given by a good God, cannot, in themselves, be indications of God’s favor, for God also sends poverty, starvation, cancer and death. On what grounds ought we to say, therefore, that earthly well-being is to be explained as evidences of favor, and yet deny that poverty and suffering are evidences of anger, hostility and hatred? To tie God’s favor to the possession of an abundance of material things and to interpret health as an indication of God’s love gets one into all sorts of difficulties and ultimately ties God’s favor to our own personal desires, carnal though they may be. We all would like to have more money. None of us enjoys cancer. To cater to our earthly covetousness would be for God to bless sin and to despise holiness. God’s holy saints are frequently very poor. We must not be so foolish; nor does Scripture give us any ground for interpreting life in such a fashion.
.
The Bible does show us the direction we ought to go as we interpret the things of this world as things which God sends. We do well to pay close attention to this instruction from the Word of God, for we are prone to fall into the same error as those who teach common grace. How often is it not true that when some calamity befalls a child of God, his first reaction is, What have I done wrong to deserve this? Of what sin am I guilty, because God has sent this trouble upon me? Why do I have to suffer in this way? Questions like these are our natural reaction to life’s trials. We frequently come perilously close to agreeing with the basic premise of common grace. .
But there is no hope for us if we go that direction to solve the problems that adversity brings. We get caught in a muddle of questions to which there are no answers. We are lead by such thinking into dead-end paths that have no outlet. We trouble the tender consciences of God’s beleaguered saints in the midst of their woes of life. We take away the one hope and comfort they have and leave them with nothing to lighten their gloom. All they know is that material prosperity and physical well-being are indicative of God’s favor. But I am dying from cancer and have just lost my only son in an accident. What now?
* * * *
God’s works are quite different. Scripture is very clear on the whole matter.
.
In this life we and all men live in the world. God gives all men without exception the things of the world. Without distinction, all men receive from God rain and sunshine, warmth and cold, money and homes, automobiles and television sets, automatic washers and clothing to wear. God disposes of all these gifts as it suits Him. To some He gives much, to others little. Some have health and strength all their life, others are sick from the date of birth. Some have cancer, others have Lou Gehrig’s Disease. God may and does give to His creatures as He pleases. No one gives Him advice on the matter. He consults with no one and seeks no one’s opinion. He pays no attention to outward appearance, rank, prestige, honor, nobility of birth or any other consideration. From the day an individual is born until the day he dies, God determines with absolute wisdom the entire pathway of a man’s life and what of the things of this earth he may have.
.
This is true of all men. The wicked and the righteous receive all things in common and share all the bounties of this earth as well as all its calamities. A tornado destroys the home of an ungodly prince, but also a believing pauper. Cancer strikes without discrimination. Wealth is sometimes given to the wicked, but sometimes to God’s people. Poverty stalks pagan lands where the name of God is not mentioned, but Christian communities are not immune to starvation. My wife and I have been in Myanmar (Burma) and seen the lodging places of the people there. I have eaten with them of their paltry handful of rice. I have been in their huts and shacks. I found godliness there – perhaps beyond our own, if godliness includes contentment. I have heard pastors in Myanmar tell of holding their dying children in their arms, because medical help was beyond their means. Shall we stand in the doorway of such a shack and tell grieving parents who are ready to bury their child that God’s favor is shown in the material bounties of life as well as in health?
.
To possess or to be deprived of the things we desire here in the world is no indication of God’s favor or disfavor. These things, in themselves, have nothing to do with grace and love or anger and hatred. They must not and cannot be interpreted in terms of God’s love or hatred, God’s blessing or wrath, God’s kindness or vengeance.
.
All that I have said does not, however, mean that God’s disposal of all that belongs to this life in this present world is arbitrary. We must not look on this divine disposal as being done willy-nilly, without reason or design, on the basis of spur-of-the-moment opinions. Nothing God does is done without the very best of reasons and as means to accomplish ends known only to the mind of God and belonging to His unsearchable ways. Whether we know God’s purpose or do not know it, makes no difference. Most – indeed, nearly all God’s ways are beyond anything we would think or imagine. God does not take us into His counsels, nor does He explain to us why He does what He does. He is not answerable to us nor are we permitted to summon Him with a subpoena that we may put Him in the dock and force Him to give an account to us of what He does.
.
God is not accountable to man for anything He does. This is the great lesson of the book of Job. Job was afflicted as few men are afflicted. His friends thought to solve the problem of Job’s sufferings by pointing to the fact that Job had sinned a great sin and was being punished by God for his sin. Job rejected that charge, for, although he knew that he was a sinner, yet he clung to the righteousness of Christ as his own (Job 19:25-27) and confessed repeatedly his trust in God’s sovereign control of his life. But Job did have one question. He wondered why all this evil had come upon him and admitted that if God would only tell him the reasons for his suffering, he would bear his anguish with patience. (Job 23:3-10). But God’s answer, when He spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, was, “Job, I am God. I do as it pleases me. No one may question my ways nor challenge my actions. No one may bring me into the witness stand and force me to give an account of what I have done. What I do is my work alone even if you do not understand it.” God’s ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts (Is. 55:8, 9).
.
God’s purpose in giving all things to all men in common is to show, on the one hand, His justice in His just punishment against sin, and on the other hand, to show the riches of His grace and love to His people whom He has redeemed in Christ. Thus, though all men have all the things of this creation in common, God’s attitude towards the wicked is different from His attitude towards His elect. God is never gracious, or loving, or kind, or filled with compassion to the wicked. Because He is sovereign, He sends them all that they receive; but all is His just judgment on those who hate Him. Equally, He is sovereign in all He gives to the righteous, but all that He sends them is blessing. We must understand this and confess it; it is the teaching of Scripture. Poverty but also riches are curses on the wicked. Strokes and diabetes but also health and strength are curses on the wicked. Riches but also poverty are blessings to the righteous. Health and long life but also heart failure and genetic illnesses are blessings to God’s people.
.
The key text here is Proverbs 3:33: “The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked: but he blesseth the habitation of the just.” The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked. That is, the curse of the Lord is with the wicked in everything that happens to them. They eat and drink the curse of the Lord. The curse accompanies them into their sitting room and bedroom and is upon all they do in these rooms. The curse of the Lord comes along with the husband when he brings his wages home. The curse of the Lord is in the work of the mother, going about taking care of the house and preparing to satisfy the needs of her husband and children. If they live in a castle or in a hut, the curse is there. If their home is turned into a hospital ward or a palace, the curse of the Lord is there. All the experiences through which the wicked pass are curses. All they possess and use in their daily lives are curses. Nothing but curse is upon them, for the curse of the Lord is in their house.
.
But the opposite is true of the righteous. Always blessing is in their habitation. If they are prosperous, it is the blessing of God. If they are poor, their poverty is sent because God loves them. If the family returns sorrowing from the cemetery, their grief is the direct fruit of God’s tender care of them. If trouble and sickness come their way, God’s blessing is not only in spite of the trouble, but through and by means of the trouble. All is curse for the wicked; all is blessing for the righteous. All this is taught us in the sacred Scriptures and we must take hold of it by faith.
.
It can be said without exaggeration that Proverbs 3:33 sums up the entire Scriptural teaching on this matter of our pathway in life. All Scripture testifies of the same truth. Read, for example, Psalm 1; and as you read the sharp antithesis between the wicked and the righteous, read it aware of the fact that Psalm 1 is the first Psalm in the Hebrew Psalter, because it defines the one theme that runs like a thread through all the songs. One does well to read meditatively this ancient Psalter of the church, The one constant refrain is the sharp contrast between the rich blessings bestowed on God’s people and the dreadful judgments God in His anger pours out on the wicked. My wife and I just finished reading the Psalms (our favorite book of the Bible) once again. We were struck by this repeated contrast. We tried to find a passage where Zion’s songs speak of God’s love towards His people and the wicked. We could not find one. I recommend to anyone to whom a common love of God towards all men seems a viable doctrinal option to read these delightful songs and try to find just one place where the church happily sings of a universal love or mercy or grace of God. One may start with Psalm 3:7, 8, go on to Psalm 5:4-7, pause for a moment at Psalm 9:5-9 and move carefully through the Psalter until he comes to the end in which concluding songs the Psalmist calls upon the entire creation to join with the church in praises to God who alone is worthy of all praise. But even then, with heart full of praise, the Psalmist reminds us that part of God’s great works for which He alone is to be praised, is God’s two-edged sword, “to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute upon them the judgment written; this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the Lord” (Psalm 149:6-9). It is our honor to praise God for His judgments upon the wicked? Indeed it is. Then what is it to the defenders of common grace to speak of love towards the wicked and grace towards them that hate God? It can only be their condemnation.
.
There is more that must be said on this point, but I will wait with that until my next letter.
.
With warmest regards,
.
Prof Hanko
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Is God Gracious in Giving Good Gifts to All Men? (16)
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Dear Forum members,
.
In my last installment I called attention to the fact that some defenders of common grace define common grace as God’s attitude of favor towards His creation. No Reformed man would ever disagree with this assertion. God made this world; He upholds it and governs it by His power. God has determined to save His creation through the atonement of Christ. God loves His world, looks on it with favor, and sends out His Spirit into the creation to renew it. There is, of course, the matter of terminology; that is, whether God’s love for His creation can rightly be called grace. But apart from that, the controversy does not lie here.
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The defenders of common grace speak of the fact that God also has a certain attitude of favor towards men – not some men, but all men. He is kind and benevolent towards men in general; He shows His desire that they be saved and does what He can to convince men of His desire to save them. That is, common grace, according to its proponents, is God’s love, mercy, kindness, etc. towards every man in the world that has ever lived, lives now and will live in the future before the Lord returns. It is an attitude of favor in whatever form it takes; that is, God shows His favor or grace to men in different ways, the chief of which is the well-meant gospel offer. But He shows His love for men in general in ways different from the well-meant and gracious gospel offer as well.
.
I have postponed a treatment of the gospel offer for the time being, It is now my purpose to discuss that element in the doctrine of common grace that claims that God shows His favor to all men through giving them the good things in life. While a great deal has been said and much ink spilled over the question of the so-called offer of the gospel, proponents of common grace point also to rain and sunshine and the good things of this life as grace upon all men and His love towards mankind in general.
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It is this matter of rain and sunshine (as well as other good gifts) upon the unregenerate that concerns us at present. The first point of common grace, adopted by the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in 1924, specifically speaks of this kind of common grace. The point reads: "Relative to the first point which concerns the favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect, synod declare it to be established according to Scripture and the Confessions that, apart from the saving grace of God shown only to those that are elect unto eternal life, there is also a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general. This is evident from the scriptural passages quoted and from the Canons of Dordrecht, II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9, which deal with the general offer of the gospel, while it also appears from the citations made from Reformed writers of the most flourishing period of Reformed theology that our Reformed writers from the past favored this view. (Quoted from Hoeksema and Hanko, Ready to Give an Answer [Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1997] 63. The emphasis is mine.).
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I note in the last letter that the wording of this first point of common grace is extremely unclear. It speaks of a favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect. According to the defenders of common grace, not the creation is meant, but men are the objects of this general grace of God – even though the wording does not sound like that.
.
But the confusion does not end here. When it comes to the point of telling us what that favorable attitude of God towards humanity is, the first point speaks only of a general offer of the gospel. One would think, upon reading the point, that this gospel offer is all that is meant. Even when one looks at the "proof" given for this assertion of God’s favorable attitude towards humanity, one discovers that there is no confessional proof offered for any favorable attitude of God towards the wicked except that favor supposedly revealed in the offer of the gospel. Canons II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9 both speak of the gospel.
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The same is true in part of the Biblical proof for this universal favorable attitude of God towards all men. The last four proof texts, I Timothy 4:10 , Romans 2:4 , Ezekiel 33:11 , Ezekiel 18:23 , are obviously intended to give Biblical proof for the gospel offer.
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But then, strangely enough, other passages are referred to, which, though few, speak of something other than the gracious and general gospel offer. There are four such Scriptural passages. These four are Psalm 145:9 , Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6 : 35, 36 , Acts 14:16 , 17. When we consider that I dealt with Psalm 145:9 and insisted that the text teaches that God surely does show favor to His creation, we are left with Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6: 35, 36 and Acts 14:16. 17. Matthew 5:44, 45 speaks of sunshine and rain and is interpreted to mean that sunshine and rain are evidences of God’s grace. Because the sun shines on everyone and because rain falls everywhere, God’s grace is also upon everyone. Luke 6 speaks only of God’s kindness towards the unthankful and evil. The interpretation of this, then, is that kindness is like rain and sunshine and is evidence of grace to all, all men being the unthankful and evil. Acts 14:17 speaks of the fact that God did not leave Himself without witness, but testified that He is God by doing good, giving rain from heaven along with fruitful season, and filling men’s hearts with food and gladness. This witness of God is interpreted to refer to God’s grace and favor that He shows to all men.
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Let us consider the matter. Before we enter into the meaning of the few texts quoted, three other points have to be made.
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The first is that no one disputes the fact that God gives good gifts to men. This is irrefutably taught in Scripture and no one wants to deny it. James 1:17 settles the matter: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." God is good! He is good in His own being. And as He reveals Himself in all the things He has made, He reveals that He is good. He is good in all He does; He is good in all the gifts He sends to man; He is the overflowing fountain of all good. Indeed, in whatever He does, He is good. It would be terribly wrong to say that there are certain things God does that are not good. The implication would have to be that sin can be found in God; or imperfection; or lack of understanding; or some deficiency in what He does. All this would be blasphemy of the worst sort.
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But this in turn means that God is not only good when He sends His rain and sunshine from heaven and causes an abundance of food to grow; He is also good when he sends drought and famine, pestilence and grasshoppers, which eat everything in sight. He is good, not only when He sends health and strength, but also when He sends sickness and pain. He is good in times of prosperity, but He is also good in times of adversity. That ought to be clear to anyone that holds to the truth of God’s sovereignty and infinite goodness. If God is good when He sends what we want, why is he not good when He sends things we do not want and fear? Is He good when rain and sunshine come? But bad when floods and drought destroy crops? Is He good when He gives us strength to work, but bad when He sends sickness? That is the insoluble problem of common grace.
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Who would dare charge God with badness? Not even those foolish people who deny that God sends sickness and trouble dare to claim badness on God’s part. They simply move all trouble and affliction outside God’s control and into the hands of the devil – and thus deny God’s sovereignty.
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From the viewpoint of our own subjective experience as children of God, we ought to see how crucial this is for our faith. If only the good things in life are grace, what about the bad things? We would be forced to conclude that the bad things are evidences of God’s anger and hatred. What else can they be? But what would that do for our faith? Every affliction and trouble in this life would be reason for fear and despair. Why is God angry with us? Why does He send these terrible troubles? It can only be that God is angry with me and loves me no longer. Such is the inevitable experience of trying to equate God’s favor with mere outward prosperity.
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The problem is, obviously, that we equate God’s favor towards men with the bestowal of pleasant earthly things. Rain and sunshine are favor, so it is claimed. So is health and strength. So is prosperity and affluence. The more things of this world I possess, the greater is the favor of God. But then the less of the things of this world I possess, the less I have of the favor of God. That follows.
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We do grave injustice to our fellow saints in third-world countries such as Myanmar when we make such absurd statements. How can we claim to have more of the favor of God here in an affluent Western country when our fellow saints in Myanmar have all they can manage to keep body and soul together? It is a cruel slander of them.
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And yet it is a mistake we are all inclined to make. Asaph made that mistake when he told us in Psalm 73 that in noticing the prosperity of the wicked and his own suffering, he almost lost his faith. The wicked owned an abundance of the things of this world and seemed to live tranquil and trouble-free lives, while he endured chastening each morning at the hand of God. The problem was so serious to him that, unless he found the answer, he found it impossible to believe God’s goodness towards His people.
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Common grace, which identifies favor with material things, is a threat to one’s faith.
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The same error is made into the central truth of preaching by the so-called "Prosperity Gospelers." Their main theme in all they preach is that to serve the Lord will result in material prosperity, health, and an easy life in the world. Thousands follow their teaching; it is the easy way to attain what their covetous souls desire. Common grace, insofar as it teaches that material possessions are indicative of the favor God, feeds this abominable teaching. It is a teaching, when consistently applied to life, believed and accepted, leads to hell. And yet I hear voices claiming to be Reformed who make the same dreadful mistake.
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It is sometimes argued that surely in the old dispensation material prosperity was indicative of God’s blessing. Countless texts can be quoted in support of this, especially in the book of Deuteronomy. One example of such a text, outside of Deuteronomy, is Malachi 3:10 : "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now here with, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
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But we must not forget that all this was in the old dispensation in which all God’s dealings with His church were in pictures and not in reality, in types and shadows and not directly in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The result was that material prosperity was, for the church, prosperity in the land of Canaan. And the land of Canaan was a picture of heaven: it was a land flowing with milk and honey as a picture of the rich spiritual blessedness of heaven. In keeping, therefore, with the nature of the old dispensation, all these blessings in the land of Canaan were dependent on Israel’s keeping of the law of God (See especially Deuteronomy 28 ). And the fact of the matter was that Israel could not and did not keep God’s law, with the result that the land of Canaan became a barren wasteland and Israel was brought into captivity ( II Chron. 36:21 ).
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The believers in Canaan never made the mistake of confusing Canaan and earthly prosperity with the blessing of God in Jesus Christ. They looked at the picture and realized it was only a picture. When Christ would come, He would fulfill the law for them and do on their behalf what they could never do. And the reward would be, not that land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, but heaven itself. Their hope and faith were fixed on Christ and on His perfect work, which would give them the fullness of the spiritual blessings of salvation ( Heb. 11:10, 13-16 ).
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I shall return to this subject in my next installment.
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With warmest regards,
Prof Hanko
Dear Forum members,
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In my last installment I called attention to the fact that some defenders of common grace define common grace as God’s attitude of favor towards His creation. No Reformed man would ever disagree with this assertion. God made this world; He upholds it and governs it by His power. God has determined to save His creation through the atonement of Christ. God loves His world, looks on it with favor, and sends out His Spirit into the creation to renew it. There is, of course, the matter of terminology; that is, whether God’s love for His creation can rightly be called grace. But apart from that, the controversy does not lie here.
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The defenders of common grace speak of the fact that God also has a certain attitude of favor towards men – not some men, but all men. He is kind and benevolent towards men in general; He shows His desire that they be saved and does what He can to convince men of His desire to save them. That is, common grace, according to its proponents, is God’s love, mercy, kindness, etc. towards every man in the world that has ever lived, lives now and will live in the future before the Lord returns. It is an attitude of favor in whatever form it takes; that is, God shows His favor or grace to men in different ways, the chief of which is the well-meant gospel offer. But He shows His love for men in general in ways different from the well-meant and gracious gospel offer as well.
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I have postponed a treatment of the gospel offer for the time being, It is now my purpose to discuss that element in the doctrine of common grace that claims that God shows His favor to all men through giving them the good things in life. While a great deal has been said and much ink spilled over the question of the so-called offer of the gospel, proponents of common grace point also to rain and sunshine and the good things of this life as grace upon all men and His love towards mankind in general.
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It is this matter of rain and sunshine (as well as other good gifts) upon the unregenerate that concerns us at present. The first point of common grace, adopted by the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in 1924, specifically speaks of this kind of common grace. The point reads: "Relative to the first point which concerns the favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect, synod declare it to be established according to Scripture and the Confessions that, apart from the saving grace of God shown only to those that are elect unto eternal life, there is also a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general. This is evident from the scriptural passages quoted and from the Canons of Dordrecht, II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9, which deal with the general offer of the gospel, while it also appears from the citations made from Reformed writers of the most flourishing period of Reformed theology that our Reformed writers from the past favored this view. (Quoted from Hoeksema and Hanko, Ready to Give an Answer [Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1997] 63. The emphasis is mine.).
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I note in the last letter that the wording of this first point of common grace is extremely unclear. It speaks of a favorable attitude of God towards humanity in general and not only towards the elect. According to the defenders of common grace, not the creation is meant, but men are the objects of this general grace of God – even though the wording does not sound like that.
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But the confusion does not end here. When it comes to the point of telling us what that favorable attitude of God towards humanity is, the first point speaks only of a general offer of the gospel. One would think, upon reading the point, that this gospel offer is all that is meant. Even when one looks at the "proof" given for this assertion of God’s favorable attitude towards humanity, one discovers that there is no confessional proof offered for any favorable attitude of God towards the wicked except that favor supposedly revealed in the offer of the gospel. Canons II, 5 and III/IV, 8 and 9 both speak of the gospel.
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The same is true in part of the Biblical proof for this universal favorable attitude of God towards all men. The last four proof texts, I Timothy 4:10 , Romans 2:4 , Ezekiel 33:11 , Ezekiel 18:23 , are obviously intended to give Biblical proof for the gospel offer.
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But then, strangely enough, other passages are referred to, which, though few, speak of something other than the gracious and general gospel offer. There are four such Scriptural passages. These four are Psalm 145:9 , Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6 : 35, 36 , Acts 14:16 , 17. When we consider that I dealt with Psalm 145:9 and insisted that the text teaches that God surely does show favor to His creation, we are left with Matthew 5:44, 45 , Luke 6: 35, 36 and Acts 14:16. 17. Matthew 5:44, 45 speaks of sunshine and rain and is interpreted to mean that sunshine and rain are evidences of God’s grace. Because the sun shines on everyone and because rain falls everywhere, God’s grace is also upon everyone. Luke 6 speaks only of God’s kindness towards the unthankful and evil. The interpretation of this, then, is that kindness is like rain and sunshine and is evidence of grace to all, all men being the unthankful and evil. Acts 14:17 speaks of the fact that God did not leave Himself without witness, but testified that He is God by doing good, giving rain from heaven along with fruitful season, and filling men’s hearts with food and gladness. This witness of God is interpreted to refer to God’s grace and favor that He shows to all men.
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Let us consider the matter. Before we enter into the meaning of the few texts quoted, three other points have to be made.
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The first is that no one disputes the fact that God gives good gifts to men. This is irrefutably taught in Scripture and no one wants to deny it. James 1:17 settles the matter: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." God is good! He is good in His own being. And as He reveals Himself in all the things He has made, He reveals that He is good. He is good in all He does; He is good in all the gifts He sends to man; He is the overflowing fountain of all good. Indeed, in whatever He does, He is good. It would be terribly wrong to say that there are certain things God does that are not good. The implication would have to be that sin can be found in God; or imperfection; or lack of understanding; or some deficiency in what He does. All this would be blasphemy of the worst sort.
.
But this in turn means that God is not only good when He sends His rain and sunshine from heaven and causes an abundance of food to grow; He is also good when he sends drought and famine, pestilence and grasshoppers, which eat everything in sight. He is good, not only when He sends health and strength, but also when He sends sickness and pain. He is good in times of prosperity, but He is also good in times of adversity. That ought to be clear to anyone that holds to the truth of God’s sovereignty and infinite goodness. If God is good when He sends what we want, why is he not good when He sends things we do not want and fear? Is He good when rain and sunshine come? But bad when floods and drought destroy crops? Is He good when He gives us strength to work, but bad when He sends sickness? That is the insoluble problem of common grace.
.
Who would dare charge God with badness? Not even those foolish people who deny that God sends sickness and trouble dare to claim badness on God’s part. They simply move all trouble and affliction outside God’s control and into the hands of the devil – and thus deny God’s sovereignty.
.
From the viewpoint of our own subjective experience as children of God, we ought to see how crucial this is for our faith. If only the good things in life are grace, what about the bad things? We would be forced to conclude that the bad things are evidences of God’s anger and hatred. What else can they be? But what would that do for our faith? Every affliction and trouble in this life would be reason for fear and despair. Why is God angry with us? Why does He send these terrible troubles? It can only be that God is angry with me and loves me no longer. Such is the inevitable experience of trying to equate God’s favor with mere outward prosperity.
.
The problem is, obviously, that we equate God’s favor towards men with the bestowal of pleasant earthly things. Rain and sunshine are favor, so it is claimed. So is health and strength. So is prosperity and affluence. The more things of this world I possess, the greater is the favor of God. But then the less of the things of this world I possess, the less I have of the favor of God. That follows.
.
We do grave injustice to our fellow saints in third-world countries such as Myanmar when we make such absurd statements. How can we claim to have more of the favor of God here in an affluent Western country when our fellow saints in Myanmar have all they can manage to keep body and soul together? It is a cruel slander of them.
.
And yet it is a mistake we are all inclined to make. Asaph made that mistake when he told us in Psalm 73 that in noticing the prosperity of the wicked and his own suffering, he almost lost his faith. The wicked owned an abundance of the things of this world and seemed to live tranquil and trouble-free lives, while he endured chastening each morning at the hand of God. The problem was so serious to him that, unless he found the answer, he found it impossible to believe God’s goodness towards His people.
.
Common grace, which identifies favor with material things, is a threat to one’s faith.
.
The same error is made into the central truth of preaching by the so-called "Prosperity Gospelers." Their main theme in all they preach is that to serve the Lord will result in material prosperity, health, and an easy life in the world. Thousands follow their teaching; it is the easy way to attain what their covetous souls desire. Common grace, insofar as it teaches that material possessions are indicative of the favor God, feeds this abominable teaching. It is a teaching, when consistently applied to life, believed and accepted, leads to hell. And yet I hear voices claiming to be Reformed who make the same dreadful mistake.
.
It is sometimes argued that surely in the old dispensation material prosperity was indicative of God’s blessing. Countless texts can be quoted in support of this, especially in the book of Deuteronomy. One example of such a text, outside of Deuteronomy, is Malachi 3:10 : "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house and prove me now here with, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
.
But we must not forget that all this was in the old dispensation in which all God’s dealings with His church were in pictures and not in reality, in types and shadows and not directly in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The result was that material prosperity was, for the church, prosperity in the land of Canaan. And the land of Canaan was a picture of heaven: it was a land flowing with milk and honey as a picture of the rich spiritual blessedness of heaven. In keeping, therefore, with the nature of the old dispensation, all these blessings in the land of Canaan were dependent on Israel’s keeping of the law of God (See especially Deuteronomy 28 ). And the fact of the matter was that Israel could not and did not keep God’s law, with the result that the land of Canaan became a barren wasteland and Israel was brought into captivity ( II Chron. 36:21 ).
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The believers in Canaan never made the mistake of confusing Canaan and earthly prosperity with the blessing of God in Jesus Christ. They looked at the picture and realized it was only a picture. When Christ would come, He would fulfill the law for them and do on their behalf what they could never do. And the reward would be, not that land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea, but heaven itself. Their hope and faith were fixed on Christ and on His perfect work, which would give them the fullness of the spiritual blessings of salvation ( Heb. 11:10, 13-16 ).
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I shall return to this subject in my next installment.
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With warmest regards,
Prof Hanko
Friday, May 15, 2009
The First Point of Common Grace: An Introduction (15)
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Dear Forum members,
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Before I get into the material that I plan to send you in this letter, I need to answer a question that came from one of our forum members.
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The question is concerning my remark in my last letter that common grace modifies at least four of the five points of Calvinism and, perhaps, also the fifth, namely perseverance of the saints. The reader’s claim was that one ought not really be hesitant about saying that common grace also affects perseverance of the saints, and that thus all five points need to be modified if common grace is introduced into the body of doctrine known as the doctrines of grace. His reason for asserting this was that the five points of Calvinism are a whole, and to modify one is to modify all. The five hang together. They stand or fall together.
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The reason for the objection of the correspondent is, of course, true. One cannot believe in a universal atonement without denying eternal predestination, including both election and reprobation. And so it is with all five.
. My “perhaps” however, had a slightly different emphasis than the reader gave it. My point was and is that the error of common grace directly modifies four of the five points. A universal love of God for men is in flat contradiction to sovereign election and reprobation. A universal atonement is in direct contradiction to sovereign predestination and limited atonement. A work of the Spirit in the hearts of all men enabling them to do good is directly contrary to total depravity. But no teaching of common grace directly opposes the preservation of the saints.
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Even the Arminians did not think that their view had a direct bearing on what we now call the fifth point of Calvinism, for in the original Five Article of the Remonstrance, in which document the Arminians set down their position, the Arminians would not flatly say that they denied the preservation of the saints. They merely expressed doubt about the question. Further, the defenders of common grace readily admit that their views modify the first four points of Calvinism, and I am not aware of a modification of the preservation of the saints by those who defend common grace – a denial as blatant as their denial of unconditional predestination, total depravity, particular redemption, and irresistible grace.
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Nevertheless, the correspondent is correct in his insistence that it is impossible to deny one of the five points without, in the end, denying them all. And so also the doctrine of the preservation of the saints has come under attack in “Reformed” circles.
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* * *
In the last installment I made a few general remarks about common grace, particularly noting that, although common grace is to be defined as God’s attitude of favor or grace towards all His creatures, including all men, nevertheless, this attitude is not only objective but also includes the subjective infusion of grace in the hearts of all men by which they know that God is favorably inclined to them, and also by which they are changed for the better, though the change does not result in salvation.
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* * * *
Dear Forum members,
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Before I get into the material that I plan to send you in this letter, I need to answer a question that came from one of our forum members.
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The question is concerning my remark in my last letter that common grace modifies at least four of the five points of Calvinism and, perhaps, also the fifth, namely perseverance of the saints. The reader’s claim was that one ought not really be hesitant about saying that common grace also affects perseverance of the saints, and that thus all five points need to be modified if common grace is introduced into the body of doctrine known as the doctrines of grace. His reason for asserting this was that the five points of Calvinism are a whole, and to modify one is to modify all. The five hang together. They stand or fall together.
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The reason for the objection of the correspondent is, of course, true. One cannot believe in a universal atonement without denying eternal predestination, including both election and reprobation. And so it is with all five.
. My “perhaps” however, had a slightly different emphasis than the reader gave it. My point was and is that the error of common grace directly modifies four of the five points. A universal love of God for men is in flat contradiction to sovereign election and reprobation. A universal atonement is in direct contradiction to sovereign predestination and limited atonement. A work of the Spirit in the hearts of all men enabling them to do good is directly contrary to total depravity. But no teaching of common grace directly opposes the preservation of the saints.
.
Even the Arminians did not think that their view had a direct bearing on what we now call the fifth point of Calvinism, for in the original Five Article of the Remonstrance, in which document the Arminians set down their position, the Arminians would not flatly say that they denied the preservation of the saints. They merely expressed doubt about the question. Further, the defenders of common grace readily admit that their views modify the first four points of Calvinism, and I am not aware of a modification of the preservation of the saints by those who defend common grace – a denial as blatant as their denial of unconditional predestination, total depravity, particular redemption, and irresistible grace.
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Nevertheless, the correspondent is correct in his insistence that it is impossible to deny one of the five points without, in the end, denying them all. And so also the doctrine of the preservation of the saints has come under attack in “Reformed” circles.
.
* * *
In the last installment I made a few general remarks about common grace, particularly noting that, although common grace is to be defined as God’s attitude of favor or grace towards all His creatures, including all men, nevertheless, this attitude is not only objective but also includes the subjective infusion of grace in the hearts of all men by which they know that God is favorably inclined to them, and also by which they are changed for the better, though the change does not result in salvation.
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* * * *
Left--Prof. Louis Berkhof
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The first point of common grace as adopted by the Christian Reformed Church in 1924 is confusing and ambiguous on the question: To whom does God show His favor? The language of the first point speaks of God’s favor “towards His creatures in general” (Hoeksema and Hanko, Ready to Give an Answer, 63), but also speaks of an attitude of favor “towards humanity in general, and not only towards the elect” (Ibid). One could conclude from this that the first point intends to make a distinction between an attitude of favor towards the brute creation and God’s attitude of favor towards all men. But this is evidently not the way in which the first point of common grace is interpreted by its supporters. Both Louis Berkhof, the primary author of the three points (Louis Berkhof, De Drie Punten in Alle Deelen Gereformeerd [The Three Points Reformed in Every Part] [Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1925] 11), and H. J. Kuiper, for many years the editor of the church paper, The Banner
(H. J. Kuyper, The Three Points of Common Grace [Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1925] 11-13) assert that the meaning of the first point is that God’s attitude of favor is shown to people, not the brute creation.
. Right: Rev. H. J. Kuiper and Dr. John H. Kromminga
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To add to the confusion of the first point and seemingly to contradict what Berkhof and Kuiper say, one Scriptural passage referred to as proof of the doctrine of the first point is Psalm 145:9: “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.” This text obviously refers to the brute creation and God’s works of providence in it, which reveal God’s goodness. The fact that this passage is quoted as proof would seem to indicate that the first point does actually teach that God has an attitude of favor towards the creation itself. If this interpretation is not what the Synod meant, but refers only to men, then Psalm 145:9 must be interpreted to read: “The Lord is good to all men, and his tender mercies are over all people.” This is an interpretation of the text that seems to me to be forced, unnatural and incapable of being sustained. Why, therefore, Psalm 145 :9 is quoted as proof of God’s attitude of favor towards all men remains a mystery.
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But be all that as it may, we assert from the outset that it is correct and in agreement with the Scriptures to say that God is favorably inclined toward His creation – as Psalm 145:9 asserts. He loves His creation, is merciful towards it and views it with great favor.
Psalm 145:9 is a clear example of Hebrew parallelism, a poetic device in which two or more sentences are so related to each other that the one explains and sheds further light on the other. In this verse, for example, the expression in the second part of the verse, “his tender mercies”, explains “the Lord is good” in the first part of the verse. And the words “all his works” is a further explanation of the word “all” in the first sentence. Thus the verse teaches that God’s mercies are towards all his works and those tender mercies towards all His works show His goodness.
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Further, if the first point of common grace wanted to interpret the sentence “The Lord is good to all” as meaning that the Lord is good to all men, this interpretation stands in flat contradiction with verse 20 where the same Psalm reads: “The Lord preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy,” where the reference is to those whom God loves is obviously to God’s elect.
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The question of whether God loves His creation is important for another reason. I have met and spoken with men, especially, from a Presbyterian background, who say they believe in common grace. But when they explain their position, it becomes evident that these men identify common grace with providence and simply mean that God’s providence gives evidence of God’s goodness towards His creation. With this idea I have no dispute, although whether the idea ought to be called “common grace” is another question. To call it such is at least confusing when the term is universally used for different ideas.
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There can be no question about it that God is favorably inclined towards His own creation, for He created it and it remains His possession. The devil, after his fall and banishment from heaven, attempted to seize the earthly creation from God and make it his own domain. He persuaded Adam and Eve to join him in that endeavor, because neither he nor his demons had any direct access to the creation. They were angels and not material creatures, as this creation is. He had to enlist Adam and Eve, for they had been placed by God as the heads of creation. Satan was eminently successful, and so it seems as if the creation today belongs to wicked man. Wicked man uncovers the powers of creation, penetrates its secrets, and from it makes products that make his life in the creation easier and more pleasant. Looking around us and observing what goes on in the world today, we could not only be easily persuaded that man has complete control over the creation, but that he uses it in countless ways to sin. He is a servant of Satan and has obediently followed Satan’s grand scheme to make this creation a kingdom of darkness where God is banished from His own world.
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But God does not relinquish His claim upon His own world. In fact, it is impossible for God to do this, not only because of God’s own purpose in creating all things, but also because God is the Author of providence. Creation means that God gave all the universe its existence by the Word of His mouth. Providence means that God, by the same Word of His mouth, continues to give the creation its existence. Further, all that happens in it is done by His sovereign control. That is the doctrine of providence. He not only spoke the word “star”, but the star formed by the Word of His power is upheld by that same Word. That is, only when God continues to speak the Word “star” does that star continue to exist. If God should cease saying that word, the star would disappear and be no more.
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There is a certain irony involved in this. The very creature God upholds by the Word of His power man uses to sin against God. If God did not uphold that creature, man would not be able to use it to deny God. And the same is true of man himself. He too is given his existence every moment by the Word of God’s power. From God’s point of view, the same is true. He upholds every creature to give it to man, knowing full well what man will do with it. It is like a murderer who uses his victim’s gun to shoot him. But there is one thing man cannot do: he cannot take God’s creation away from God.
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God will not permit that to happen in any case, because God has His own purpose with this creation. To that purpose even all Satan does is subordinate; he too is under the sovereign rule of God. What that purpose is, God determined from eternity. It is to glorify Himself through the redemption of the creation by the suffering and death of Christ.
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When Adam chose to assist the devil in his wicked purposes, Adam fell into depravity and corruption. The words of God were fulfilled: “The day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” That death was not only physical, but also spiritual, for sin is death. Adam came under the curse, a curse that drove Adam out of Paradise, but also out of fellowship with God. To live apart from God is death.
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But Adam fell into sin as the head of God’s creation. Created to be representative of God Himself in God’s world, he became Satan’s representative when he agreed to do Satan’s will. As Satan’s representative, the whole creation came under the curse. Death pervades this earthly creation. Evolutionism may claim that death in the creation is only a weakness inherited from lower forms of life and an animal ancestry and soon to be overcome as the creation continues to produce higher forms of life, but this is part of the devil’s lie to draw man away from God the Creator. The curse of death is God’s just anger and fury as He punishes the creation as well as Adam its head.
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Christ died for the creation as well as for His people in order that the creation might be redeemed. The Biblical proof of that is solid. When God established His covenant with Noah after the flood, God established His covenant with every living creature (Gen. 9:9-17). The Psalms speak of God’s love for His creation in many places. It is striking, however, that the Psalms, in extolling the glories of the creation, speak prophetically of Christ, revealed in the creation (Psalm 19:1-6, where the figure of the sun as a bridegroom coming forth from its chamber speaks of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness that arises with healing in His wings, Malachi 4:2). It is striking that the law of God is also mentioned in vss. 7-14 as the gospel that converts the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, and gives rewards to those who keep it. The connection between the first part of the Psalm and the second part is surely that the law of God is present in both the creation and man, and has the same power in both creation and man. Psalm 33:6-11 speaks of the power of the Word of God that creates and upholds all the creation. This same truth is mentioned in John 1:1, 2, where that same creative Word of God is said to have become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ (verse 14).
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Many names given in Scripture for Christ are taken directly from the creation: Lion of Judah’s Bright and Morning Star, Lily of the Valley, Rose of Sharon, etc. All these indicate that Christ’s redemption extends to the entire creation.
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Romans 8:19-22 speaks of the hope of the creation to be delivered from the bondage of corruption. “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan without ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
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Paul speaks of the same truth in Colossians 1:20: “And [God] having made peace through the blood of his [Christ’s] cross, by him [Christ] to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” The apostle is very specific and emphatic about the fact that in Christ’s cross all the creation, the earthly and the heavenly, is reconciled to God. All shall therefore, be saved. God snatches His own creation out of the dirty hands of the wicked and not only restores it to its original pristine purity and beauty, but raises it to a much higher level of glory in the new heavens and the new earth, when heaven and earth shall become one creation.
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Hence, to speak of God’s grace towards the creation is a perfectly Biblical thought and no one can make objection to it. Surely the quotation of Psalm 145:9, used as a proof text for the first point of common grace, is, on the contrary, a powerful text to prove God’s love towards His own creation: “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.” How true!
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Gradually the righteous are, for the present, squeezed out of God’s world till they are all but destroyed. Then, at that moment when the devil congratulates himself in the accomplishment of his nefarious purpose, Christ comes in power and glory, and the whole creation is snatched out of the hands of the wicked led by Satan. And, irony of all ironies, that same creation, now glorified, is given to the people of God as their everlasting inheritance, for the meek shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5), while the wicked are banished forever in hell.
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With warmest regards,
Prof. Hanko
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The first point of common grace as adopted by the Christian Reformed Church in 1924 is confusing and ambiguous on the question: To whom does God show His favor? The language of the first point speaks of God’s favor “towards His creatures in general” (Hoeksema and Hanko, Ready to Give an Answer, 63), but also speaks of an attitude of favor “towards humanity in general, and not only towards the elect” (Ibid). One could conclude from this that the first point intends to make a distinction between an attitude of favor towards the brute creation and God’s attitude of favor towards all men. But this is evidently not the way in which the first point of common grace is interpreted by its supporters. Both Louis Berkhof, the primary author of the three points (Louis Berkhof, De Drie Punten in Alle Deelen Gereformeerd [The Three Points Reformed in Every Part] [Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1925] 11), and H. J. Kuiper, for many years the editor of the church paper, The Banner
(H. J. Kuyper, The Three Points of Common Grace [Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1925] 11-13) assert that the meaning of the first point is that God’s attitude of favor is shown to people, not the brute creation.. Right: Rev. H. J. Kuiper and Dr. John H. Kromminga
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To add to the confusion of the first point and seemingly to contradict what Berkhof and Kuiper say, one Scriptural passage referred to as proof of the doctrine of the first point is Psalm 145:9: “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.” This text obviously refers to the brute creation and God’s works of providence in it, which reveal God’s goodness. The fact that this passage is quoted as proof would seem to indicate that the first point does actually teach that God has an attitude of favor towards the creation itself. If this interpretation is not what the Synod meant, but refers only to men, then Psalm 145:9 must be interpreted to read: “The Lord is good to all men, and his tender mercies are over all people.” This is an interpretation of the text that seems to me to be forced, unnatural and incapable of being sustained. Why, therefore, Psalm 145 :9 is quoted as proof of God’s attitude of favor towards all men remains a mystery.
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But be all that as it may, we assert from the outset that it is correct and in agreement with the Scriptures to say that God is favorably inclined toward His creation – as Psalm 145:9 asserts. He loves His creation, is merciful towards it and views it with great favor.
Psalm 145:9 is a clear example of Hebrew parallelism, a poetic device in which two or more sentences are so related to each other that the one explains and sheds further light on the other. In this verse, for example, the expression in the second part of the verse, “his tender mercies”, explains “the Lord is good” in the first part of the verse. And the words “all his works” is a further explanation of the word “all” in the first sentence. Thus the verse teaches that God’s mercies are towards all his works and those tender mercies towards all His works show His goodness.
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Further, if the first point of common grace wanted to interpret the sentence “The Lord is good to all” as meaning that the Lord is good to all men, this interpretation stands in flat contradiction with verse 20 where the same Psalm reads: “The Lord preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy,” where the reference is to those whom God loves is obviously to God’s elect.
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The question of whether God loves His creation is important for another reason. I have met and spoken with men, especially, from a Presbyterian background, who say they believe in common grace. But when they explain their position, it becomes evident that these men identify common grace with providence and simply mean that God’s providence gives evidence of God’s goodness towards His creation. With this idea I have no dispute, although whether the idea ought to be called “common grace” is another question. To call it such is at least confusing when the term is universally used for different ideas.
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There can be no question about it that God is favorably inclined towards His own creation, for He created it and it remains His possession. The devil, after his fall and banishment from heaven, attempted to seize the earthly creation from God and make it his own domain. He persuaded Adam and Eve to join him in that endeavor, because neither he nor his demons had any direct access to the creation. They were angels and not material creatures, as this creation is. He had to enlist Adam and Eve, for they had been placed by God as the heads of creation. Satan was eminently successful, and so it seems as if the creation today belongs to wicked man. Wicked man uncovers the powers of creation, penetrates its secrets, and from it makes products that make his life in the creation easier and more pleasant. Looking around us and observing what goes on in the world today, we could not only be easily persuaded that man has complete control over the creation, but that he uses it in countless ways to sin. He is a servant of Satan and has obediently followed Satan’s grand scheme to make this creation a kingdom of darkness where God is banished from His own world.
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But God does not relinquish His claim upon His own world. In fact, it is impossible for God to do this, not only because of God’s own purpose in creating all things, but also because God is the Author of providence. Creation means that God gave all the universe its existence by the Word of His mouth. Providence means that God, by the same Word of His mouth, continues to give the creation its existence. Further, all that happens in it is done by His sovereign control. That is the doctrine of providence. He not only spoke the word “star”, but the star formed by the Word of His power is upheld by that same Word. That is, only when God continues to speak the Word “star” does that star continue to exist. If God should cease saying that word, the star would disappear and be no more.
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There is a certain irony involved in this. The very creature God upholds by the Word of His power man uses to sin against God. If God did not uphold that creature, man would not be able to use it to deny God. And the same is true of man himself. He too is given his existence every moment by the Word of God’s power. From God’s point of view, the same is true. He upholds every creature to give it to man, knowing full well what man will do with it. It is like a murderer who uses his victim’s gun to shoot him. But there is one thing man cannot do: he cannot take God’s creation away from God.
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God will not permit that to happen in any case, because God has His own purpose with this creation. To that purpose even all Satan does is subordinate; he too is under the sovereign rule of God. What that purpose is, God determined from eternity. It is to glorify Himself through the redemption of the creation by the suffering and death of Christ.
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When Adam chose to assist the devil in his wicked purposes, Adam fell into depravity and corruption. The words of God were fulfilled: “The day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” That death was not only physical, but also spiritual, for sin is death. Adam came under the curse, a curse that drove Adam out of Paradise, but also out of fellowship with God. To live apart from God is death.
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But Adam fell into sin as the head of God’s creation. Created to be representative of God Himself in God’s world, he became Satan’s representative when he agreed to do Satan’s will. As Satan’s representative, the whole creation came under the curse. Death pervades this earthly creation. Evolutionism may claim that death in the creation is only a weakness inherited from lower forms of life and an animal ancestry and soon to be overcome as the creation continues to produce higher forms of life, but this is part of the devil’s lie to draw man away from God the Creator. The curse of death is God’s just anger and fury as He punishes the creation as well as Adam its head.
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Christ died for the creation as well as for His people in order that the creation might be redeemed. The Biblical proof of that is solid. When God established His covenant with Noah after the flood, God established His covenant with every living creature (Gen. 9:9-17). The Psalms speak of God’s love for His creation in many places. It is striking, however, that the Psalms, in extolling the glories of the creation, speak prophetically of Christ, revealed in the creation (Psalm 19:1-6, where the figure of the sun as a bridegroom coming forth from its chamber speaks of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness that arises with healing in His wings, Malachi 4:2). It is striking that the law of God is also mentioned in vss. 7-14 as the gospel that converts the soul, makes wise the simple, rejoices the heart, enlightens the eyes, and gives rewards to those who keep it. The connection between the first part of the Psalm and the second part is surely that the law of God is present in both the creation and man, and has the same power in both creation and man. Psalm 33:6-11 speaks of the power of the Word of God that creates and upholds all the creation. This same truth is mentioned in John 1:1, 2, where that same creative Word of God is said to have become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ (verse 14).
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Many names given in Scripture for Christ are taken directly from the creation: Lion of Judah’s Bright and Morning Star, Lily of the Valley, Rose of Sharon, etc. All these indicate that Christ’s redemption extends to the entire creation.
.
Romans 8:19-22 speaks of the hope of the creation to be delivered from the bondage of corruption. “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan without ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”
.
Paul speaks of the same truth in Colossians 1:20: “And [God] having made peace through the blood of his [Christ’s] cross, by him [Christ] to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” The apostle is very specific and emphatic about the fact that in Christ’s cross all the creation, the earthly and the heavenly, is reconciled to God. All shall therefore, be saved. God snatches His own creation out of the dirty hands of the wicked and not only restores it to its original pristine purity and beauty, but raises it to a much higher level of glory in the new heavens and the new earth, when heaven and earth shall become one creation.
.
Hence, to speak of God’s grace towards the creation is a perfectly Biblical thought and no one can make objection to it. Surely the quotation of Psalm 145:9, used as a proof text for the first point of common grace, is, on the contrary, a powerful text to prove God’s love towards His own creation: “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.” How true!
.
Gradually the righteous are, for the present, squeezed out of God’s world till they are all but destroyed. Then, at that moment when the devil congratulates himself in the accomplishment of his nefarious purpose, Christ comes in power and glory, and the whole creation is snatched out of the hands of the wicked led by Satan. And, irony of all ironies, that same creation, now glorified, is given to the people of God as their everlasting inheritance, for the meek shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5), while the wicked are banished forever in hell.
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With warmest regards,
Prof. Hanko
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The Serious Implications of "Common Grace" (14)
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Dear Forum Members,
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Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. It will interest you to know that Mrs. Hanko and I are once again in Singapore. The Covenant Evangelical Reformed Church was greatly in need of help once again; one of the pastors of this church, Rev. Lau Chin Kwee, is still recuperating from major surgery. He had a rare genetic disease and the only life-saving measure was a heart-liver transplant. This was the first operation of its kind in all Asia and only the 17th in the whole world. It was performed by a team of 50, of which ten were doctors. He is recuperating well and could possibly return home this week. His surgery has attracted a lot of media attention, and the family has been greatly bothered by this. Pray for him and his family in this difficult time.
.
* * * *
I have finished the discussion of the history of common grace, giving particular attention to the history of the gracious and well-meant gospel offer. The time has come to begin a discussion of the doctrines themselves, the Biblical proof offered in support of them and the evaluation of them from a Biblical and confessional perspective.
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Before I enter a detailed discussion concerning the doctrine of common grace, I should make some general remarks.
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The doctrine of common grace has implications for many other doctrines of the Reformed faith. By virtue of the fact that common grace deals with grace, it touches on and significantly modifies these doctrines that historically have been called “the doctrines of grace”. These doctrines of grace are usually defined as the “Five Points of Calvinism.” Common grace has implications for at least four of the five points of Calvinism, and perhaps all five: unconditional election, particular redemption, total depravity, and irresistible grace, and perhaps the preservation of the saints. While a consideration of this aspect of the subject surely has benefits, and while I intend to demonstrate in passing how common grace modifies these doctrines of grace, I will be concentrating on the doctrines of common grace themselves.
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I say, I will be concentrating on the doctrines (in the plural) of common grace. Common grace itself is one doctrine that teaches that God is gracious to all mankind, and not only to the elect. But included in that general doctrine are at least four other doctrines. That is, God is said to show His favor to all men and not only to the elect in at least four different ways. Briefly, they are: God’s attitude of favor towards all men shown to them by gracious and wonderful gifts in creation; God’s work of restraining sin in the hearts of the unregenerate by His Spirit so that unsaved people are not as bad as they could be and would be apart from common grace; the ability of the unregenerated man to perform good works by the power of the Holy Spirit; and the gracious and well-meant offer of the gospel.
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Although the four doctrines that form parts of the general doctrine of common grace are separate doctrines, and although they may clearly be distinguished form each other, the similarity and relationship between these four doctrines lies in the fact that all are manifestations of God’s grace or favor to all -- although that grace is worked in different ways.
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* * * *
It is important to remember, as I have pointed out before, that the word “grace” has basically two connotations in Scripture. The first one is God’s unmerited attitude of favor to the elect. No one does anything to merit that favor, but rather forfeits it with all he does. Favor is always gratuitous. The second meaning of the word “grace” is a work of God in the heart of the sinner that brings God’s blessings upon the object of grace and spiritually changes the recipient of that grace. In the elect, God’s grace is the power within men that bestows on them all the blessings of salvation, spiritually alters them so that the regenerated child of God can be called “a new creature” (Gal. 6:15); enables them to walk as God’s people in the world, gives them strength to bear the trials of life, and leads them infallibly to their eternal destination. But if one teaches that God shows grace to the reprobate, this grace to the reprobate is also both an attitude of favor and an internal work of God, a bestowal of benefits internally given that change a man, though that change is not conversion or salvation. We must keep this in mind.
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There is a point here that needs to be made. Although common grace is defined as an attitude of God towards all men, that attitude is not simply objective, out there somewhere, an attitude of which the object is unaware, an attitude hidden in the heart of God. The object of common grace may despise God’s gracious attitude towards him, but he does know it and experience it and his rejection of it is the proof that he knows it..
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The objective attitude of God’s favor towards all men becomes subjectively man’s experience in two ways. The first is simply that the object of God’s attitude of favor is made aware of this favor of God and what it means for him personally.
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The well-meant gospel offer is one part of common grace that stresses the knowledge the sinner has of God’s gracious attitude towards him. The gospel itself expresses to him in a gracious offer, that God wants very much to save him and is willing to do all that is necessary to make salvation possible for him. In fact, it is God’s intention to save him and the only reason he is not saved is because man himself puts up obstacles to God’s work that are not overcome by God.
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This consciousness of God’s favor that makes the unregenerate sinner aware of this gracious attitude of God towards him is very important. What good does it do if the sinner is unaware of how greatly God loves him? A young man may like very much a young lady, but shyness keeps him at a distance and she never becomes aware of it. However, he may gain courage and send her a dozen roses on her birthday, or he may find the courage in himself to express his feeling towards her. Then she knows, whatever her own reaction might be.
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So God also makes known to the sinner that He is favorably inclined towards him. He does this in more ways than through the gracious gospel offer. In giving a man the Holy Spirit who restrains sin in him, the man knows this comes from God. Just as a sick man knows he is made better by the skills of a physician, the sinner knows he is made better by the divine physician. This gift is impressed upon the consciousness of man by God Himself. God gives man this gift because God loves him – so the common grace advocate teaches.
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It has frequently been said that man is conscious of God’s goodness towards him because of what has been called in Reformed theology, a sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity), or semen religionis (seed of religion). This sense of divinity is indeed a reality, as Scripture and our confessions teach. But it is a serious mistake to claim, as some do, that this sensus diuvinitis is also the fruit of common grace. We shall consider this more in detail at a later point.
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Hence, man cannot escape knowing, so claim the advocates of common grace, that God loves him, shows mercy to him, truly shows kindness and benevolence toward him and is very much interested in saving him and making him blessed. Through all God’s works man comes to know that God is indeed favorable towards him.
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Grace involves all the communicable attributes of God. Grace is, in that sense, a broad term, a generic term that includes many different attitudes of God. Grace includes love, mercy, kindness, benevolence, longsuffering and the like. For example, if God gives him grace, God loves the reprobate, according to common grace. Some defenders of common grace are quick to point out that this love of God for the reprobate is not the same kind of love, perhaps not as intense, not as strong, but love nonetheless, which God shows to the elect. The same is true of the other virtues of God. He is compassionate to the wicked; He is merciful to them in their misery; He is sympathetic to them in their troubles; He enjoys nothing so much as to see them happy and does all that He can to make them happy. And so common grace is God’s favor upon the wicked of which they are conscious, and the benefits of which grace they experience every day.
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But this is not all. The defenders of common grace also teach that grace, subjectively bestowed on the sinner, involves a subjective and inner change in the sinner, although not a saving change. This lies in the nature of grace. When the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of the sinner to restrain sin and to enable the sinner to do good works, that powerful grace modifies his total depravity, lessens the power of sin in a man, and leaves an unsaved sinner no longer totally depraved. I know that defenders of common grace, in defense of this position and intent on trying to remain Reformed, speak of a distinction between total depravity (one of the Five Points of Calvinism) and absolute depravity. Apart from common grace, so they say, man is absolutely depraved, but through common grace he becomes totally depraved. It is obvious that this is a mere playing with words. In the thinking of those who promote common grace, the term “total” does not mean “total,” but partial.
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The same is true of the well-meant gospel offer. Because it is a gracious offer, it is a vehicle whereby God gives to everyone who hears the gospel a subjective grace by means of which a man has the power to accept or reject the gospel. In fact, as we shall see, that grace that never saves, gives sufficient power to the sinner to see his own sins, see the just punishment of God that is his lot because of his sins, see the blessedness of escaping from sin by fleeing to Christ; and yet he refuses to go to Christ for salvation. We shall discuss this at a later date. It was known among Puritans as the doctrine of preparationism.
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That there is this internal working of God in the hearts of the unregenerate that changes him is made clear in the writings of Herman Bavinck, the great Dutch theologian and contemporary of Abraham Kuyper. Bavinck, though brought up in the tradition of the Secession of 1834, and though he became professor of Dogmatics in Kampen Seminary, the Seminary of the Secession Churches, nevertheless, moved to the Free University, Kuyper’s pride and joy, to take up the position of professor of Dogmatics there. The Secessionists never quite forgave him
for doing this.
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Right: Dr. Herman Bavinck
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Bavinck, in his book, Our Reasonable Faith discusses common grace from the viewpoint of general revelation and speaks of general revelation as a manifestation of common grace. (Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith [Grand Rapids: Wm B, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956] chapters 3 & 4.)
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He first makes a point of it that the content of general revelation and special revelation are the same: But though they have the same content, they are to be distinguished from each other. “And, however essentially the two are to be distinguished, they remain intimately connected. … The general revelation is owing to the Word which was with God in the beginning, which made all things, which shone as a light in the darkness and lighteth every man that cometh into the world. … The special revelation is owing to that same Word as it as made flesh in Christ, and is now full of grace and truth …”(37, 38).
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This relationship between general revelation and special revelation is described as follows: “It is common grace which makes special grace possible, prepares the way for it, and later supports it; and special grace, in its turn, leads common grace up to its own level and puts it into its service” (38).
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That this common grace is also worked internally in the heart of man is Bavinck’s conviction: “After all, the revelation of God in nature and in history could have no effect upon man if there were not something in man himself that responded to it. … And so too the revelation of God in all the works of His hands would be quite unknowable to man if God had not planted in his soul an inerasible (sic, inerasable is correct) sense of His existence and being. … God reveals Himself outside of man; He reveals Himself also within man. He does not leave Himself without witness in the human heart and conscience” (42, emphasis belongs to Bavinck).
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And, of course, general revelation is, in the mind of Bavinck, common grace. And so the fruits of common grace in general revelation are many: “It is owing to general revelation that some religious and ethical sense is present in all men; that they have some awareness still of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, justice and injustice, beauty and ugliness; that they live in the relationship of marriage and the family, of community and state; that they are held in check by all these external and internal controls against degenerating into bestiality; that within the pale of these limits, they busy themselves with the production, distribution, and enjoyment of all kinds of spiritual and material things; in short that mankind is by general revelation preserved in its existence, maintained in its unity, and enable to continue and to develop in history” (59).
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That all these things are true of mankind we do not doubt. That they are the fruit of general revelation, much less, common grace, is quite another matter.
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With warmest regards,
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Prof. Herman Hanko
Dear Forum Members,
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Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ. It will interest you to know that Mrs. Hanko and I are once again in Singapore. The Covenant Evangelical Reformed Church was greatly in need of help once again; one of the pastors of this church, Rev. Lau Chin Kwee, is still recuperating from major surgery. He had a rare genetic disease and the only life-saving measure was a heart-liver transplant. This was the first operation of its kind in all Asia and only the 17th in the whole world. It was performed by a team of 50, of which ten were doctors. He is recuperating well and could possibly return home this week. His surgery has attracted a lot of media attention, and the family has been greatly bothered by this. Pray for him and his family in this difficult time.
.
* * * *
I have finished the discussion of the history of common grace, giving particular attention to the history of the gracious and well-meant gospel offer. The time has come to begin a discussion of the doctrines themselves, the Biblical proof offered in support of them and the evaluation of them from a Biblical and confessional perspective.
.
Before I enter a detailed discussion concerning the doctrine of common grace, I should make some general remarks.
.
The doctrine of common grace has implications for many other doctrines of the Reformed faith. By virtue of the fact that common grace deals with grace, it touches on and significantly modifies these doctrines that historically have been called “the doctrines of grace”. These doctrines of grace are usually defined as the “Five Points of Calvinism.” Common grace has implications for at least four of the five points of Calvinism, and perhaps all five: unconditional election, particular redemption, total depravity, and irresistible grace, and perhaps the preservation of the saints. While a consideration of this aspect of the subject surely has benefits, and while I intend to demonstrate in passing how common grace modifies these doctrines of grace, I will be concentrating on the doctrines of common grace themselves.
.
I say, I will be concentrating on the doctrines (in the plural) of common grace. Common grace itself is one doctrine that teaches that God is gracious to all mankind, and not only to the elect. But included in that general doctrine are at least four other doctrines. That is, God is said to show His favor to all men and not only to the elect in at least four different ways. Briefly, they are: God’s attitude of favor towards all men shown to them by gracious and wonderful gifts in creation; God’s work of restraining sin in the hearts of the unregenerate by His Spirit so that unsaved people are not as bad as they could be and would be apart from common grace; the ability of the unregenerated man to perform good works by the power of the Holy Spirit; and the gracious and well-meant offer of the gospel.
.
Although the four doctrines that form parts of the general doctrine of common grace are separate doctrines, and although they may clearly be distinguished form each other, the similarity and relationship between these four doctrines lies in the fact that all are manifestations of God’s grace or favor to all -- although that grace is worked in different ways.
.
* * * *
It is important to remember, as I have pointed out before, that the word “grace” has basically two connotations in Scripture. The first one is God’s unmerited attitude of favor to the elect. No one does anything to merit that favor, but rather forfeits it with all he does. Favor is always gratuitous. The second meaning of the word “grace” is a work of God in the heart of the sinner that brings God’s blessings upon the object of grace and spiritually changes the recipient of that grace. In the elect, God’s grace is the power within men that bestows on them all the blessings of salvation, spiritually alters them so that the regenerated child of God can be called “a new creature” (Gal. 6:15); enables them to walk as God’s people in the world, gives them strength to bear the trials of life, and leads them infallibly to their eternal destination. But if one teaches that God shows grace to the reprobate, this grace to the reprobate is also both an attitude of favor and an internal work of God, a bestowal of benefits internally given that change a man, though that change is not conversion or salvation. We must keep this in mind.
.
There is a point here that needs to be made. Although common grace is defined as an attitude of God towards all men, that attitude is not simply objective, out there somewhere, an attitude of which the object is unaware, an attitude hidden in the heart of God. The object of common grace may despise God’s gracious attitude towards him, but he does know it and experience it and his rejection of it is the proof that he knows it..
.
The objective attitude of God’s favor towards all men becomes subjectively man’s experience in two ways. The first is simply that the object of God’s attitude of favor is made aware of this favor of God and what it means for him personally.
.
The well-meant gospel offer is one part of common grace that stresses the knowledge the sinner has of God’s gracious attitude towards him. The gospel itself expresses to him in a gracious offer, that God wants very much to save him and is willing to do all that is necessary to make salvation possible for him. In fact, it is God’s intention to save him and the only reason he is not saved is because man himself puts up obstacles to God’s work that are not overcome by God.
.
This consciousness of God’s favor that makes the unregenerate sinner aware of this gracious attitude of God towards him is very important. What good does it do if the sinner is unaware of how greatly God loves him? A young man may like very much a young lady, but shyness keeps him at a distance and she never becomes aware of it. However, he may gain courage and send her a dozen roses on her birthday, or he may find the courage in himself to express his feeling towards her. Then she knows, whatever her own reaction might be.
.
So God also makes known to the sinner that He is favorably inclined towards him. He does this in more ways than through the gracious gospel offer. In giving a man the Holy Spirit who restrains sin in him, the man knows this comes from God. Just as a sick man knows he is made better by the skills of a physician, the sinner knows he is made better by the divine physician. This gift is impressed upon the consciousness of man by God Himself. God gives man this gift because God loves him – so the common grace advocate teaches.
.
It has frequently been said that man is conscious of God’s goodness towards him because of what has been called in Reformed theology, a sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity), or semen religionis (seed of religion). This sense of divinity is indeed a reality, as Scripture and our confessions teach. But it is a serious mistake to claim, as some do, that this sensus diuvinitis is also the fruit of common grace. We shall consider this more in detail at a later point.
.
Hence, man cannot escape knowing, so claim the advocates of common grace, that God loves him, shows mercy to him, truly shows kindness and benevolence toward him and is very much interested in saving him and making him blessed. Through all God’s works man comes to know that God is indeed favorable towards him.
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Grace involves all the communicable attributes of God. Grace is, in that sense, a broad term, a generic term that includes many different attitudes of God. Grace includes love, mercy, kindness, benevolence, longsuffering and the like. For example, if God gives him grace, God loves the reprobate, according to common grace. Some defenders of common grace are quick to point out that this love of God for the reprobate is not the same kind of love, perhaps not as intense, not as strong, but love nonetheless, which God shows to the elect. The same is true of the other virtues of God. He is compassionate to the wicked; He is merciful to them in their misery; He is sympathetic to them in their troubles; He enjoys nothing so much as to see them happy and does all that He can to make them happy. And so common grace is God’s favor upon the wicked of which they are conscious, and the benefits of which grace they experience every day.
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But this is not all. The defenders of common grace also teach that grace, subjectively bestowed on the sinner, involves a subjective and inner change in the sinner, although not a saving change. This lies in the nature of grace. When the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of the sinner to restrain sin and to enable the sinner to do good works, that powerful grace modifies his total depravity, lessens the power of sin in a man, and leaves an unsaved sinner no longer totally depraved. I know that defenders of common grace, in defense of this position and intent on trying to remain Reformed, speak of a distinction between total depravity (one of the Five Points of Calvinism) and absolute depravity. Apart from common grace, so they say, man is absolutely depraved, but through common grace he becomes totally depraved. It is obvious that this is a mere playing with words. In the thinking of those who promote common grace, the term “total” does not mean “total,” but partial.
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The same is true of the well-meant gospel offer. Because it is a gracious offer, it is a vehicle whereby God gives to everyone who hears the gospel a subjective grace by means of which a man has the power to accept or reject the gospel. In fact, as we shall see, that grace that never saves, gives sufficient power to the sinner to see his own sins, see the just punishment of God that is his lot because of his sins, see the blessedness of escaping from sin by fleeing to Christ; and yet he refuses to go to Christ for salvation. We shall discuss this at a later date. It was known among Puritans as the doctrine of preparationism.
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That there is this internal working of God in the hearts of the unregenerate that changes him is made clear in the writings of Herman Bavinck, the great Dutch theologian and contemporary of Abraham Kuyper. Bavinck, though brought up in the tradition of the Secession of 1834, and though he became professor of Dogmatics in Kampen Seminary, the Seminary of the Secession Churches, nevertheless, moved to the Free University, Kuyper’s pride and joy, to take up the position of professor of Dogmatics there. The Secessionists never quite forgave him
for doing this..
Right: Dr. Herman Bavinck
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Bavinck, in his book, Our Reasonable Faith discusses common grace from the viewpoint of general revelation and speaks of general revelation as a manifestation of common grace. (Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith [Grand Rapids: Wm B, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1956] chapters 3 & 4.)
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He first makes a point of it that the content of general revelation and special revelation are the same: But though they have the same content, they are to be distinguished from each other. “And, however essentially the two are to be distinguished, they remain intimately connected. … The general revelation is owing to the Word which was with God in the beginning, which made all things, which shone as a light in the darkness and lighteth every man that cometh into the world. … The special revelation is owing to that same Word as it as made flesh in Christ, and is now full of grace and truth …”(37, 38).
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This relationship between general revelation and special revelation is described as follows: “It is common grace which makes special grace possible, prepares the way for it, and later supports it; and special grace, in its turn, leads common grace up to its own level and puts it into its service” (38).
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That this common grace is also worked internally in the heart of man is Bavinck’s conviction: “After all, the revelation of God in nature and in history could have no effect upon man if there were not something in man himself that responded to it. … And so too the revelation of God in all the works of His hands would be quite unknowable to man if God had not planted in his soul an inerasible (sic, inerasable is correct) sense of His existence and being. … God reveals Himself outside of man; He reveals Himself also within man. He does not leave Himself without witness in the human heart and conscience” (42, emphasis belongs to Bavinck).
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And, of course, general revelation is, in the mind of Bavinck, common grace. And so the fruits of common grace in general revelation are many: “It is owing to general revelation that some religious and ethical sense is present in all men; that they have some awareness still of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, justice and injustice, beauty and ugliness; that they live in the relationship of marriage and the family, of community and state; that they are held in check by all these external and internal controls against degenerating into bestiality; that within the pale of these limits, they busy themselves with the production, distribution, and enjoyment of all kinds of spiritual and material things; in short that mankind is by general revelation preserved in its existence, maintained in its unity, and enable to continue and to develop in history” (59).
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That all these things are true of mankind we do not doubt. That they are the fruit of general revelation, much less, common grace, is quite another matter.
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With warmest regards,
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Prof. Herman Hanko
Thursday, April 16, 2009
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