REFORMED WITNESS
Volume XVI, May 2010, Number 5
The Inability
Chapter 7 of the book, Particular Grace - A Defense of God's Sovereignty in Salvation
By Rev. James D. Slopsema
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. - Romans 8:7
To our joy we have discovered that our articles about whether grace is general or special have not gone unnoticed. Never before, when writing such a series, have we received so many signs of earnest interest as this time. [1]
Among the responses there are also those that intend to be more a friendly protest than a testimony of agreement. But how could this be otherwise, since the defense of this aspect of the truth has not been heard from the pulpits for fifty years, and under foreign influences has died out of the confession of the greater part of the church?
Our purpose with these articles is, therefore, not to charge with heresy everyone who either denies the particular character of grace or confesses it differently than the Reformed church. On the contrary, our intent is to call many children of God to return from their errant way of thinking by a reasoned explanation on the basis of God's Word of what the Reformed church has confessed, and to renew the awareness of what was the pith and essence of the issue for a spiritually stronger generation.
People need not defend themselves against us as against a self-appointed "judge of the hearts." It is not for us to judge. Our only calling is to testify. Whoever has the freedom of conscience to lay aside our witness should do this in sincere earnestness before God's face and pray (from his perspective) for an erring brother.
Detractors should, however, keep this fact in view: The aspect of the truth, as we are explaining it, is the confession of the Reformed church, both in her official decisions and in the uninterrupted succession of her most brilliant theologians. The viewpoint that by many critics and letter writers is stoutly maintained against our view is an interpretation very familiar to our fathers, but exactly for that reason it was decisively rejected and condemned in their priceless theological works.
In the abstract it is quite possible and conceivable that the Reformed church has erred and that Reformed divines who at one time illuminated Europe with their brilliance had gone off course, and that accordingly we - the sooner the better - should for example become Lutheran out of obedience to God's Word. If people would only do that!
But it goes a little too far, in our opinion, if as now happens, brethren from among the preachers and some from among the hearers of the Word, who belong to the Reformed church and who remain members, contradict anyone who does nothing more than remind us what the confession and theology of these churches is. They scarcely grant time for discussion, as if a person committed to the creeds has said - who knows? - such strange, absurd and illogical things!
People should keep in mind that we are not attacking; we are defending!
At the beginning of our first chapter it is clearly stated that the idea Christus pro omnibus ("Christ for all") prevails at present and whoever does not yield to that notion is cast out of the 'synagogue'.
On our part, therefore, we do not venture anything more than an attempt to register a protest against that severe condemnation. Accordingly, we dug up the old documents and deeds of ownership of our Reformed family and opened and reread once again the intimate family letters in order that everyone might see that in the past the Reformed church did not confess Christus pro omnibus!
Is that unacceptable? Has a renewed emphasis on what your whole church confessed in earlier times become inexpedient? Is the right of speech, provided it remains brotherly in tone, no longer free?
* * * * *
In order to prevent misunderstanding and to answer kindly many interested inquiries, we want to draw attention to three things:
The first is that the doctrine of particular grace belongs inseparably to the doctrine of the covenant, which we, if strength be granted, will discuss immediately after this series. All the complex problems regarding gospel preaching: the right of exhortation, administration of the sacraments, work in missions, etc., to which people continually point, can and will only be satisfactorily resolved by this doctrine of the covenant.
The second thing to which we draw your attention is that it is the furthest thing from our mind to stigmatize without distinction as "Pelagians" and "Remonstrants" all speakers and hearers in the church who at present maintain or fanatically insist on Christus pro omnibus. That would be injustice itself. There have always been two kinds of adversaries of particular grace: the one a sort of dry, moribund, cold intellectual who never gave any evidence of life in his heart, who places a lifeless doctrinal skeleton taken from false presuppositions of human wisdom over against the spiritual, living organism of God's truth. Those were the Pelagians of ancient times, the Remonstrants of the seventeenth century, and the children of the Remonstrants, whom at present you still find in all churches. But besides these, there was long ago and there is also now a completely different kind of people who are thoroughly warm and inspired, but who have been misled by mistaken interpretations of Scripture and by erroneous instruction. Not daring to enter the profound depths of the covenant of grace, they fearfully shrink back. They are so perplexed that they confess two ideas at the same time: both that grace is particular and that nonetheless it is an abomination to restrict grace to something particular, according to God's will and intention. [2] These latter individuals are more disposed towards Lutheranism, and since our orthodox theology has been imported almost exclusively from Lutheran lands during the last twenty years, they will proceed with a sense of security, and act most brotherly, while thinking of the Remonstrant leaven only in strongly expressed cases. Yet they generally suspect nothing more serious than Lutheran lack of clarity.
In the third place, we must also observe that people repeatedly write to us that they certainly believe that grace is particular and that man is totally depraved, so that without God's intervention he cannot accept salvation, but for all that, they place unreconciled next to it the notion "died for all individuals," admitting certainly that this clashes, but nevertheless maintaining both, because both, they say, are taught in God's Word. They tell us that from their confession of a Christ who died for all, we are, therefore, apt to deduce unjustly that they blunt the sting of sin.
Over against this we would like to be permitted the modest question, whether the same injustice does not constantly befall us? People say of us, "You, with your preaching that no one can believe unless he is ordained to faith, cultivate a stupid and deathlike passivity and make all evangelization utterly vain by your 'I cannot unless God gives it to me.'"
From our perspective we respond to that as vigorously, "To explain how it fits that not believing is wholly and only the sinner's guilt, and that truly believing is wholly and only of God's grace, we cannot do at all," and still we firmly maintain both, because God in his holy Word commands us humbly to confess both.
It all comes down to this, therefore, that one ultimately - with both the position of general as well as of particular grace - is stymied by a contradiction and stands before a door that refuses to open. One also ends up in both cases with two as yet unreconciled facts that, according to our thinking, do not completely harmonize, letting them stand in juxtaposition only out of obedience to God's Word.
Rightly understood, the question that settles the matter comes down to this: Which of these two does God's Word teach? Does it teach a general grace next to a particular grace? Or does it reveal to us an inviolable counsel of God's will next to an absolute responsibility in the creature? The first we deny, the second we maintain; and for that contention we will carefully and gradually provide our proof.
We know very well that many of the brethren who teach "Christ for all" nevertheless maintain very rigorously the profound depravity of sin, and we emphatically declare this about the ethical theologians. What we have already in part demonstrated, however, and will further demonstrate, is that by their profession that Christ died for all, they actually abolish again what they had confessed in their doctrine concerning sin, and in this manner they proceed from presuppositions that God's Word does not support but, in fact, rejects as imaginary.
We also know very well that people can cast the same kind of objection against what we have derived from the Reformed church. To begin with, however, it does make somewhat of a difference whether one in a Reformed church has the Reformed confession on his side or against him. Leaving aside for a moment who is right and who is wrong, we cannot understand why the brothers and sisters who constantly bring up the notion that Reformed preaching makes one passive and takes away the sense of responsibility cannot be made to see that their preaching is frustrated by a no less grave objection. By their preaching they do something worse: they impugn the humble confession of the complete depravity of sin, and in regard to the aspect of the sense of guilt, they proceed from suppositions concerning the sinner that diametrically clash with what God's Word has revealed to us concerning the nature, the corrosive power, and the deadly consequences of sin.
It seems to us that this observation should inspire mutual calmness, because it is certainly necessary, before anything else, that those who are truly numbered among those born in Zion avoid all unrighteousness, also in the investigation of the truth.
* * * * *
If people grant us this, we still ask the question whether the proponents of "Christ for all" do not confess, almost without exception, that in the counsel of salvation, man is viewed not as he was before the fall but as he became because of the fall. Up to this point in time we have never met members, either laity or clergy, insisting on "Christ for all" who have not presented "the fallen sinner" as the object of election. Whether this is justly or unjustly perceived, we let that be for now. Here we have to reckon not with the condition of things as it really is, but with the condition of things as the non-Reformed brethren present it.
Then it is certain that all those among them who, with us still confess a counsel of God unto the salvation of sinners, also explicitly and firmly propose that the decrees of that counsel pertain not to a creature as yet sinless but to a creature that already, as sinner, was lost. Therefore, it is self-evident that the Lord God did not make the plan of redemption, the counsel of salvation, and the decrees of redemption with a view to what man could have done before he fell, but with a view to what man was still able to do after he had become a sinner.
If a fire breaks out in a prison in which all the prisoners are sitting locked in shackles, whoever quickly devises a plan to save them would act very foolishly if he simply threw the steel doors open, called them out, pointed to a ladder, and thought, "Now they will surely escape because before they were placed in shackles, they had freedom of movement." In order not to act foolishly he would certainly have to reason in this way, "Opening the doors wide and calling to them does not help. They must first be unshackled. Otherwise, they cannot escape."
If I look at this situation the other way around and see an energetic warden, who knows precisely what his prisoners can and cannot do, simply giving the order to open the doors wide and giving a warning to the prisoners, I am then in position to respond specifically to the question, "Were the prisoners shackled?" In that case I would reason, "No, they could not have been shackled, for then the warden would have first had to unshackle them."
If we transfer that to God's scheme for the rescue of the sinner, it is impossible that the Lord God could have intended the deliverance of all in his eternal counsel of salvation, except in one of these two cases: either they all sat in the prison unshackled or he permitted them to take the shackles off before he called them. Every other supposition, of course, refutes itself.
When a house is ablaze, if I am aware that someone within is shackled, it is not really possible for me to yell a warning in order to rescue him without removing his shackles first.
It is incontrovertible that the Lord God does not remove the shackles from all individuals, because that removing is nothing less than regeneration. That this is in fact not accomplished in all - baptized or unbaptized - allows for no contradiction.
There is only one conceivable situation in which God, who knows the sinner thoroughly, could still have had the intention to save all individuals (when he firmly established his plan of salvation), namely, that he knew that the sinner was not shackled and was not fettered to the prison wall.
You can paint the consequences of sin as dark as you want, and you can say that the sinner sits locked up in jail behind bars, and that he is weakened in his strength, but you judge, nonetheless, that he retains his freedom of movement in that prison. No matter how restricted, fearful, and dreadful you picture his circumstances, if you open the door of his cell and leave the exits unobstructed, then, according to your presentation, he can leave.
Then he can leave. Whether he does it or does not do it is up to him.
Through the flames a deliverer comes to the prisoner's cell. But if the sinner, in his ill-natured design, considers it preferable to be overtaken by the flames and to be buried in the rubble of his prison, contrary to the compassionate calling of his deliverer, then that is up to him. He has to know that his deliverer did all that was necessary for the rescue. The rest was up to him. One cannot for a second speak in this context of a shackle. Provided that the prison stayed open, he was free to decide for himself if he wanted to stay or go.
In exactly this way, the Lord God must have known the sinner when he in and by himself formed the intention to save all and allowed Christ to die for all. God, the Omniscient One, who thoroughly discerns also the heart of the sinner, and who could not have erred in regard to what the sinner still could or could not do, must have known the following in order to form that intention:
"A sinner has retained the capacity to accept or reject salvation according to his own choice of the will." "As a sinner he can do little more."
"Almost nothing."
"Above all, he is unable, therefore, to find a ransom for his soul."
"But if I offer Christ to him as a ransom, so that he can either oppose that Christ or take hold of him unto life, that one thing man can still do very well, even after he becomes a sinner."
Only by reasoning in this fashion would it be conceivable for the omniscient God to intend to save all.
The intention to deliver all by means of a hasty flight cannot for a moment enter the mind of the commander who thinks about it even briefly, if one-half of his men lie in the field hospital with frozen feet.
The wish, "Oh, if I could save them all!" would certainly be the desire of his heart, but it is a wish that could not become his intention, since he knows that to flee is impossible at this time for men with frozen feet.
If I hear, therefore, of a general who has the intention to save all his men - every last one - by means of a flight over the snow-covered passes of the Balkan Mountains, I know at the same time that as far as this field general knew, not one of his soldiers had frozen feet.
One cannot even suggest an intention in God - in connection with the forming of the plan of salvation and the execution of the same in Christ's death to save all sinners without exception - unless God knew that all these sinners had retained, without any intervening word of his divine power, the energy, the strength, and the capacity to believe in Jesus Christ and redemption through his blood.
* * * * *
If one asks, on the other hand, whether according to God's knowledge, such a capacity actually was yet present in the sinner, we can put aside all conjecture, because God himself in his sacred Word has given us the most comprehensive and explicit announcement concerning the condition of the sinner. This condition, according to the testimony of the Scriptures, is nothing less than a condition of death. Death follows immediately upon sin as its punishment. Spiritually, therefore, every little infant is born "dead." It can be, as was the case with John the Baptist, that there is already in the unborn infant an operation of the Holy Spirit taking place. But since we are speaking of the situation in which the sinner would believe without the intervening wonder-work of God, it can be left out of the discussion in this context.
A sinner is overwhelmed, therefore, by virtue of the imputed guilt of Adam and by the violent attack of spiritual death at the moment of his conception. He is accordingly dead in sins and trespasses whether he be old or young, rich or poor, formally honest or dishonest. Out of that death he must first be translated unto life in order to participate in life.
As long as he remains captured in that death, he is powerless. He cannot even see the kingdom of God. He does not want to believe in Jesus, because he cannot come to him, and he does not lay hold of the mercy of God, because as a natural man he does not even understand the things of the Spirit of God. After all, the sinner is by that death so alienated from the life of God that even his understanding has been darkened, and he can stand right next to Jesus, see Jesus, yes, he can even hear Jesus' own voice without ever suspecting or guessing that it is indeed Jesus.
We are told in the Bible by him who tries us and who examines us even to the depths of our hearts that a sinner is "dead" and consequently has retained no power, no strength, no ability, or capacity to do the greatest and most dreadful thing to which a sinner is called: to cast away his own "I" and take Jesus in the place of his "I."
"Dead" means not to be half or in part alive, but it is the failure, the lacking, the absence of all life.
Life can be restored to him again only by the one who alone does wonders. This is in complete agreement with what the Bible teaches us in regard to the sinner's deliverance.
They who suppose that God not only desires to save in the abstract, but also actually intends to bless all sinners, without exception, openly contradict what the Lord himself in his Word has revealed clearly and unambiguously concerning the unspeakable depths of depravity and sin's terrible destruction in the sinner, a contradiction that we of course respectfully and humbly would have to let stand if such an intention of God were made known to us equally clearly and unambiguously in the same Scriptures. Everyone must weigh his own responsibility for holding to this contradiction. In its defense would have to be given an entirely different explanation of the texts of Scripture than that given by the preeminent exegetes of ancient times, such as Augustine, Calvin, and Voetius. [3]
Footnotes
- The material in Kuyper's book was
originally in the form of articles in The Herald (De Heraut), and the
material was left unedited by its book publisher. The Herald was so
well-known and well-read by the religious community of Kuyper's day
that mention of "articles" required no explanation.
[Return to article] - Kuyper depicts a situation in the
Reformed churches of his time that also characterizes our situation.
In the Reformed and Presbyterian churches today are those leaders who
claim that the Bible teaches particular grace, but who also erroneously
recognize evangelical Arminianism as a legitimate form of the gospel.
[Return to article] - Gijsbertus Voetius (1589-1676),
a theological professor in Utrecht, was an ardent defender of the Reformed
faith. He studied under Gomarus at Leiden. After preaching at Heusdan,
he was appointed professor of eastern languages at Utrecht in 1634 and
served there for 42 years. He was convinced that the doctrine of Arminianism
was as a cancer in the healthy body of the words of Christ. An incredibly
able, learned man, Voetius was a delegate to the Synod of Dordt from
the province of South Holland.
[Return to article]
| Back to top | Back to main Reformed Witness page |
The Reformed Witness newsletter is published monthly under the auspices of the Evangelism Committee of the Hope Protestant Reformed Church of Redlands. This newsletter is available to anyone who is interested in the Reformed Faith. If you would like your name added to our mailing list, please write to:The Reformed Witness
Hope Protestant Reformed Church
1307 E. Brockton Ave.
Redlands, CA 92374-3802
or email us: