A Brief Response to Scott Clark on Predestination and the Well Meant Offer

 

Indeed, in the next few lines Calvin says much the same thing: “It is unreasonable that man should scrutinize with impunity those things that the Lord has determined to be hidden in himself.… The secret of his will which he determined to reveal to us, he discovers [discloses] in his Word.”2 It is not only unreasonable to scrutinize the hidden will of God, as Calvin says; it is impossible. Knowledge of predestination is to be sought in God’s revealed will, in the Word, and in the Word alone. Let us not pry elsewhere with that curiosity that Calvin condemns, but let us not neglect to study carefully what God reveals to us and intends that we should study.

 

Gordon H. Clark. Predestination (Kindle Locations 97-102). The Trinity Foundation. Kindle Edition.

"But I do want to make it clear that while I am no universalist, my own inclination is to emphasize the "wideness in God's mercy" rather than the "small number of the elect" motif that has often dominated the Calvinist outlook."  Richard Mouw.

Further, if God’s will can only be spoken of in one sense, then we would become universalists! Nevertheless, we must deal honestly with God’s Word and recognize that, given the hiddenness of the divine decree, there is a genuine and true sense in which God must be said to will the salvation of all.   R. Scott Clark

 

 

A Brief Response to the Theologian of Paradox and Contradiction:  Is Denying Common Grace, the Free Offer and the Well Meant Offer Hyper-Calvinism?

 

I generally do not waste much time refuting an old strawman fallacy leveled at the apologetics of the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark, the Protestant Reformed Church in America, Dr. David Engelsma, and others who reject the liberal progressives in the mainstream Evangelical and Reformed movement.  Sadly, the most conservative Calvinists and Evangelicals are constantly vilified with abusive ad hominem fallacies, gaslighting, and unjustified polemics by the so-called “tolerant” and confessional Reformed academics.  I speak specifically of Dr. R. Scott Clark, a professor of theological history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California.  R. S. Clark recently rehashed a litany of false accusations against those who refuse to accept the theology of paradox which is advocated by the students of the late Dr. Cornelius Van Til and which was advocated by Van Til himself.  You can read his article here:  Hyper-Calvinism, Rationalism, and Anti-Predestinarians.

Scott Clark is the perfect example of what happens when an earlier departure from the biblical and confessional Reformed theology begins to diverge into even greater departures from the system of propositional truth revealed in the Bible.  Dr. Gordon H. Clark traced this theology all the way back to the Romanist theologian, Thomas Aquinas, who proposed a two-fold view of truth, one for God and another humanity.  While it is true that there are differences between how an eternally omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and immutable God knows everything intuitively, and how humans only know discursively and in time, it does not follow that truth changes from the Creator to the creature.  If so, then humans cannot know anything God knows.  But as Dr. Gordon H. Clark once said, does God know that 2 + 2 = 4?  Of course He does know this.  There must be a univocal connection between what God has revealed and what we know of that revelation.  This twofold view of truth, which is being advocated by the students of Cornelius Van Til, actually began with Abraham Kuyper and his influence on the Old Princeton Seminary in New Jersey and on Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Along with that came the new liberalism of neo-orthodoxy and existentialism, which was promoted by Karl Barth, Gerhard Von Rad, Emil Brunner, and others.  These theologians wanted to curb logic and rationality because they did not believe that supernatural revelation could withstand the scrutiny of internal consistency.  Ironically, R. Scott Clark and most of the semi-Calvinists today agree more with the higher and lower liberal critics and the neo-orthodox theologians than with the twentieth century Fundamentalists and Evangelicals of Old Princeton.

Somehow, R. S. Clark believes that we must curb rationality because rationality questions supernatural revelation and attacks the Bible and the Christian worldview.  While it is certainly true that reason divorced from faith and supernaturalism results in natural religion and liberalism, it does not logically follow that philosophy cannot be subservient to Scripture.  Even Richard Muller argues for this magisterial and ministerial use of philosophy in his first volume on the what he calls Reformed dogmatics. 

(See:  Muller, Richard A. Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy;  Volume 1: Prolegomena to Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003. Print.)

R. S. Clark wants to argue that he is not a rationalist because he affirms the theology of paradox as his default go to when confronted with apparent contradictions.  Instead of using the logical propositions in the Bible to solve the apparent antinomies and dilemmas, RSC wants to excuse his inability to reconcile the biblical texts to his cultural concerns and pastoral concerns as they relate to evangelism and pastoral care in the local congregation.  But this is not the approach taken by Jesus and the apostles.  Instead, they faced their opponents head on with Scripture.  However, RSC does not like Sola Scriptura that much either, and anyone who opposes his theology or exegesis of the biblical texts is gaslighted with abusive ad hominem attacks like hyper-Calvinist, biblicist, and rationalist.

Astonishingly, R. S. Clark says that the hyper-Calvinsts have more in common with universalists, presumably Arminian universalism, than with Calvinism:

Ironically, the “evangelical” universalists and the hyper-Calvinists (we should speak of “hyper-predestinarians”) deserve each other. The universalists cannot see how it is that God can freely and genuinely offer the gospel to all unless it is the case that Christ actually died for everyone who ever lived and unless it is that Christ’s death has made it possible for all to be saved if they will only do their part. Methodologically, in both cases, what their nets cannot catch are not butterflies. The limits of their intellect are the limits of what God can or cannot do.

Orthodox, confessional Calvinism does not limit God by the limits of our comprehension. We understand that God transcends our ability to comprehend Him. We may be wrong, but we really do believe that we are following God’s Word when we confess both that God has known his elect from all eternity, and that he reprobates some by passing them by, and that Christ died for those whom the Father gave to him from all eternity (pactum salutis), and that God has ordained that the gospel of free salvation through faith alone (sola fide), by grace alone (sola gratia), in Christ alone (solo Christo) should be preached and offered freely to all as a well-meant offer of the gospel.

But this is his position, not ours.  In fact, Clark openly admits that he cut his teeth in the Universalist and Unitarian church of his upbringing.  He cannot seem to divorce himself from his past and falsely projects his own universalist tendencies upon traditional and classical Calvinists who insist on a strict reading of the Reformed confessions and Calvin himself.  Common grace, which R. S. Clark promotes, is a universalist doctrine which comes amazingly close to the Arminian doctrine of common grace, with the exception that RSC admits that there are two kinds of grace; one kind of grace is special and particular to the elect and the other kind of grace is general and common to both the elect and the reprobate.   But what kind of grace is it that does not save anyone?  It’s not even the Arminian common grace because at least the Arminian common grace makes salvation a contingency.  Semi-Calvinist common grace says that God loves the reprobate, knowing that He will not save them.

Furthermore, Scott Clark conveniently fails to mention that the well meant offer means that God actually desires to save everyone while not decreeing to save everyone.  In the first case, the well meant offer is simply preaching a contingency to humans and telling them that God really does want to save everyone without exception--which is essentially lying to them, because the Bible clearly says that God will not save everyone.  If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, then God should be able to save everyone without exception, which is a universalism that goes well beyond what the Arminians argue for, namely libertarian free will and contingency.  If God is able to save everyone but does not do so, then it cannot be that God both desires or wills to save everyone and yet does not decree or will to save everyone.  And this is precisely the contradiction that RSC does not wish to discuss here.  Instead, he attacks his theological and apologetical opponents with polemics based on his self acknowledged ignorance of what God knows in His archetypal knowledge.

While Clark denies that he is a universalist, other promoters of the well meant offer, the free offer and common grace, such as Richard Mouw, have openly said that they hold out hope that everyone would be saved in the last day.  If this is not univeralism, I do not know what else to call it:

Throughout this discussion I have been rather free in employing the well-worn Calvinist categories of "elect" and "non-elect" or "reprobate." I make no apologies for doing so. The categories are biblical ones. Nevertheless, I do not mean to mean [sic] to imply that I actually have clear notions about how to divide the human race up into these classifications. Here too - even especially here, I am convinced - we mortals stand before a great mystery. But I do want to make it clear that while I am no universalist, my own inclination is to emphasize the "wideness in God's mercy" rather than the "small number of the elect" motif that has often dominated the Calvinist outlook. I take seriously the Bible's vision of the final gathering-in of the elect, of that "great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages," who shout the victory cry, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb" (Revelation 7:9-10). For all I know - and for all any of us can know - much of what we now think of as common grace may in the end time be revealed to be saving grace.  . . .

Richard J. Mouw. He Shines in All That's Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Kindle Locations 1020-1027). Kindle Edition.

As we can see from the comments of Richard Mouw, the semi-Calvinists affirm Calvinism and then openly deny Calvinism because their theology requires that everything is a mystery and an apparent contradiction or paradox.  How this is different from neo-orthodoxy they are unwilling to explain, because that too would constitute “rationalism”.  Richard Mouw claims that he is not a univeralist, yet if common grace applies to the whole human race from the beginning to the end, then

much of what we now think of as common grace may in the end time be revealed to be saving grace.

Richard J. Mouw. He Shines in All That's Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Kindle Locations 1026-1027). Kindle Edition.

What Mouw is saying is based on a postmillennialist view of eschatology.  However, implicit in his remarks is that the wide road will lead to salvation and the narrow road to damnation, precisely the opposite of what Jesus said (Matthew 7:14).  It is my contention that this is deliberate on their part and a way of hiding what their true beliefs are.  Liberals do not wish to openly admit what they believe privately--much like progressives in the political sphere--so that by the time the churches realize what has happened, it is too late to turn back.  The frog in the kettle analogy comes to mind here.

If God says that not everyone will be saved and that some will go to hell by His predetermined foreknowledge and predestination, does that mean that God somehow wills to save those whom He has not decreed to election, regeneration and ultimate salvation?  Of course not.  But this is where the theology of paradox comes in to rescue the semi-Calvinists from their Arminian accusers.  The semi-Calvinists will agree with the Arminians and the universalists that both are true at the same time and in the same way.  God both desires to save the reprobates who were decreed to reprobation prior to the creation of the world, and God does not will to save them at the same time and in the same way.  This is an outright contradiction, not merely an apparent contradiction or paradox.  Any Arminian can understand that this is a contradiction. 

The Arminian solution to the problem is to make God unable to save and to make salvation merely a possibility left up to partially depraved sinners, who have had libertarian free will restored sufficiently so that the sinner can have enough common grace to make a genuine choice between salvation and damnation.  Of course, this is exactly the same view held by the semi-Calvinists, though they wish to deny it by appealing to a legitimate desire on God’s part to save those who frustrate His desire, even foreknowing that they will not accept the “free” offer.

The problem here is that God’s foreknowledge is perfect, otherwise God would not be omniscient, knowing the exact future as it will inevitably occur in historical time.  The Arminian says that God makes His election decisions based on peering into the future to learn how history will unfold once God set the creation in motion.  This smacks openly of deism whereby God creates and then has no providential control over nature, humanity, or anything else.  As the old saying goes, “Stuff happens.”  But the Arminian view entails that God must be ignorant of the future and therefore He must learn new information in order to decide who to save.  This also leads to the heresy of Open Theism.  Even Arminians once identified Open Theism as a heresy but now it has become popularized by the chief heresiarch of Arminianism, Roger Olson:

Open theism is, in my opinion, although mistaken, closer to the true heart of Arminianism than is Molinism (insofar as it uses middle knowledge to reconcile divine determinism with free will). It ought to be considered a variety of Arminianism just as, say, supralapsarianism is considered a legitimate variety of Calvinism. Calvinism is a diverse tradition.  (Is Open Theism a Type of Arminianism?).

These kinds of heresies and deviations are not just resident with the Arminians.  They exist with the post Reformation dogmatics of the semi-Calvinists as well.  In fact, there is much infighting amongst the followers of Van Til.  John Frame, for example, holds to two different existences of God to try to bridge the gap between God’s transcendence as the Creator and God’s immanence with His creation and His creatures.  Scott Oliphant has proposed using an anology of the incarnation and applying that to the Creator so that He now has this third category of covenantal properties or attributes, which allow for Him to interact with His creation.  And Richard Muller has suggested that the ectypal revelations of God in the form of the written Scriptures are actually derived from the archetypal knowledge of God, which is known only to Himself.  But if what Muller, Oliphant, and Frame says is true, it is yet another mystery or outright contradiction.  I say that because you cannot derive ectypal knowledge from an unknown archetypal knowledge which is accessible only to God Himself.  Even more telling, Muller himself acknowledges that he disagrees with Francis Turretin’s view of the ectypal and archetypal knowledge of God.  For Turretin, the distinction is not an outright contradiction or a paradox, much to the chagrin of the Van Tilians.  Turretin’s view, in fact, seems much more in tune with the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark’s view of univocity between God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge at certain points of convergence. For the irrationalists, as GHC pointed out, there is no contact between two parallel lines and therefore, creatures can know nothing whatsoever that God knows.  Muller, at least, acknowledges that ectypal knowledge is derived from God’s archetypal knowledge, implying that there are points of contact between God’s knowledge and our knowledge, not irrational parallel lines.  I am sure that Muller and the Van Tilians will disagree with my analysis but the implications are there for all to see if you read volume one of his Post-Reformation Dogmatics.

R. Scott Clark cannot understand the apparent contradiction between predestination and the general call of the Gospel, so his response is to contend for an actual contradiction which he calls a paradox.  First of all, a paradox is not an actual contradiction.  Paradoxes have logical solutions; actual contradictions have no solution.  So if God foreknows who will be saved, it is not a contradiction to say that God has never intended to save those whom He has decreed to reprobation prior to creation.  Whether the theologian opts for supralapsarianism or infralapsarianism, the decree is an eternal and timeless decree, not subject to what happens in time.  Therefore, an eternal God could not have an emotional desire to do what He has not predetermined in eternity.  God has no emotions or passions, precisely because God has no body or bodily sensations.  It is inescapable for Scott Clark that predestination ultimately determines who is saved and who is not saved, whether he likes it or not.  Predestination is a central doctrine to the doctrine of God and the trinity.  If God is sovereign, then predestination is an essential attribute of God’s eternal will, His eternal omniscience, and His eternal omnipresence.  

Dr. Gordon H. Clark solved the problem of predestination versus the general call of the Gospel.  However, he is not the first to do so.  There were many of the primary reformers who also solved this problem.  John Calvin’s distinction between remote and proximate causation is just one example.  Scott Clark claims to believe in predestination; but then he sweeps predestination under the rug because he does not want to actually discuss the doctrine or any solutions to the paradox.  This is why Dr. Gordon H. Clark referred to these men as semi-Calvinists.  

R. Scott Clark openly admits that he is neo-orthodox and universalist, in the Arminian sense at least, by his remarks at the end of his article.  He says that there is no point of contact between the written word of God and RS Clark's view of the well meant offer, which is always in the mysteries of God's hidden and archetypal knowledge:

To my hyper-Calvinist friends and correspondents, I was reminded by a post on Reformation Theology by John Samson, of this verse: “Who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). The English verb “to desire” translates the Greek verb which is usually translated “to will” (θελειν). Against the free or well-meant offer, it has been argued that we cannot speak of God’s will in two aspects or in two ways, that we must speak univocally. Univocity, however, assumes an intersection between the divine and human intellect, and that is, of course, a form of rationalism. It is not Reformed theology, which is premised on the Creator-creature distinction.

Further, if God’s will can only be spoken of in one sense, then we would become universalists! Nevertheless, we must deal honestly with God’s Word and recognize that, given the hiddenness of the divine decree, there is a genuine and true sense in which God must be said to will the salvation of all. It is in light of this sort of biblical language that the Reformed faith has historically taught the substance of what has come to be called the “free” or “well-meant” offer of the gospel.

Ibid., R. Scott Clark. 

There is a reason that R. Scott Clark does not like the doctrine of predestination.  It is because he knows that the well meant offer and the free offer of the Gospel, as defined by RSC and other semi-Calvinists, directly contradicts what the Bible plainly says about predestination.  If God foreknows that particular individuals will not receive regeneration and believe, then obviously election cannot be conditional as the free offer of the Gospel entails.  Election is particular and foreknowledge of who is elect and reprobate is an immutable decree of God (Romans 9:11-13).  Simply because we do not know who is elect or reprobate does not entail that God both decrees particular individuals to election and reprobation, and that God does not decree particular individuals to election and reprobation.  Scott Clark wants there to be contingencies and possibilities in God's immutable mind so that he can preach an Arminian gospel of possibility.  Even the late R. C. Sproul recognized that he could not tell an unbelieving person that Jesus died for their sins.  There is no way to know that unless you're preaching contingencies.  Ironically and paradoxically, it is Scott Clark who is the universalist, and he openly admits that his view is not founded on the Scriptures but in his theology of paradox!

I will be making more remarks on the topic of predestination in the next series of posts.  I am currently reading Richard Muller’s first volume of Post-Reformation Dogmatics.  He apparently thinks that later departures from the earlier positions taken by the initial Protestant Reformers trumps what the first generation Reformers said.  Muller also tries to read his own views into the post-Reformation theologians rather than letting them speak in their own terms.  I have many examples of this, and there is more to follow.

[Postscript:  1 Timothy 2:4 means that God wants to save His elect from every class of mankind, high and low.  It does not literally mean universal salvation for all of mankind as the Arminians, the Unitarian Universalists, and the common grace Semi-Calvinists contend.  The general call of the Gospel does not prove that God literally desires to save everyone head for head, as the purveyors of paradox contend.  Rather, the general call of the Gospel is preached to all indiscriminately because we do not know whom God has individually elected.  He wants us to preach to all so that the elect may be gathered from all nations and classes of men.  The common grace people take this is as a contradiction with no solution.  See Calvin's Commentaries: 

4. Who wishes that all men may be saved. Here follows a confirmation of the second argument; and what is more reasonable than that all our prayers should be in conformity with this decree of God?

And may come to the acknowledgment of the truth. Lastly, he demonstrates that God has at heart the salvation of all, because he invites all to the acknowledgment of his truth. This belongs to that kind of argument in which the cause is proved from the effect; for, if “the gospel is the power of God for salvation to every one that believeth,” (Rom. 1:16,) it is certain that all those to whom the gospel is addressed are invited to the hope of eternal life. In short, as the calling is a proof of the secret election, so they whom God makes partakers of his gospel are admitted by him to possess salvation; because the gospel reveals to us the righteousness of God, which is a sure entrance into life.

Hence we see the childish folly of those who represent this passage to be opposed to predestination. “If God,” say they, “wishes all men indiscriminately to be saved, it is false that some are predestinated by his eternal purpose to salvation, and others to perdition.” They might have had some ground for saying this, if Paul were speaking here about individual men; although even then we should not have wanted the means of replying to their argument; for, although the will of God ought not to be judged from his secret decrees, when he reveals them to us by outward signs, yet it does not therefore follow that he has not determined with himself what he intends to do as to every individual man.

But I say nothing on that subject, because it has nothing to do with this passage; for the Apostle simply means, that there is no people and no rank in the world that is excluded from salvation; because God wishes that the gospel should be proclaimed to all without exception. Now the preaching of the gospel gives life; and hence he justly concludes that God invites all equally to partake salvation. But the present discourse relates to classes of men, and not to individual persons; for his sole object is, to include in this number princes and foreign nations. That God wishes the doctrine of salvation to be enjoyed by them as well as others, is evident from the passages already quoted, and from other passages of a similar nature. Not without good reason was it said, “Now, kings, understand,” and again, in the same Psalm, “I will give thee the Gentiles for an inheritance, and the ends of the earth for a possession.” (Ps. 2:8, 10.)

In a word, Paul intended to shew that it is our duty to consider, not what kind of persons the princes at that time were, but what God wished them to be. Now the duty arising out of that love which we owe to our neighbour is, to be solicitous and to do our endeavour for the salvation of all whom God includes in his calling, and to testify this by godly prayers.

Calvin's commentary on 1 Timothy 2:4.

Calvin, John, and William Pringle. Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010. Print.]