The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth: Part 3

  

2. And not for ours only. He added this for the sake of amplifying, in order that the faithful might be assured that the expiation made by Christ, extends to all who by faith embrace the gospel.

Here a question may be raised, how have the sins of the whole world been expiated? I pass by the dotages of the fanatics, who under this pretence extend salvation to all the reprobate, and therefore to Satan himself. Such a monstrous thing deserves no refutation.  John Calvin’s commentary on 1 John 2:2.

 

The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth:  Part 3

 

In this blog post I will now consider how the free offer of the Gospel and the 19^th and 20^th century doctrine of common grace is related.  In future posts I will then show how the free offer or well meant offer of the Gospel and common grace have influenced the pragmatic approach to church growth and evangelism.

The most controversial downgrade of Calvinistic Reformed theology since the Protestant Reformation happened in 1924 when the Christian Reformed Church decided that God loves the reprobate, that the reprobate can do civic good, and that there is some hope that those who appear to be reprobate can be persuaded to accept the effectual call of the Gospel.  Of course, modern day semi-Calvinists will tell you that this is only an apparent contradiction or paradox.  The controversy at Kalamazoo, Michigan began when certain moderate theologians in the Christian Reformed Church passed the Three Points of Common Grace at the 1924 General Synod and later excommunicated the conservative Dutch Reformed pastors and theologians who dissented from the compromising document.  The deposed ministers then formed the Protestant Reformed Churches in America.  (See:  The Three Points of Common Grace).

Early on in my theological education I learned that accommodation to the surrounding culture leads to compromise, to theological liberalism and even universalism.  Even the classical Pentecostals at the Assemblies of God Bible college where I did my undergraduate studies warned students about the dangers of theological liberalism.  However, today, semi-Calvinist reformed denominations or churches are telling its laity that there is nothing to see here and that they are actually Evangelicals and conservatives.  Just recently, Dr. Neil Stewart, the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church, which is part of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian denomination, asserted that this is one of the most conservative denominations in America.  Either Dr. Stewart is ignorant of the controversies going on behind the scenes at the presbytery level and at the denominational seminary and college, i.e. Erskine Theological Seminary, and Erskine College, or Dr. Stewart is deliberately misleading the congregants.  (See:  Dissolution of the Catawba Presbytery;  see also, William B. Evans:  A Change in Ecclesial Affiliation).

If the doctrine of common grace is true, why is it that society is waxing worse and worse and not better and better?  The basic premise of the doctrine of common grace is that God loves the entire human race but has a special love for the elect.  Unfortunately, this leaves the semi-Calvinists open to the charge of elitism.  Calvinists are special, do you not know?  The Bible, on the other hand, says that the entire human race is fallen in Adam and under the wrath of God.  (Romans 1:18-21; Romans 5:12-14).  Such love!  The apparent contradiction or paradox here is that God supposedly loves and desires the salvation of the reprobate; but the reprobate have decided to damn themselves and frustrate God’s desire to save them.  Of course, this would imply that God only reprobates them because He foresaw that they would harden their hearts and refuse to be saved.  But is this not Arminianism?  Does God need to look into the future to learn what will happen in order to make His eternal and timeless decree?

Not only is the culture and society at large getting worse, but it seems to me that Evangelical churches, colleges, and seminaries are on a downward spiral as well.  Church splits and new seminaries and colleges are formed as liberalism arises; Yet, in time these same organizations and denominations tend to drift into liberalism themselves.  Even the terms Evangelical and reformed have been redefined in ways that are foreign to their original meaning.  Even Roman Catholics today claim to be “Evangelical” if they happen to trend toward a more conservative interpretation of Romanism. 

If common grace means that the reprobate can do civil and civic good, why is woke ideology, LGBTQIA+, secular humanism, social justice, and Marxism turning the national morality on its head?  What was once generally considered evil is not called good.  (Isaiah 5:20).  Children from kindergarten age are being nurtured by irrational parents and public school teachers into the ideology of transgenderism and homosexuality.  Criminals are now the victims of society rather than lawbreakers who victimize other citizens.  The progressive left is turning homelessness and crime into virtues of victimhood rather than an undermining of the virtues of individual responsibility and hard work.

Modernism was a dismal failure as a means of ushering in the utopian of a brave new world.  World War I put an end to that fantasy.  We live in a fallen world where moral evil causes crime, wars, and totalitarian regimes.  Yet, the so-called progressive “conservatives” who promote the theology of apparent contradiction tell us that common grace means that the world is getting better.  Some of them are postmillennalists and others are amillennialists.  The amillennialists tend toward a radical separation between the kingdom of God ruled in the ecclesiastical realm and the kingdom of secularism ruled by the civil government.  The postmillennialists tend toward a theonomic view where the civil realm is made better and better through the agency of natural law and the moral law of God.  Both views compromise with the culture in order to achieve the goals of their respective theological agendas.

The problem is that there is no common ground between the Christian worldview and the worldview of secularism and secular humanism.  The world views abortion, homosexuality, and surgical trans-sexuality as morally good.  The world views criminals as victims who have no responsibility for their crimes because of systemic racism, systemic homophobia/transphobia, etc., et. al.  However, the Bible condemns all of these things as violations of God’s moral law.  Natural law is supposed to be deduced from the cultures around the world.  But if this so, why so many different views of what is right and wrong in various nations and societies around the world.  C. S. Lewis used the existence of relativistic moralism as an argument for the existence of a moral God.  However, this, too, seems to be a dismal failure.  Why?  The human mind is corrupted by the noetic effects of sin and idolatry seems to replace the biblical God at every turn.

It would seem ironic, then, that the optimism of Kuyperian common grace would so soon replace modernism just after the first world war.  Common grace, like modernism, has failed miserably at making the world a better place to live for the reprobate and for elect and believing Christians alike. 

The pragmatic church growth is the attempt to use Pelagian and Arminian ways of preaching the Gospel in an attempt to persuade the reprobate which, biblically speaking, cannot be persuaded.  Using the corporate business model of selling the unchurched a felt need, these progressive Evangelicals pretend to preserve their conservative theology while in fact selling out to the culture of woke-ism, behaviorism, and Marxism.  They claim that after these persons are persuaded into joining their churches, that the new members will be transformed by the teaching of the church.  By this means, the progressives hope to reform and transform the culture at large.  The problem is that the teaching remains obscure, equivocal, and ambiguous by hiding behind the theology of paradox.  It fails to transform individuals or society.

Here ends this blog post.  I will explain the historical roots of the church growth movement, Tim Keller’s compromise of the Reformed theology, and how this is producing psychological conversions instead of actual conversions to Calvinist and reformed Christianity in my next post.

You can read my previous posts here:  Part 1, Part 2.

The next post is Part 4.

Westminster Larger Catechism: Question 14

Question 14

How doth God execute his decrees?

God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will. (Eph. 1:11)


The Westminster Larger Catechism: With Scripture Proofs. (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996).

OK, I just cannot resist the temptation to slam once again those who push the doctrine of common grace as if it were somehow a "Reformed" distinctive which was "implicitly" taught by John Calvin or at least anticipated by him.  Some scholars, like Dr. R. Scott Clark of the Heidelblog, insist that common grace is just "general" providence.  But the Larger Catechism defines God's decrees as relating to "whatsoever comes to pass," not just a "general" providence.  (See Westminster Larger Catechism, Questions 12 and 13).  Those who have a high view of human reason advocate "natural law" as the Lockean understanding of ethics and morality by which the worldly kingdom is governed and only the church is obligated to abide by God's moral law.  

R. Scott Clark seems to hold this view since he believes that natural revelation in the divine image and likeness in humans constitutes a knowledge of good and evil and is sufficient to rule the worldly kingdom.  (Cf. Romans 2:1-29; Romans 3:9-20).  Anyone reading Romans 1:18-3:20 can see that Paul is not advocating the idea that salvation is possible apart from special revelation.  The Law reveals everyone to be utterly sinful (Romans 3:23).  N. T. Wright's contention that Romans 2 refers to Christian Gentiles who keep God's law by nature flies in the face of Romans 3:9-23.  Romans 3:23 makes it clear that none are righteous and the law can only point out the lostness of all mankind (Romans 6:23; 7:7).  The Gospel is therefore only of free grace (Romans 3:20-26).

Additionally, the Westminster divines seem to hold a different opinion.  The doctrine of providence is particular and not general.  "Whatsoever comes to pass" is ordained by God, including the evil actions of nations against other nations.  That would include wars.  If war is a part of "common grace," which no Calvinist I know of would advocate, then you could say that providence is the same thing as "common grace."  Otherwise one has to question the sincerity and the deductive powers of those who say that common grace and "general" providence are the same thing.  I would never call providence a "general" providence in the first place because God is sovereign over "whatsoever comes to pass."  (WLC, Question 12).  He "unchangeably foreordains" everything that happens "in time," according to the WLC, Q12.  That's not "general" providence.  It is "particular providence."  Providence is not general anymore than the atonement is general or universal.  The doctrine of God's sovereignty means that absolutely every detail of every detail down to the most minute detail of what happens in real time is in God's control and is foreordained to happen just exactly as it comes to pass.  If you do not believe that then I would suggest that your views are more in line with Arminianism or Molinism or Semi-Pelagianism.

The bottom line here is that due to man's total corruption there is no knowledge of God or God's will and only by special revelation will human societies and nations obey God (Romans 1:18-21).  Of course, human reason maintains some vestiges of truth.  For whatever reason, God has ordained modern nations as they exist, and there is some semblance of morality evident in the criminal law codes.  But on the other hand much evil is tolerated by society today and some evil is encapsulated and sanctioned by the laws of modern nations.  The blatant endorsement of homosexuality is one example of that.  I guess, following the logic of the advocates of common grace, that civil laws which approve of civil unions and gay marriage are part of God's "common gifts" to humanity?  What a gift!  Such gifts are not gifts but are in fact evidence of God's hardening of the reprobate.  (Cf. Romans 1:18-32).  So much for common grace.  (Romans 9:11-13).

Addendum:  For a good sermon on Romans 1:18-32 click here:  Covenant Presbyterian Church

Gordon H. Clark: Quote of the Day

That true religion is preceded by or in some way founded on the activity of natural reason is an idea that has been and continues to be widely prevalent. The proper procedure is pictured as beginning with a proof of the existence of God. When the unbeliever is convinced by an argument drawn from nature, then he may next be shown the antecedent probability of a special revelation, and finally the reasonableness of the Scriptures. Not only has this natural theology in its medieval form been adopted as the official position of Romanism, but many Protestant theologians also accept it in some form or other.

Gordon H. Clark. Religion, Reason and Revelation (Kindle Locations 807-813). The Trinity Foundation.

Of course, Gordon H. Clark was not speaking approvingly here.  But it does show that appealing to natural reason as a basis for opposing gay marriage in the civic realm is doomed to failure.  R. S. Clark, of the Heidelblog, ought to know better.