Is the Doctrine of Common Grace Biblical or Confessional?

 

Is the Doctrine of Common Grace Biblical or Confessional?

 

“To the reprobate the preaching of the gospel is no favor because as it increases their knowledge, it increases their responsibility and condemnation. Better if they had never heard the gospel. One can reply, nonetheless, that in some cases the preaching of the gospel may restrain an evil man from some of his evil ways. Since therefore sins are not all equal, and since some are punished with many stripes, but others with few, the preaching of the gospel results in the lessening of the punishment. Thus preaching would be a small favor, a modicum of grace. We note it and pass on.”  Dr. Gordon H. Clark  (See:  A Place for Thoughts:  Gordon Clark on “Common Grace,” by Doug Douma).

 

To discuss the issue of the reputedly “reformed” doctrine of common grace is a convoluted and complicated matter.  Often it is hard for the layperson to understand exactly what the controversy is about.  Basically, it comes down to a controversial doctrinal statement issued by the Christian Reformed Church in 1924 at Kalamazoo, Michigan.  That document outlined the what is identified as the Three Points of Common Grace.  You can access a direct quote of the three points and subsequent critique of the three points at the Protestant Reformed Churches in America website here:  The Three Points of Common Grace.

The first thing I would like to point out is that common grace often is used to justify accommodation with Arminianism, and worse, liberal theology.  The point of compromise here is that even theological liberals and other reprobate persons allegedly can do civil good by practicing the discipline of liberal scholarship.  But, this is hard to understand because the agenda of theological liberals and other ungodly scholars is to undermine the Bible, not to support it as special revelation from God.  A good example of this is the apostasy of Bart Ehrman, who attended Princeton Theological Seminary in order to study textual criticism.  Ehrman was once an Evangelical Christian who attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois.  Being weak in his faith, he decided that the Bible could not be trusted because of the many errors in the extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.  The Evangelical position is that God has providentially preserved what was contained in the original autographs, even though the originals are no longer extant.

This is a significant issue because if we no longer have the original autographs, then logically speaking none of the extant manuscripts are without error or infallible.  Using the axioms or principles of reasoned eclecticism, the Bible is alleged to be a reconstruction of the original autographs and only in that sense can any modern translation of the Bible be considered infallible or inerrant.  Any apparent errors are to be attributed to the translation from the original languages or to errors in transmission of the original Greek or Hebrew manuscripts which are only preserved in copies of the copies passed down through hundreds and thousands of years.  The debate then degenerates into which manuscripts are best and who has the logical upper hand in making those determinations?  In short, the science of textual criticism is alleged to be a part of the common grace of God since many of the men who invented the basic principles of the science were either part of the Renaissance or the Enlightenment.  From there we get the 19^th century scholars of Westcott and Hort, who then influenced subsequent schools of textual criticism that went in other directions.

One of the opponents of the reasoned eclecticism approach to textual criticism used to be part of the reasoned eclecticism approach.  His name is Maurice Robinson.  His main objection to that approach is that the reasoned eclecticism approach often creates verses by splicing together fragments and variants to create verses that do not exist in any extant manuscripts whatsoever. 

Another issue with common grace is the third point mentioned above that the reprobate can do civic good.  Theological liberals prior to the first world war were optimistic that the entire world could be harmonized into a peaceful global community.  Where have we heard that one before?  After WWI, that optimism changed to pessimism.  Now, apparently, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction.  Part of the blame for this would be the theology of Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Reformed theologian turned politician.  Kuyper gave his Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1898.  The vast majority of modern Reformed denominations support the compromised theology of the Three Points of Common Grace.  This compromise can be traced all the way back to the Stone Lectures.  It could even be argued that the Stone Lectures were the genetic cause of the eventual fall of the Presbyterian Church in the United States into apostasy.  The Old Princeton stalwarts became infatuated with creating a Calvinist cultural reformation worldwide such that eventually the emphasis on solid biblical and systematic theology fell to the wayside in order to facilitate missions and evangelism at the cost of special revelation and biblical truth.  Even otherwise solid theologians like Benjamin B. Warfield and Charles Hodge were caught up in theological compromise.  Warfield advocated for reasoned eclecticism and the Westcott and Hort approach to New Testament textual criticism, while Hodge fell to the compromise that Christ in some sense died not only for the elect, but also for the reprobate.  Hodge’s reasoning was that common grace was somehow purchased on the cross for the entire world, not just for the irresistible grace and the efficacious atonement which propitiated the wrath of God against the elect.

A postmillennialist view of reforming the culture seems to lead inevitably towards an overly optimistic agenda to transform the culture.  I would contend that this naivete has led to accommodation to culture instead of a prophetic calling out of the culture, which is in manifold rebellion against the moral law of God as summarized in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments.  A further problem with this is that this postmillennialism is combined with a theonomic view of evangelization and mission, which leads to a co-belligerent cooperation with papists, Arminians, Lutherans and various other opponents of a Reformed worldview.  As the saying goes, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. 

While it is true that Old Princeton was for a time a bastion of conservative and reformed theology, a small compromise leads to later generations which compromise a little more, and so on until three or four generations later there is a major compromise that leads to apostasy.  It was only a period of forty years or so until the 1940s when the foreign mission board of the Presbyterian Church of the United States went in a completely liberal direction, and J. Gresham Machen and his followers were forced out of the PCUS for refusing to support the foreign mission board.  Machen, along with Gordon H. Clark, Cornelius Van Til and others helped to found Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Unfortunately, Van Til, Ned Stonehouse, and John Murray decided to oppose Dr. Gordon H. Clark’s ordination with the newly formed Orthodox Presbyterian Church because of Clark’s disagreement with common grace, the free offer of the Gospel, and the well meant offer of the Gospel. Van Til, Stonehouse, and Murray rejected propositional revelation as the basis for systematic theology.  They redefined Francis Turretin’s doctrine of archetypal and ectypal knowledge so that they unwittingly affirmed some aspects of neo-orthodoxy.  Their emphasis on an analogical system of theology in the Westminster Standards went well beyond the traditional view of Scripture as the analogy of faith, meaning that Scripture interprets Scripture.  Van Til said that all Scripture is apparently contradictory.  Gordon Clark’s response to this in an audio lecture cuts to the heart of the issue:

What are we to make of his statement that “all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory?” Now, Van Til said omnipotence is not self-contradictory, but creation and responsibility are contradictory. And, also, he said all teaching of scripture is apparently contradictory. Which would of course include the idea of omnipotence.  …

I might say that the statement “David was King of Israel” is not apparently contradictory to me. 

[Audio Transcript:  (From the Gordon Conwell Lectures on Apologetics, 1981.)  “John Frame and Cornelius Van Til.”  P. 11.  Posted at:  The Gordon H. Clark Foundation.]

I would contend that the doctrine of common grace is a contradiction of the biblical doctrine of divine sovereignty by implication.  The implication of the doctrine is that God gives a non-salvific grace to those whom He has decreed to reprobation before the foundation of the world.  This is a mere charade if it is intended to solve the problem of evil.  For billions of human beings of all ages suffer the effects of the fall of Adam, yet God does not relieve their suffering.  So, this would contradict the proponents of common grace who misuse the doctrine of providence to show that God loves the reprobate.  (Matthew 5:43-48 KJV).  But, David, says that we should hate those who blaspheme God:

Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men. 20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain. 21 Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? 22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: 24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Ps. 139:19-24 KJV)

I would contend that it is extremely naïve to promote common grace as any kind of good whatsoever.  The Protestant Reformed Churches in America have rightly pointed out that this doctrine leads to Arminianism and Pelagianism.  It looks the other way when the Bible specifically says that the wicked are the enemies of God:

The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. 6 Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. (Ps. 5:5-6 KJV)

The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. (Ps. 11:5 KJV)

 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. (Rom. 9:13 KJV)