QUESTION BANK

Here is a collection of informed responses to the most common questions and objections on the topic of common grace well-meant offer. Here they are categorized under various headings for easy inquiry. 

 

The list is regularly updated and added to. 

 

If you have a particular question and require a response that is not included here, or would like a better understanding on particular point, feel free to send an email (hutchingsmusic@gmail.com)

 

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Categories:
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Definitions, terminology and history

Main concerns

 

 

What is grace?

 

 

What about all the good things in this world? (life, air, food, rain, sunshine, prosperity, etc.) Are not all these things “undeserved,” “unmerited,” and always “forfeited”? Are they not blessings?  

 

 

“Deferred,” “delayed,” or “postponed” judgement; God’s “Longsuffering” and “Forbearance”

 

 

Why is God continuing and sustaining this world’s existence apart from common grace?

 

 

Total depravity and the restraint of sin in society: How is the world not as bad as it could be? Do we not see unbelievers doing “good deeds”? What about so-called “natural vs. moral” inability?

 

Predestination, election, reprobation, “equal ultimacy,” and the free offer of the gospel.

The atonement

 

 

Irresistible grace

 

 

The preaching of the gospel; Is it an “offer”? The gospel “promise,” the command for all to repent and believe, and the will of God in the preaching. What about the so-called “warrant to believe”?

 

 

What about prayer?

 

 

Did Christ fulfil the law?

 

 

Does God have two wills? What about His decree and His precepts (commands)?

 

 

Do God’s ‘commands’ tell us what God ‘desires,’ ‘wishes,’ or ‘wants’ to happen?

 

 

Creeds and confessions. Are we allowed to interpret creeds in a way that contradicts the personal opinions of the men who wrote those creeds?

 

 

Can a Church that teaches “common grace” be said to be “Reformed”?

 

 

The antithesis … and “common grace,” and the Christian’s involvement in the world.

 

 

What constitutes “Calvinism”? What is “hyper-Calvinism”? What determines “orthodoxy”?

 

 

The covenant

 

 

Christology: Christ’s mission, two natures, minds and wills.

 

 

Bible Interpretation Methods and Hermeneutics—“Systematic Theology” vs. “Biblical Theology”; “Atomistic” vs. “Holistic” interpretation.

 

 

Rationalism, “paradoxes,” “mysteries,” “apparent contradictions,” Cornelius Van Til, harmonizing Scripture with Scripture, etc.

 

 

Why all this discussion on “common grace”? Isn’t all this just about “semantics”? a mere quarrel over words?

 

 

Why stand alone against the majority? Are there not big-name theologians of the past that taught a “common grace”? Has not all your claims to theologians of the past been disputed?

 

 

The well-meant offer’s origins in Amyraldianism.

 

 

“Common Grace” and Apologetics.

 

 

Accusations against the PRCA refuted.

 

 

What about missions and evangelism?

 

 

Arminianism

 

 

Is God the author of sin?

 

 

Is not this a ‘monstrous’ picture of God?

 

 

The image of God. What is it? Does fallen man still possess part of it? Or was it lost completely?

 

 

The De Wolf controversy in the PRC, and the Split of 1953

 

 

God’s being and nature

 

 

God’s attributes

 

 

God’s righteousness

 

 

God’s unchangeableness/immutability

God’s love

 

 

God’s simplicity

 

 

God’s sovereignty

 

 

God’s wrath and hatred; is wrath an attribute of God?

 

 

John Calvin; what about “evanescent grace”?

<>+<>  Miscellaneous and longer arguments <>+<>