(15)
Conclusion
The Free Church Synod in
the conclusions of its 1971 Report, page 27, has attempted to relegate the
doctrinal differences which are involved in the system which is identified as
modern modified Calvinism, as being of minor importance. On the contrary, that
system is perhaps the most deceptive of all the errors which have ever assailed
the doctrine of the Reformed Churches, because it is a completely ambiguous
system. On the one hand it has the appearance of accepting the formularies and
standards of the Reformed Church, while on the other, it demolishes them. This
it accomplishes through veiling or obscuring its ambiguities in a false mystery
concerning Divine Sovereignty.
In conclusion let us now
recapitulate the main points which have been brought forward in this essay.
(a) The Practical Issues of Modern Modified Calvinism
By its deceptions it
creates the following problems in the defence, propagation, and application of
the Reformed faith:
1. It represents itself as
the true Reformed faith, whereas in fact, those who embrace it are in a state
of error and decline.
2. It cannot uphold the
principles of the Reformed faith because of its ambiguous contradictory system
of theology.
3. Its effect on good men
who unwittingly embrace its system as a code of life is that they are liable to
become like the doctrine itself in their relationships before God and with
their fellow men. “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).
4. Its ambiguous and
contradictory system robs the Reformed faith of its defenses against other
doctrines of self-salvation because it has itself adopted the common principle
of a universal benevolence in God.
(b) The Overthrow of Calvin’s Calvinism as Set Forth in his Institutes and Commentaries
We have seen how modern
modified Calvinism constitutes the overthrow of Calvin’s Calvinism on the
following points:
1. It rejects the central
principle of Calvin’s theology that the will of God is simple.
2. It proposes that the
will of God is complex by placing within the divine mind a desire concerning
His precepts, which is contrary to His purposes and decrees.
3. It proposes that its
system does not imply a contradiction in God because His desire to save all
respects only His preceptive will and not His decretive will. Such proposal
fails to comprehend that a desire in God, whether it respects His preceptive
will or His decretive will involves a state or act of the divine mind. The proposal is therefore a nonsense statement,
unless it is acknowledged there are two minds or there is duplicity in God;
which is contrary to Calvin’s system.
4. It turns the mystery of
divine sovereignty concerning the apparent contradiction between God’s precepts
and decrees, into an internal conflict between desires and purposes within the
divine mind. Calvin, however, simply accepts the apparent contradiction between
the precepts of God’s Word and His decretive will, as being a mystery which
cannot be understood or comprehended by the weak finite mind of man.
5. It gives a double
meaning to certain texts, as listed on page 13 herein, oneof which says that
God desires the salvation or repentance of all men; whereas Calvin clearly
refers those texts only to the elect without giving them a universal reference.
It also proposes a law of opposites in which God is said to love and hate the
one object at the one time.
6. It intrudes into the
secret counsels of God's will on two counts:
a) By false interpretation
of Scripture it misinterprets the mind of God, so teaching that which Scripture
does not teach.
b) It attempts to define
the inner workings of the divine mind, when it says that there is an
unfulfilled desire in God’s mind for the salvation of all men which respects
His preceptive or revealed will; but which is contrary to His decretive will.
7. It actually takes the
position which Calvin’s objectors raise against him, the substance of which is,
on the one hand it is said, “Nothing happens without the will of God,” on the
other, “He must have two contrary wills, decreeing by a secret counsel what He
has openly forbidden in His law.” This is the same as saying, “there is a will
to the realisation of what He has not decretively willed, a pleasure towards
that which He has not been pleased to decree.”
8. It implies that God
desires that man shall obey Him without grace in spite of such Scriptures which
teach, “Without me ye can do nothing,” and “Without faith it is impossible to
please Him” (Heb. 11:6).
It is God’s requirement
that all men, regenerate and unregenerate, obey His moral law. God’s command is
man’s rule of duty. If, however, the natural man is allowed to think that God
desires that he obey His law without grace, he will either never consider
himself bound by the moral law, or imagine that he can please God and merit His
favour by his own efforts without grace. It is the function of the moral law
and the gospel to show sinners their total inability in this respect, that they
may cast themselves on the mercy of God.
Conclusion
Since the theology of the
Westminster formularies and other standards of the Reformed Churches is founded
on Calvin’s system of theology, we may now draw the following two conclusions
concerning modern modified Calvinism.
1. Because of the four
practical issues in which it fails, and the eight points enumerated above at
which it overthrows Calvin’s Calvinism and therefore the Confessional Standards of the Reformed Churches, it must be
considered to be destructive of the true preaching of the Word of God.
2. Where it has been made
or allowed to be a received doctrine by the highest court of a Church, it is
also destructive of the discipline of the Church, because the courts of such a
Church cannot deal with it or other doctrines of like kind, as a heresy. The
Church then becomes the medium for the propagation of error rather than truth.
All that then remains is a fundamentalism which claims Scripture as the Word of
God, but which is without the principles of Calvin’s Calvinism and the
doctrinal standards of the Reformation. It is only a matter of time,
thereafter, when even the so called fundamentalism gives way to the theology of
liberalism and unbelief.
Let us therefore learn the lesson of history, that
modified Calvinism is the tool of the enemy, who from within, brings about the
downfall of a Reformed Church. In its modern form it constitutes a great
hindrance to the propagation of the truth. Nothing reacts to Calvin’s Calvinism
like modern modified Calvinism. Until those who would propagate the truth of
God in our age, recognise it for what it is, all other heresies and the
lawlessness of our time will go virtually unchallenged.
No comments:
Post a Comment