Canons of Dordt, III/IV, Rejection of Errors 5—“… the common grace (by which they understand the light of nature) …”

[The Synod rejects the errors of those] who teach: That the corrupt and natural man can so well use the common grace (by which they understand the light of nature), or the gifts still left him after the fall, that he can gradually gain by their good use a greater, namely, the evangelical or saving grace and salvation itself. And that in this way God on his part shows himself ready to reveal Christ unto all men, since he applies to all sufficiently and efficiently the means necessary to conversion. For the experience of all ages and the Scriptures do both testify that this is untrue. “He showeth his Word unto Jacob, his statues and his ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his ordinances they have not known them,” Psalm 147:19, 20. “Who in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own way,” Acts 14:16. And: “And they (Paul and his companions) having been forbidden of the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia, and when they were come over against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit suffered them not,” Acts 16:6, 7.  (Canons of Dordt III/IV, Rejection of Errors 5).

COMMON GRACE ARGUMENT:

“This article is simply condemning a misuse of the doctrine of common grace, or a misuse of the term; its not necessarily condemning the actual doctrine held by Reformed people today.”

(I)

Prof. David J. Engelsma

Canons 3&4, Rejection of Errors/5 is the one mention of common grace in the creed.  This one mention puts common grace in the theology of the Arminians, in order to reject it.  The meaning of the mention of common grace is that the Arminians describe the light of nature as a grace of God, which they called ‘common grace.’  This common grace, according to the Arminians, was the means by which the unsaved man can gradually gain saving grace, if he uses the common grace well.

This was, in fact, the theology of the Arminians: there is a common grace that can gradually become saving grace.  Nowhere in the Canons, or in any Reformed creed, is it taught that there truly is a common grace of God, which the Arminians then misused.

The entire article sets forth the Arminian theology, which the Reformed theology rejects.  The error rejected is that there is a common grace of God and that this common grace, as is invariably the case wherever common grace is confessed, then leads on to saving grace.

This explanation of the article has always been the understanding of all expositors of the Canons.  Even the CRC in 1924 did not, to my knowledge, explain the article as teaching that there is a common grace which the Arminians then abused.

(DJE, 05/09/2020)

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(II)

More to come! (DV)