Herman Hoeksema (1886-1965)
[Source: The Standard Bearer, vol. 20, no. 9
(February 15, 1944), no. 10 (March 1, 1942) and no. 11 (March 15, 1944)]
(I)
Dr.
Clarence Bouma, who informs us in Calvinalia, The Banner, Dec. 24,
1943, that he specialized in philosophy at the time when he was preparing
himself for apologetics, in spite of this special preparation, appears to have
special difficulty properly to evaluate any view that differs from his
own. And the result is, not only that
those who disagree with him often become the victims of a pen-lashing administered
by him, instead of receiving appreciative, sympathetic, and properly-motivated
criticism, but also that the criticism he does offer is frequently vague and
besides the point.
A
fair example of the pen-lashing, breathing a spirit of intolerance, I consider
the editorial on “Wilson and Roosevelt Vindicated,” in the Calvin Forum
of December last. And a striking
illustration of his failure to understand and properly to evaluate a view he
criticizes, one may find in the January number of the same paper. I refer to the following paragraph:
Nor is a truly realistic approach found by
many who repudiate Modernism and Barthianism both. The “orthodox” are ever in danger of an
unrealistic approach to the truth of the Word of God, though their distortion
is orientated quite differently. The
denial of common grace by some and the dreaming of Judaistic-chiliastic dreams
by others—all of them very “orthodox”—is but another form of idealism run
rampant for lack of integration with a truly biblical realism. These differ from the modernists in that
their idealistic, optimistic onesidedness is not grounded in the belief in the
inherent goodness of man in his present state (as was the case with the
humanist and modernist), but in a divorce between the wicked world and the
ideal as God sees it and as it will be realized only among the elect, whether
on earth or ultimately in the future.
There lies an essential Anabaptism at the bottom of the denial of common
grace as well as at the base of all Dispensationalism. When the true realism of the Scriptures is
not grasped, a distorted form of Christianity results also among the orthodox.
Now
we may, first of all, observe that all these sweeping statements, by which we,
who believe that what Dr. Bouma conceives to be the true realistic view of the
present world is a pure dream, are classified as Anabaptists, who present “a
distorted form of Christianity,” that is, besides, characterized by an “idealistic,
optimistic onesidedness,” and that is, moreover, “grounded in a divorce between
this wicked world and the ideal as God sees it,”—that all these sweeping
generalities are offered by the editor of Calvin Forum with absolutely
nothing to support them but the authority of the writer, which may have weight
with himself, but means nothing to us, and should have no significance for the
readers of his paper. However, let us
examine them somewhat more closely.
The
heart of the matter appears to be that Dr. Bouma ascribes to us a view that
fails to understand and to evaluate properly this present wicked world, and
that separates it from the ideal world as God sees it. And all this is supposed to be due to our
denial of common grace.
But
reading this, and bearing in mind that this is written with the tacit
assumption that Dr. Bouma’s conception of the relation between the present
world and the ideal “as God sees it,” is certainly the only correct view, one
cannot help but wonder what his conception of this relation may be.
We
may assume that by “the ideal as God sees it,” he means the ideal world
as it will be realized in the future. It
also appears rather certain that he has in mind the ideal of the new creation
that is to come after the parousia, for he writes: “as it will be
realized only among the elect.” It is,
therefore, the ideal of “special grace,” to speak in Dr. Bouma’s terms, that he
has in mind. Now, it is not entirely
correct—in fact, not at all correct—that we divorce this present from that
world to come. Dr. Bouma may know better
than that, and, as a professor of apologetics, he ought to state the views of
those whom he wants to criticize correctly before he offers his criticism. But we conceive of this relation thus: that
the “ideal as God sees it,” can be realized from and through this present
world, not by way of gradual development, but only by the Wonder of grace. And one is rather curious to know how, as a
Reformed man, Dr. Bouma can possibly have a different conception of this
relation. Really, this is a very
important question, and Dr. Bouma, if he has some new light on this point,
could do Reformed theology a service if, instead of writing in high-sounding
phrases on the proper realistic approach and telling everyone that differs with
him where he errs, would inform us about his own conception of the relation
between the present world and the world to come.
Strictly
speaking, “common grace” runs dualistically alongside of the line of “special
grace,” according to Dr. Bouma’s conception, unless he is of the opinion that
our modern “culture” and its products—our science and art, our automobiles and
airplanes, our telephone and radio, our tanks and guns and bombs—are to be
carried into the New Jerusalem. The “common
grace” ideal is strictly different from the “ideal as God sees it, as it will
be realized only among the elect.” It is
the realization of the original creation ordinance. Hence, I may safely say that his common grace
theory cannot help him to develop a proper conception of the relation between
the present world and the world to come.
The former is surely going to be utterly destroyed in the final
world-fire. And it is only the Wonder of
grace that can save God’s world out of the present world.
Of
course, I know that Dr. Bouma believes in the philosophy of common grace. And I can very well understand how this
changes and distorts his view of the reality of the present world and its
culture. He certainly has a different
conception of the efforts of certain “Christian gentlemen” than I have. But this is not to be attributed to the fact
that I do not grasp “the true realism of Scripture,” but rather to the fact
that Dr. Bouma wears the colored spectacles of the common grace philosophy, the
result of which is, not only that he cannot grasp “the true realism of
Scripture,” but also that he has a distorted view of reality of present day
history, the trend and significance of which are otherwise sufficiently plain
to all that are able to willing to see.
(II)
Recently,
as our readers will recall, the editor of The Banner wrote about a hymn
and a latch. In the issue of Jan. 14 he
devotes an editorial to “a narrow bridge.”
That
narrow bridge is the truth. “He who
would know the truth must walk on this narrow bridge. On either side is a deep abyss from which
there is no return.”
Although
the editor informs us that this figure of speech is derived from an old Arab
story, the phraseology reminds one rather strongly of Barth and his dialectic
performances. We say this without even
remotely intending to accuse the editor of The Banner of any form of
Barthianism. Only the similarity is striking. Barth prefers to think dialectically. In fact, it is the only way one can think
about God. And he loves to illustrate
this dialectic method by referring to the figure of a man walking on a
knife-edge mountain ridge, on which he must continue to walk, and cannot stand
still, lest he fall into the abyss on the right or on the left. And not only is there a striking similarity
in the figures employed by the editor of The Banner and Karl Barth, but
also the actual method of thinking about God recommended by the former is
similar to that of the latter. Barth
thinks dialectically. He always moves on
between the Yea and the Nay, and remembers that the truth lies beyond both in
God, the only Yea and Amen. We can state
the truth only in the form of question and answer, and always in such a way
that the answer contains a question; or in the form of a dialogue, with the two
sides opposing each other; a conflict. Somewhat
similar to this is the method the editor of The Banner recommends to us
in thinking about the matter of salvation.
He speaks in the form of a conflict.
The matter of salvation is Yea and Nay, and, therefore, it is neither
absolutely Yea, nor absolutely Nay. And
the editor would have us walk on the “narrow bridge” of these dialectics in
order to abide in the truth. On the one
hand, there are those that insist on saying only Nay, and they fall into the abyss
on the one side of the bridge; on the other hand, some would say only Yea, with
the result that they plunge into the abyss on the other side. We must be careful, however, to remain on the
bridge, and balancing ourselves by constantly saying Yea and Nay, keeping
ourselves from dashing headlong into the abyss, “from which there is no return.”
Let
me explain.
In
the article referred to above, the editor first says Yea. And we like to hear him say that, even from the
depth of the abyss into which we have plunged according to him. For when he says that, he is soundly Reformed,
leaves the latch on the outside, and condemns the Arminians that are singing
their hymns in the abyss opposite from us.
Just listen to this:
Our contention is that the latch is on the
outside. No person who is Reformed in
his creed and holds that the gospel of “sovereign grace” believes
otherwise. Our doctrinal standards
stress that man is by nature an enemy of God, not subject to the law of God, neither
able to be (Rom. 8:7); that he is unwilling to believe and be saved unless
Christ first makes him willing by sending the Holy Spirit into his heart to
regenerate; in other words, that Christ must open the door to the sinner’s
heart, take possession of it, and awaken a true saving faith. He who puts the sinner’s act of faith before
God’s act of regeneration—a doctrine clearly contradicted by what we
read of in Acts about Lydia, namely, that God opened her heart in order that
she might give heed to the message of Paul—makes the work of the sinner, rather
than of God, primary in salvation. Such
a one can not consistently say that we love God because he first loved us; that
we sought him because he first sought us.
And
we, from the depth of our abyss, when we hear him thus pronounced his Yea,
shout our Amen of agreement; and from the other side of the bridge, in the
Arminian abyss, we hear loud exclamations of protest about this “deluded
minister” on the bridge, that goes “haywire” about election.
But,
alas! No sooner did we express our agreement, but we hear acclamations of great
joy from the depth of the Arminian abyss, for now they hear the “walker-on-the-bridge”
speak his Nay! For hear him:
Now, all this is but one side of the
gospel. There is another side which the
Scriptures stress not less strongly, namely, that the offer of salvation comes
to all who hear the gospel, to the reprobate as well as to the elect. We must hold to both sides if we would preserve
our balance on the narrow bridge of truth.
And
all this would not be so serious, if the editor merely meant that the gospel is
preached promiscuously to all, and that the “call to faith and repentance comes
to every person who hears the message of salvation,” if the editor would only
explain that according to the good pleasure of God this preaching is a savor of
death unto death to the reprobate, as well as a savor of life unto life for the
elect. But this he does not mean,
neither believe, still less teach. On
the contrary, what he now means is the very opposite of what he first taught,
viz., that God seriously wills the salvation of all men, and well-meaningly
offers it to them, which is in full accord with what he wrote in a previous
article, that although Christ does not plead with sinners to do what they
cannot, what He alone can do, He does plead with them to repent and believe,
implying that they can do the latter. And that this is, indeed, his meaning, is
sufficiently evident from his quotation of II Pet. 3:9 in this connection: “not
wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” And does the editor here purposely quote from
the Revised Version, and prefer the weaker translation “wishing” to the better
and stronger “willing”? No doubt, the
Revised Version had the Arminian interpretation of this passage in mind when
they so translated it, for the original (boulomenos) does not usually
mean “wishing” but “willing deliberately.”
And
does not the author of The Banner know that Reformed men never interpret
that passage in this Arminian sense?
I
might offer him my own exegesis of this passage, but, lest he refuse to listen to
a voice out of the abyss into which he beholds us as hopelessly precipitated, I
will quote from the very exponent of “common grace” who, in his earlier days
wrote about this passage as follows. (I
translate):
And to demonstrate this, I will, in regard
to II Pet. 3:9, leave it to the judgment of my opponents themselves, whether
they will accept the inner contradiction one must face if one makes this scriptural
passage say what they put into it.
For about the context and the way of argumentation
in II Pet. 3:9 there can be no difference of opinion.
In this passage, all admit this, the only
subject is the long tarrying of the return of the Lord upon the clouds.
The church of those days had long expected
this return …
And when they were disappointed in this
expectation, and one year after another passed by, without heaven being opened
and the Lord descending, unstable souls in the church began to murmur and to
ask whether what the apostles had told them was the truth, and whether they had
not published as a promise of Jesus’ return what was, after all, only the
product of their own imagination and therefore false prophecy.
Now, if in this connection and
argumentation I insert the conception: “Ye yourselves, and not God, are the
cause of this tarrying about which ye murmur.
For why do ye not hasten your repentance? For this ye surely do know, that first the
last of the elect must come to repentance before that day can come”—then
the whole argument runs perfectly smoothly, the chain of thought is unbroken,
and everyone understands why and for what purpose the apostle employs exactly these
terms.
But note now, how all this is lost, and the
sense becomes completely unintelligible, if I, for other reasons, try to carry
the idea of common grace into this passage.
Then I must come to the following
unreasonable argumentation: “Jesus cannot come as yet, for the will of God must
be fulfilled, and, according to this will, all men must first come to
repentance!”
But … if Jesus cannot return before all
men have come to repentance, then He will never come!
For, in the first place, thousands upon
thousands have already died without repentance, for whom this postponement of
Jesus’ return is of no avail.
Secondly, there are millions upon millions
that will die tomorrow, or the day after, or next year, without ever having
heard of Jesus, for whom this postponement neither is any profit.
And finally, if God without fixing a
definite number, constantly causes new men to be born, and if the return of
Jesus must await until also these have come to repentance, the return of Jesus
may be postponed indefinitely. And this
is the more serious, in view of the fact that the population of the world
increases every day, and it becomes more probable all the time that not all men
come to repentance.
Hence, this does not jibe. This does not harmonize. That is the most unreasonable argumentation
conceivable; it has neither sense nor solution.
No, if I want to demonstrate why the Lord
God, humanly speaking, fulfills the promise of Jesus’ return somewhat later
than we had imagined, then this can become intelligible only if I start to
figure from a definite starting point.
For if the number of men that must be born
is determined, and if God knows for whom out of all men a place must be
prepared in heaven,—then, indeed, I can understand perfectly well that Jesus
cannot return until they all have been brought in; and then the process of
thought is perfectly pure, clear and lucid, if I say: “God tarries, for there still
are some unconverted of those that are elect, and God surely wills not that any,
be they ever so few, shall be missing from the number of His elect, but that
they all shall have come to repentance before Jesus appears …”
There is, therefore, nothing left of this
objection, and the meaning of II Pet. 3:9 can be nothing else than this: “Jesus
cannot return until the number of the elect is complete, and while there are at
present still many elect that have not come to repentance, He postpones His coming
in longsuffering, not willing that through His early coming some should perish,
but willing that all shall first be converted.”
(Uit Het Woord, IV, pp. 33-36)
Although
we might, perhaps, follow another method of exegesis in some respect, the point
Dr. Kuyper here makes is perfectly clear: All in II Pet. 3:9 does not
denote all men head for head, but all the elect.
And
the interpretation the editor of The Banner offers is the explanation of
those who Dr. Kuyper in the above quotation opposes: the Arminians.
The
editor makes his usual appeal to “mystery.”
And about this I hope to make a few closing remarks the next time, the
Lord willing.
But
in closing this time, I would like to point to a patent fact.
The
editor of The Banner exhorts us to stay on the narrow bridge, and in his
editorial, he supposedly gives us a demonstration how to accomplish this.
Instead,
however, he tries to show how a man may perform the wonderful stunt of jumping
off the bridge (as he presents it) on both sides, frantically and crazily
hopping from one side to the other, and still stay on it.
I’d
like to see a man perform that stunt on an actual bridge.
But
neither can it be done on the “narrow bridge” of truth!
(III)
At
the close of his article entitled “A Narrow Bridge,” the editor of The
Banner makes the following remarks:
Let us not forget that though the truth of
God is not irrational, it often transcends our reason. There are many doctrines in Scripture which
appear to be self-contradictory. On that
very ground the Unitarians deny the Trinity.
No believer in the Trinity has ever been able to show that it is in
accord with human logic to believe that there are three distinct divine persons
while there is only one divine being.
How many have plunged from the narrow bridge of truth because they
could not harmonize the tri-personality with the unity of God and therefore
rejected the first or the second!
Again, who can show that it is logical to
believe that Jesus Christ is only one person, the Second Person of the
holy Trinity, and yet has two natures, a human and a divine nature. How many have sacrificed, in their thinking,
the human nature to the divine or the divine to the human! And as to the human nature of our Lord in the
state of His humiliation, how impossible it is to maintain logically the
absolute sinlessness of our Lord and His temptability at the same time!
We find ourselves in precisely the same
kind of a predicament with respect to our conception on sinful man and of the
way of salvation. We accept, for
example, the doctrine of total depravity but we also hold that the natural man
by the common grace of God is able to perform some outward good. Likewise, we believe in a particular
atonement, but we also hold that there is a general offer of salvation and we
plead with sinners to repent. Again, we
believe the doctrine of irresistible grace; we hold that a sinner’s heart must
be opened by the Holy Spirit before he can believe; at the same time we summon
him to faith and repentance and urge him to come to Christ. All this sounds foolish to the man who
applies the yardstick of human logic to divine truth. It is not foolish to the man who accepts the
Bible as the Word of God and believes that by the foolishness of the gospel God
is pleased to save sinners.
Now
I wish to state first of all that with the first sentence of the above
quotation I wholeheartedly agree.
With
emphasis, I would like to express agreement with the second clause of that
sentence: the truth often transcends our reason. And I may add that, ultimately, the truth always
transcends our reason. Of course! How could it be different? The truth
always concerns God, and God is the transcendent One, and as such He is the
incomprehensible One. It is the wonder
of revelation that, while God makes Himself known to us, He at the same time
causes us to discern clearly that we cannot comprehend Him. And as one contemplates and searches this
revelation of the infinite, he always confronts more inscrutable depths of
mystery, which he can never fathom. Nor
does the believer have any spiritual or rational difficulty with those
inscrutable mysteries of God which he knows and apprehends by faith, without ever
comprehending them. For, as the editor
of The Banner admits, though they surpass our comprehension, they are
not irrational. Hence, in the measure
and form that they are revealed to us, we know them, and in as far as they are
incomprehensive, we worship and adore Him Whose depths they are, and Whom to
know is life eternal. To these mysteries
certainly do belong the truths referred to above, that of the holy Trinity, and
that of the unity of Christ’s Person in the divine and human natures. And to these belong many other truths, and ultimately
all truths, if we but make the attempt to fathom them. We walk in mysteries.
But
I want to emphasize also the first clause of the above quotation: “… the truth
of God is not irrational.” To say that
the truth is irrational is to deny the possibility of all systematic theology,
of all knowledge of God, of revelation itself, and virtually to assert that God
Himself is irrational. It is quite
impossible for us, whom God created rational beings, to apprehend that which is
irrational, i.e., contrary to reason. Nor
are the truths which the editor of The Banner mentions in the above paragraphs
irrational. To us it appears that he
partially contradicts his statement that the truth is not irrational, when he writes:
“No believer in the Trinity has ever been able to show that it is in accord
with human logic to believe that there are three distinct divine persons while
there is only one divine being.” If the
editor had written that no believer has ever been able to comprehend the
tri-unity of God, we would have no objection, but we do object to his statement
now. If the doctrine of the Trinity is
not in accord with human logic, it is irrational, and cannot be a
doctrine. Contrary to reason it would
be, and impossible for faith to apprehend, if the doctrine of the Trinity
implied that one is three and three are one in the same sense, i.e., that one
being is three beings and three beings are one being. But this is not the case. And there is nothing contrary to reason, even
though it may far transcend our boldest comprehension in the doctrine that God is
one in being, and three in persons. And the same is applicable to the unity of
the divine Person of the Son of God in the two natures, the divine and the
human. Readily we admit that also this
truth far transcends our comprehension, but there is nothing illogical or
contrary to reason in the doctrine that the eternal Son of God, who subsists
eternally in the divine nature, also assumed the human nature.
But
when the editor in the rest of the above quotation tries to make us believe
that this principle, that the truth is never irrational though it transcends
our comprehension, is also applicable to and involved in his contention that the
atonement is particular and the well-meaning offer of salvation on the part of
God is general and universal, that God wills to save only the elect and that He
nevertheless wills that all men shall be saved, that man is totally depraved
and that yet he is able to do good works, we must most emphatically disagree
with him.
The
editor, let me point out, does not do justice to the doctrine which has been
adopted by the Christian Reformed Churches in 1924, and which he also tries to
present to his readers. When, for
instance, he writes: “Again, we believe the doctrine of irresistible grace; we
hold that a sinner’s heart must be opened by the Holy Spirit before he can
believe; at the same time we summon him to faith and repentance and urge him to
come to Christ,” he does not state the matter quite correctly from the
Christian Reformed viewpoint. If no more
is said, there need be no logical contradiction involved in the statement, for
when we urge a sinner to come to Christ, we do so on the supposition
that God will draw him, and that otherwise all our urging is absolutely
vain. But the editor should have stated
the matter as follows: “We believe the doctrine of irresistible grace, which God
gives only the elect, and yet we believe that God [not we—HH]
offers this grace well-meaningly to those whom He does not want to save.” That is the doctrine of the Christian
Reformed Churches. Briefly: God well-meaningly
offers salvation to those whom He does not want to have it. Still more briefly: God wills to save those
whom He will not save.
Now,
this is not a deep truth, but a very superficial untruth. It does not transcend our reason, but its
falsity and nonsense lies quite within the scope of our reason. Its untruth is so superficial that a child
can not fail to recognize it. It is irrational,
indeed, and, therefore, incapable of being accepted by the rational mind of the
believer. No one can possibly believe
both sides of a directly contradictory statement, for the simple reason that by
accepting the one he has already rejected the other. Either God wills that all men shall be saved
in the sense that He is earnestly desirous of the salvation of all men, and in
accord with this it is to teach that He offers salvation well-meaningly to all,
a salvation which Christ merited for all, and the acceptance of which is left
to the will of man; or He wills that only the elect shall be saved, and in
harmony with this is the Reformed doctrine of particular atonement, and of
irresistible grace. But both cannot be
true. And no man can possibly believe
both.
And,
therefore, as long as the editor of The Banner tries to inculcate this
contradiction into the minds of his readers, his attempt to fight Arminianism
in the Christian Reformed Churches will prove fruitless. They will not believe both sides of the contradiction
he proposes but accept one of them only.
And that will be the Arminian side, which is far more appealing to the
flesh than the Reformed truth.
That
this is true, the editor of The Banner cannot fail to ascertain for himself,
if he will but turn on the radio and listen to some of the programs that are
broadcast from Christian Reformed Churches and under their sponsorship as “Hour
of Praise” programs. Just recently I
happened to listen to one of them, which, while the message delivered on that
occasion was a sad mixture of modernism and Arminianism, was concluded by
singing:
There’s a Stranger at the door, Let Him in;
He has been there oft before, Let Him in;
Let Him in, ere He is gone,
Let Him in, the Holy One,
Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, Let Him in.
Open now to Him your heart, Let Him in;
If you wait He will depart, Let Him in;
Let Him in, He is your friend,
He your soul will sure defend,
He will keep you to the end, Let Him in.
And
all this while the editor of The Banner is pleading with his readers: “Beware
of taking your doctrine from the gospel hymns …”
I
would, therefore, earnestly invite the editor: come on the narrow bridge of the
truth with us, brother, and refrain from your strange acrobatic stunts by which
you attempt to jump off on both sides, and to stay on the bridge at the same
time!
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