28 December, 2021

FAQ—John Calvin; what about “evanescent grace”?

 

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Q. “What is your opinion regarding Calvin’s apparent teaching of ‘evanescent grace’? It is often appealed to in order to support a grace of God upon the reprobate; a temporary grace that lasts until God withdraws it. It is said to be ‘evanescent’ in that it tends to 'vanish like a vapor’; one who has this grace is someone who is brought to be absolutely convinced that they are saved, whereas in actual fact they are unregenerate and are lost and perish forever. In other words, this ‘grace’ causes lost individuals to have an assurance or a feeling of having been forgiven, justified, and sanctified, and may even appear to have salvation for a time, but, ‘like a vapor,’ all this goes away; they were under a strong delusion the whole time; they were deceiving themselves.”

 

Calvin’s language and teaching concerning what he (rarely) referred to as “evanescent grace” leaves something to be desired.  He allows for a grace that is saving in nature that appears and works for only a short while in the reprobate but then to disappear.  I recognize that by this grace Calvin intends to do justice to Hebrews 6 and to our experience.  Nevertheless, the notion is unsound, contrary to Calvin’s overall doctrine of particular, *efficacious* grace, and misleading.

 

The truth is, as was Calvin’s own doctrine, that (saving) grace is particular, efficacious, and enduring into eternal life.

 

More importantly, this is the doctrine of Scripture.  He who has begun a good work in us will complete it to the end.  Romans 8 teaches that the grace that has its origin in foreknowledge/predestination has its end, always, in glory (vv. 29, 30).  In John 10:25-29 Jesus teaches the preservation of the saints by His grace, something that the notion of evanescent grace denies. Scripture teaches that (saving) grace has its origin in eternal election, and that this election never fails, by the grace that flows from it, to bring the elect to eternal glory (Romans 9).

 

The biblical explanation of the falling away of some who seemed to possess saving grace is not that they lost this grace, but that “they went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us:  but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us” (I John 2:19).

 

This text is the explanation that Calvin unwisely explained a few times in terms of evanescent grace.  Grace was not evanescent; the *persons* were evanescent.  They seemed to possess saving grace, but by abandoning their confession of Christ and by leaving the church they showed that they never were united to Christ by grace.

 

Calvin was a great man of God and a theologian of great help to us.  He was not an inspired authority, alongside the Bible.  We test his teachings by the Bible.

 

The Bible teaches particular, efficacious grace.  This grace is not evanescent.

 

There is in the Reformed tradition development of doctrine beyond Calvin. (DJE, 24/12/2021)

 

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Q. 2. “Where does Calvin teach this ‘evanescent grace’?”

 

Here are some quotes appealed to:

 

[Quoting Augustine with approval]: “Let no one think that those fall away who were of the predestined, called according to the purpose and truly sons of the promise. For those who appear to live piously may be called sons of God; but since they will eventually live impiously and die in that impiety, God does not call them sons in His foreknowledge. There are sons of God who do not yet appear so to us, but now do so to God; and there are those who, on account of some arrogated or temporal grace, are called so by us, but are not so to God” (John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. by J. K. S. Reid [London: James Clarke & Co. Limited, no date], p. 66).

 

“Sometimes, however, he communicates it also to those whom he enlightens only for a time, and whom afterwards, in just punishment for their ingratitude, he abandons and smites with greater blindness” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:24:8).

 

“Still it is correctly said, that the reprobate believe God to be propitious to them, inasmuch as they accept the gift of reconciliation, though confusedly and without due discernment; not that they are partakers of the same faith or regeneration with the children of God; but because, under a covering of hypocrisy, they seem to have a principle of faith in common with them. Nor do I even deny that God illumines their minds to this extent, that they recognize his grace; but that conviction he distinguishes from the peculiar testimony which he gives to his elect in this respect, that the reprobate never obtain to the full result or to fruition. When he shows himself propitious to them, it is not as if he had truly rescued them from death, and taken them under his protection. He only gives them a manifestation of his present mercy. In the elect alone he implants the living root of faith, so that they persevere even to the end. Thus we dispose of the objection, that if God truly displays his grace, it must endure forever. There is nothing inconsistent in this with the fact of his enlightening some with a present sense of grace, which afterwards proves evanescent” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3:2:11).

 

“Whoever has sinned, I shall delete him from the book of life … But the meaning is simple: those are deleted from the book of life who, considered for a time to be children of God, afterwards depart to their own place, as Peter truly says about Judas (Acts 1:16). But John testifies that these never were of us (1 Jn 2:19), for if they had been, they would not have gone out from us. What John expresses briefly is set forth in more detail by Ezekiel (13:9): They will not be in the secret of My people, nor written in the catalogue of Israel. The same solution applies to Moses and Paul, desiring to be deleted from the book of life (Ex 32:32; Rom 9:3): carried away with the vehemence of their grief, they prefer to perish, if possible, rather than that the Church of God, numerous as it then was, should perish. When Christ bids His disciples rejoice because their names are written in heaven (Lk 10:20), He signifies a perpetual blessing of which they will never be deprived. In a word, Christ clearly and briefly reconciles both meanings, when He says: Every tree which My Father has not planted will be rooted up (Mt 15:13). For even the reprobate take root in appearance, and yet they are not planted by the hand of God” (John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. by J. K. S. Reid [London: James Clarke & Co. Limited, no date], pp. 151-152).

 

“God certainly bestows His Spirit of regeneration only on the elect, and that they are distinguished from the reprobate in the fact that they are remade in His image, and they receive the earnest of the Spirit in the hope of an inheritance to come, and by the same Spirit the Gospel is sealed in their hearts. But I do not see that this is any reason why He should not touch the reprobate with a taste of His grace, or illumine their minds with some glimmerings of His light, or affect them with some sense of His goodness, or to some extent engrave His Word in their hearts. Otherwise where would be that passing faith which Marks mentions (4.17)? Therefore there is some knowledge in the reprobate, which later vanishes away either because it drives its roots less deep than it ought to, or because it is choked and withers away” (John Calvin, comm. on Hebrews 6:4-6, in Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: Hebrews and I and II Peter, translated by W. B. Johnston [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963], 76).

 

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Q. 3.


 

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