03 June, 2022

“Paradox,” “Mystery” and “Divine Incomprehensibility”

 

 

Q. When we ask the defenders of “common grace” (i.e., a love of God for all men in the good things of creation and in various providential workings among and upon the wicked in society) and “the well-meant offer” (God’s indiscriminate proclamation of the gospel to all men with the desire, will, and intention that all who hear it be blessed) how they reconcile their interpretation of Scripture with the teaching of Romans 9, Proverbs 3:33, Psalm 73, etc., ... one of their responses has been this:

This is but one of the many instances of mystery and irreconcilable paradox throughout Scripture. It is an apparent contradiction from our perspective, but from God’s perspective, in eternity, in the divine mind, there is no contradiction; all things align perfectly for God, for with Him is no contradiction at all. 

 

But human beings cannot know the mind of the Lord as to comprehend how everything fits together.  This is one of the many “secret things” that belong only to God; what concerns us is only that which is “revealed” (cf. Deut. 29:29), even if, for us, they seem to contradict.  

 

The most humble and spiritual thing for a man to do is to accept both propositions (both lines of thought) as they are: a love of God for all men *and* that God, indeed, cannot deny any of His attributes). We are not permitted to try and rationalize things; we must not be rationalists, like the Arminians and hyper-Calvinists, and try to “put God into a box” or try to His word fit with our fallen human logic.  

 

If man could fully comprehend God or His word, he could be like God; he could be omniscient; he wouldn’t need the Holy Spirit; such a god would not be worth worshiping; a god who could fit into my 3-pound human brain would be on a par with the creature.  But He is greater than that; He is *incomprehensible*, which means it is impossible for men to be able to comprehend Him or everything in His word ... 

 

It is not my responsibility to try and reconcile the humanly-irreconcilable divine mysteries of the word of God; rather, it is my responsibility, as a humble child of God, to simply accept whatever I read ... In fact, I believe that God has deliberately placed things in His word that are humanly irreconcilable, in order to keep us humble and to prevent us from being puffed up with pride; it is to glorify God, in fact, to humbly acknowledge that we cannot fathom all things in His word, and rather to leave certain things for Christ Himself to explain to us. In this, God forever remains the Teacher, and we the student.

 

################################################


Prof. David J. Engelsma:  

This is my response to the desperate defenders of common grace with regard to their last-ditch argument, namely, that God is a confused deity, who cannot make up His mind whether He loves or hates those who are outside of Christ and who hate Him, and that God is unable to reveal Himself to His people as He truly is, namely, capable of saving those whom He finally loves and desires to save, or who is incapable, failing to save many whom (according to common grace) He loves and desires to save.

I attach my response to the statement of the doctrine of the defenders of common grace, so that all who may read this my response can readily also read the position of the common grace people, verifying that my presentation of their view is accurate.

I should make clear also that my response concerns only one aspect of the theology of common grace, namely, the doctrine that God loves all humans with a saving love, that is, that God desires to save all humans, offering them Christ as Savior in the divine will to save all humans.  This element of the theology is referred to as the “well-meant offer of the gospel” (wm offer).  I am not concerned here with that aspect of common grace that consists of the doctrine that God, in love for all, bestows on all the good things of natural life, for example, rain and sunshine, etc.  The theory of the wm offer is far and away the most important aspect of the theory of common grace to those who defend the theory, as it is the most objectionable aspect of the theory to me.

 

What Is the Well-Meant Offer? Is it Reformed? 

I begin with a description of the wm offer.  This description, in my judgment, is not controversial, that is, the defenders of common grace agree with my description of their theory.  God loves all humans without exception with a love that sincerely desires to save them.  In this love, He offers them Christ and salvation, dependent upon their accepting Christ by faith when God offers Christ to them in the gospel.  The love with which He loves those who perish is the same, saving love with which He loves those who are saved by accepting the offer.  It is a saving love and a (would-be) saving will. 

My concern in this response to this theory is with the confession of it by theologians who claim to be Calvinists—not with avowed Arminians, although the theory of the wm offer is in fact Arminianism, plain and simple.  I am here concerned with the defense of this theory by men who subscribe to the Canons of Dordt or to the Westminster Standards, particularly to the statements in these creeds that confess double predestination; limited atonement; sovereign, efficacious grace; and more.  By the way, I urge those who read this response to one specific defense of the theory of common grace to read, or re-read, these confessional documents, especially on predestination, in light of this controversy as engaged in in this exchange. 

It is obvious to a grade-school child that the theory of common grace contradicts the Reformed, Calvinistic doctrine of predestination; limited atonement; and sovereign, particular grace as confessed by Westminster and Dordt.  It is plain to every Reformed layman and woman that the Reformed doctrine of predestination and its accompanying doctrines contradict the wm offer.  The Reformed doctrine of predestination teaches, explicitly, that God loves some, certain, particular persons, for example, Jacob, in distinction from other persons, for example, Esau, whom He does not love.  This same doctrine explicitly teaches that, in this love, God wills to save some, definite humans, whereas He does not will to save the others.  Carrying this truth out, the Reformed creeds teach that Christ died for the elect only, and not for the others—the reprobate.  Further, by the gospel, God then efficaciously calls the elect for whom Christ died unto Christ in a saving union, whereas He does not savingly call the others, so that the glory of their actual salvation is God’s, not their own in that they accepted a mere wm offer to all.  All whom God elected, He also effectually calls unto actual salvation.  This, I remind us all is the theology of the Reformed creeds, especially Dordt and the Westminster Standards.

Not only do the creeds teach the above, but they also clearly, indeed expressly, condemn the teaching that God loves all, desires to save all, and merely offers Christ to all in this desire to save all, so that salvation depends upon the acceptance of the offer by the sinner.  Read Dordt and Westminster.

I here refrain from proving that predestination and its accompanying truths are biblical, because my adversaries claim to be Reformed and thus subscribe to the creeds and because they agree with me, upfront, that the creeds are biblical.

 

“Paradox”

Now I come to the argument that defends the wm offer by the assertion that God is contradictory.  In the language of the defenders of the wm offer, that God loves and desires to save only some while at the same time loving all and desiring to save all is a “paradox.”  The Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) err by knowing God as “logical.”  By criticizing the confession of the wm offer as contradictory to predestination, the PRC show themselves as “rationalists.”

What is my, and the PRC’s, response to this defense of the wm offer?

First, to describe the wm offer in relation to the doctrine of predestination as a “paradox” is erroneous.  A paradox is an apparent contradiction, not a real one.  A paradox can be logically harmonized.  For instance, that God is three and one can be viewed at first glance as a contradiction and is therefore paradoxical.  But the truth is only an apparent contradiction, not a real one.  For God is three and one is different respects.  He is not three and one in the same respect.  He is three in persons and one in being.  There is no contradiction.  That God loves and wills to save, while at the same time reprobating, one and the same human being is a contradiction.  These two affirmations about God—His attitude towards one and the same person, and His will with regard to the same person—cannot be harmonized; not even by God Himself. They are logically incoherent—even to God.  The wm offer is not a paradox; it is a contradiction of predestination, of the saving will of God in Jesus Christ.  Those who confess the wm offer are committed to the contradictory nature of the biblical revelation of salvation, of Christ, and of God Himself.  Because the contradictory nature of truth would make the knowledge of the truth impossible for even the believing human, the effect of the wm offer is that it makes knowledge of the truth of the gospel impossible for the Christian. 

This is worked out in regard to the knowledge of salvation in a church that embraces the wm offer, while confessing predestination and sovereign grace.  One Sunday, the minister proclaims, say from Romans 8 and 9, predestination, implying or, if he is courageous, stating, that God wills the salvation only of some and that all salvation is derived from this election of some only.  The next Sunday, preaching the wm offer, he proclaims that God loves all, with a saving love, willing to save all, necessarily implying, if the preacher does not expressly declare it, that salvation depends upon the acceptance of it by the sinner.  After the second Sunday and sermon, no one in the congregation can possibly know the truth of salvation:  is it sovereign grace or the wm offer? The preacher cannot make up his mind.

I am bold to declare that God Himself does not know what the truth is.  Is it for Him predestination or the wm offer?

 

“Mystery”

Second, the contradiction of predestination by the wm offer cannot be defended by the appeal to “mystery.”  This too is the serious mistake of those in the sphere of Calvinism who defend the wm offer.  The gospel is, indeed, a “mystery,” and the Bible calls it so.  But “mystery” in the Bible as a description of the gospel of Jesus Christ does not mean a contradiction that defies the knowledge of God and man.  “Mystery” describes the gospel as truth that no human would ever have imagined, but truth and reality that God has made known to the elect believer by the gospel as applied to the mind of the elect by the Holy Ghost.  The gospel does not remain an unintelligible conundrum to the believer, unknowable on account of being a message of contradiction.  But it is known by revelation.  Paul makes known to the Ephesian church the mystery of the gospel (Ephesians 6:19).  This mystery very much includes that all salvation flows from and is directed by the election of some in Christ from eternity (Ephesians 1).  Appeal to “mystery” as well as “paradox” on behalf of the wm offer is forbidden.  Like “paradox,” the use of “mystery” by the defenders of the wm offer denies the (believing) knowledge of the gospel of God.  Take heed!

 

God’s Incomprehensibility

Third, also the defense of the wm offer by having recourse to the incomprehensibility of God is illegitimate.  God is incomprehensible.  This means that the truth of Him exceeds our knowledge.  He is greater than our minds and thinking.  He, His ways, and His thinking are above our minds.  But the truth of Him is not in itself contradictory.  Nor is it contradictory in the revelation of Himself that He Himself gives us of Himself.  He exceeds our thinking; He does not mock our thinking, which thinking He Himself has worked in our minds by divine revelation of Himself.  At the end of the day, the believer exclaims, “He is greater than what I know of Him by His revelation to me.  I know Him truly, as He is.  And yet there is more to know, more depths to search out, all in harmony with what He has revealed so far.”  God is more than we now know; He is not different from what we now know. The truth of incomprehensibility keeps us humble; it does not discourage us from knowing Him as He is.

 

Rational, But Not Rationalistic

Fourth, the truth of God and His ways is rational and logical.  It is not irrational and illogical to the believing mind.  Rational is not the same as rationalistic, as though the truth of the gospel is forced to comply with the demands of the natural thinking of the unconverted mind of humans.  Rationalistic is the philosophical thinking that accepts only what the unenlightened mind of man finds reasonable.  Then nothing of the truth of salvation remains.  The result of this principle is modernism and now postmodernism.  But God, who made man with a mind, that is or can be logical, understanding propositions and reasoning from propositions to conclusions, reveals Himself and the truth of the gospel in such a way that His regenerated people can know Him and the gospel.  To the revelation and its salvation belongs that God enlightens the minds of His people.  Jesus, the revelation of God, is the “Logic” according to John 1, literally, the “Logos,” or logical “Word.”  The truth is logical.  No Christian should be afraid to confess that the truth is logical.  This is basically the same as to say that the truth is knowable.  Even in the realm of natural life, one who is irrational and illogical belongs in an insane asylum.  Illogical thinking in the realm of basic theology is folly.  For example, to survey the creation and to conclude that this all came about and exists by accident or by its own inherent working, in contradiction of the truth of creation as revealed in Genesis 1, is illogical and irrational, that is, sheer natural madness.  Logical thinking, apart from Genesis 1, must conclude the truth of creation.

 

Conclusion

The fundamental truth of revelation, God’s making the truth known to His people, exposes the wm offer as false.  Contradiction renders knowledge impossible.   

God and His truth are logical.  So is the Christian religion.  The theory of the wm offer, scandalously to a Christian, is not.  Therefore, it cannot be harmonized with fundamental Christian doctrine, especially predestination.  It makes the gospel unknowable.  It should be rejected by every logically thinking believer.  In fact, if the truth is illogical, God cannot know Himself—for example, if the theory of the wm offer is true as well as the doctrine of predestination, God must eternally be asking Himself, in divine puzzlement, “Do I love only the elect, or do I love all humans?  Do I want to save Esau as well as Jacob?  If I love and desire to save all, why did I not give Christ for all?  Am I content with the number and identity of the saved, or do I forever grieve that all are not saved?”

The truth of a serious, external call of the gospel [<--- see the link] is harmonious with predestination.

Why will the defenders of the wm offer not consider this alternative to their theory of the wm offer?

                          

                                                                  Cordially in Christ,

                                                                                    Prof. David J. Engelsma (03/06/2022)

 



No comments:

Post a Comment