The PRC of 2022 and the PRC of 1953

Before I analyze the “privately published paper” of Professor Engelsma¹ in light of the events and writings regarding the schism of 1953 in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC), I note that I have a syllabus that was compiled by a supporter of Rev. Hubert De Wolf and the other ministers who agreed with his theology. The compiler’s purpose in creating the syllabus was to make known “the truth from the other side” and to show that De Wolf and the men who agreed with his theology were, in fact, good, “solid Reformed men” who should not have been condemned.² The syllabus is composed of articles from the Reformed Guardian, which was a magazine first published on July 21, 1953, after the suspension and deposition of De Wolf. In the Reformed Guardian De Wolf and ministers who supported him defended their theology regarding conditions and prerequisites and made known what they considered to be “the vicious condemnation of Rev. De Wolf” on “flimsy grounds” and by “gross injustice.”³

What is startling is that the articles and defenses of those men would have a comfortable place in the Protestant Reformed Churches today. Clean up a reference to a condition here and a mention of a prerequisite there, and the articles could be written by any one of the ministers in the PRC today. If a minister or member of the PRC and any other interested reader want to know where the PRC are actually at doctrinally, they should read some articles in the Reformed Guardian. All the same scriptural passages being used today to defend the doctrine of the PRC were used in 1953; all the same arguments being made today were made then; all the same warnings against making men stocks and blocks and about doing justice to the plain language of scripture as are issued today were issued then. It really is shocking and eye-opening.

I will give an opening sample from Rev. John Blankespoor:

How does that Word come to us as rational, moral creatures? This to me is the big question. The answer is that God uses many different forms, also conditional speech and requirements.

Does this mean then that man must do something? This question I have heard so often of late arising out of a suspicious heart it seems. Man do something? Why, it’s absurd! God does everything, man does nothing.

That attempt at giving God all the glory in this statement I again do appreciate. But it doesn’t explain everything. True, man does nothing as far as earning salvation is concerned. Never do we merit anything. The cross of Christ is the only ground of the salvation of the elect. However, after we are saved we surely do something, and are called upon to do something. No, not of self, but by the Spirit within us, for man never works anything which God does not first work in him. Doesn’t the Bible say that we must even work out our own salvation? Isn’t that doing something? Isn’t the performing of good works doing something? Isn’t the new obedience unto which we are called in the baptism form…an action on the part of the redeemed saint? That we may and can do this is surely by the grace of God, but it is doing something nevertheless. Therefore, it is better to say that God does everything and we, in connection with sanctification, do nothing of ourselves.⁴

It must be remembered that Blankespoor was defending the theology of Rev. H. De Wolf regarding prerequisites.

I am sure that every Protestant Reformed minister today would admit that there are no prerequisites in salvation. It might take a year and a half and several protests, but when hard pressed the elders and ministers would finally admit that if a minister taught that there are conditions for communion with God, this is “the error of the heresy of conditional covenant theology.”⁵ If a man would use the word condition, it could not have been intentional, of course, because no Protestant Reformed minister could possibly believe in conditions, let alone preach them and actually mean it.

Prof. R. Dykstra told everyone that so it is in the Protestant Reformed Churches:

The other point of this history [“a wrenching controversy over the covenant of grace [in 1953]…whether the covenant can be conditional”] is that the Protestant Reformed Churches are well grounded on the doctrines of sovereign grace and the unconditional covenant. Coming to synod [2018] were not two groups of elder and minister delegates with opposing theologies…All the delegates of synod, representing the churches well from a theological point of view, were and are committed to the theology of justification by faith alone and an unconditional covenant.⁶

Today, then, Protestant Reformed ministers would not be too quick to use the word condition or prerequisite.

But examine how Reverend Blankespoor framed the matter of conditions: it was about man’s activity and doing justice to the biblical language of requirements. Man does do something.

That is also how this same kind of conditional theology is being defended today in the PRC. Who in the denomination today would not laud Blankespoor’s writing as the very picture of balance? Men who write like Blankespoor would have no problem with man’s being first in order that God may act, with man’s being first in a certain sense, with the teaching that there is that which man must do for salvation, and with the preaching that the grace of God is available. Men like Reverend Blankespoor in 1953 would defend that false theology the same way as men do today—they would quickly add that God causes man to act, that God decreed to work in a certain order—and they would react in horror at the suggestion that man acts by himself. “It is only by grace, beloved!” they would exclaim.

The theology that man is first in a certain sense and that there is that which man must do to be saved was the theology of 1953. And the syllabus on the schism of 1953 put together by a supporter of De Wolf and his followers establishes that fact.

As I said, you could publish any one of the doctrinal articles in this syllabus in the Standard Bearer today with only a little massaging and some basic editing, and the writer would be praised. It would be a really good joke to send one of these articles in to the Standard Bearer for publication. It would be published.

It is clear after reading this syllabus whose children the PRC of today are.

Hoeksema’s Overlooked Phrase

The theology that is being promoted in the PRC today, the theology that Professor Engelsma is defending and that is pouring out in sermons and articles, is conditional. I am thankful that Engelsma is so willing to state boldly and clearly what others are apparently incapable of doing or are unwilling to articulate.

I will review briefly what he has taught. Recently, he wrote the following:

The precise reference [of an editor of Sword and Shield] was to His act of the forgiving of our sins. Our repenting precedes His remission of our sins. My statement was as follows: “It pleases God…to forgive in the way of the sinner’s repenting…Neither is repentance the cause of forgiveness…[As an aspect of faith it is] the (God-worked) means. It is not the cause…The PRC teach that repentance is the (God-given and God-worked) means unto the remission of sins. As means, repentance precedes remission of sins; as end, remission of sins follows repentance.”⁷

He wrote the following in his explanation of Malachi 3:7:

We do draw nigh to God; God calls us seriously to do so; and there is a sense, a certain, specific sense, in which our drawing nigh precedes God’s drawing nigh to us. To deny this is to contradict the inspired Word of God.⁸

He recently added the following to that explanation of the order in which God works:

Despite the efforts of myself and of the assemblies of the churches of which I am a member, he [the editor of Sword and Shield ] does not understand that God works this aspect of salvation in such a way that He (sovereignly) moves the elect sinner to repentance so that, following this repentance, He may forgive.⁹

And he wrote,

Does he [a minister] not urgently call them [members of the congregation] to repent so that they may be forgiven? Does he not call them to repent in so many words? Does he not utter the promise of the gospel that everyone who repents is (then, and in this way) forgiven? (“Ignorant, Lying, or Merely Mistaken,” 13)

And he wrote similarly,

I urge him [the editor of Sword and Shield] also to open his eyes to the fundamental Christian truth that God works in such a way that our repenting precedes our receiving the gift of forgiveness, so that the necessary call of the gospel is, “repent that you may be forgiven.” (“Ignorant, Lying, or Merely Mistaken,” 14)

Man’s being first in the matter of the experience of salvation, man’s repenting so that God may forgive him, and the promise of the gospel described as “repent that you may be forgiven” are conditional.

My burden now is not to establish this again. I have already done that.¹⁰ My point now is that the nature of the conditions faced today is similar to the nature of the conditions the PRC faced in 1953.

The PRC of 1953 had conditions for regenerated and sanctified people, and the PRC of today have conditions for regenerated and sanctified people. Rev. R. Van Overloop really said it best:

If any man will hear my voice….he is talking about not the condition to establish a union but he is establishing a condition that deals with communion. Not union, that’s grace, it’s all grace, only grace, but communion, fellowship.¹¹

There are no conditions to enter the covenant, but there are conditions for fellowship in the covenant. Van Overloop’s elders at Grace Protestant Reformed Church said it even better: “We do agree…that any condition that man needs to fulfill, without the grace of God, is wrong.”¹² They do not believe in any condition that is not fulfilled by grace. 

This is the same theology stated nakedly as is being taught through the use of the language of in the way of, faith and repentance being means to forgiveness, active faith, and a faith that is man’s activity and not God’s act. That theology is being taught by the language that repentance is the activity of man that God does not perform. The same theology is being taught when the preacher or writer says that faith is God’s gift, but man has to exercise his faith for this, that, or the other blessing of God. That theology is being taught when it is said that in a certain sense man is first or that God causes man to act in order that God may act in the way he determined.

In some cases the men of 1953 expressed their conditional theology in almost the exact same words as we are hearing today in the PRC. So, for instance, Reverend De Wolf in his Formula of Subscription examination defended his theology of conditions by an appeal to Malachi 3:7. He said,

I believe that there are also many instances in scripture in which God assures us that he will do something if we will do something. At least, I say, that that’s the form which it comes to us in scripture. You have that, for example, in Malachi. Malachi 3:7, in the last part of verse 7: “Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.” I say that that is the form, that comes to us in this form, that if we do something, God will do something. 

And now listen to how Reverend De Wolf exegeted that conditional “form” of Malachi 3:7: “In some sense, Mr. Chairman, there is an action of God that follows upon our action.”

Professor Engelsma cannot have been ignorant of that part of De Wolf’s exam.

And there is more of that kind of language in the exam. When De Wolf, for instance, was explaining conditions, he said that he was only talking about how God works out his decree consciously in man.

De Wolf was asked during his exam the following perceptive question: “If faith, obedience of faith, holiness, etc. are no prerequisites in God’s counsel, how can they be in its realization?”

De Wolf responded,

I would like to have it clear that any condition which man fulfills, he fulfills only by the grace of God; and any prerequisite which he fulfills, he fulfills by the grace of God. I would like to have that clear, and that, therefore, that condition and prerequisite can only pertain to the subjective realization of any decrees or salvation which God grants. And my answer to that question then, in that light, would be that they are decreed in God’s counsel to appear in time as requirements but not as prerequisites upon which the counsel of God’s election depended.

What was he saying? He was saying that what he called a “prerequisite” was in God’s decree what was required first before God did something else for the realization of his decree in man’s experience. God decreed to work in this certain way that man would be first.

Professor Engelsma wrote, “God is always first in salvation, but with regard to the assurance of salvation He works in the order of drawing me to Himself as the way to draw nigh to me.”¹³ In the matter of the assurance of salvation, or in the subjective realization of salvation, God decided to work in a certain order so that man must do something—by grace, of course—before God does something.

Professor Engelsma also wrote,

His [the editor of Sword and Shield] reference was to my assertion that in a certain aspect of God’s work of salvation God works in such a way that He moves us to act in order that He may then act in the way He has determined. (“Ignorant, Lying, or Merely Mistaken,” 12)

If this does not mean that God decreed to work in such a way that man is first and following man’s activity (by grace or not makes no difference) God acts in a certain way, then I do not know what it means. God in the subjective realization of his decree decided to save in such a way that man must do something before God does something, or God decreed to work in such a way that man acts so that God may act.

How is this any different from De Wolf’s language that in the subjective realization of God’s decree the activities of man appear in God’s counsel as requirements or things that man must do before God does something?

Certainly, De Wolf and his followers in 1953 appealed in defense of their theology to the same passages as today (Mal. 3:7; James 4:8; the fifth petition of the Lord’s prayer; and others). I would like to say to all the ministers who quote Bible passages and creedal articles to us that you are using the same passages and articles that ministers such as De Wolf, Blankespoor, Petter, Cammenga, and others used against Reverend Hoeksema.

In an overlooked phrase in Hoeksema’s letter to the Protestant Reformed Classis East of May 1953, which was deciding the question of De Wolf’s orthodoxy, Hoeksema wrote, “No matter, how anyone may attempt to explain these statements, whether they be applied to the regenerated or unregenerated, the statement remains corrupt.”¹⁴ He was commenting on De Wolf’s statement, “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter into the kingdom of God.” Hoeksema was also referring to the defense of that statement by an appeal to man’s regeneration.

Rev. De Wolf maintained that by “our act of conversion” he did not refer to the unregenerated but only to the regenerated. He spoke only about the regenerated man’s responsibility and activity.

But Hoeksema pointed out that whether the statement is applied to the regenerated or to the unregenerated makes no difference. “The statement remains corrupt.” And you can add that whether the act is fulfilled by grace or not fulfilled by grace also makes no difference. “The statement remains corrupt.”

Hoeksema hit on something in his statement. I do not know, and I cannot say for sure, that his insight was not dropped at classis. But I would make the argument that Classis East dropped it and that the focus in the 1953 controversy became conditions in what we might call their raw form, which is what De Wolf and his followers were teaching in principle.

I believe that the statement of Hoeksema bears reexamination. What his statement means is that a condition is a condition. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. I would add that it makes no difference whether or not one uses the word condition or prerequisite. The theology is not about a word. It is about an idea. A condition is a condition. Whether one talks about regenerated or unregenerated people, a condition is a condition. Whether one says, “By grace” or “In man’s own power,” a condition is a condition. Whether or not one says that God decreed to work in such a way, a condition is a condition.

The final decision of Classis East in May 1953 was that both of De Wolf’s statements were “literally heretical regardless of what the Rev. De Wolf meant by them, regardless of how he explains them.”¹⁵

My contention is that classis’ condemnation was incomplete. It allowed the defense of conditions by De Wolf and others to fester in the PRC. It is this theology—the theology of De Wolf’s defense of conditions; the theology of the majority report of Classis East that sought to exonerate De Wolf¹⁶; the theology of the 1953 men generally, as represented in their writings—that is at present being developed in the PRC. I maintain that it is this theology that we are confronting today.

I wonder if Professor Engelsma made it his business in his ministry to balance Hoeksema and De Wolf’s defense. Would Engelsma not join Hoeksema in being one-sided? Engelsma is De Wolfian in his language and in the defense of his language. He should know this more than anyone.

The members and officebearers in the PRC today maintain that just because they do not use the word condition, they do not teach conditions. I maintain that because they say that God causes man to act so that God may act, they have conditions. I maintain that because they say that there are activities of man upon which follow blessings of God, they have conditions. It is said that because God causes man to be first, there are no conditions. It is said that because they are talking about regenerated people in whom God works, there are no conditions. It is said that because they are talking about assurance and experience, this language is not conditional. But whether or not these statements are applied to regenerated or unregenerated, the ideas we are facing today are conditional.

Conditions Then and Now

The shocking similarity between the theology of De Wolf and his followers in 1953 and the theology we are hearing today in the PRC will come out when I examine how the 1953 men defined conditions and how they defended conditions.

Rev. G. M. Ophoff, in his dealings with Rev. A. Petter and Petter’s defense of conditions, insisted on this idea regarding the word condition:

Condition:…A requisite; something the non-concurance [sic] or non-fulfilment of which would prevent a result from taking place; a prerequisite…

Hence—A restricting or limiting circumstance; a restriction or limitation.¹⁷

A restricting or limiting circumstance is a prerequisite. What is required before something else can take place is a prerequisite. God does not have prerequisites because he is God, so the term can only be applied to man and what man must do. Prerequisites are what man must do before something else happens. Again, whether by grace or not is not the issue.

Hoeksema gave a definition of prerequisite in his appeal to Classis East:

This sermon [of De Wolf] emphasized very strongly [that] our act of conversion is a condition or prerequisite to enter into the kingdom of God. This, whether it is applied to our first entering into the kingdom or to our repeated conversion, is pure Arminianism. The question is: what is a prerequisite? The answer is: a prerequisite is something required beforehand, i.e. as a preliminary to any proposed end or effect.¹⁸

Note that to teach that something is required beforehand, that is, that something is a preliminary to any proposed end or effect, whether it is applied to the initial entrance into the kingdom or to daily entering the kingdom—whether it is applied to salvation or to the experience of salvation—is a prerequisite, that is, a condition, according to Hoeksema. If man and man’s activity are first before God and his blessing, then that is conditional.

De Wolf’s explanation of a prerequisite was as follows:

In the first place, it must be proved that “prerequisite” places one outside of the kingdom. This can be proved only when it can be shown that “prerequisite” means something which a man must do of himself, as a natural man, before God does something.¹⁹

Thus De Wolf was willing to grant that a prerequisite is what a man must do before God does something, but that idea only became Arminian and therefore unacceptable to him if man had to fulfill the prerequisite in his own strength.

Blankespoor explained conditions this way:

Speaking about conditions and requirements in this Covenant [of grace], I have reference only to God’s people, as chosen and regenerated, etc…

After God regenerates His people He calls them, gives them faith, through faith justification and with justification sanctification. In sanctification He preserves them and therefore they persevere, and finally He glorifies them. All this is of God! Now it is in connection with the increase of this faith and sanctification that Reformed theology has spoken and does speak of conditions and requirements.²⁰

Note that Blankespoor simply used the word conditions as a synonym for requirements. All he was talking about was requirements. A condition is what is required of man in the increase of his faith and sanctification. The realm is man’s experience.

Then Blankespoor asked,

What then are conditions in this very limited sense of the word?…In connection with our use of the word we consider it to be something demanded or required as a prerequisite for granting something else. Also, that a condition is something that must exist or be present if something else is to take place. In short and plain language, I consider a condition something which is required for something else to take place.²¹

For Blankespoor a condition was something that is required for something else to take place. Something that man must do—whether by grace or not, whether regenerated or not, makes no difference—before something else takes place.

He defined condition again in his explanation of 1 John 1:9:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness!”…Does this forgiveness of the text mean that it is dependent upon our confession? All of Scripture surely contradicts this…But how then explain the text? No doubt John is speaking of the possession, experience, conscious enjoyment of the forgiveness of sins. This we receive only when we confess our sins. Hence, the confession in some limited sense is a condition unto the enjoyment of the forgiveness. The one is required for the other.²²

He also explained condition in connection with 2 Chronicles 15:2:

“The Lord is with you while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.”…This can mean only one thing: when and if Israel and Judah seek the Lord, they will be conscious of the Lord’s blessing and nearness, and if and when they don’t they will not experience this. Hence, the seeking of God is required to be found of Him.²³

There is something man must do that is required for something God will do. Again, the realm is experience. For us to experience being found of God, we must seek him. For us to experience the forgiveness of sins, we must confess them. There is something man must do, upon which doing some blessing of God follows.

Petter explained condition by pointing out that faith is active and that the believer is active in his faith. And the following is what he meant by condition:

It will be evident that under this form of promise [a calling given to a believer with an act of God following] in the administration of salvation the faith is always presented as an act of man, a conscious, hoping, trusting, relying on God, and as such it is in the Bible freely presented as a condition.²⁴

What he meant was that man has faith as a gift of God; and what man has to do for this, that, and the other promised blessings of God is to exercise his faith. 

De Wolf and his followers were very keen on the idea of exercising one’s faith. Constantly, they juxtaposed these two things: faith and the benefits of faith. Faith is the gift of God, but do not think that the benefits of faith appear automatically. Man must exercise his faith. Something man must do for the blessing of God. Indeed, that is the way that all of God’s promises are yes and amen to believers: they have to exercise their faith!

All of the above point out in their own words what De Wolf and his followers meant by conditions. That is how they spoke and exegeted passages. That was their thinking. And that is nothing different from Protestant Reformed exegesis and explanation today, except that the ministers do not very often use the word condition or prerequisite.

A condition simply means that one thing by man is required before the next thing from God happens. What is required is man’s activity or man’s doing. Ministers deftly deflect criticism of this Arminian thinking by appealing to God’s grace. What follows man’s activity is God’s blessing, God’s fellowship, the assurance of salvation, more grace, and whatever else is good and blessed. God gives to man so that man can do, in order that God may act in a certain way. The promises of God are always held away from man until man does his part. This is conditional.

That is how ministers preach this too. Man must do this and that. He does this all by grace. They preach whole sermons that are nothing but what man must do, and at the end the third point is entitled “The Possibility.” I want to say today to anyone who is still a Berean that if you hear a third point that is entitled “The Possibility,” you are more than likely hearing conditional preaching. I sat under a lot of it. It is as De Wolf said about the sermon in which he preached that “Our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter into the kingdom of God”:

We are always entering into the kingdom, day by day, in all our life, and because sin still lives in us and works in us we are always being called to turn away from it and humble ourselves…So it is from the point of view of our conscious entering. From that point of view, and from that point of view only, conversion is a prerequisite for our entering into the kingdom of God, and never as something that man must do himself. Also this was very plain in my sermon. For, having shown what was necessary to enter into the kingdom we stressed the fact that it is impossible for us, that we cannot change our nature which is evil and proud, that we, therefore, experience that we of ourselves cannot do what we must, and therefore, have but one hope, namely, the cross of Christ and his grace.²⁵

Ah yes, I have heard more preaching like that than I care to remember. Explain what man must do to experience the favor of God, have assurance, or experience this or that blessing of salvation. Tell man that he cannot do it by himself. Tell him that he can only do it in Christ. Christ is a mere possibility. He is the help that man needs to do what man must do. And if, and only if, man does it, does he then receive the promised blessing. The whole sermon amounts to a moral lesson about what man must do, and Christ and God are the possibilities. That is today’s Protestant Reformed preaching. That is conditional.

Contingency

What is a condition? A condition means that there is some blessing or activity of God that follows some activity of man and without which activity of man that blessing or activity of God does not come. So infamously in 1953 it was said that our act of conversion is a prerequisite to enter the kingdom. The entrance into the kingdom, which is surely God’s act, does not come about unless man converts. Some ministers tried to make that statement orthodox by saying that a man converts by grace, but the fact is they were camouflaging the business. They wanted and they preached that man’s activities—God-given and God-worked—were decisive. That is conditional theology.

When they were called Arminians, they protested and said they most certainly did not believe Arminianism and that their theology was not Arminian.

But it was Arminian, and Hoeksema called it that. He said it was “pure Arminianism” and “worse than Arminianism.”²⁶ The more I read the heretical ministers of 1953, the more I am impressed by Hoeksema. He was on to them. He rose to the challenge. He fought for the truth, even though he was weak from strokes and worn out from the care of the churches. He was able to discern the ministers’ deceptiveness, and they were deceptive. They make today’s ministers look like amateurs by comparison. The 1953 ministers were theologians. Hoeksema did not merely fight against a caricature of their theology; he did not set up straw men in order to knock them down. He dealt with those heretical ministers as they were actually preaching their corruption of the Reformed faith. Hoeksema said in many articles and in many speeches that their conditionality came down to this: they were making man’s activities, whether by grace or not, decisive in salvation.

The same issue faces us today. The matter is whether in the realm of experience, assurance, joy, peace, and happiness in God man is first or God is first. That matter is whether God decrees man to be first and causes man to be first so that God may work in a certain way; or whether God sovereignly gives to man the experience of his salvation, so that from the beginning to the end—from election through the cross, to the application of salvation and the experience of salvation, on into eternity—God is first.

The Protestant Reformed men have conditions. They have conditions as the men of 1953 defined them. There is hardly a thing that those men wrote that would not be praised to the heights today in the PRC as the very essence of Reformed orthodoxy and as a necessary balance in teaching about salvation by grace alone in the interest of preaching a full-orbed gospel and doing full justice to the commands of scripture, to the fact that man is a rational and moral creature, and to the activities of regenerated man.

It is about contingency. It is not about the bare word condition or prerequisite. It is about the idea of them, and that idea is contingency. The 1953 men conceded this point too. They were not sticklers for the word, but they wanted the idea of condition and prerequisite. That idea was contingency.

By the measure of today’s theology in the PRC, the schism of 1953 should never have happened. The ministers of the PRC should make a wholesale rewrite of the history. They believe the same thing; they write the same way; they appeal to the same scriptures and the same creeds; they make the same justifications and pleas. They are the ministers of 1953 come back from the dead.

Engelsma rejects conditional theology. But he does not reject the idea, the concept, of conditions and ends up with a conditional theology. There is something man must do before something God does. The acts and blessings of God are contingent on man’s acts, acts that God causes man to perform.

But that God causes man to perform something on which God’s act depends, or that God causes man to act so that God may act, is for God to give himself a condition. There are no conditions for God; he brings to pass. That is the Reformed faith: a sovereign God who brings to pass in salvation what he decreed to give to his people, and he does not work in such a way—whatever that means—that man is first so that God may then act. I do not recognize that language as Reformed. That is the language of conditions. That is the language of contingency.

The Protestant Reformed Churches have succumbed at last to the theology of 1953, to the theology of De Wolf, Petter, Blankespoor, Cammenga, and the rest. And the fate of the PRC will be the same as the fate of the 1953 men. Look how far the PRC have traveled in a little more than a year. It is mysterious and sobering. But then, the mystery of iniquity is always with us as the sovereign God carries out his will for salvation and damnation.