Beginning in September 1953 Rev. John Heys, one of our fathers in the faith, wrote a twelve-article series in the Standard Bearer (SB) entitled “Afraid of the Gospel.” In the series he did battle with the conditional theology that had crept into the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). His motivation for writing was to answer the charge against the theology of a free gospel—of salvation not dependent in any sense upon the activity or works of man—that such a gospel would make men careless. It is the charge of antinomianism, the charge that is always made against the gospel. In answering this charge Heys gets at the heart of conditions in salvation. Like his contemporaries, Rev. George Ophoff and Rev. Herman Hoeksema, Heys thoroughly understood conditional theology. In his series he aims a veritable laser-guided missile against that doctrine of the devil and utterly destroys it. Heys concentrates on that which is essential to all conditional theology, namely that faith and repentance are not only our duty but are also seen as requirements that we must meet before we can receive benefits of salvation. In other words, there are activities of man that must precede activities of God. It is my objective in this article to apply what Heys wrote then to the controversy that has recently engulfed the Protestant Reformed Churches.

Heys on Faith and Repentance as Requirements for Salvation 

In the fifth article of his series, Heys gets to the very heart of what a condition is. What he writes there is, I believe, so crucial to the whole issue of conditions that I urge everyone to read (and reread) this article.¹

In it he sets forth what Rev. M. Gritters wrote in 1943, when he was orthodox with his teaching of conditions. In 1953 Gritters and others made faith a condition to salvation. Heys contrasts this with what Gritters wrote only ten years before. Key to Heys’ evaluation of Gritters is a statement in Canons 3–4.10 upon which the latter had written at that time: “That others who are called by the gospel obey the call and are converted…must be wholly ascribed to God, who as He has chosen His own from eternity in Christ, so He confers upon them faith and repentance” (Confessions and Church Order, 168).

Heys points out that what Gritters wrote regarding this article was orthodox. At that time Gritters taught that both the covenant and its salvation were all of grace and completely unconditional. He taught that faith and repentance are required for salvation. They are requirements, and Heys agrees they are. But Gritters also taught that faith and repentance are requirements that God fulfills in us: he “confers upon them faith and repentance.”²

Then Heys explains the Protestant Reformed position on faith and repentance as requirements for salvation. I want to quote the whole paragraph since in it he defines the orthodox position; and since he is contrasting this with the conditional theology of 1953, it follows that anyone who contradicts Heys is not Protestant Reformed.

This passage, surely, shows us that the conditional theology that is maintained so tenaciously today by the Rev. Gritters and his colleagues who have left the Protestant Reformed Churches and who are afraid of the Gospel we preach (the only Gospel for it preaches a complete salvation that is unconditionally obtained by the elect), that this conditional theology was not at all known by the Rev. Gritters ten years ago. Not even when he writes, as above, that faith and repentance are the requisites for salvation. At that time he embraced the truth of Scripture and of the Canons, for he declares that God confers these gifts upon the elect. Note that he does not say that God requires faith and repentance of man in order for him to attain to salvation. With a mind and heart that was pure of the Arminian taint of conditional theology he says that faith and repentance are requisites for salvation. No more! Well, yes he does say more. He says that GOD CONFERS THEM upon His elect. And hence, ten years ago, he writes by implication that God requires these OF HIMSELF, for He confers what He requires. Faith and repentance are required because God has elected us to salvation. Thus GOD’S DECREE OF ELECTION requires faith and repentance IN US but not OF US. God CONFERS these upon us and does not set them before us as pre-requisites. (“Afraid of the Gospel (5),” 63–64; Heys’ capitalization and emphasis)

The point is, if you say that my act of faith is necessary for salvation; specifically, that my act of faith meets a requirement of God, you still teach conditions. This is precisely how Heys understands the statement that God confers upon the elect faith and repentance. He says this means “that God requires these OF HIMSELF, for He confers what He requires.” He further explains this: “Thus GOD’S DECREE OF ELECTION requires faith and repentance IN US but not OF US.” Heys concludes this section by declaring that if one says these are required of us—so that God sets them before us as demands or requirements that we must meet—he makes them prerequisites.

As we shall see, this error is being taught in the PRC today, albeit the words condition and prerequisite are not used. To put it simply: If you say faith and repentance are necessary for salvation as my act, you teach conditions. Faith and repentance are necessary for salvation as God’s act. That is the meaning of Canons 3–4.10, 14. Article 14 is even more explicit, for it connects God’s conferring faith and repentance upon us with God’s producing the act of believing in us. That is what the Canons teach, and that alone is what they teach. If a man will not confess this, he is but an Arminian still.

In line with the Canons, we understand that God “confers upon [the elect] faith and repentance.” Heys says, “God requires these OF HIMSELF, for He confers what He requires.” The idea here is that God gives what he requires, that the one who confers these things is the one who meets the requirements. Heys is saying that the only Reformed and confessional position on faith and repentance as requirements for salvation is that God performs in us that which he requires. Then Heys goes to the heart of the meaning of conditions. What he is saying is this: if faith and repentance are required of me for salvation, then it follows that I am the one who performs them because the one who meets the requirements is the one who performs them. And this flatly contradicts the Canons, which make clear that faith and repentance are gifts precisely in the way of God’s conferring them upon us, working them in us, or producing them in us.³ God performs his own requirements in us. That and that alone is the Reformed truth of faith and repentance.

The confessional position is clear: God produces faith and repentance in us. It ought to be clear that something is a requisite for the one who produces it. If I am intending to travel to the United Kingdom, the passport officer there will require my passport. The production of my passport is a requisite for me; and if I don’t produce it, I will be sent back home. Similarly, faith and repentance are requisites for God because he is the one who gives and produces them in us. For Heys, the difference between the truth and Arminianism is whether or not faith is man’s work. Either faith and repentance are part of salvation, in which case God both promises them to and produces them in the elect; or they are required of us, so that they are requirements we must meet before we can obtain or receive blessings of salvation.

Again, I draw your attention to what Heys writes in criticism of Rev. M. Gritters:

God requires these [faith and repentance] OF HIMSELF, for He confers what he requires. Faith and repentance are required because God has elected us to salvation. Thus GOD’S DECREE OF ELECTION requires faith and repentance IN US but not OF US. God CONFERS these upon us and does not set them before us as pre-requisites.

Heys belabors this point precisely because it takes us to the heart of conditions in salvation. I believe he saw, perhaps more clearly than anyone else in 1953, the deviousness and trickery of the majority. Seeing this, he aimed a torpedo of truth at their lie, one of pinpoint accuracy. He refers to the truth that God confers faith and repentance upon the elect as “beautiful truth.” He continues,

That beautiful truth means exactly that these things are not conditions which man must fulfill. They are however, things which he will and must ENJOY. And they are required not in order that he may be saved, but they are requirements for salvation because THEY ARE PART OF THAT SALVATION! They are not, even by the teachings of the Rev. Gritters, PRErequisites but requisites. He did not dare in those days say that these had to be there BEFORE salvation could be given us. He said that God confers them upon us as part of our salvation, AND AS THE THINGS UNTO WHICH WE ARE ELECTED. (“Afraid of the Gospel (5),” 64)

The whole idea that faith and repentance are things we must do, specifically things required of us for salvation, Heys rejects. The idea that God requires them of us before we can receive blessings of salvation he condemns as Arminian. Faith and repentance are either part of salvation or they are prerequisites to salvation. And no amount of doublespeak can get around that, specifically the doublespeak that they are required of us before we can receive blessings of salvation but that faith and repentance are also the fruit of God’s grace. That is abject nonsense. Heys calls it “misleading double talk.”⁴

If God’s grace is the reason for faith and repentance, then they are conferred by God and are not then requirements I must meet before I receive anything. That intelligent men, men who know the issues, can continue to talk this way is troubling. They must be warned: this is false doctrine, and if you continue in it, God will judge you with more false doctrine.

This was also Augustine’s doctrine. He wrote:

This is the house of the children of promise, not by reason of their own merits, but of the kindness of God. For God promises what He Himself performs: He does not Himself promise, and another perform; which would no longer be promising, but prophesying. Hence it is “not of works, but of Him that calleth,” lest the result should be their own, not God’s.⁵

Augustine taught all that which God promises his people he also performs. Since God promises to give all that is included in election, and since faith and repentance are included in election, it follows that God performs faith and repentance in the elect.

Conditional Theology Alive and Well in the PRC

In the SB we find a detailed and specific treatment of the activity of faith. Purporting to explain the Canons’ doctrine of the activity of faith, Rev. Kenneth Koole cites both Peter’s Pentecost hearers and the Philippian jailor. The SB even gave weight to Koole’s words by printing them in bold in a highlight box in the middle of the page. There we read:

There was something they were called to do. And they did it. Of themselves, apart from grace? No! But they themselves did do it—they repented and believed. Grace enabled them to do it. Or more correctly, God the Holy Spirit graciously enabled them to do it….And in so doing, God was praised and grace glorified.⁶

Now it ought to be obvious from this statement alone that when the Pentecost hearers and the jailor did that “something they were called to do,” they were saved. That is, after all, what the text says: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” To which Paul responded, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” There was something they were called to do. And they did it. And they were saved. That is what Koole writes. And that emphatically is not the gospel. Rather, the gospel is that only that which Jesus Christ does is necessary for salvation.

That Koole teaches that our act of faith is not a requisite but a prerequisite is clear from the same article. He claims that the writers of the Canons

confessed and taught that if a man with his household was to be saved and consciously enter into the kingdom, placing himself with his family under the rule of Christ as his Lord and Savior, he was called, he was required, to respond obediently to the call and command of the gospel—“Repent and believe, that thou mightiest [sic] be saved with thy house. (“What Must I Do…?” 8)

The requirement to repent and believe Koole further elaborates as “something they were called to do” (“What Must I Do…?” 8; his emphasis).

That faith is required of us (remember this is what Heys explicitly denies) is clearly Koole’s position. He explicitly teaches this in the SB. There he argues that our act of believing precedes salvation; specifically, our assurance of salvation.⁷

He goes on to answer an objection to the effect that if our act of believing is necessary for salvation, then elect infants cannot be saved. He agrees that “no believing as an obedience is required of them” (“Response,” 254). The implication is that believing as an obedience is required of everyone else. What is implied is made explicit in what he writes next: “Elect infants are in a unique category as those who have simply been granted the faculty of faith. We are talking about unbelieving adults. And such, we maintain, are required actively to believe for their salvation” (“Response,” 254). There you have it as clear as the noonday sun—God requires faith of us for or unto salvation. Our act of believing is something that we must do before salvation can be given us. That makes faith a prerequisite, according to Heys. And that is precisely the doctrine of the PRC today!

That the SB published those articles in which Koole teaches this is instructive in itself. The SB represents the popular mind of the Protestant Reformed Churches. That which fills the pages of the SB reflects the thinking of the denomination. So if it is taught in the SB that faith is our obedient doing for salvation, that we are required to repent and believe before we can be saved and consciously enter into the kingdom, then we may be sure that is also the mind of the denomination.⁸

Not only so, but another Protestant Reformed minister—Rev M. McGeown—wrote two lengthy articles at the time endorsing what Koole had written.⁹

Of course, both men know that to say that our acts of faith and repentance are required before we can be saved and enter consciously into the kingdom of God sounds very much like the conditional theology of 1953. In an attempt to escape being branded with teaching such theology, they claim that those of whom they spoke were already in the kingdom. Referring to the Philippian jailor, Koole writes, “As one in whom the Holy Spirit was working, the jailer was in the kingdom already (“Response,” 254). Supporting Koole in this tactic, McGeown writes, “Remember that Rev. Koole clearly presented the Philippian jailor as in the kingdom already, that is regenerate, although not yet enjoying the consciousness of the forgiveness of sins” (Email, May 7, 2019). Their attempted fix amounts to this: faith and repentance are necessary to enter the kingdom, but we are already in the kingdom before we repent and believe! That is misleading doubletalk.

This tactic has characterized those who have smuggled their conditional theology into the PRC. When someone exposes their error, they immediately change tack. Their change of tack is carefully disguised. Often they appeal to other Reformed doctrines in an attempt to disguise where they have departed in Reformed doctrine. Koole and McGeown’s appeal to regeneration in an attempt to disguise that they were really teaching that our act of conversion is required before we can be saved and enter consciously into the kingdom is a case in point. When in the pages of the SB Rev. Andy Lanning exposes Koole’s teaching that the Philippian jailor and those mentioned in Acts 2:37–38 were required to repent and believe before they could consciously enter the kingdom, which was to make our repentance and believing prerequisites, Koole simply changes tack.

In his reply to Lanning, Koole claims that he was actually teaching regeneration and not conversion. In this way he could still say that God was first in the matter of our entering the kingdom:

In other words, we are speaking of the regenerated, those in whom God has worked first. And of such men and women, born-again by the Spirit of Christ…In other words, we are not speaking of man doing something first, but of a man in whom God has done something first. (“Response,” 253)

According to Koole, when he said in his first article regarding the jailor and those in Acts 2:37–38 that their repenting and believing “was something they were called to do” and that “if a man with his household was to be saved and consciously enter into the kingdom…he was called, he was required, to respond obediently to the call and command of the gospel—‘Repent and believe, that thou mightiest be saved with thy house,” he was actually referring to those who were already in the kingdom (“What Must I Do…?” 8). In another article, he says this of the jailor: “As one in whom the Holy Spirit was working, the jailer was in the kingdom already (because the kingdom life was in him)” (“Response,” 254).

In his wholesale defense of Koole, McGeown approves of this change of tack, for he quotes the former with approval (Email, May 7, 2019, 5). Apparently for him too, when one’s error is exposed, rather than admit it, one just changes the theological goalposts. For this is exactly what Koole does. He writes that something we do, namely our faith and repentance, is required of us before we can be saved and enter into the kingdom. Then he comes under pressure from Reverend Lanning’s letter; so that in Koole’s response, he claims that the jailor and the Acts 2 hearers were already saved and in the kingdom by regeneration; and since regeneration is exclusively God’s work, that means God is first and not man. There is just one problem for Koole and McGeown with all of this: Acts 2:37–38 and Acts 16:30–31 do not speak of regeneration but of conversion, that is, of the first act of faith for salvation. And Koole teaches (and McGeown defends him) that faith is something we do, a requirement we must meet for salvation and entry to the kingdom. And that is to make faith a prerequisite.

Without doubt, that which Koole writes in his article “What Must I Do…?” is that which Heys opposes in “Afraid of the Gospel,” namely that faith and repentance are not conferred upon us, but God sets them before us as requirements we must meet. Consider the following elements of Koole’s teaching:

1. Faith is something we do: “There was something they were called to do.”

2. Faith is something we do for salvation. This is inescapable since the text to which he appeals speaks of the salvation of the jailor. This is also clear from the second statement I quoted from Koole: “If a man with his household was to be saved and consciously enter into the kingdom…”

3. If we are to enter the kingdom, there is a requirement we must meet: “He was required to respond obediently to the call and command of the gospel—‘Repent and believe, that thou mightiest be saved with thy house.’”

4. The requirement we must meet in order to enter the kingdom is faith. And this faith that is required of us is defined by Koole as our doing.

We may state all this in a syllogism: Faith is required of us for salvation; faith is something we do; therefore, something we do is required for salvation. And that makes faith a work. Both premises of this argument are wrong. First, faith is not a requirement we meet for salvation but is itself part of salvation. Second, faith is not something we do.

To teach that faith is something we are called to do for salvation is to make faith a work. It is to make faith a condition; for as a something we do for salvation, it is a cause of salvation (specifically the experience or assurance of salvation). As such, the SB articles in which Koole openly teaches this position on faith are completely heretical. That which he teaches there is an outright denial and repudiation of not only the three forms of unity but also of all that our fathers in the faith fought for in 1953. Everywhere, the word of God, the Reformed confessions, and the orthodox fathers of 1953 teach that faith is a gift of God. It is a gift that God confers upon us and works in us by his Word and Spirit. As such, faith is part of salvation and is never a condition for salvation. This is the crux of the matter. It really is not that complicated but is made complicated and obtuse by men and their sophistry. It is made complicated by men who speak out of both sides of their mouths at the same time. Beloved reader, the whole controversy over faith and repentance and their function in salvation is simply this: faith cannot be both a gift of salvation and something I do for salvation.

It is the glorious truth of the Reformed faith that God not only acquires the gift of faith for me through Christ’s atonement and calls me to it in the preaching of the gospel, but he also confers it upon me by working it in me. It ought to be evident that in the first analysis the one to whom God gives faith (and in whom he works it) is passive. As to salvation, the activity of faith is essentially passive. This is the truth of both scripture and the confessions. Answer 20 of the Heidelberg Catechism teaches that faith is a graft. In answer to the question, “Are all men then, as they perished in Adam, saved by Christ?” the Catechism says, “No, only those who are ingrafted into Him, and receive all His benefits, by a true faith” (Confessions and Church Order, 90). In the act of grafting, that which is grafted is acted upon by the horticulturist; that is the figure. In the spiritual reality, when we are grafted it is the Spirit of God who performs the activity; we are acted upon. Thus it is only by virtue of faith as, first of all, the graft or bond of union with Christ that I have any spiritual activity at all. This is also the teaching of Jesus in John 15, where he describes our union to him under the figure of a vine and its branches. Faith is our abiding in him because faith is the bond of union with Christ. Because faith is my graft to Christ, I live one life with him. What we call our activity of faith is nothing other than the life of the risen Christ flowing into us. Remember, before the Catechism gets to our activity of faith—our knowledge and confidence or trust—it establishes emphatically that the first activity of faith is God’s: God puts me in union with Christ.

To say the activity of faith is essentially passive is to say faith as the alone instrument of salvation is always and only a receiver. Faith does not do something or give things to God; rather, faith receives things from God. We may and we must certainly speak about things that faith does. I do good works by faith. Good works are the fruit of faith. But faith itself as the instrument of salvation never does something for or unto salvation.

Faith as an Activity but Not Man’s Act for Salvation

Reverend Heys alludes to Canons 3–4.10 in support of his polemic. There we read, 

That others who are called by the gospel obey the call and are converted is not to be ascribed to the proper exercise of free will…but it must be wholly ascribed to God, who as He has chosen His own from eternity in Christ, so He confers upon them faith and repentance. (Confessions and Church Order, 168)

That God confers faith and repentance upon the elect is crucial to the whole question of the nature and function of faith and repentance in salvation. Properly understood, the truth that God confers faith and repentance completely demolishes any idea that they are requirements or demands that we meet for salvation (irrespective of whether you add “as the fruit of grace,” which, as we shall see, does not make it Reformed).

For God to confer both the right and the possession of salvation upon us, he must also meet all requirements for salvation, including faith and repentance. Confer here does not mean potential. The idea is not that God merely gives us a certain power or ability to perform an act, an act that meets a requirement for salvation. In that case our act of faith stands outside or apart from that which God works in us; it is no longer God’s act. It cannot be both: faith cannot be both God’s act by which he meets requirements for salvation and my act by which I do what is necessary for salvation. If it is the latter, it follows that faith is requisite of me, in which case I also must be said to perform or produce the act of faith, and that the Canons flatly condemn.

None of this is to deny the activity of faith. Faith is the bond of union with Christ, and as such, faith is an activity of the believer. The activity of faith is to come to, to know, and to trust Christ as revealed in the gospel. The activity of faith has Christ as its only object; faith always looks away from oneself to Christ. The essential nature of faith as an activity of the believer is not that faith gives anything to God; rather, the essential nature of faith as an activity is that it receives things from God. That faith is an activity is not the point here. No one in the Reformed camp denies that faith is an activity, but the question is this: as something that God requires for salvation, does God meet that requirement, or does man meet that requirement? And God confronts every man with a choice here. God will not permit us to evade this choice. It is this: as a requirement for salvation, is faith God’s act or my act? Does God produce faith in me, or do I produce faith? The former is the answer of the Canons of Dordt; the latter is the answer of Arminianism. That I produce the act of believing (faith) is also the answer of the PRC today. If it is not, then let men in the PRC have the courage to openly, publicly, and unambiguously repudiate the doctrine of Koole, McGeown, and Cammenga, as explained below.

Rather, confer means to actually put in possession of. Canons 3–4.11 says that God works faith and repentance in us, for speaking of the elect it says, “God…works in them true conversion” (Confessions and Church Order, 168). And in the previous article, the Canons teach that our conversion consists in faith and repentance. When God works things in us, we have those things; we enjoy those things; they are ours. Every blessing of salvation is God’s. Christ acquired and obtained them by his perfect work of obedience. Christ purchased both the blessings and the means necessary to bestow them upon us. Thus Christ purchased not only faith but also the means necessary to confer it. The means necessary to confer faith is the Holy Spirit, whom God gave to Christ as the reward for his obedience (Acts 2:33). Thus in Christ God met his own requirements for the bestowal of salvation upon us. All the salvation we receive is requisite of God, not in the sense that God is subject to some obligation imposed upon him. God is never subject to any necessity that does not arise from his own will. But having freely willed the salvation of the elect, having given them to Christ in election, and having promised in his word to save them, God realizes his decree and makes good his promises in the death of his Son. It is this of which Heys speaks when he teaches that “God requires these [faith and repentance] of HIMSELF, for He confers what He requires. Faith and repentance are required because God has elected us to salvation.” It is because of election that God will and must confer faith and repentance upon us. God has engaged his own triune, holy being to perform and realize in us all his salvation. Faith and repentance are required in us because they are part of salvation. If they are required of us, they are things we must do before or in order to obtain salvation, and then they are not part of salvation.

Not only do the Canons teach that faith and repentance are requirements for God and therefore not requirements for us; the Belgic Confession teaches the very same thing. Regarding faith, the Confession declares in article 22:

We believe that, to attain the true knowledge of this great mystery, the Holy Ghost kindleth in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him. For it must needs follow, either that all things which are requisite to our salvation are not in Jesus Christ, or, if all things are in Him, that then those who possess Jesus Christ through faith have complete salvation in Him. (Confessions and Church Order, 49–50; emphasis added)

The Confession teaches that all things which are requisite to (or required for) our salvation are in Jesus Christ. Now it is certainly the case that faith is one of the things required for our salvation, and thus it follows that Christ has met that requirement together with all the other “things which are requisite to our salvation.”

Koole and McGeown do not and cannot teach that which article 22 of the Confession declares. They would have to rephrase the Confession something like this: “All things requisite to our salvation are in Jesus Christ, BUT we must repent and believe in order to possess that salvation.” Elsewhere, I have analyzed the error of the preceding statement.¹⁰

There I argued that the essential error of the statement is that it places God’s activity and man’s activity over against each other in a relationship of opposition. This is characteristic of Protestant Reformed theology today, so that for anyone left in the denomination who has any Reformed antennae, such language should set off spiritual alarm bells. This language of contrast and qualification is expressed in the following statements.

It is not enough for salvation that God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. It is not enough, that there is a Jesus. It is not enough, that this Jesus was born of a virgin; that this Jesus lived a perfect life; that this Jesus taught and defended the Word of God; that this Jesus suffered under the wrath of God in an atoning death; that this Jesus arose with his body from the grave on the third day; that this Jesus is ascended in power at the right hand of God in the heavens. Not enough for salvation. God must not only have sent Jesus into the world, but I must come and you must come to Jesus. I must become one with him so that I enjoy his fellowship and share in his salvation. For salvation it is necessary that I come to him. And if I do not come to him, there is no salvation and no enjoyment of the blessings of salvation.”¹¹

Jesus loved Peter, but Peter had to weep bitterly with tears of repentance—which were the fruit of God’s grace—before he came to the renewed assurance of Jesus’ love for him.¹²

God is first in the aspect of the experience of salvation but in such a manner of working that He causes us to draw nigh to Him in order that in this way He may draw nigh to us. He is first, but in such a way that our drawing nigh to him consciously precedes His drawing nigh to us in our experience.¹³

The statement of article 22 is the complete antithesis of the above statements. Far from setting the activity of faith in an adversarial relationship to Christ’s work, a most beautiful harmony is established. The article emphatically teaches that it is precisely because all things required for our salvation are in Christ that faith is the alone instrument of salvation. It is precisely because all things requisite for our salvation are in Jesus Christ that “the Holy Ghost kindleth in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him.”

In complete antithesis to the above statements, there is the most beautiful harmony between God’s activity and man’s. It is not “Oh yes, we believe in election, BUT we have to do something.” It is rather this: God elects us to salvation, AND we believe and repent; Christ accomplished all our salvation on the cross, AND we believe and repent; the Spirit of Christ produces faith in us, AND we believe and repent; God is always first in salvation, AND we experience that he is first in our experience of returning to him.

Statements that place but or however between God’s activity and man’s; between election and man’s activity of faith; or between Christ’s work of salvation and man’s activity of faith are a seminal way for the child of God to detect error. It is always characteristic of conditional theology to make our faith and repentance stand in a relationship of contrast and qualification to God’s election and/or to Christ’s accomplishment of our redemption. In contrast to this, Heys expresses the Reformed position: “Faith and repentance are required because God has elected us to salvation.”

The language of Heys is that of the orthodox theology of our Protestant Reformed fathers. It is not orthodox to say, “We believe in election, but we must also repent and believe.” When we place election and our calling to repent and believe in such a relationship of contrast (even opposition), we make them to be two independent principles of activity for salvation. This explains why certain ministers present election and man’s calling to repent and believe as though they are two sides of the truth. In this way they make the Arminians’ argument for them. The Arminians argued that the doctrine of sovereign, unconditional election is incompatible with man’s responsibility. They argued that if one teaches that all salvation flows from election, so that all a man’s salvation is entirely by grace—including faith, which is itself a gift of God—one makes man a stock and a block. For the Arminians such a doctrine leaves no room for a conscious, active response from man; specifically, a conscious, active response of faith and repentance.

Their answer was to pay lip homage to election while they taught man’s free will, by which he could choose to believe or not believe the gospel. Not in the way of faith worked by irresistible grace flowing from election but in the way of faith as a free-will choice of the sinner was man’s responsibility possible for the Arminians. Their position was that man cannot possibly be said to act freely and consciously if his salvation (including faith and repentance) is caused by election. When Protestant Reformed men refuse to teach what Canons 3–4.14 declares, namely that God produces the act of believing in us; when they refuse to teach that God performs in us that which he requires; and when they refuse to teach faith is a gift precisely in the way of God’s working the act of believing in us, their position is in principle no different from the Arminians’. Furthermore, when conversely the Reformed Protestant Churches teach the orthodox truth of a single track in salvation, namely election, so that all of the believer’s spiritual activities are worked in him by God, this has consistently drawn the charge of antinomianism and hyper-Calvinism from the PRC. It ought to be obvious that if God does not produce and perform in us all our spiritual activities, then we must produce them. And this is no different from the Arminian position that faith is merely a spiritual enabling. The Canons describe the Arminian position on faith in 3–4.14: faith is to be considered as the gift of God “because God bestows the power or ability to believe, and then expects that man should by the exercise of his own free will consent to the terms of salvation and actually believe in Christ” (Confessions and Church Order, 169). Mark well, this is all you are left with when you deny (as the leading spokesmen of the PRC do) that God produces the act of believing in us. You are left with the same position as the Arminians.

It is also true of the statements (the “but” statements) that they fall under the condemnation of Heys. Namely, they present faith and repentance not as part of salvation; rather, God sets them before us as requirements we must meet for salvation. Doing so, they make faith and repentance prerequisites. The statements by Cammenga are perhaps the most egregious example of the error. They are an open, unapologetic, unashamed repudiation of the person and work of our Savior. He says that Jesus is not enough. Jesus personally is not enough, he claims. Neither is our Savior’s cross enough, for “it is not enough…that this Jesus suffered under the wrath of God in an atoning death.” You might ask, how could such a wicked denial of our Savior and his work be tolerated in the PRC? How could the Heidelberg Catechism’s ringing affirmation of Jesus as “a complete Savior” (Q&A 30) be so blatantly denied and the minister get away with it? The answer is that by the year 2003 the theology of our Protestant Reformed fathers had already been undermined in the PRC. Already a generation had arisen who knew not the Lord—a generation by whom the theology of Hoeksema and Ophoff was rejected for being, in their view, too one-sided, overemphasizing the sovereignty of God and consequently minimizing the responsibility of man. In other words, conditional theology was once again alive and well in the PRC. For what Cammenga preached in Southwest church eighteen years ago is exactly what Heys had condemned as Arminian in 1953.

According to Cammenga, Jesus and his work are not enough for salvation, but I must come to Jesus. Something else is also required for salvation in addition to Jesus’ work, namely that I come to Jesus. Since coming to Jesus is the activity of faith, faith is that which is required for salvation in addition to Jesus’ work. According to this view, faith cannot be part of Christ’s work of salvation, for if it is, then Christ’s work would be enough. And if faith is not a part of salvation, then it stands apart from salvation and is thus a condition I must meet for salvation. But what does Heys teach? He says faith and repentance “are required not in order that [we] may be saved, but they are requirements for salvation because THEY ARE PART OF THAT SALVATION!” And he denies that they “had to be there BEFORE salvation could be given us.” But “God confers them upon us as part of our salvation, AND AS THE THINGS UNTO WHICH WE ARE ELECTED” (“Afraid of the Gospel (5),” 64). His point is that faith and repentance flow from election. As such, they are included in all the blessings Christ purchased by his death. Therefore, my coming to Jesus—my faith—is part of Jesus’ work and not something required of me in addition to Jesus. In which case Jesus is enough, and Cammenga’s sermon is a denial of Jesus the only savior. And remember, all of this resulting from the dread heresy of conditional theology.

At this point I draw attention to a tactic used by men in the PRC to disguise their conditional theology. You will notice from the above statements that when these men teach that faith and repentance are requirements we must meet for salvation, they like to qualify this by bringing in grace. Take McGeown’s statement: “Jesus loved Peter, but Peter had to weep bitterly with tears of repentance—which were the fruit of God’s grace—before he came to the renewed assurance of Jesus’ love for him.” This statement teaches that repentance is a condition in salvation. It says that Jesus’ love is not enough to restore Peter to assurance. No, Peter had to do something—had to repent—before he could receive assurance once again. But that parenthetical statement saying that Peter’s repentance was “the fruit of God’s grace” is supposed to make the statement Reformed. At one and the same time, the statement teaches that Peter had to do something before he could receive a blessing of salvation, and that which he did was the fruit of salvation. We are asked to believe that Peter’s act of repenting had to precede an aspect of God’s salvation, and at the same time his act was due to an act of God’s salvation. A very subtle tactic indeed and one employed to great effect by those who have smuggled conditions back into the PRC.

Heys spotted this same trick back in 1953. Opposing those who promoted conditions in the PRC at that time, he writes:

We are told that our act of conversion is required before we enter into the kingdom of God.

Do not say, “O, but we mean that we perform that act of conversion only and entirely by God’s grace. We are speaking of those already in the kingdom.” Listen! You put that grace of God before our act of conversion and you have taken the “pre” away from your requisite. It is misleading doubletalk to speak of prerequisites we fulfill by God’s grace. (“Afraid of the Gospel (3),” 16)

Similarly with McGeown’s statement, repentance cannot be both an act of Peter’s necessary before he can receive salvation (for assurance is certainly part of salvation) and be part of salvation. If repentance is part of salvation, it cannot also be a requirement we must meet before we receive salvation. Such statements are misleading doubletalk.

A recent example of the tactic is from the pen of Professor Engelsma and based on James 4:8: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” Again, what was said regarding this text fits the pattern that has developed in Protestant Reformed writing and preaching, namely an act of ours must precede an act of God’s. As always, this order of man first is said to be limited to the experience of salvation. This has always baffled me. It is as though we are meant to experience something different from how things are, namely that “of him [God], and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). With these men it is supposed to be acceptable to establish an order of experience in which man is first, while at the same time affirming God is first theologically. We are asked to believe that from God’s side (theologically) his activity is always first and causative, but from our side (experientially) our activity precedes God’s. This establishes a fundamental contradiction in the knowledge of God, a contradiction every bit as pernicious as that established by those “Calvinists” who promote the theology of the well-meant offer of the gospel. They ask us to believe that from God’s side there is a decree of predestination, and yet the preaching of the gospel is an expression of God’s desire to save all who hear.

The professor writes,

The issue is the call of the gospel, particularly whether in God’s issuing of that call there is an important sense in which God’s drawing us to Himself consists of His causing us actively to draw nigh to Him (which is our believing and repenting) preceding His drawing nigh to us in our experience, or consciously.

After restating his position, the professor claims,

This is the plain meaning of James 4:8…This is the plain meaning of the text as it stands in all its perfect clarity before every reader, especially before a minster of the Word. Our drawing nigh to God precedes God’s drawing nigh to us. (“Professor Engelsma to Forum, Terry Dykstra, and Andy Lanning, June 21, 2021,” 30–31)

It is not at all plain that “this is the plain meaning of the text.” In fact, to teach that in the matter of believing and repenting our activity precedes God’s activity is the same error that Heys condemned in 1953. Outlining that error, he writes,

Now what is defended is that we must do something BEFORE God bestows the next installment of our salvation. Understand it is not requisites but PRErequisites that are being defended. We are told that our act of conversion is required before we enter into the kingdom of God. (“Afraid of the Gospel (3),” 16)

Explaining that faith and repentance are not requirements that we must meet, but rather they are conferred by God upon the elect, Heys refutes Gritters:

They are not, even by the teachings of the Rev. Gritters, PRErequisites but requisites. He did not dare in those days [in the days when he was orthodox] say that these had to be there BEFORE salvation could be given us. He said that God confers them upon us as part of our salvation, AND AS THE THINGS UNTO WHICH WE ARE ELECTED. (“Afraid of the Gospel (5),” 64)

What Heys is saying here is that to teach that faith and repentance as our activities must precede God’s activity is to make them conditions. The essential idea of a condition is always this: something (or some activity) is required of us before God does something. Always in defense of this error in Protestant Reformed circles, we are assured that our activity precedes God’s only in our experience. This has been trotted out so many times it has become a kind of present-day orthodoxy, or even a kind of Protestant Reformed bandwagon. Far from questioning the idea, everyone rushes to clamber aboard. The cry goes up, “Oh, but we are not stocks and blocks; faith and repentance are conscious activities of ours.” Indeed, faith and repentance are conscious activities of the believer and are such in our experience. But do any of those who cry to the rooftops of an order in our experience ever call to mind that the Bible and the Reformed faith everywhere define faith and repentance as gifts of God—gifts of God IN OUR EXPERIENCE? So that it is precisely in giving them to me in my experience that I know that God is first.

Moreover, what the professor writes is self-contradictory and is more “misleading doubletalk.” In the same circular email he writes:

In salvation as the matter of our consciousness, or experience, of God’s drawing nigh to us in the assurance of His love and the sweet experience of the covenant of grace, God draws us to Himself (thus He is first in the matter of experience) in such a way that we actively draw nigh to Him by a true and living faith (which faith as a spiritual activity of knowing Him in Jesus and trusting in Him), so that in the way of this our drawing nigh to Him He may draw nigh to us in the experience of His nearness in Christ. In this specific sense, our drawing nigh to Him precedes His drawing nigh to Him [sic].

We are told that God causes us in the call of the gospel to draw near to him; “thus He is first in the matter of experience,” according to the professor. Well and good, completely Reformed, and to which Heys and all of like mind would say a hearty and thankful “Amen!” But the professor is not done yet. He goes on to insist that our act of drawing near to God, which is the activity of faith, precedes God’s act of drawing near to us. So, according to the professor, God draws us to himself and “is first in the matter of experience,” and at the same time he is not because “our drawing nigh to Him precedes His drawing nigh to [us]” in our experience.

The question is not and never has been the reality of a believer’s experience; the question is, what is the theology of faith? Christian experience is the wrong starting point. Because the starting point is wrong, the conclusions are also wrong. Because Cammenga, Koole, McGeown, and others begin with the activity of faith, they get the theology of faith wrong. Inexcusably wrong. For these men know very well that a Reformed man starts with theology and then gets to questions of Christian experience and obligation. Let them just reach up and take down Hoeksema’s Reformed Dogmatics and turn to “The First Locus,” and they’ll see what I mean.