Making Theology Impossible

“There’s no glory for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,'” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”¹

Prof. Brian Huizinga, professor of dogmatics at the Theological School of the Protestant Reformed Churches, recently wrote in the Standard Bearer a series of eight articles regarding the phrase in the way of.²

In this series he attempts to talk straight recent Protestant Reformed synodical decisions which stated that there are activities of man that precede blessings of God.

I began an evaluation of that series in the May issue.³ I finish my analysis in this article. I do not intend to be long at examining his series. The articles are not worth it. The series is such transparent nonsense and egregious falsehood that one must have been smitten by a very strong delusion indeed to believe it. At the least serious level, the series is nothing more than a whimsical theological jabberwocky. Furthermore, the series is barren. There is false theology that can be compellingly expressed, for instance Karl Barth on election. False. Absolutely false but compelling. The series is not that. It is bad theology poorly and blandly argued. At a more serious level, the series is a concoction of theological ideas mixed together into an unpleasing porridge that reeks of Arminius and that is sprinkled with some overripe Reformed cheese for flavor and a little creedal parsley for a pleasing presentation. But when the series is set on the ecclesiastical table, the overwhelming impression is still the sulfureous smell of Pelagianism. At the most serious level of all, the theology of the articles is a theology of man; and so it is dishonoring to God, stokes the fires of man’s pride, and harms souls.

Professor Huizinga works with recent synodical decisions of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). These decisions were the fruit of a nearly five-year doctrinal controversy in the denomination. In these decisions the PRC officially adopted the doctrine that man precedes God in a certain and vital sense in man’s salvation. There are acts of man—God-given and God-wrought and by grace, of course—that are prior to and unto blessings from God. Many, many things depend on what man does. Especially is this true in the realm of experience. Really, to experience anything in the PRC you must trust and obey, for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus. This is the doctrine of the PRC. This is what ministers must preach and do preach. This is what is taught in the Protestant Reformed seminary as the gospel that ministerial candidates are to learn and then as ministers to develop and preach in the pulpits of the churches. This is the doctrine for which Professor Huizinga contends in his series of articles. Of course, he mentions grace, election, Christ, and the cross. But they receive only mention. They are some overripe cheese and parsley sprinkled on for flavor and color. His doctrine—the doctrine of the series as represented by the majority of the words—is that there are activities of man that precede and are unto blessings of God.

All of this bad theology is carted in on the phrase in the way of. The professor is busy now and will apparently spend the rest of his ministry developing a theology of in the way of to explain how this idea is orthodox and necessary. And he will teach the churches and all his students that many, if not all, of the “if ” passages, all the calls and demands spoken in scripture, are not first to be referred to Christ but to be explained as in the way of man’s doing this and man’s doing that. It is a hermeneutic of in the way of. The professor cannot develop the truth of election, faith, and the cross of Christ. He cannot because they only serve as enabling powers; they are not the thing but only gateways to the thing, which thing is man’s activities and man’s obedience as the way unto God’s blessings. What a barren wasteland. It reminds me of the Latin phrase that translates as “they create a desert and call it peace.”⁴ So in the PRC they create a theological desert and call it development.

Professor Huizinga has gone a long way in his development in this series of articles. The phrase in the way of means at least five different things in two different contexts. However, how many more senses of the phrase in the way of he might develop is anyone’s guess. The sky is the limit, and the only hindrance is the fertility of the imagination of the Protestant Reformed theologian who is working in the soil of the phrase in the way of. Perhaps he will have salvation in the way of obedience or the assurance of one’s justification in the way of obedience or sanctification in the way of obedience or blessings from God in the way of obedience. Oops. He already has that!

Professor Huizinga chastises his readers that they must be precise in theology and carefully define terms and maintain scriptural distinctions. Would that he had taken his own advice. In these articles he makes words, history, examples, illustrations, creeds, and scripture mean whatever he needs them to mean or wants them to mean for his purposes. His purpose is to explain the phrase in the way of. He contends for this phrase as though it were the essence of orthodoxy and the hinge upon which all true religion turns. The problem is that in the series we find out that for the professor in the way of rarely means in the way of. The phrase means precedes, prior to, way unto, or simultaneous with, depending on the context. The specific purpose of the articles is to explain that repentance is unto remission of sins and to distinguish this from obedience unto fellowship with God. Yet also here words change meaning, and the meaning of repentance changes with the context. Sometimes repentance is a work; sometimes repentance is not a work; sometimes we may talk loosely, broadly, and inaccurately about repentance. Then it can be a work. Sometimes we talk precisely, accurately, and narrowly about repentance. Then it is most definitely not a work. It is impossible and even ridiculous and dangerous and very naughty to make repentance a work when one is speaking precisely, especially when one is saying that man’s act of repentance is unto the remission of sins.

The question is, indeed, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

The result of such theological jabberwocky is to make theology impossible. Doing theology when words mean so many different things is like trying to do mathematics when 1 plus 1 sometimes equals 2 and sometimes equals 3, depending on the context. Mathematics at that point becomes impossible. So theology also descends into the ridiculous and the nonsensical when in the way of and repentance mean many different things in many different contexts.

God-worked?

Professor Huizinga sets himself this task because he needs to explain the decision of Synod 2020 of the Protestant Reformed Churches that determined that “there is an activity of the believer that is prior to the experience of a particular blessing from God.”⁵ It must be remembered that synod’s decision explained what Proverbs 28:13 means and what Rev. D. Overway meant when he preached on that passage and said, “It is in the way of confession, in the way of repentance, that we have the mercy of God.”⁶ The synod also made official what the PRC means when ministers preach that we have this and that blessing in the way of this and that activity. The synod made it official dogma that in the way of means that prior to the blessing of God there must be an activity of man, so that man’s activity is that without which the blessing of God does not come.

In his series the professor needs to talk straight the naked Pelagianism of Synod 2020’s formulations. He writes, “When the Synod taught that there is a God-worked activity of the believer that precedes a certain blessing of God…” (79). But there was no “God-worked” in Synod 2020’s decision. Synod 2020 made a statement or two about the believer’s activity being the fruit of God’s work in such a way as to make the addition of those statements meaningless. The synod emphasized all that man has to do before he receives God’s blessing and then added, “The previous point does not contradict that the believer’s activity…is still the fruit of God’s work.”⁷ Those were just meaningless words at that point. Synod 2021 did similarly. The professor, following both synods, does the same. But this is the main point of Synod 2020: “There is an activity of the believer that is prior to the experience of a particular blessing from God.”⁸ Synod 2020 hid behind a meaningless addition about man’s activity being the fruit of God’s work; and Synod 2021 and Professor Huizinga, like Professor Engelsma, hide their Pelagianism behind the words “God-worked.”

But Professor Huizinga must understand two things.

First, adding “God-worked” does not save synod’s decision. It simply profanes the name of God by using his holy name as window-dressing on the professor’s man-centered doctrine. It would have been better to leave “God-worked” out instead of besmirching the name of God by association with false doctrine. Whether the activity that is prior to the blessing of God is God-worked is not the issue. The issue is that God’s blessing depends for its realization on man’s activity. Man’s activity is the decisive thing in this theology. God will always bless. God will always do his part. No one suggests otherwise. But man must do his part to have God do his part. There is an act of man that is prior to the blessing of God. It is man-centered, man-first, man-pleasing theology that displaces Christ.

Second, the issue with the decision is that the Protestant Reformed synod supposed that because it added the words “believer” and “experience” to its denial of the truth, the decision was saved from Pelagianism. Obviously, if one teaches that there is an activity of man that is prior to the blessing of God, that is Pelagianism. But because synod’s decision was about a “believer” and “experience,” then according to synod, it is legitimate, right, good, and necessary to say that there are activities of man that are prior to blessings of God. But simply because one is talking about a believer who is regenerated and because one is talking about the experience of salvation for that believer does not make it legitimate to make man first before God any more than it is proper for man to be first before God prior to regeneration. Man’s activities prior to God’s blessings is the theology of the Protestant Reformed Churches, and it is that theology that we charge as being conditional. The faith of man as his activity, the repentance of man as his activity, and in the end the obedience of man as his activity are all unto the obtaining of remission, assurance, and salvation now and in the final judgment.

Assuring everyone that the formulations of the Protestant Reformed Churches are no departure from the truth, Professor Huizinga writes, “The synod was not turning the focus from God to man, or making man first and God second, or teaching ministers to emphasize man and his activity in their preaching” (79). This sounds a lot like the Christian Reformed Church’s defense of common grace. The Christian Reformed ministers talked like this too: the decision about common grace by which we tore three massive holes in the wall of the antithesis does not mean that we are encouraging worldliness. But that was the effect under God’s judgment. So also in the PRC the effect of synod’s doctrinal decision is that ministers emphasize man and man’s activity in the preaching. Pick a random sermon from a random minister, and you will see. The ministers preach all about man’s active faith, man’s active repentance, man’s confession, and man’s doing this and doing that. This is the result because, contrary to what Professor Huizinga writes, the PRC did in plain English words decide that man is first and that God is second. Take the synodical decision that “there is an activity of the believer that is prior to the experience of a particular blessing from God” and put it in front of one hundred random people and ask them, “Who is first here?” You would have to be an idiot or, worse, a deceiver to say that man is not first in that statement. Man is first if English words have meaning.

But then again, for Professor Huizinga: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

The professor continues to give us his whole series of things that the synod was not doing by its decision that there are activities of man that are prior to blessings of God. He writes,

The synod was not flirting with conditional theology and introducing repentance as a new condition the believer must fulfill in order to receive mercy, as if God’s will to bestow mercy hinges upon the believer’s will to repent of his sins. The synod was not introducing some profane species of covenantal bargaining in which the ‘party’ man meets the ‘party’ God and they both agree that, if man does his part and repents, then God will do His part and forgive. (79)

Where does one even start with this kind of manipulative writing? The synod was not flirting with conditions. The synod taught them. There are activities of man that are prior to blessings from God. Who in their right mind would deny that that is a condition? It is true that the synod was not introducing parties. That would have been much too obvious. But besides, for the PRC parties that have to bargain do not go far enough. Man does not even have to bargain anymore in Protestant Reformed theology. He does, and he gets.

Just like Norman

Professor Huizinga’s defense of this man-centered and soul-destroying theology is to insist on the phrase in the way of as though it were the very essence of orthodoxy and as though orthodoxy could not be maintained without it. I want everyone to know that this was also Norman Shepherd’s way out of his dilemma in which he made works instrumental. He began to talk about ways!

There is some discussion about the liability of the term “instrument” for both faith and works in relation to justification and the expression “the way” is suggested instead, and we find “the way of faith and the way of obedience” used instead of “instrument.”⁹

What Shepherd was hiding behind those phrases, “the way of faith” and “the way of obedience,” was the total overthrow of the Reformed doctrine of justification and thus also of the covenant. Instead of saying “instrument,” he simply said “the way of.” And in this way he joined repentance and obedience so closely with faith that faith cannot save, justify, or assure without repentance and obedience.

Shepherd said what he meant by the words “the way of.” He meant “faith coupled with obedience” and “faith and new obedience” and “faith and repentance” as being unto or necessary for justification.¹⁰

In his Thirty-four Theses, he wrote,

In a right use of the law, the people of God neither merit nor seek to merit anything by their obedience to God, but out of love and gratitude serve the Lord of the Covenant as sons in the household of the Father and in this way are the beneficiaries of his fatherly goodness (Mal. 3:16-18).¹¹

Notice the language that out of love and gratitude they serve the Lord…and in this way are the beneficiaries of his fatherly goodness. That is not a stitch different from the synodical decision that there are activities of the believer that are prior to the experience of the blessing of God, which the PRC made official dogma.

Shepherd also wrote,

Faith, repentance, and new obedience are not the cause or ground of salvation or justification, but are, as covenantal response to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the way (Acts 24:14; II Peter 2:2, 21) in which the Lord of the Covenant brings his people into the full possession of eternal life. (Theses, number 18)

And Shepherd wrote, “The forgiveness of sin for which repentance is an indispensable necessity is the forgiveness of sin included in justification, and therefore there is no justification without repentance” (Theses, number 15).

I could cite more examples and multiply them endlessly because what Shepherd taught, his language and his phrases, are what is being taught in the PRC, in the seminary, and in the dogmatics classroom of the PRC; and it is the overthrow of the Reformed faith. For Shepherd himself tells us what he meant by his phrase “the way of”:

The righteousness of Jesus Christ ever remains the exclusive ground of the believer’s justification, but the personal godliness of the believer is also necessary for his justification in the judgment of the last day (Matt. 7:21-23; 25:31-46; Heb. 12:14). (Theses, number 22)

Following this article I publish Norman Shepherd’s Thirty-four Theses. Read them, and tell me if that is not what you are hearing and have heard preached in the Protestant Reformed Churches for years and years.

Professor Engelsma complained endlessly that Norman Shepherd was never disciplined. To that I say that the PRC does not discipline false teachers either. But I will also say this: if Norman Shepherd could have refrained himself from using the word condition, he would have found a comfortable place in the ministry of the PRC. What he taught is just what the PRC is teaching in almost exactly the same words. I am only trying to figure out yet if the PRC was following Norman Shepherd’s playbook or if the PRC actually wrote the playbook before Shepherd came along, and he followed and developed from the PRC.

But that there is a striking and chilling similarity between the expressions of the relationship between repentance and remission by Norman Shepherd and by the professors and ministers of the PRC is obvious. In that light the PRC owe David Overway a huge apology. What the PRC did to him was iniquitous at many levels and grotesque hypocrisy. The ministers and professors believe what he taught, and that is coming out now, and the PRC is advancing far beyond him.

The important point is that many people far and wide understand that in the Protestant Reformed Churches the obedience of man is decisive. It is the thing. It is the thing in every sermon. Even when the ministers preach on Lord’s Days 23 and 24, they will not be busy preaching Christ crucified but making sure that their audiences know that faith is active and that the people must be active in faith. The ministers cannot even shut up about man for those Lord’s Days on justification. Man’s work, activity, and doing—his obedience—are the way to everything: they unlock the storehouse of God’s blessings; they turn God’s face to shine on you; they open God’s arms to embrace you; they throw open the doors of the experience of salvation. Obedience does. It is not the obedience of Christ that is the important and decisive obedience. It is not the gifts and grace of God that are decisive. Those only enable you to do. Those get you only so far! Christ and the grace of God bring you to the point where God can work with you again on the basis of the law and prescribe new ways for you to approach him, to have his favor, and to be blessed by him. There is that which man must do to be saved, so the story goes. He must repent; he must believe; he must obey; he must do many, many things, in the way of which he will have God’s favor and blessings. Man does all of these things by grace, of course; but do them he must, and without doing them he cannot be saved. Man, man’s activities, man’s doings, man’s obedience are the issue. After all, God always does his part. The ministers can breeze over that. And Professor Huizinga does. In an eight-part series, there is one article that is worth the paper it is printed on. Everything else reeks of man—a sweaty, stinking, working man. By all his working that is all a man ever gets: a loathsome stench. And the whole series stinks with the stench of sweaty, smelly, working man.

A Telling Definition of Conditions

The articles make clear that Professor Huizinga’s theology is conditional. The articles betray their conditionality in part by their definition of conditions. Conditionality, whether it uses the word or not, betrays itself by its definition of conditionality. Definitions are the skeleton of the body that is theology. Definitions are the structure on which one hangs the flesh and around which the body of theology is fashioned. Professor Huizinga gives his definition of conditions in the articles. It is cleverly slipped in. He does not dwell on it much. But he gives it, and that definition is the key to understanding the conditionality of the articles. He writes,

Our activity of repentance, however, is to be explained by God’s sovereign grace. Apart from divine grace not one person over the length and breadth of the earth would ever repent. There is absolutely no native desire or ability in man to repent. If repentance were a condition for pardon so that the pardoning God had to wait upon us and our repentance, He would forever be waiting and never pardoning. Should there ever be a theology that teaches that repentance is the act of man apart from or even in cooperation with divine grace, and an act upon which God depends, then that theology is not only contrary to Scripture and the confessions but nonsense according to the believer’s own experience. (173–74)

Did you catch that? What does Professor Huizinga mean by the word condition? He means this: that man acts in his own strength or that man cooperates with the grace of God. That is how many theologians have covered their conditionality.¹² They restrict conditionality to man’s acting in his own strength. The fallacy of the argument is seen by a simple analogy. If I tell my son to put the bikes in the garage before he eats supper, then whether I help him or not makes not a shred of difference regarding the arrangement. The issue is him and what he does. It is the same with conditionality in the PRC. In order to deny that the churches teach conditions, it is said that conditions are what man does in his own strength.

However, conditionality in the Reformed churches never was about man’s doing something in his own strength. This is especially true with regard to conditionality in the covenant. There was always grace to help fulfill the condition. But the fact remained that the activity of man was always the decisive activity. It was not God’s activity that was decisive. It was not God’s election or God’s promise or Christ’s work or the grace of the Holy Spirit that was decisive. God helped. God did his part. But man also had to do his part. Also conditionality was never so much about cooperation as about God’s giving man all that was necessary for man to do what man must do. That is the nature of conditionality in this controversy too. No one is arguing that anyone is teaching that man must do something in his own strength, and it is pure deception and distraction to present the issue as such.

By so defining conditionality as man’s doing something in his own strength, Professor Huizinga covers his own conditionality. For him conditionality is man’s doing something in his own strength upon which God depends. The other alternative is the position of his church and of himself that there are activities of man that are prior to and unto the blessings of God, activities that are God-worked and God-given and graciously provided, but which for all that are activities without which God’s blessing does not come. The implication is that since the Protestant Reformed Churches do not teach conditions fulfilled in man’s own strength, the denomination does not teach conditions; indeed, it is impossible that the Protestant Reformed Churches would teach conditions. Have you never heard of 1953 and the fact that the PRC defeated conditions once and for all time and eternity!

There are two other instances of this deception in the articles. The professor does the same sort of thing with the word merit. The PRC does not teach merit, and so the PRC cannot be teaching justification by faith and by works and cannot be teaching conditions. No one is accusing the PRC of teaching merit explicitly, so the PRC can stop saying that. The other instance of this kind of argumentation is in connection with the call to repentance. The argument runs this way: The PRC make repentance unto remission so that the ministers can issue the call to repentance. The Reformed Protestant Churches deny that repentance is unto remission, so the Reformed Protestant ministers cannot issue a call to repentance; and, indeed, the Reformed Protestant Churches deny that there ever could be a call to repentance. That is a complete lie. And God does not approve of liars, especially not when doing theology. This is the kind of disreputable opponents that we have to deal with. They do not shun the lowest forms of specious argument to attack the truth.

In so defining conditions Professor Huizinga gives away that his theology is no different from the theology of conditions fulfilled by grace. This definition of conditions is the old refuge of every teacher of conditions: “We do this all by grace, beloved! But there is that which a man must do to be saved.” His articles are simply another restatement of the theology of Rev. David Overway at Hope church; of Rev. Kenneth Koole and his theology that if a man would be saved, there is that which he must do; and the theology of Rev. Hubert De Wolf. Reverend De Wolf taught that man’s act of conversion is prior to his entrance into the kingdom. Today the PRC teaches that man’s act of repentance is prior to receiving forgiveness; man’s act of obedience is prior to fellowshiping with God; man’s act of forgiving his neighbor is prior to his receiving forgiveness from God; and man’s act of abiding in Christ by faith and the obedience of faith is prior to his entrance into eternal bliss.

This theology took over the Protestant Reformed Churches at some point. The theology was sitting at Classis East in May 1953 in the form of the majority report. That report was dismissed, and the theology never left. It worked in the churches. We now can bring the theology back to 1967, when the young people were being taught by Rev. David Engelsma that there is a way that man’s drawing near to God precedes God’s drawing near to man. The issue came up again after 2015 and really won at that point. The apparent victory of Synod 2018 was nothing but smoke and mirrors. The hierarchy had gained too much ground and was not going to surrender it. The false theology came back with a vengeance and was determined to rid itself of those who objected to it. The PRC cannot conceive of any other theology and never will have any other theology than that there are acts of man that are prior to the blessings of God. What Reverend Overway merely mentioned is the official position of the Protestant Reformed Churches, the official position of the Protestant Reformed seminary, and the official position of the dogmatics classroom at the Protestant Reformed seminary. It is the official position of the Protestant Reformed pulpits, so that there cannot and will not be the gospel preached in those pulpits because when there are acts of man that are prior to blessings of God, that is another gospel that is no gospel, which the apostles, prophets, angels, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the church of Christ in every age damn with “Anathema Maranatha!”

Going Home Unjustified

What is thoroughly dreadful is that this theology unabashedly teaches conditions in the matter of justification. Professor Huizinga is not merely teaching that generally somewhere there are activities of man that are prior to and unto the blessings of God. That is bad. That is God-denying. But he is teaching that man’s act of repentance— God-given and God-worked—is prior to and unto God’s act of forgiving (justifying). Professor Huizinga uses the words remission and forgiveness. However, whenever one speaks about remission and forgiveness, he is speaking about justification. Let no one fool you. Remission of sins is justification. Man’s act of repentance is prior to and unto God’s act of justifying. That is what the professor teaches. Man’s act of obedience—God-given and God-worked, of course—is prior to and unto God’s act of fellowshiping with man. That is the same thing. The Protestant Reformed Churches and Professor Huizinga are teaching conditions for justification. They are teaching conditions for fellowship with God, which is the same thing.

He denies that the PRC teach an “act of man…an act upon which God depends” (173). He means that the PRC do not teach rankly Arminian conditionality, and so the PRC do not teach conditions. Is he just deceptive, or is he willfully ignorant? Has he not heard? Professor Engelsma said, “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.”¹³ Unless man acts, God does not act. Unless man acts, God may not act. You can describe man’s acting at that point in whatever way you please—God-worked, God-given, Spirit-wrought. God is dependent on man’s acting. And this in the matter of justification!

And this points out another problem with the articles: they are simply yesterday’s news. The PRC has run past Professor Huizinga. He is not leading at all. He is following an unruly team of mules. And he is left with the unenviable task of cleaning up all the dung they keep dropping. The PRC is progressing down the road of apostasy so fast that hardly was the ink dried on the professor’s articles, and there was new development in the PRC’s precipitous departure from the truth: man must act in order that God may act (!); faith and obedience are how a man abides in Christ (!).

The author of this series and all who follow him are to be warned that he and others like him are teaching a theology that sends men home unjustified day by day, Sunday after Sunday, and to hell at the end of their lives. I shudder for his own judgment. He has played a central role in the theological destruction of the Protestant Reformed Churches and in the destruction of the truth in the PRC. He did the work of the Lord lackadaisically. He is one of those men whom God condemns in Ezekiel 13:5: “Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord.” He was on the committee of Synod 2018 that gave the churches the compromised document that he now trumpets throughout the series of articles as the very quintessence of sound theology. That document ensured that error will never again be condemned in the Protestant Reformed Churches. When things were blowing up in the churches, he took it upon himself to give a speech throughout the churches. I listened to the speech. Afterward I pleaded with him to stop giving it because in the speech he took away with the left hand what he gave with the right. The solution for him was not to teach justification and faith soundly but to teach the churches how to use the phrase in the way of properly. He perpetuates that same illusion in his series of articles. He had opportunity after opportunity to address the churches on the issue that was the issue, namely the shameless denial of justification and the promotion of the theology that if a man would be saved, there is that which he must do. He not only had the opportunities, but he also had the ears of the people. He had the calling: stand in the gap! He squandered the opportunities and disobeyed the calling. Then he attacked the truth. He held the coats of those who stoned us, and I could never figure out why. Was he that naïve? Was he that haughty that he thought he could fix the mess? Put Humpty together again! Was he just misinformed or uninformed? Did he harbor a delusion about the theological state of the PRC? I held some hope for him even at that late hour. I now know why he could not condemn the error that the churches were actually facing—conditional theology in the experience of the covenant and conditional justification. He could not condemn it because he believes it. The sad thing is that I doubt he can see it. As God said in Ezekiel 14:9, “If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.”

He is the egg that grew larger and larger and more and more human and that now pontificates perched precariously on a very high and very thin wall. That is what happens when God gives spiritual blindness and sends a strong delusion. One believes a lie. Not only does Professor Huizinga believe the conditional theology of the PRC; but because of his position and his young age, he will also cement that theology deeply into the consciousness of the next generation of Protestant Reformed ministers. He will teach them to teach their congregations that there are activities of man that are prior to the blessings of God; that there are activities of man that are the way unto the reception of the mercy of God; and that there are activities of man upon which the blessings of God wait. He will teach them this conditionality: repentance is prior to and is unto justification. He will teach them conditions, all the while assuring them and deceiving himself that he is teaching the old paths.

All the King’s Horses…

It is like Humpty Dumpty then: “When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

And with Alice we ask Professor Huizinga, “The question is…whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

The series could have been much shorter and far clearer. Professor Engelsma has made perfectly clear what the Protestant Reformed Churches mean by in the way of. The churches mean that God causes man to act so that God may act. They mean conditions. They will not use the word condition, but they should. They are teaching conditions. Refusing to use the word condition is just dishonest and adds duplicity to the charge of false doctrine. They teach that there is an activity of man that precedes a blessing of God. It does not matter where that activity comes from or what the explanation of that activity is. There is an activity of man that precedes a blessing of God. This activity of man is that on which God’s blessing depends and without which God’s blessing does not come. That is a condition. Saying that the activity of man that is necessary for salvation is God-worked is not a bit different from saying that the conditions that God requires are fulfilled by grace. The fact is that there is some activity of man—God-worked, by grace, through the power of the Holy Spirit—that man must do to be saved.

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that were ever invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.”

This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“That’s enough to begin with,” Humpty Dumpty interrupted: “there are plenty of hard words there. ‘Brillig’ means four o’clock in the afternoon—the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”

“That’ll do very well,” said Alice: “and ‘slithy’?”

“Well, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

“I see it now,” Alice remarked thoughtfully: “and what are ‘toves’?”

“Well, ‘toves’ are something like badgers—they’re something like lizards—and they’re something like corkscrews.”

“They must be very curious looking creatures.”

“They are that,” said Humpty Dumpty: “also they make their nests under sun-dials—also they live on cheese.”

“And what’s the ‘gyre’ and to ‘gimble’?”

“To ‘gyre’ is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To ‘gimble’ is to make holes like a gimlet.”

“And ‘the wabe’ is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?” said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.

“Of course it is. It’s called ‘wabe,’ you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it—”

“And a long way beyond it on each side,” Alice added.

“Exactly so. Well, then, ‘mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable’ (there’s another portmanteau for you). And a ‘borogove’ is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round—something like a live mop.”

“And then ‘mome raths’?” said Alice. “I’m afraid I’m giving you a great deal of trouble.”

“Well, a ‘rath’ is a sort of green pig: but ‘mome’ I’m not certain about. I think it’s short for ‘from home’—meaning that they’d lost their way, you know.”

“And what does ‘outgrabe’ mean?”

“Well, ‘outgrabing’ is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you’ll hear it done, maybe—down in the wood yonder—and when you’ve once heard it you’ll be quite content. Who’s been repeating all that hard stuff to you?”¹⁴

It ought to be clear to anyone who reads Professor Huizinga’s series on in the way of that the theology of the PRC has become complete nonsense. In the way of means way unto, prior to, precedes, or simultaneous with and sometimes even means in the way of. What the phrase means depends on whether one is talking about remission in the way of repentance or whether one is talking about fellowship in the way of obedience. Repentance, too, can be a work or not be a work depending on whether one is speaking like the creeds (!), imprecisely and broadly, or whether one wants to be hyper-creedal, hyper-learned, and hyper-accurate. If repentance is not work, neither is it faith. What exactly repentance is we are not told.

Which is master, indeed!

And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty together again.

And so also have gone the churches of Herman Hoeksema and George Ophoff.

They will not be put together again.

THIRTY-FOUR THESES ON JUSTIFICATION IN RELATION TO FAITH, REPENTANCE, AND GOOD WORKS

1. All men are sinners by nature and are under the wrath and condemnation of God.*

2. There is nothing that any man can do to save himself from condemnation or to contribute to his salvation in any sense or at any point, so that any attempt on the part of man to save himself not only fails but even serves to compound his guilt.

3. Justification is an act of God by which He forgives sinners acquitting them of their guilt, accounts and accepts them as righteous, and bestows upon them the title to eternal life.

4. The term “justification” may be used with reference to the acquittal and acceptance of a believer at his effectual calling into union with Christ, or with reference to the state of forgiveness and acceptance with God into which the believer is ushered by his effectual calling, or with reference to God’s open acquittal and acceptance of the believer at the final judgment (Matt. 12:36, 37; Rom. 3:22, 24; 5:1; 8:1; Gal. 5:5).

5. The ground of justification or the reason or cause why sinners are justified is in no sense to be found in themselves or in what they do, but is to be found wholly and exclusively in Jesus Christ and in his mediatorial accomplishment on their behalf.

6. By faith the sinner receives and rests upon Christ and his righteousness as held forth in the gospel, and in this way is justified.

7. In the order of the application of redemption in the case of an adult, justification is by faith, and the sinner must believe in order to be justified; however, to use the categories of antecedence or priority to describe the relation of faith to justification obscures the truth that the justifying verdict and the gift of faith are received together at the moment the sinner is united to Christ by the Holy Spirit. (Later revised to: In the application of redemption in the case of adults, justification is by faith and the sinner must believe in order to be justified; however, the justifying verdict and the gift of faith are received together at the moment the sinner is united to Christ by the Holy Spirit.)

8. The order of the application of redemption which places faith before justification, in so far as it takes no account of the experience of redeemed infants, is Baptistic. (Later revised to: Elect infants who are saved in infancy and other elect persons, incapable of, or prevented from exercising faith or repentance or yielding obedience to Christ, are justified when they are united to Christ by the Holy Spirit.)

9. Redeemed infants and others incapable of, or prevented from exercising faith or repentance or yielding obedience to Christ, are justified when they are united to Christ by the Holy Spirit. (Later revised to: In the case of redeemed infants, justification precedes faith in time, but the regeneration given together with justification in union with Christ inevitably manifests itself in the exercises of faith, repentance, and obedience to Christ as the child matures.)

10. Although believers are justified by faith alone, they are never justified by a faith that is alone, because faith as a gift of the Holy Spirit is given together with all the other gifts and graces flowing from the cross and resurrection of Christ, and the exercise of faith is co-terminous with the exercise of the other gifts and graces so that when a man begins to believe he also begins to love God and to bring that love to expression through obedience to God (West. Conf. of Faith XI, 2).

 11. Justifying faith is obedient faith, that is, “faith  working through love” (Gal. 5:6), and therefore  faith that yields obedience to the commands of  Scripture.

12. Faith which is not obedient faith is dead faith and  neither saves nor justifies; living and active faith  justifies (James 2:14-26).

13. Faith and repentance are so inextricably intertwined with each other that there cannot exist  a true and saving apprehension of the mercy of  Christ without a grief for and hatred of sin, a  turning unto God, and a purposing and endeavoring to walk with God in all the ways of his commandments (West. Conf. of Faith, XV, 2).

14. Repentance, inclusive not only of grief for and  hatred of sin but also of turning from sin and  endeavoring to walk with God in all the ways of  his commandments, although not the ground  of forgiveness, is nevertheless so necessary for all  sinners, that there is no pardon without it (West.  Conf. of Faith XV, 3).

15. The forgiveness of sin for which repentance is an  indispensable necessity is the forgiveness of sin included in justification, and therefore there is no  justification without repentance.

16. Prior to regeneration in union with Christ, sinners can neither believe, nor repent, nor perform  deeds appropriate to repentance because they are  dead in their trespasses and sins.

17. Regeneration is such a radical, pervasive, and efficacious transformation that it immediately registers itself in the conscious activity of the person  concerned in the exercise of faith and repentance  and new obedience.

18. Faith, repentance, and new obedience are not the  cause or ground of salvation or justification, but  are, as covenantal response to the revelation of  God in Jesus Christ, the way (Acts 24:14; II Peter  2:2, 21) in which the Lord of the Covenant brings  his people into the full possession of eternal life.

19. Those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are  his disciples, who walk in the Spirit and keep covenant with God, are in a state of justification and  will be justified on the day of judgment; whereas  unbelieving, ungodly, unrighteous, and impenitent sinners who are covenant breakers or strangers to the covenant of grace, are under the wrath  and curse of God, and on the day of judgment will be condemned to hell forever, unless they flee  from the wrath to come by turning to the Lord in  faith and repentance (Psalm 1; John 5:28, 29). 

20. The Pauline affirmation in Romans 2:13, “the  doers of the Law will be justified,” is not to be  understood hypothetically in the sense that there  are no persons who fall into that class, but in  the sense that faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus  Christ will be justified (Compare Luke 8:21;  James 1:22-25). 

21. The exclusive ground of the justification of the  believer in the state of justification is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, but his obedience,  which is simply the perseverance of the saints in  the way of truth and righteousness, is necessary to  his continuing in a state of justification (Heb. 3:6,  14). 

22. The righteousness of Jesus Christ ever remains the  exclusive ground of the believer’s justification, but  the personal godliness of the believer is also necessary for his justification in the judgment of the  last day (Matt. 7:21-23; 25:31-46; Heb. 12:14). 

23. Because faith which is not obedient faith is dead  faith, and because repentance is necessary for the  pardon of sin included in justification, and because  abiding in Christ by keeping his commandments  (John 15:5, 10; 1 John 3:13, 24) are all necessary  for continuing in the state of justification, good  works, works done from true faith, according to  the law of God, and for his glory, being the new  obedience wrought by the Holy Spirit in the life  of the believer united to Christ, though not the  ground of his justification, are nevertheless necessary for salvation from eternal condemnation and  therefore for justification (Rom. 6:16, 22; Gal.  6:7-9). 

24. The “works” (Eph. 2:9), or “works of the Law”  (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16), or “righteousness of my  own derived from the Law” (Phil. 3:9), or “deeds  which we have done in righteousness” (Titus  3:5) which are excluded from justification and  salvation, are not “good works” in the Biblical  sense of works for which the believer is created  in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:10), or works wrought by  the indwelling Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9; Gal. 5:22- 26), or works done from true faith (I Thes. 1:3),  according to the law of God, and for his glory, but  are works of the flesh (Gal. 3:3) done in unbelief  (Gal. 3:12) for the purpose of meriting God’s justifying verdict.

25. The Reformed doctrine of justification by faith  alone does not mean that faith in isolation or  abstraction from good works justifies, but that the  way of faith (faith working by love), as opposed  to the “works of the law” or any other conceivable method of justification, is the only way of  justification. (John Calvin, Institutes, III, 11, 20.  “Indeed, we confess with Paul that no other faith  justifies ‘but faith working through love’ [Gal.  5:6]. But it does not take its power to justify from that working of love. Indeed, it justifies in no  other way but in that it leads us into fellowship  with the righteousness of Christ.”) 

26. The Roman Catholic doctrine that justification is  a process in which the unjust man is transformed  into a just man by the infusion of sacramental  grace confuses justification with sanctification,  and contradicts the teaching of Scripture that justification is a forensic verdict of God by which the  ungodly are received and accepted as righteous on  the ground of the imputed righteousness of Jesus  Christ. 

27. The Roman Catholic doctrine that faith merits  (congruent merit) the infusion of justifying grace,  and that faith formed by love and performing  good works merits (condign merit) eternal life  contradicts the teaching of Scripture that justification is by grace through faith apart from the  works of the law. 

28. In a right use of the law, the people of God neither  merit nor seek to merit anything by their obedience to God, but out of love and gratitude serve  the Lord of the Covenant as sons in the household  of the Father and in this way are the beneficiaries  of his fatherly goodness (Mal. 3:16-18). 

29. The proclamation of the gospel of sovereign grace  must include not only a setting forth of the sufficiency and perfection of the Redeemer Jesus  Christ as the only name under heaven given  among men whereby they must be saved, but must also include an earnest appeal to sinners to  come to Christ in faith, to forsake sin and unrighteousness, and to perform deeds appropriate to  repentance (Acts 26:19, 20).

30. Jesus Christ cannot be received as Savior without  submission to him as Lord in one and the same  act of faith, and he cannot be received as Savior  and Lord unless he is presented as Savior and Lord  in the proclamation of the gospel. 

31. Because faith is called for in all gospel proclamation, exhortations to obedience do not cast men  upon their own resources to save themselves,  but are grounded in the promise of the Spirit to  accompany the proclamation of the whole counsel of God with power so that the response of the  whole man called for in the gospel is wrought in  the sinner. 

32. The election of God stands firm so that sinners  who are united to Christ, justified, and saved, can  never come into condemnation; but within the  sphere of covenant life, election does not cancel  out the responsibility of the believer to persevere  in penitent and obedient faith since only they  who endure to the end will be saved (Matt. 24:13;  Mark 13:13). 

33. Though believers are never without sin in this life,  they have no excuse for sinning inasmuch as they have died and are risen with Christ; nevertheless,  their sin does not bring them into condemnation only because it is covered by the blood of Jesus to which the believer has continual recourse in prayer. 

34. The justification, sanctification, and life of the believer reside wholly and exclusively in Christ Jesus, and therefore the proclamation of the sole-sufficiency and all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ is a source of perpetual assurance, encouragement, and comfort to believers in their warfare against Satan in obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

*  As an expression of his views on justification, Rev. Norman Shepherd, associate professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, presented these Thirty-four Theses to the Presbytery of Philadelphia of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church on November 18, 1978.