Evil Words of Men

This word of God declares the blasphemous height of the vain speech of the wicked. These wicked have persecuted the poor and needy. They have oppressed the poor. They have caused the needy to sigh. Why oppress the poor and needy? What do the poor and needy have that can increase the wealth of the wicked?

The reason is the God of the poor and needy. God has promised to be their helper. By his promise God has made the cause of the poor and needy his own. God is the

reason that the wicked take a special delight in oppressing the poor. The wicked set their words against the word of God. Their desire is to ask the question, “Who is lord over us?” To that question they desire to give the resounding answer, “No lord is over us!” Not even the living God of heaven and earth.

These wicked point to the instrument of their triumph. Their triumph is not by physical force, by extortion as the threat of force, by bullying, or by deceitful manipulation and trickery. These indeed are instruments the wicked have used against the poor and needy. The wicked have indeed killed and beaten. They have twisted law and order to favor themselves in their wickedness. They have bullied and threatened others into compliance with their unjust actions. But the real point is their warfare against God. They have boasted before the Lord of their cruel evil. They have boasted against him of their wicked gain. He has not stopped them. He has not destroyed them. So they speak against him. They exalt their tongues against his. They boast of the possession of their own lips. So they speak, and so they talk. Feeling free both of God’s judgments against them and of his sovereignty over them, they ask the question, “Who is lord over us?”

It is one thing to be presented with such words in scripture as spoken by the heathen. The nations that rage against the Lord and his Christ speak similar words: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:3). Similar are the words that Pilate spoke to him who is the way, the truth, and the life: “What is truth?” (John 18:38).

But the words of the wicked expressed in Psalm 12:4 are not from the heathen. They are spoken by members of the house of Israel. They speak against God as he has revealed himself in his holy word, the testimony of the scriptures. They speak against him who has declared himself to be the sovereign of heaven and earth, sovereign over all the tongues of men. They speak against him who has promised to be the helper of the poor, the fatherless, and the widow. They speak against him who has threatened his just judgment against the workers of iniquity.

This great wickedness of men in the church is by no means limited to sacred history. Psalm 12:4 is a powerful reminder of what recurs time and again in church history. One of the most notable expressions of this great evil happened at the time of the Protestant Reformation. The truth of God’s word was bitterly and viciously opposed by the papacy. The papacy employed the power of its hierarchical tyranny against the truth of scripture. God’s people were not to live freely by the word of God, justified by faith alone. Although confronted with the clear testimony of God’s word, the Romish papacy used its own words against God’s word. Issuing so many papal bulls and culminating in the Council of Trent, the antichristian papacy worked to destroy the truth in order to maintain its oppression of the church of Jesus Christ. Claiming with so many words that the authority of Christ had been conferred on the papacy alone, it turned aside the authority of God’s word and invoked its own authority to destroy all who bore testimony to the divine word.

Sadly, the great wickedness of Psalm 12:4 carried through into Protestantism. Still the tongue of the wicked sought to prevail apart from papal tyranny. Still men thought their lips were their own. Refusing submission to the word of God, men spoke their own words against the word of God. Joining together in their rebellion, they worked to drive out the testimony of God’s word by dominating the institutions of church and state. They focused on those standing for the truth of God’s word. They used their lips and tongues to accuse the orthodox of being unloving and intolerant, of laboring for the destruction of the church’s peace and unity. They turned heresy into orthodoxy. They turned faithfulness into perfidy. They turned unrighteousness into righteousness, wrong into right, disorder into order. All with their words.

Decisions for Deposition

The grievous wickedness of Psalm 12:4 became evident in the deliberative assemblies of the Protestant Reformed Churches.
Preaching against the truth of justification by grace alone without works and against the unconditional covenant was declared by men to be orthodox. When that declaration failed, such preaching was declared to be merely confusing. Those who protested against that preaching were vilified as troublemakers and radicals. They were threatened with church discipline. When leaders of these churches agitated against the decisions of Synod 2018 in their public writings and teachings, they were not declared to be schismatic but were declared orthodox. When some in these churches continued to point out obvious failures to conform to the truth of God’s word, including failure to repent of the false teachings condemned by Synod 2018, they faced discipline for schism and slander.

The history of the recent controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches is replete with the twisting of the word of God by the words of men. Through it all the words of Psalm 12:4 must be heard: “With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?”

How did this grievous wickedness of Psalm 12:4 happen?

How did this wickedness happen when the beginning of the Protestant Reformed denomination involved the same use of wicked words? How did this happen when that wickedness was so apparent in 1924? How did such wickedness happen though many books had been written and published on the history of the beginning of the Protestant Reformed denomination? How did this wickedness happen again in spite of so much instruction in this history?

Why was this so apparent in the history of 1924?

In this history the leadership of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) had banded together with their words. Their cause of common grace signified a broad-mindedness and a movement toward finding acceptance and approval among other institutions. The world envisioned by Abraham Kuyper’s gemeene gratie was a world the leadership in the CRC wanted to move into and help develop. The opposition of Herman Hoeksema, Henry Danhof, and George Ophoff they found intolerable. They knew the weapon they would use, the weapon that had been put to use so often before in church history: the weapon of words.

With their words they laid hold on the creeds and on the writings of men about those creeds. With their words they persuaded the synod of 1924 to authoritatively declare the three points of common grace to be the teaching of scripture and the Reformed creeds. A quote from the first point of common grace is clear:

This [“a certain favor or grace of God which He shows to His creatures in general”] is evident from the Scripture passages that were quoted and from the Canons of Dordt, II, 5 and III, IV, 8, 9, where the general offer of the gospel is set forth; while it also is evident from the citations made from the Reformed writers belonging to the most flourishing period of Reformed theology that our fathers from of old maintained this view.¹

It mattered not that it was not “evident.” It mattered not that Abraham Kuyper identified himself as or was acknowledged by others to be the author of this new doctrine. What mattered was that synod could write the words and have them passed by majority vote, accomplished by words.

With words the force of the words of Synod 1924 carried through with the additional words of Classis Grand Rapids East and Classis Grand Rapids West. Based on the work of that synod, these classes of the CRC deposed the three ministers with their consistories. Again, the autonomy of the local congregations as ruled by elders in their locales according to the word of God did not matter. What mattered were the words of these assemblies. What mattered were the words that explained that such urgent and decisive action was necessary and so important for the peace and unity of the churches.

What words! Words that the synod read into the confessions and “citations made from the Reformed writers belonging to the most flourishing period of Reformed theology.” Words that synod used authoritatively to declare it to be so. Words that followed through, to break through lines of Reformed church polity, for putting out of office men whom God had placed there for the maintenance of the truth.

Words of men were used not only by the CRC Synod of 1924 and carried through by the CRC classes of Grand Rapids East and Grand Rapids West, but words were also used by Synod 1945 of the Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland (GKN) for the deposition of Klass Schilder from the office of professor of theology. The same tactics used against Hoeksema, Danhof, and Ophoff were employed against Schilder and the ministers standing with him. The synod of the GKN insisted that conditions of unrest and turmoil required that the assembly continue over the space of three years. Over that time Schilder remained in hiding from the Nazis and could not appear publicly to defend himself. Synod took advantage of his absence to issue ruling after ruling to build up opposition against Schilder. Deliberations of that assembly focused on controlling all information about the denomination in order to build up and maintain the impression that Schilder’s teachings threatened the welfare of the denomination. Having driven that impression deeply throughout the denomination, the assembly then moved against the professor. With the sentence of his deposition, the synod of the GKN hoped to intimidate all who would dare to stand with Schilder. It was their hope that all support for Schilder would evaporate, leaving the professor all alone, an outcast of the GKN.

The manner and end of Schilder’s ouster from the GKN was similar to that of Hoeksema, Danhof, and Ophoff from the CRC. But what was more clear about Schilder’s case was that it had much to do with the professor’s opposition to the dominance of Kuyperian thought in the GKN. Schilder decried the abstract, speculative nature of Kuyper’s teachings in favor of preaching and teaching that centered on the text of scripture. Schilder shared the focus of the Afscheiding, the care of God’s people in the churches. He eschewed the focus of Kuyper’s Doleantie on the institutions of the day, denomination and state, which he saw compromised by allegiance to the Nazi party.

The Threat of God’s Word

There are significant reasons that the doctrines of Abraham Kuyper were involved in the actions taken by the deliberative assemblies of both the CRC and the GKN.

The first reason is the simplest. The doctrines of men are not the doctrines of the word of God. The doctrines of men need support that the doctrines of God’s word do not need. They need the support of the authority of men. They need to have the deliberative assemblies of the churches under the control of men rather than under the control of the scriptures. The doctrines of men simply cannot stand against the scriptures. Therefore, the testimony of holy scripture cannot be allowed any place in the deliberative assemblies of the churches. The voices of men who exercise their responsibility to maintain and defend the truth of God’s word against the false doctrines of men must be excluded. Because the doctrines favored are the doctrines of men, church authority must be exercised against the word of God.

The second reason goes deeper than the first and provides the spiritual explanation for such actions of these broader assemblies and their misuse of ecclesiastical authority. It is that the truth is narrow and antithetical, while the lie is broad and tolerant. Institutional pride is concerned with appearances and numbers. Institutional pride wants representation of its institution either in Christendom or more broadly in the world. Institutional pride must know that its institution has an impact in the realm of denominations or public life. Institutional pride has little use for the ordinary member of the church and the care of his soul by the word of God proclaimed to him Sunday after Sunday. In a similar fashion institutional pride seeks to maintain itself as the means of grace. Grace is not to be controlled by the eternal election of God or by the cross of Christ. Grace is not to be applied by the Holy Spirit to the hearts of God’s elect by the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. Instead, grace is tied to the institution and bare membership in the institution. Stumbling at sovereign, gracious election and stumbling at the cross of Christ, emphasis is placed on an outward institution and its appearance before all. Institutional membership must indicate and control the boundaries of grace. On the other hand, sovereign, particular grace does not concern itself with external appearances, numbers, or the praise of men. It does not seek out the wise and the strong but the foolish, the weak, and the despised (1 Cor. 1:26–29). Therefore, institutional pride cannot tolerate the simple, powerful rebuke of the grace of God that prefers the younger to the elder, the humble to the proud, and the weak to the strong.

The third reason is the point of these articles: the determination of men to forsake the humble, earthy moorings of the word of God in favor of the lofty, speculative heights of abstract reasoning. How easy it is for men to turn away from the word of God that constantly humbles and abases them and denies them every corner of their pride! How easy it is for men to devote themselves to the contrivances of their own imaginations! How easy it is for men also to imagine a basis for their vanities in God’s word.

These contrivances must not be limited to the error of common grace. It is tempting to do so. It is a simple thing to point to Kuyper’s three-volume work on the subject. It is a simple thing to point out a clear rationale for the effort: the ascendance of the Anti-Revolutionary Party and Kuyper’s departure from the gospel ministry to attain the political office of prime minister of the Netherlands. There are also Kuyper’s efforts at maintaining the truth of God’s word in the churches of Holland, his role in the Doleantie as true church reformation, and his stand against liberalizing elements in the state church of the Netherlands. There is indeed much to agree with in Kuyper’s work. There is his book That God’s Grace is Particular. There is much good found in his work on the Holy Spirit. But the fact remains that Kuyper’s work on common grace is not an error that stands by itself. His teaching on presupposed regeneration is not merely another example of error. His errors are not aberrations, accidental departures that somehow happened along the way. They belong to what is known as Kuyperianism and also belong to the child known as Neo-Kuyperianism.

Kuyperianism and Neo-Kuyperianism are theological movements that steer into abstract, philosophical reasoning in order to build up doctrinal systems independent of scripture. Then these theological movements work to bring these doctrinal systems back down as ideals,
to carry their weight and influence into the world. These ideals have two characteristics. First, they attempt to control institutions to subordinate them to expressed ideals rather than to the word of God. Second, they are preoccupied with human reasoning to the neglect of the true knowledge of God in his word. Kuyperianism and Neo-Kuyperianism build castles in the sky and then demand that Reformed people live in them. There is a utopian aspect of these movements, built on the doctrine of common grace, that seeks the kingdom of God on the earth. It is not content with the Christian life as a life of struggle and pilgrimage. It wants triumph and an earthly home. It rejects a theology of suffering for the sake of a theology of glory.

What is the threat of Kuyperianism and Neo-Kuyperianism? How are these movements directly related to Psalm 12:4?

Most directly, they build up and maintain their systems by the words of men. Though these movements are claimed to be built up out of the word of God, the claims are false. These movements are the words of men that take attention away from the word of God. They raise up systems and doctrines that rely solely on man’s authority, which must by that very fact be opposed to the word of God. This opposition becomes evident in two striking ways. The first way is that Kuyperianism is opposed to the doctrine of total depravity. The second way is that Kuyperianism is opposed to understanding grace as limited to the redemption of the elect in Christ alone. Its claim to doctrinal faithfulness to limited atonement is belied by its focus on the institutions of men. Kuyper’s famous claim in his Stone Lectures of “every square inch” is no mere assertion of God’s providential government according to his sovereignty. Kuyper intended his claim to be the basis for a movement of men that was meant to be exactly the redemption of everything in society and culture to the cause of Christ.

The threat of Kuyperianism made itself evident in the weakening of Reformed and even Presbyterian denominations, which made for easy entrance of the heresy of the federal vision. The federal vision certainly exploited the weakness present in Reformed and Presbyterian churches by the error of the conditional covenant. But an additional weakness was present in these churches with the influence of Kuyperianism. Speculative theology loosens the grip of churches on the truth of scripture, making it easy for error to enter. But more to the point, works-theology is certain to enter where the doctrine of total depravity has been compromised and where man is exalted as the agent of redemption, whether his own personal redemption or his redemption of worldly institutions.

But the greatest threat of Kuyperianism is that it offers a deadly substitute: words for truth, dead ideas of man’s vain imagination for the living word of God.

This deadly substitution is found in what was addressed before in this magazine under the rubric of doctrine, on the subjects of repentance and faith. It is the substitution of the doctrine of repentance for repentance itself. It is the substitution of the doctrine of faith for faith itself. Repentance becomes having an idea about it. One becomes a master of the doctrine of repentance. He knows thoroughly the doctrine of repentance. He knows thoroughly the true doctrine of repentance. But he supposes that his knowledge signifies that he is truly repentant. The true gift of God’s grace is displaced by a mere idea. The same effort is undertaken with respect to faith. But the fatal flaw becomes apparent. Left with only the idea, repentance is made into the good thing that is done in order to receive forgiveness. Faith is made into the activity of man that he does in order to receive salvation, whether in part or in whole. So it must also follow that good works do have standing before God to obtain following blessings and benefits. With their words men build their castles in the sky for imagined dwelling places of grace. But their castles are far away from the word of God that reveals true grace alone in the cross of Christ.

Next, Lord willing, I will treat the underpinnings of idealism and the need of God’s word for the glorious, true salvation of God’s people from sin.