In his response to Brendan Looyenga’s letter defending the views of IRBS against Samuel Vasquez’s criticisms of the Biblical Counseling movement, Vasquez rightly attributes to me and other defenders of common grace what he considers to be the erroneous conviction that, as he describes our view, “truth can be found in unregenerate, profane authors; this truth is given by the Holy Spirit to unbelievers, and if we despise this truth wherever it can be found, we despise the Spirit of God.” Again, that certainly is an accurate account of the view I hold.

But Vasquez’s characterization of the view is also a close paraphrase of something that John Calvin affirms in Institutes, II, 2, 15, where the Reformer observes about ancient pagan authors that the “admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it where it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.”

I do not mean here to rehearse my serious disagreements with Protestant Reformed authors regarding common grace. But I do believe you should make it clear to your readers why you reject what Calvin says in this comment that Vasquez paraphrases, lest they happen to read the Institutes and be unwittingly led by what he affirms into what you see as a clear and dangerous departure from Reformed orthodoxy.

Richard J. Mouw, PhD

President Emeritus

Fuller Theological Seminary

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REPLY

Introduction

I appreciate Dr. Mouw’s desire not to enter into a debate regarding the doctrine of common grace over against particular grace or over against providence. The question, for the sake of the argument, concerns truth: Is truth found among unregenerate persons, either as individual persons or as they form worldly institutions?

However, let me take the opportunity to state my preference. Although the idea is erroneous, I prefer Mouw’s judgment, expressed elsewhere, that common grace is the outstanding explanation for psychology and psychiatry. To have psychology and psychiatry be the results of common grace would be an improvement, though only from worse to bad, over the more recent novelty of so-called Christian psychology.

Indeed, the Protestant Reformed Churches ought to understand that Christian psychology is not Christian. The introduction of Christian psychology into Protestant Reformed churches is evident. It is evident in sermons, in the teachings of various articles, and in counseling done in the denomination by ministers and lay persons. Such is the reason behind Samuel Vasquez’ article, “The Sufficiency of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” in the December 1, 2020, issue of Sword and Shield. This article occasioned the missive from Dr. Mouw. A proper understanding of this psychology, branded as Christian, reveals the attempt to introduce practically into the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) the doctrine of common grace through the Trojan horse of Christian psychology.

If the interested reader is willing to do the research, he will find that Dr. Mouw’s contention about common grace is indeed correct. There is abundant testimony from a multitude of purveyors of Christian psychology that common grace is their basis for applying the results of secular psychology to Christianity. Dr. Mouw’s labor is but the tip of an iceberg. Then the question must be asked, is the doctrine of common grace stealthily worming its way into the PRC via Christian counseling?

The above is indeed the deep, heartfelt concern expressed by Samuel Vasquez. The question raised by his article is indeed urgent. Are we selling our precious birthright of sovereign, particular grace alone for the pottage of Christian psychology? His sense of alarm easily explains, then, the length he is willing to go by writing the statement to which Dr. Mouw calls attention.

What about Truth?

The main matter of importance that Dr. Mouw brings to the reader’s attention gets to the heart of the debate. What about truth? Specifically, what about the truth that is found on the lips and from the pens of unregenerated individuals? What about the truth that is found from the studies of men that are performed in obvious independence from the only light—God’s word?

In addition to the quotation presented by Dr. Mouw from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, we find two additional comments in the immediate context of the same section.

To this gratitude we have a sufficient call from the Creator himself, when, in the case of idiots, he shows what the endowments of the soul would be were it not pervaded with his light. Though natural to all, it is so in such a sense that it ought to be regarded as a gratuitous gift of his beneficence to each. (II.2.14)

Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art, expended their industry in our behalf, were only raving? (II.2.15)

What is striking about this second quotation is that Calvin includes his observation concerning “the medical art” among others, namely “lawgivers,” “philosophers,” rhetoricians, and the “mathematical sciences.” I bring up this quotation because it shows a ready application to the realm of psychiatry (not so much psychology) as a subdivision of medicine.

At the same time—and I trust Dr. Mouw will readily agree with him—Calvin had the following to say:

Lest any one, however, should imagine a man to be very happy merely because, with reference to the elements of this world, he has been endued with great talents for the investigation of truth, we ought to add, that the whole power of intellect thus bestowed is, in the sight of God, fleeting and vain whenever it is not based on a solid foundation of truth. Augustine…to whom, as we have observed, the Master of Sentences…and the Schoolmen are forced to subscribe, says most correctly, that as the gratuitous gifts bestowed on man were withdrawn, so the natural gifts which remained were corrupted after the fall. Not that they can be polluted in themselves in so far as they proceed from God, but that they have ceased to be pure to polluted man, lest he should by their means obtain any praise. (II.2.16)

What is this “truth” found here and there, “whenever it is not based on a solid foundation of truth”? Is this “truth” or is it even common grace, when, as stated by Calvin, “the gratuitous gifts bestowed on man were withdrawn”?

The alarm raised by Vasquez is therefore entirely justified. We can certainly understand that he is free to disagree with Calvin on the distinct point. There are certainly clear, urgent reasons for rejecting anything in the above as “truth,” and especially as “the truth given by the Holy Spirit to unbelievers.”

One reason for Vasquez’s alarm is the clear danger demonstrated by so many examples. The truth identified by Calvin in this section of his Institutes is abused to such an extent as to overwhelm and drive out the truth of God’s word, notably the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. One such example is found in Vasquez’s point that the superficial comfort and peace offered by psychological methodology are preferred to the true, antithetical comfort and peace from the cross of Jesus Christ set forth in the gospel. The Pelagian self-improvement of self-teaching and self-motivation replaces the sinner’s faith in Jesus Christ to be all his salvation. The behavior-changing techniques of psychological therapy contend against gratitude for Christ’s salvation as the godly motivation for a life of good works.

Another reason for alarm is the failure to understand and apply the antithesis between the truth and the lie. Indeed, while it is to be admitted, as Calvin asserted, that the truth is not to be despised when God providentially gives that gift to lawmakers, philosophers, and doctors; yet it remains that unregenerated, fallen men in Adam hold this truth under in unrighteousness and use it in the service of the lie. The lie is that without God this truth can be known and discovered, explained and applied for the true benefit of man. While men crow and preen themselves on the knowledge that they have attained in perverse defiance of the very God who has shown to them what they know, they give every evidence of their wickedness. As article 14 of the Belgic Confession asserts regarding these unregenerated, fallen men who have this knowledge, they retain

only a few remains thereof, which, however, are sufficient to leave man without excuse; for all the light which is in us is changed into darkness, as the Scriptures teach us, saying: The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not, where St. John calleth men darkness.

The same confession is made later in the same article: “Who can speak of his knowledge, since the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God?” (Confessions and Church Order, 39). After declaring that the natural man “is incapable of using it [“the light of nature”] aright even in things natural and civil,” the Canons of Dordt go further in stating the work of the natural man upon that light. “Nay further, this light, such as it is, man in various ways renders wholly polluted, and holds it in unrighteousness, by doing which he becomes inexcusable before God” (Canons 3–4.4, in Confessions and Church Order, 167).

The failure to understand and apply the antithesis between truth and lie becomes clear when applied to Christian psychology. How does secular, atheistic psychology come to have these inroads into Christian churches to the subversion of the gospel of salvation, in which is found all true comfort and peace through faith alone in Christ alone?

There is a catastrophic failure to see the “truth,” to which Calvin calls attention in II.2.15, in the light of scripture. Sadly, this failure is not in seeing what the Canons call “the glimmerings of natural light.” But the abject, devastating failure is to apply the scriptures that testify what the natural man does with these glimmerings. Christians, eager to import the fleshly and devilish wisdom of the world, forget that the world is under the judgment of God. Specifically, under the judgment of God, the ungodly world formulates many ways and means to maintain its comfort and peace and denies the wrath of God on the wicked. Refusing the true comfort and peace presented in the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ, the ungodly world insists on the sufficiency of its earthly psychology. In their great evil, what is the material difference between the sufficiency of earthly psychology or the sufficiency of drug abuse? Must not any sufficiency opposed to the sufficiency of the gospel of Jesus Christ be wholly abhorrent to the child of God? Must he not see it as a deadly rival to the comfort that he possesses only as the gift of his dear savior to him? Must he not take any other sufficiency than the gospel and reject out of hand that sufficiency as a wicked lie of Satan to draw him away from the full peace he has from the blood of his crucified Lord?

The matter of “the glimmerings of natural light” stands over against the darkness of the natural man, the darkness that always renders that light wholly polluted and holds it in unrighteousness. While Dr. Mouw, following the teaching of Calvin, may rightly deem such glimmerings as “truth,” the alarm sounded by Vasquez about the abuse of that “truth” in the service of the lie that would subvert the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is easily understood. Let the alarm continue to sound, whether against Christian psychology or against common grace psychology!

We might well seek more of the likes of Laocoön, Cassandra, and Helen, who gave every effort to warn the hapless Trojans of the perilous horse brought into their midst. What will happen when their warnings are ignored, and the population goes to blissful sleep at night and awakens the next morning to see the city’s gates opened wide to the enemy’s attack and the destruction of their beloved city? Who in the wake of such destruction would dare quibble about Cassandra’s spurning of Apollos as a reason for ignoring her true warning?