Introduction
When certain Protestant Reformed ministers in the 1940s were drawn to the influence and theology of Klaas Schilder, Benne Holwerda, and Cornelis Veenhof of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (liberated), one must recognize that the doctrinal seed sown among the Protestant Reformed ministers was not new. Its roots could be traced back to the covenant theology of the Afscheiding ministers K. J. Pieters and J. R. Kreulen, whose teachings had long promoted a conditional conception of the covenant. The theology of those two ministers was the theology of conditions. Their conception of a conditional covenant was presented in their book De Kinderdoop volgens de Beginselen der Gereformeerde Kerk (Infant Baptism according to the Principles of the Reformed Church).
Dr. Anthony Hoekema wrote that
these authors in setting forth their doctrine of the covenant, do not take their point of departure in God’s decree. They do not wish to identify election with the covenant of grace. They say that, when we consider baptism, we must let eternal election rest, and leave it aside.1
That corrupt conception of the covenant had gained a following not only in the Netherlands but also in the United States of America.
Moreover, concerning the sacrament of baptism as it relates to the covenant promise, Hoekema wrote,
Baptism, so say Pieters and Kreulen, is not a seal of internal grace, but only a sign and seal of the promise of the covenant. That promise is, however, objectively represented. The forgiveness of sins and the adoption as children mentioned in the prayer of thanksgiving after baptism in the baptismal formula are not to be understood subjectively, but only objectively. Pieters calls the idea that infants before and at the administration of baptism must be understood to have already received the grace of regeneration a Baptist conception, and states that it conflicts with the practice of the Apostles. When the baptismal formula speaks of the children of believers as being “sanctified in Christ,” this is meant only in an objective sense, according to these men. The covenantal holiness of the children of believers must not be understood in any other way than merely as an objective dedication of these infants to God.2
According to Pieters and Kreulen, the baptismal formula must not be understood subjectively but objectively—that is, only externally. On this understanding baptism is divorced from any actual saving operation of God. Nothing decisive takes place before baptism, during its administration, or after it. The reason for this is that the objective promise does not come unconditionally. The baptized child, though he receives the promise of the covenant, must fulfill certain conditions to maintain himself in the covenant and to experience God’s fellowship.
Woudenberg wrote,
All of this when it was presented by Prof. Heyns to Herman Hoeksema in his school days, Hoeksema rejected as emphatically as had Bavinck in his day, which in turn did much to prepare him [Hoeksema] for the struggle with the Christian Reformed view of common grace, permeated as it was with this “Heynsian” scheme of thought.3
Heterodox Dutch Ministers
The two ministers, Pieters and Kreulen, disrupted the unity of the Afscheiding churches in the Netherlands. They were prominent leaders within the Christelijke Afgescheidene Gereformeerde Kerk (Christian Separated Reformed Church), and their view of the covenant proved highly appealing. Because of its appealing nature, those who sought to defend an orthodox doctrine of the covenant were well aware that they would face significant opposition to their defense. Rev. H. Joffers knew the lamentable situation in the Afscheiding churches when the controversy regarding the covenant of grace erupted, and he said that the “pernicious” conditional view of the two Dutch ministers in a period of four years had “much influence in our church.”4
And in the heat of the controversy, G. Vos, a faithful elder, protested the new opinion of the two ministers to the Synod of Franeker (1863). In that protest Vos said with much conviction and condemnation,
I may not tolerate that grace must be bought from God by a condition, and, therefore, the covenant of grace is to be compared with a business contract for buying a house or some other property.
And Vos said that such grace was brought about in the pages of Pieter and Kreulen’s book De Kinderdoop (Infant Baptism [1861]) with “heterodoxy.”5
Grace that is common and powerless. Covenant salvation that is wholly incapable of saving a single sinner from temporal and eternal punishment.
Pieters and Kreulen introduced a view of the covenant that was foreign to the thinking of the seceders. By inflicting universal grace and conditions on the doctrine of the covenant, it became apparent how their view was “in conflict with all our godly fathers, in conflict with the confession of the church, and in conflict with the Holy Scripture,” as asserted by Simon van Velzen.6
Nevertheless, their view found reception in the churches—a viral infamy. And in the succeeding years, especially in the 1940s, their view would disturb not only the Reformed churches in the Netherlands but also the Protestant Reformed Churches in America. Moreover, contributing to the ongoing disturbance were the failures of the Synod of Franeker (1863) and the Synod of Amsterdam (1866) to settle the controversy concerning the doctrine of the covenant.
Pieters and Kreulen insisted on a different species of the covenant that was divorced from predestination, particularly from election. However, this idea of the covenant was not absolutely foreign among the Reformed ministers in the Netherlands, especially since two centuries before Pieters and Kreulen, a theologian from Franeker named Johannes à Marck already had taught such divorcement. In connection with his explanation of 1 Corinthians 7:14 and the word “sanctified” in the first question to parents in the Form for the Administration of Baptism, he wrote in his Exercitatio,
That incorporation [into the covenant] is without distinction of being elect or reprobate and includes those who have already been sanctified as well as those who are not yet sanctified.7
From à Marck’s viewpoint sanctification is not always real and efficacious. Implied in his view is that sanctification is something external and available to all baptized infants. The promise to an elect infant becomes an invitation to all infants. This view, according to Bastiaan Wielenga, was the “generally prevailing view on baptism and of the covenant of grace at that time.”8
Nevertheless, H. Joffers asserted that the view of Pieters and Kreulen was “something new, introduced by the devil, and [it] opens the way to a real and total apostasy from the covenant of grace.”9 The two ministers claimed that all baptized children were objectively in the covenant of grace, that is, only externally in relation to the historical manifestation of the church. This is Arminianism to the core and unreformed—and was “something new.”
But Pieters and Kreulen mocked the doctrine of H. Joffers and Simon van Velzen as something relatively new in comparison to their doctrine. When mocked that his doctrine was hardly a hundred years old, Joffers responded that Pieters and Kreulen were “still obliged to acknowledge that that view [Joffers’ view of the covenant] is a hundred years older than their ‘objective’ view.”10
The antiquity of a doctrine does not establish its truth. However ancient a view may be, if it is the product of man’s imagination rather than the revelation of holy scripture, it remains a novelty. Such a doctrine bears the marks of estrangement from the truth. It is foreign to the Reformed faith; and the Spirit of Christ, who dwells in believers and leads them into all truth, does not bear witness to that doctrine. So the claim for antiquity does not count. After all, the lie that was first uttered by the devil is more than six thousand years old, yet neither age nor repetition has ever conferred upon it the dignity of truth.
The First Baptismal Question
The phrase in the Reformed baptism form “our children…are sanctified in Christ” was the focus of disputes for many years in the Dutch churches. The Secession fathers were united in their understanding that “sanctified in Christ” does not mean external sanctification and that the covenant and its blessings are extended to all children alike. The baptism form does not even mention external sanctification as a matter of comfort to the parents. External sanctification, or holiness, is essentially the objective grace of Arminianism, which sets Christ forth as available to those who hear the gospel. It is a grace to all who hear. The only difference in the so-called Reformed construction of Pieters, Kreulen, and others is that the baptized child is said to be a genuine object of divine grace. Yet this grace remains merely external and provisional, not absolute and efficacious. The fulfillment of that grace awaits the child’s acceptance of what has been offered. Consequently, in light of the foolishness of the doctrine, the movement from external holiness to internal reality is made contingent upon human consent rather than upon the sovereign and irresistible grace of God.
To this day I find it difficult to comprehend how a form so thoroughly Reformed in its language, doctrine, and spirit can be subjected to an interpretation that proceeds upon fundamentally Arminian terms. But for a long period of time, this little phrase of our beloved baptism form has been the focus of disputes.
Bastiaan Wielenga summarized the disputes regarding the first baptismal question as concentrating
around the important question of whether baptism seals present, real grace or exclusively a future, possible grace; whether we have to regard the children who are presented for baptism as belonging only externally to the church or whether they are truly included in the covenant, in the church, in Christ. The actual baptismal issue concentrates on these two questions that for so long and so often, alas! Caused a bitter fight. It is truly remarkable that mainly the first baptismal question is involved.11
Wielenga maintained that the controversies over the first baptismal question were essentially “dogmatic.”12 They reached to the very heart of the truth. The issues were not peripheral but fundamental: grace or works, God’s faithfulness or man’s faithfulness, God’s sovereign covenant promise or man’s conditional acceptance, life or death. Rightly so, for the doctrine of the covenant is no peripheral matter in a Reformed church but is the very blood that courses through her veins. It determines her preaching, sacraments, discipline, government, comfort, and hope. Spill that blood upon the ground by attempting to twist and malign the gospel, and it will cry unto God for judgment, for the covenant of God touches the very heart of our Reformed religion.
Pieters and Kreulen denied that the phrase “sanctified in Christ” in the first baptismal question to the parents is strictly comprehended as referring to the elect infants of believers.
Their view was contrary to the view of Anthony Brummelkamp, who insisted on the particularity of sanctification as applied only to the “children of the promise,” or the elect, as they are “taken into the covenant of grace, in which covenant nothing is included that is unholy.”13 In his explanation Brummelkamp considered divine predestination as well as the spirituality of the assurance that our children are sanctified in Christ. They are sanctified not because of the parents’ faith and active obedience to the ordinance; rather, they are sanctified, first, by God’s electing love. Election determines who is sanctified and who receives effectually the promise of the covenant. That promise is always effectual in its purpose, as signified by baptism. But it is not a promise of a future reality that is impeded until the child is given conscious faith.
Pieters and Kreulen denied that election is relevant to the issue of membership in the covenant. What those ministers failed to understand is that election implies one important truth, that is, the covenant of grace is only with Christ—with Christ alone. Alone signifies the federal headship of Christ, in whom all the elect are incorporated and identified by God as one corporation from eternity to eternity. And because the covenant is with Christ, it must be perceived as utterly unconditional. The person of Jesus Christ is the fullness of the covenant of grace; thus to say that the covenant is conditional is to remove Christ from his preeminent position in the covenant of grace. From these lines of reasoning, the Reformed cannot in good conscience perceive the covenant apart from election.
By divorcing election from the issue of who is included in the covenant and who is being referred to by the baptism form as “sanctified in Christ,” one strays from the very essence of the covenant, which is covenant fellowship. This covenant fellowship is always essentially from the triune life of God within himself, and God ordained that his life might be revealed in the highest possible way. Thus Jesus Christ was eternally elected by God to be the head of the covenant and of the church, his body.
Herman Hoeksema defined the covenant of God with Christ as eternally and centrally fixed in Christ, establishing also the church in an intimate relationship with him as he is “Immanuel, God with us.”14
Departing from the essence of the covenant, one is compelled to make the covenant universal and powerless. Pieters and Kreulen taught that all baptized infants, without exception, are part of the establishment of God’s covenant. Really and well-meaningly, all baptized children receive the promise of the covenant. The two ministers distinguished between objective grace and subjective grace. Objective grace refers to the covenantal promise of God upon the baptized child. It is a promise but not an absolute promise. It is rather a desire (favorable attitude) of God that all baptized children be incorporated into his covenant, so that the promise becomes a mere offer that God sets before the child. Subjective grace is the efficacious work of the Spirit in the hearts of the elect. This efficacious grace in their hearts, as affirmed by the two ministers, is not bestowed upon all baptized children. So in their conception of the covenant, Pieters and Kreulen wanted to do both: to limit and to broaden. They wanted common grace in the objective promise, on the one hand, and particular grace in the hearts of the elect, on the other.
The confusion was this: The promise that all our children are sanctified in Christ is common to all baptized children, but the inner reality in their hearts, out of which regenerated infants will live, is particular. Nevertheless, faith and obedience are conditions that the regenerated infants are demanded to perform to experience covenant fellowship with Jehovah. Can there be anything more confusing than such a doctrine?
The Reformed doctrine of the covenant teaches that elect children of God are always objects of God’s grace. From eternity they are embraced by God’s favor in Christ, and throughout their lives that grace remains upon them. Moreover, because the Spirit of Christ dwells within the elect and never departs from them, the work of covenantal salvation is continually realized in their hearts and lives. Thus what may be called objective grace is inseparably joined to subjective grace, as God himself works salvation in his people according to his eternal purpose of incorporating them into Jesus Christ. It is as simple as Joffers said: “Everything He promised, He gives.”15
That little phrase “sanctified in Christ,” as perceived by Pieters and Kreulen, is essentially conditional because election has nothing to do with it. Therefore, “sanctified in Christ” is a ready declaration upon the child that must wait upon the consent of that child through his belief and obedience. Objectively, if you will, that child receives grace from God. Subjectively, if you will, that grace is contingent upon the faithfulness of that child. Forgiveness of sins? That can wait until the child repents. Covenant salvation? That can wait until he believes. Covenant blessings? They can wait. Sanctification? Holiness? Though the form assures the parents that their children are sanctified in Christ, yes, that can also wait. It all depends on something else besides the sovereign will of God. It depends upon the will and work of man.
Conditions, conditions, conditions!
Cheap Version of “By Grace”
But as false prophets do, Pieters and Kreulen said that the fulfillment of certain conditions of faith and obedience is accompanied by grace. However, in principle, maintenance of the covenant is solely a work of man, and God’s grace is simply a vehicle for rendering inexcusable any who fail. So by grace becomes just lip service. As if by grace makes you orthodox, let alone Reformed. I will quote them at length and note how their explanation of the word “condition” is essentially the same doctrine held today by the false Protestant Reformed Churches:
Does someone say, in this manner there comes a condition into the covenant of grace, without which one does not become a partaker of the salvation promised in the covenant? Be it so, still the question really is, what does one here understand by a condition? If you take this word in a legal sense for something that man does by his own power, something that gives him a merit, upon which and because of which he would become partaker of the benefit contained in the covenant of grace, who would then give his assent to such an idea? But if one understands by a condition the means that God ordained by which man becomes partaker of the salvation of the covenant in God’s way, and without which he shall never enjoy this [salvation], then faith is surely a condition in the sense of the means by which (not: because of which or on the basis of which) the member of the covenant becomes partaker of the blessings of the covenant of grace. It is only in this sense that we believe and teach, as the Reformed church has always done, that faith is the condition of the covenant of grace.16
Who in the Protestant Reformed Churches today would not laud the statement of Pieters and Kreulen as the very picture of truly Reformed? Who in that denomination would not agree that there is something that man must do that precedes the work of God? Who among them would not agree that the activity that precedes God’s work is by God’s grace? Who in the Protestant Reformed Churches today would not agree with the statement of the two Dutch ministers that all baptized children can find in Christ “a rich righteousness, salvation, and honor in the way of faith”?17
But father Hoeksema would not agree. When Hubert De Wolf breathed the same spirit of Pieters and Kreulen and made man’s act of conversion something that precedes God’s gracious act, Hoeksema commented,
No matter how anyone may attempt to explain these statements, whether they be applied to the regenerated or unregenerated, the statement remains corrupt.18
Of course, to ward off the charge of being an outright Arminian, one must say “it is by grace”—that is, to say that the one who is demanded to act is already regenerated. If there is something that man must do first, or some kind of activity, the presupposition is that he is regenerated. Hoeksema says, “No matter!” It does not matter as long as the activity is a prerequisite. It does not matter as long as God is presented as one who is waiting upon the believer. We also say, “No matter!”
Man’s activity that precedes God’s work is works-righteousness. That theology is no better than the meritorious theology of Rome.
With great conviction for the truth and against the lie, Hoeksema asserted that
it cannot be too strongly emphasized that man can never merit anything with God and that all religion based upon this notion of merit is fundamentally corrupt. Christ certainly could merit righteousness and eternal life, but remember, he was the Son of God. Man, however, is always obligated to God. Never can he merit anything with his creator. Man and all that he has is God’s. Never can he do anything for God or bring anything to God that is not already God’s. The earth, its fullness, and those who dwell on the earth belong to the Lord. How could man ever claim a reward of merit from his creator? It was the conception of the Pharisees of old that they could claim a certain reward for a certain amount of work, but this works-righteousness is severely condemned throughout Scripture.19
The Reformed Protestant Churches agree with Hoeksema. God is always first, even in the experience of the covenant, for instance, the assurance that we are indeed forgiven even before we repent.
Hoeksema beautifully breathed the same confession:
Christ comes to us even before we can possibly come to him. He quickens us, enlightens us, causes us to see the horror of our sin, and enables us to repent in dust and ashes. Thus we come to him as the fruit and result of his first having come to us by the power of his grace. This is why it is so unconditionally certain that he will never cast out the man who comes to him. This is why the publican who cried out, “God, be merciful to me a sinner” surely went to his house rejoicing in the forgiveness of sin, for that very prayer was the expression of the redeeming grace already wrought in his heart.20
But someone from the Protestant Reformed Churches who is not content with the sovereign grace of the covenant mocks this gospel by mocking the Reformed Protestant insistence that we get into heaven and are incorporated into the covenant only by the act of God. Prof. David Engelsma not only mocks our gospel, but he also brags about his coming to Christ:
Should I meet a member of the RPC at the feet of Jesus, I would readily explain my presence there as repentance over my sins, including sorrow over my sins against God and longing for the healing of forgiveness from the Great Physician. I would then ask him or her, “Why are you here? What brings you here?” He or she would be speechless.21
The conditional theology of Pieters and Kreulen, more so of the Protestant Reformed Churches, has no place in a truly Reformed church.
My next article will show clearly the influence of the conditional covenant theology of Pieters and Kreulen on Prof. William Heyns’ conception of the covenant. It is unmistakable that Heyns was a disciple of those two enemies of the covenant of grace.
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Footnotes:
