Dear family, Terry, and Andy Lanning (hereafter AL),

This is in response to the missive recently sent to us all by AL as reply to my response to his Wednesday evening attack on my and what I consider to be PR theology.

I will respond to what both he and I consider to be the main issue, in conclusion adding some remarks on other elements of his recent broadside.

The issue is the call of the gospel, particularly whether in God’s issuing of that call there is an important sense in which God’s drawing us to Himself consists of His causing us actively to draw nigh to Him (which is our believing and repenting) preceding His drawing nigh to us in our experience, or consciously. Let me state this once again, more simply. In salvation as the matter of our consciousness, or experience, of God’s drawing nigh to us in the assurance of His love and the sweet experience of the covenant of grace, God draws us to Himself (thus He is first in the matter of experience) in such a way that we actively draw nigh to Him by a true and living faith (which faith as a spiritual activity of knowing Him in Jesus and trusting in Him), so that in the way of this our drawing nigh to Him He may draw nigh to us in the experience of His nearness in Christ. In this specific sense, our drawing nigh to Him precedes His drawing nigh to Him. This is the plain meaning of James 4:8: “Draw nigh to me, and I will draw nigh to you.” This is the plain meaning of the text as it stands in all its perfect clarity before every reader, especially before a minister of the Word. Our drawing nigh to God precedes God’s drawing nigh to us. The question is not, “Does our drawing nigh to God precede in some important sense God’s drawing nigh to us?” but “how,” or “in what sense” does our drawing nigh to God precedes His drawing nigh to us?”

I call attention to two gross errors that AL makes in his treatment of the text. First, inexcusably, and beyond any shadow of a doubt deliberately, he charges me with teaching that our activity in some aspect of salvation precedes God’s activity. This is misrepresentation, if not slander. I merely call attention to the fact that to represent the issue thus, that I hold that men respond to the call “in their own strength,” or “on their own,” whereas AL confesses that men respond to the call by the grace of God, is false. I made clear throughout the document from which he quotes that God is first in the aspect of the experience of salvation but in such a manner of working that He causes us to draw nigh to Him in order that in this way He may draw nigh to us. He is first, but in such a way that our drawing nigh to Him consciously precedes His drawing nigh to us in our experience. This does justice to the text in James 4: Draw nigh to me, and I will draw nigh to you. Denying that there is any sense at all in which our drawing nigh to God precedes His drawing nigh to us in James 4, AL is compelled to corrupt the Word of God in James 4. Rather than to do justice to the obvious truth of the text that God’s drawing nigh to us follows in any way whatever our drawing nigh to Him, AL is compelled to explain that the meaning of the text is that when we draw nigh we learn that God has already drawn nigh to us in the past. He overlooks the fact that even his explanation has our drawing nigh precede God’s drawing nigh in the sense that only when we draw nigh are we assured of God’s having drawn nigh to us in the past, or of God’s drawing nigh to us at the present time. This explanation too can be charged by an unkind critic as making our assurance of God’s having drawn nigh in the past, or of God’s drawing nigh to us at the present time, conditional upon our drawing nigh to God. An obvious indication that AL is forcing James 4 into the mold of his aberrant theology concerning the call of the gospel is his inability to do justice to the future tense in James 4:8. James 4 reads, “and God will draw nigh to you,” that is, when we draw nigh to Him.” The future tense compels every reader to acknowledge that in some sense our drawing nigh precedes God’s drawing nigh, and that God’s drawing nigh follows our drawing nigh. What does AL do in response to this obvious truth? He changes the tense of the verb. Now it becomes, “Draw nigh to God and He does draw nigh to you,” or, “He has drawn nigh to you.” His theology forbids him to recognize the future tense of the verb. I remind him that inspiration includes also the tense of the verb in James 4:8.

AL, explain the future tense of the verb! “Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you.” “He will.” In every language, except that of those who are afraid to issue the call of the gospel with its promise of experiential salvation following believing, a future tense following a present tense exhortation means that a certain benefit will follow the activity of the exhortation. Or, to say it differently, the action of the exhortation precedes the promise that follows.

Here I note that Jeremiah 31:18, 19 does not at all support AL’s doctrine of the call of the gospel. The passage teaches that when God turns one to Himself He does so in such a way that the man actively repents, smiting upon his thigh in genuine grief. And when he repents he is forgiven, which forgiveness takes place in the man’s experience in the way of his repenting. And this is the issue: not that the activity of repenting is God’s work, which it is, but that His turning of us takes place in such a way that the elect actively repents and that this is the way of forgiveness and the experience of God’s favor.

Further, as regards Calvin on James 4:8, Calvin contends with the explanation that makes man’s drawing nigh to God a condition of God’s drawing nigh to us. But Calvin acknowledges from the very outset of his explanation that there is a sense—an important sense—in which our drawing nigh precedes God’s drawing nigh to us. Nor is he afraid of this truth as is AL. I quote: “He (James) again reminds us that the aid of God will not be wanting to us, provided we give place to him.” “Provided we give place to him”! According to Calvin, giving place to God precedes the granting of God’s aid to us. 

Let me appeal to the Christian experience in everyday earthly life, which is based on the reality of spiritual life. When covenant parents have a wayward child, they call the child to repent, to turn, and to draw nigh again to them in the fellowship of the Christian family. The child repents by the grace of God, and in this repentance draws nigh to his parents. When this takes place, and in this way, the parents draw nigh to the child. His drawing nigh precedes the parents’ drawing nigh to him in forgiveness and family fellowship. To illustrate the order of the activity of repentance and faith more personally still, AL has from time to time, if he is at all like me, wandered away from God in sin. Indeed, daily. God has called him back. By virtue of this call, Andy has drawn nigh to God in a lively faith. How has he experienced God’s drawing nigh to him? Did God only say to him, “I have drawn nigh to you in election and in regeneration?” Or does God make AL to experience His favor once again, upon his drawing nigh to God, saying, “now, I forgive you, and receive you back into my favor and fellowship experientially?” Does not this drawing nigh to God in repentance and faith precede God’s drawing nigh to AL in “some, important sense”? Does this order of the experience of salvation identify AL as a closet Pelagian, Arminian, and Federal Visionist?

Because AL makes such a (mistaken) point of this, as though I make God dependent upon man in the matter, I am bold to ask him: “Is there such a reality in his life as forgiveness and the experience of the favor once again of God that follows his repenting, confessing sin, and trusting in God’s mercy, that is, drawing nigh to God?” Does this drawing nigh to God on the part of AL precede his experience of God’s once again drawing nigh to him? Do not now evade the issue by talking to me of election, the cross, and regeneration, or even of this drawing nigh to God being the effectual work of the Spirit within you, which it is. Is there a sense in your Christian life in which your drawing nigh in the sense of James 4 precedes God’s drawing nigh to you? If so, why so vehement an assault upon my teaching? To the detriment of your flock?

What AL does to the call of the gospel in James 4, he must do throughout the Bible. With disastrous consequences for the gospel and the experiential life of those who are taught by AL! For example, Jesus’ call, “Come unto me all ye that labor,…and I will give thee rest” is not, according to AL, a gracious call to the spiritually laboring, but law, insisting on the duty of the called. It merely convinces all that they cannot come. And, if AL rejects these charges, one charge cannot be gainsaid: the promise of rest in the text does not, according to AL, refer to a rest that follows the call, as though the coming in any sense precedes the experience of rest, for this would imply conditional salvation. Because of his fear of the serious call of the gospel, AL reads the text this way: “I give you rest, and then you come unto me.” Away with the future tense of the verb to be! Yes, and away with the call of the gospel!

The issue, I remind us all, is not that God is first in election, in redemption, and regeneration. It is not even the issue of the order of daily conversion, or of sanctification. For AL to describe this controversy as the matter of his confessing that God is first in all of salvation, whereas I deny this is another falsehood. Apart from all else, these misrepresentations by AL are evidence that his doctrinal case is weak. God is first and sovereign in all of salvation. But the issue is how God works in bringing to repentance and in holiness of life. He is first in the matter of drawing, as I affirmed earlier. But He draws us to Himself by causing us actively and consciously to come to Him so that in this way He can come experientially to us.

AL is afraid of the call of the gospel, as the exhortation of us to be active in faith and repentance. This is evident also in his description of faith only as a bond of fellowship with God. But faith also becomes spiritual activity: a knowing, a trusting, a returning, a drawing nigh. And this is what faith is when it is exhorted and admonished. When God calls us to draw nigh, He is not exhorting us to create fellowship with God. He is exhorting the activity of living in this fellowship.

As for Malachi 3:7, I have already proved that “return” in the text is not law, although it is a command. It is the call of the gospel to the true Israel of God, whom God, according to the text itself, willed to return to in all the blessings of salvation as the following verses make plain. And the last verse of the chapter shows that the call is efficacious. Israel will return. It is the call of a jealous husband to His adulterous wife whom He yet loves. It is the call of a loving Father to His disobedient child, whom He desires in the fellowship of the family. And in both earthly figures, the returning of the wife and of the child precedes the drawing nigh and the returning of the husband and father.

This is fundamental earthly reality and basic Christianity.

To deny this is not orthodoxy. It is a rejection of the call of the gospel: “Come, and I will then and in this way give you rest.”

Nervousness of Arminianism and of the federal vision may not vitiate this important aspect of the Christian religion.

I for one will not allow the Reformed faith to run scared before the false charge of Arminianism, run scared by denying the call of the gospel. Long before AL appeared on the scene I wrote a book against that error known as “hyper-Calvinism,” that always threatens the Reformed faith. Arminianism is not the only threat to truth of the call of the gospel. I do heartily urge AL to re-read the book, and the members of his congregation to read it.

Cordially in Christ,

Dad and Prof. Engelsma