Playing the Nice Guy

A year ago Prof. R. Cammenga started a series in the Standard Bearer entitled “Antinomian? Without a Doubt.” This series has been going on now for seven articles and is aimed at the theology of the Reformed Protestant Churches (RPC). Professor Cammenga writes,

In a few articles, I hope to demonstrate this distortion of the gospel of grace that has been embraced and is being aggressively promoted by the RPC. It is also my intention to demonstrate that, contrary to the charge of the RPC, the PRC remain faithful to the gospel of God’s sovereign, particular grace as set forth in Scripture and defended in the Reformed creeds. From their founding nearly one hundred years ago, the PRC by God’s grace have remained faithful to the truth, rejecting error both on the left and on the right. The leaders of the RPC have departed from the old paths and have laid another foundation than that which was laid in 1924 when the PRC were birthed.¹

I was inclined to wait until the professor finished writing his series, but it seems that the series will be interminable. He started with the supposed first error of the RPC on repentance and forgiveness. He has been beating that like a dead horse now, especially by mangling the creeds and cherry-picking quotations from John Calvin. And Professor Cammenga still has to cover what the Protestant Reformed theologians say about this supposed error. Then he has to get to an as yet unnamed second error of the Reformed Protestant Churches, which I assume he will cover in the same belabored and self-serving way. Besides, Professor Cammenga has already written enough to show that on the subject of repentance and forgiveness he is not Reformed at all. And if he is not Reformed at all on these subjects, he is simply not Reformed at all.

Professor Cammenga begins his attack on the RPC with the same refuge of false teachers throughout the ages: he plays the nice guy. So he writes,

At the outset, I want to be clear that I am not interested in character assassination. I do not in any way want to assault persons. I am interested in the truth—biblical and confessional truth. In my defense of the truth, I consider it to be my duty to expose error as did our Lord and His apostles. I will strive to speak the truth in love, as is the calling of every Christian according to Ephesians 4:15. It is not enough that we speak the truth; we are called to speak the truth in love. My aim is especially to help our readers in assessing the teaching of the leaders of the RPC. I am also interested in convincing those who have been led astray. I fervently desire the return of those who have left the PRC. I also pray for the repentance of the leaders of the RPC. May God use these articles to these ends. (98, 18:419)

This is pandering to a Protestant Reformed audience and a broader Reformed church-world that does the work of the Lord lackadaisically, has no stomach for battle, and believes that the cardinal sin of a preacher or writer is to be mean. But as Martin Luther said, “Their writings accomplish nothing because they refrain from chiding, biting, and giving offense.” Speaking the truth in love is not speaking the truth without attacking persons or speaking the truth while appearing to be cordial. Professor Cammenga seems to think that because one speaks the truth in a nice way that this will appeal more to people, and they can be convinced more easily of the truth. But that false notion of speaking the truth in love is nothing more than speaking with man’s wisdom. Look at the prophets. Look at our Lord. Look at the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter. Look at Luther and Calvin. Did they not attack persons?

So I want to tell Professor Cammenga that he should stop pandering to weak and shallow people who are offended by the business of defending the truth and to get busy attacking us. If we are antinomians, then we are wicked, plain and simple. The scripture damns those who turn the grace of God into lasciviousness as antinomians do. If we are schismatics, as he charges, then we are likewise wicked, even grossly so, because we destroy in the temple of God, and he who destroys in God’s temple him will God destroy.

I also can assure Professor Cammenga over against his prayer for our repentance that I remain impenitent in my schism and in my antinomianism. I welcome his charges and wear them as badges of honor given by Jesus Christ, whom Professor Cammenga’s spiritual forefathers likewise name-called a glutton and winebibber and a friend of publicans and sinners and whom they branded and dismissed as a Nazarene.

And at the same time, I condemn Professor Cammenga as a false teacher like those who have always troubled the churches with their lies, and I do so speaking the truth in love. This means to speak the truth in love for that truth and then in hatred for the lie and those who teach it. Perhaps he will hear this harsh condemnation and repent of his false doctrine; and if not, perhaps some of God’s people will hear and get away from his tent.

The reformation leading to the formation of the Reformed Protestant Churches has been vicious. That is how spiritual warfare is and how it must be as part of the history-long antithesis between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. I do not say that out of a mean spirit. That is the nature of spiritual warfare. For too long in the PRC, there has been none of the spirit of contending earnestly for the faith. And now they contend, but they contend against the truth, which they damn and reprobate as antinomianism, and treat with the utmost disdain the ministers of truth, all the while professing not to want to assassinate persons and characters. You cannot attack the truth without attacking those who teach it. Christ said that: “If they reject you, they reject me and reject him who sent me.” Likewise, you cannot contend against a lie without naming and attacking those who teach it. But the characters of men are not the most important. The most important things are the honor and character of God and Jesus Christ, who are assassinated in attacks on the truth. And whoever loves Christ cannot help but be vehement in his defense. So at the very least, if Professor Cammenga has the truth, his pandering to the unspiritual and squeamish in his audience by his caveat is the revelation that he does not love the truth that he claims to have.

In this vein I would encourage him if he attacks us and the truth again to use our names when he quotes us. It is not very scholarly to make unnamed quotations, and besides, it is weird. Are we the unmentionables? When someone uses quotes from our writings, he is supposed to give not only the source of the quotation but also the author of the quotation. I think perhaps Professor’s Cammenga’s tender audience might be able to handle that without thinking—gasp!—that he is attacking persons. I will claim quotations if they are my words and defend them unless he can convince me by the creeds or scripture that my words are wrong.

Get Your History Straight

In my reply to Professor Cammenga, I make a historical observation. He and many others in the PRC are habitual liars in their continual crafting of a false narrative of events in the PRC from 2015 onward that led to the formation of the Reformed Protestant Churches. Professor Cammenga writes,

Three ministers, Nathan Langerak, Andrew Lanning, and Martin VanderWal, have led the schismatics out of the PRC. They have organized themselves as the Reformed Protestant Churches (RPC). At the time that they left the PRC, these ministers were guilty of public schism. One had been deposed for this sin.

Besides the sin of public schism, there is also a critical theological issue involved in the breech [sic] between the RPC and the PRC. Since they have left, in their writings in the magazine they founded, Sword and Shield, in the public speeches they have given, and in the sermons they have preached, the leaders of the RPC have developed in this error. Their error is the error of antinomianism. Although it is true that the ministers were never formally charged with antinomianism when they were in the PRC, there were indications already then of antinomian tendences. Since then there has been doctrinal development (declension). (98, 18:418)

Let us get our history straight.

Besides, it is always good to review our history. It makes those who want to forget it or craft their own narrative uncomfortable, while also being beneficial to those who went through the history. The history could fill a book, but I will give the highlights. Rev. David Overway of Hope Protestant Reformed Church preached a number of atrocious sermons that were charged with false doctrine. By his denial of justification by faith alone in the believer’s experience (!), he also denied the unconditional nature of the covenant in the believer’s experience (!). The most egregious of these sermons was on the text John 14:6. In the sermon he taught that Jesus Christ and man through man’s Spirit-wrought works are the way to the Father. Many in the PRC leadership and clergy believed that, and the sermons could not be condemned.

When Neil Meyer, an elder from Hope church, protested the sermon on John 14:6, he was falsely charged with being an antinomian. This is relevant because the charge of antinomianism in this controversy was false from the beginning. It was the invention of men like Rev. K. Koole, the elders at Hope church and Grandville Protestant Reformed Church, and Professor Cammenga—among others—in order to distract the churches from the false doctrine promoted by Reverend Overway and defended vigorously by the Protestant Reformed ministers, professors, and elders. It also was revelatory of their own hatred of the gospel of grace, which they instinctively smeared as antinomianism. Indeed, if you believed Reverend Overway’s doctrine, then you must necessarily call the gospel of grace antinomianism because it declares that Jesus Christ alone is the way to the Father, wholly apart from any consideration of your works but by faith alone. The issue in the controversy was not the gospel versus antinomianism, but the issue was Romish legalism versus the Reformation gospel of justification by faith alone.

I have called that charge of antinomianism a red herring, and others in the PRC, including Professor Engelsma, have also called the charge of antinomianism a red herring, and so it was.

Professor Cammenga went on and on about antinomianism in that controversy and even went on to make a fool of himself publicly by promoting in a protest to the Protestant Reformed Synod of 2017 a book against antinomianism by the rank false teacher of the conditional covenant, Mark Jones.² That protest by Professor Cammenga showed that he was not Reformed.³ Mark Jones hates the truth of the unconditional covenant that is the heritage of the PRC. Jones characterizes the unconditional covenant as antinomian; and along the way of his critique, he also reveals that he does not believe in justification by faith alone.⁴

The counsel of Professor Cammenga’s colleagues to those who were troubled by his protest and writings was to ignore him. I did not ignore him, but I wrote against Mark Jones. I admit that in my writings against Mark Jones, I should have attacked Professor Cammenga, but remember that such polemics were strongly cautioned against by many of my colleagues, who preferred that Professor Cammenga be allowed to rant while everyone pretended to pay attention and at a convenient time would dismiss him. Many did dismiss him, but being incapable of self-awareness or of knowing how others see him, he continued to make a buffoon of himself with his silly charge of antinomianism stolen from the playbook of Mark Jones and other enemies of the truth of the unconditional covenant. I note that Professor Cammenga has not yet quoted Mark Jones against us in his series “Antinomian? Without a Doubt.”

In 2018 Rev. David Overway was offered up as a sacrificial lamb and condemned, however weakly. The Protestant Reformed Churches found it within themselves to say that he compromised the unconditional covenant and justification by faith alone. But the errors of Reverend Overway never went away. Too many had made clear that they believed the errors and were going to defend them and drive out those who opposed the errors.

The ink on the 2018 synodical decision had not yet dried, and Reverend Koole renewed the false doctrine with his article in the Standard Bearer concerning the calling of the Philippian jailor in Acts 16:30–31. In this article Koole taught that there is that which a man must do to be saved.⁵ In so doing he also called the exegesis of Herman Hoeksema of that same passage, “Nonsense!” (with an exclamation mark), and the charge of antinomianism was revived against those who opposed him.

In opposing this renewed threat, eventually it became evident that no one could write in the Standard Bearer against it, so a new magazine, Sword and Shield, was published. The publication of that magazine more than anything else galvanized the foes of the truth in the PRC, and they were determined—as one of their own said—“to lance the boil.” Yet we were not charged on our doctrine. As Professor Cammenga admits, there were no doctrinal charges against us. Indeed, after the beginning of Sword and Shield, the enemies of the truth studiously avoided the issue of doctrine in the controversy. At the trial of Rev. A. Lanning at the January 2021 meeting of Classis East, it was said repeatedly and with some force that nothing was alleged against his doctrine. Professor Cammenga knows this. In my own suspension and in the suspension of Rev. M. VanderWal, nothing was alleged against our doctrine. It was all a matter of improper behavior. I speak for myself that there was not so much as a hint to me from my consistory that I was an antinomian. Many members of the consistory rolled their eyes at Professor Cammenga and wished he would just go away. Many spoke of the time when the younger men would take over in the PRC, and things would change. Shortly before my suspension, I wrote the document regarding the doctrinal issues in the controversy that the consistory of Crete Protestant Reformed Church adopted and published. And in that document, I made evaluations about the place of antinomianism in the controversy. I said that the charge of antinomianism was a red herring and a distraction, and the consistory agreed.

What Professor Cammenga is now doing with his narrative is to give legitimacy to his engagement in a long diatribe against the Reformed Protestants about antinomianism as though this has always been the issue in the controversy. His narrative and articles are also a self-congratulatory, “I told you so.” But antinomianism has not been the issue. Antinomianism has been, and it will remain, a distraction from the main issue: the gospel of the unconditional covenant and justification by faith alone.

Professor Cammenga goes on and on about antinomianism because he does not understand the gospel-truths of the unconditional covenant and justification by faith alone. He is offended by them.

The Protestant Reformed Churches have given up their heritage of these two truths. Unconditional covenant and justification by faith alone are empty words in the PRC, used as window dressing for what is the gospel of these churches: a theology of man’s works and actions empowered by grace as decisive in the sinner’s reception and experience of salvation. To put it bluntly their theology is that in a certain, vital sense man is first in the matter of repentance and forgiveness and thus in the matter of the experience of salvation.

To put that in historical context, the theology of Rev. Hubert De Wolf that conversion is a prerequisite to entrance into the kingdom of heaven, which was preached from the pulpit of First Protestant Reformed Church and defended in the consistory room during his examination as teaching merely that in a certain sense man is first, has won out in the PRC. The theology went underground. It changed its clothes. But it is the same old error.

Before Professor Cammenga continues his series on antinomianism, he should answer the charge of the writers of Sword and Shield that the man-first theology of the present-day PRC and the man-first theology of Rev. Hubert De Wolf are the same and use virtually the same language. This is the official dogma of the PRC: there are activities of man that precede the blessings of God (all by grace, of course).⁶ This was De Wolf’s doctrine too. Perhaps in Professor Cammenga’s examination of that, he will realize that he is far from the theology of Herman Hoeksema as that was distilled in the 1953 controversy in the PRC.

There was a doctrine at the heart of the recent controversy in the PRC, but it was not antinomianism. The doctrine at the heart of the controversy was conditionalism in the experience of salvation inside the covenant of grace: once a man is in the covenant, he is empowered and enabled by God to do many things that are necessary for his salvation, so that the doing of those things precedes God’s blessings upon those things; and without doing those things, he does not receive the blessings of God. Repentance for the forgiveness of sins is simply one example of that. Doing good works to have more and more of God’s blessings or fellowship is another example.

A Wrong Approach

Next, I take issue with Professor Cammenga’s definitions of legalism and antinomianism. He writes,

My approach in these articles will be to contrast legalism with antinomianism—the antinomianism of the RPC—on specific doctrinal issues, after which I will set forth the historic Reformed faith. (98, 18:419)

He chooses this approach because part of the Protestant Reformed narrative is that there are two ditches on each side of the gospel. Thus the PRC with its doctrine has managed to maneuver in such a way that it avoids both ditches. The gospel for the PRC is somewhere between these two ditches. I suppose, depending on whom one would ask, the gospel is nearer to one ditch than to the other. The two-ditch mantra is an old and tired one. The gospel stands not between two errors, but the gospel stands over against the one error of man as God.

Both legalism and antinomianism declare man as God. Legalism teaches that man’s activities are decisive in salvation, so that man becomes his own savior. Antinomianism teaches that man may do as he pleases in his life without attention to the law of God, so that man becomes a law unto himself. Both legalism and antinomianism overthrow the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God is what is always at stake in every doctrinal controversy. That issue may be reduced into this simple formula that has held true since the garden of Eden: Is God God, or is man God?

So Professor Cammenga’s approach is wrong because he views the gospel as a kind of balancing act between going off into the ditch of antinomianism or veering off into the ditch of legalism. I suppose it is something like this: the legalist declares too much that there is something that man must do to be saved, and the antinomian declares too much that there is nothing that man must do for salvation. So the theologian has to balance these two.

However, the task of the theologian is wholly different: it is not a balancing act between two false doctrines, but his task is to declare God as God and to place man, man’s salvation, and man’s life in their proper places within that truth. God is God, and so man is not God. God is God, so man’s salvation is all of God and none of man. God is God, and so man’s whole life is to be worship of that God according as God tells man how he will be worshiped.

Because Professor Cammenga starts wrong, he cannot help but go wrong in his evaluation of the teaching of the Reformed Protestant Churches.

Sounds Like Rome

Then Professor Cammenga continues and defines legalism: “It is the teaching of legalism that repentance earns forgiveness” (98, 18:419).

He should know that not even Rome was that crass. Here is what the official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church is on contrition or repentance:

Contrition, which holds the first place amongst the aforesaid acts of the penitent, is a sorrow of mind, and a detestation for sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning for the future. This movement of contrition was at all times necessary for obtaining the pardon of sins; and, in one who has fallen after baptism, it then at length prepares for the remission of sins, when it is united with confidence in the divine mercy, and with the desire of performing the other things which are required for rightly receiving this sacrament.⁷

Rome’s doctrine is that repentance is necessary before God forgives. Repentance is “necessary for obtaining the pardon of sins.”

Professor Cammenga’s definition is a self-serving one that allows him to place his doctrine in between Rome’s, which teaches that repentance merits, and the antinomian’s, who teaches that repentance is not necessary. But Professor Cammenga’s doctrine bears a closer resemblance to Rome’s. The quotation above from the decrees of the Council of Trent would fit very well in any article written by about any Protestant Reformed minister and especially an article written by Professor Cammenga. The Roman Catholic theologians at Trent would have hailed Professor Cammenga as a great theologian, who had great insights into the necessity of repentance, over against those nasty Protestants, who denigrated repentance by their detestable faith alone. After all, did they not know that faith is always accompanied by repentance and that repentance is necessary? The fact is that Rome did not need to use the word earn or merit. Instead, Trent used the words “necessary for obtaining the pardon of sins.”

Professor Cammenga’s doctrine is no different. In his atrocious and ham-fisted handling of question and answer 76 of the Heidelberg Catechism, he tells us that repentance obtains the forgiveness of sins. He writes,

The Heidelberg Catechism has a similar Q&A regarding the Lord’s Supper. After asking in Q. 76 what it is to eat the crucified body and drink Christ’s blood, the Catechism answers that it is “to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ,” and in that way “to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal.” Faith in Christ, which is always accompanied by repentance, clearly precedes “obtain[ing] the pardon of sin and life eternal.” (98, 20:470)

Wow! If this does not tell us that Professor Cammenga is a Roman Catholic, I do not know what will convince anyone. His quotation is a rewrite of the Heidelberg Catechism. Cardinal Bellarmine could have signed Cammenga’s rewrite of the Catechism. The Catechism does not say, “and in that way ‘to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal.’” The Catechism says this:

Q. 76. What is it then to eat the crucified body and drink the shed blood of Christ?

A. It is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal… (Confessions and Church Order, 112–13)

The Catechism uses the word “thereby.” The German word is dadurch. I suppose that you could translate dadurch as way, but the English translation “thereby” captures the sense here. The Catechism is talking about the instrument of our reception of “the pardon of sin and life eternal.” Or to rephrase it, the Catechism is asking how it is that we come into the possession of Christ and all the glorious and saving righteousness, holiness, and satisfaction of Christ. Or you could say that the Catechism is talking about our justification and its benefit of eternal life. We receive that—as every good Protestant knows, and as a professor of theology in the Protestant Reformed Churches, of all places, should know—by faith alone. Alone! Leave repentance out of it. Alone! Leave good works out of it. Alone! Justification is through faith alone, or justification is by means of faith alone. The instrument of justification is faith. It alone justifies because it alone is united to Jesus Christ, and through faith we are covered by his righteousness imputed to us. This is all theology 101.

But what is curious is that in his haste to proof text from the creeds against the Reformed Protestant Churches, Professor Cammenga exposes himself as a false teacher, like those in Galatia who denied the Lord. For Cammenga writes, “Faith in Christ, which is always accompanied by repentance, clearly precedes ‘obtain[ing] the pardon of sin and life eternal’” (98, 20:470). This might be just sheer stupidity on his part or the writing of a logical and theological amateur. I would say that his whole framing of this controversy as a matter of before or after—whether repentance is before or repentance is after forgiveness—is the amateur fixation of a shallow man. I would also say that it is another red herring. The PRC are good at throwing out red herrings in order to distract from the main issue: whether there are activities of man that precede the blessings of God. So he argues: when the creeds teach that faith precedes forgiveness, this means that repentance precedes forgiveness because repentance and faith are always together.

What do you do with this kind of logic? As though the creed here is even talking about what precedes what. What an arid view of the creeds.

However, I do not believe that Professor Cammenga is as silly as his statement makes him seem. What he does there is to put repentance with faith as the way of obtaining forgiveness, and that is Romish. Repentance is necessary for obtaining the pardon of sins. You cannot on the words of the Catechism insert repentance into question and answer 76 without denying the Reformed, Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Then place Professor Cammenga’s amendment of the creed in the context of the subject in question and answer 76: What does it mean to eat Christ? This is such a compelling question because Christ said that except you eat him, you have no life in you. With that question of eating Christ, we come to the difference between faith and unbelief, heaven and hell, salvation and damnation. When Jesus taught his disciples about eating his flesh and drinking his blood and when by doing that he took away their works, then they all were offended and left Jesus, except for twelve, and one of them was a devil. You must eat Christ, or you have no life in you. And Christ said, and the Catechism says with him, that to eat Christ means in part to believe in him. It also means to be more and more united with his sacred body. But it means to believe in him. The fruit—fruit—of this is that we live and are forever governed by one Spirit.

But Professor Cammenga says that you eat Christ by faith and by repentance. And so Cammenga contradicts the Lord and also does despite to the Reformed creeds that he swore to uphold. That such a man would have the gall to charge others with antinomianism is shocking when he allows himself such wide latitude from his promises and oaths.

To prove that legalism and antinomianism are in essence the same, one only needs to look at the history of legalism and see that those who bind the church by the law also allow themselves wide liberty to break the law. So Christ told the Pharisees that they devoured widows’ houses and dishonored their parents while claiming to be the most scrupulous about the observance of the law. And Rome, where one had to work his way to heaven by grace, was a stable of vices and wickedness.

And that tells you what Professor Cammenga’s doctrine is. Whatever our doctrine might be, his doctrine is without a doubt Romish and legalistic to the core, and he adds to his offense a cavalier and evil twisting of the Reformed creeds.

A better definition of legalism that fits all its forms is that legalism teaches that man’s activities by grace are decisive in salvation. That is legalism. That has been legalism all through history. That is legalism as it has morphed and took on different forms. This was the legalism of the Arminian, for instance, as that was described by the Synod of Dordt:

Error 4: Who teach that the new covenant of grace, which God the Father, through the mediation of the death of Christ, made with man, does not herein consist that we by faith, inasmuch as it accepts the merits of Christ, are justified before God and saved, but in the fact that God, having revoked the demand of perfect obedience of the law, regards faith itself and the obedience of faith, although imperfect, as the perfect obedience of the law, and does esteem it worthy of the reward of eternal life through grace.

Rejection: For these contradict the Scriptures: Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:24, 25). And these proclaim, as did the wicked Socinus, a new and strange justification of man before God, against the consensus of the whole church. (Canons of Dordt 2, error and rejection 4, in Confessions and Church Order, 165)

It is essential for the Reformed man not merely to contend with the legalism of Rome, which teaches that good works merit righteousness and among which is the act of repentance, but the Reformed man must also contend with legalism in the covenant of grace. It is the doctrine of the covenant that is uniquely Reformed, and it is the doctrine of the covenant that Satan attacks through false teachers by a species of legalism. The legalism of the Arminian doctrine at the Synod of Dordt was that the act of faith and the obedience of faith, although imperfect, were regarded as perfect and rewarded with eternal life by grace. Dordt pointed out that this was a new and strange doctrine of justification—legalism—like the doctrine of the wicked Socinus. The legalism of the Arminian doctrine was that the activities of man—faith and obedience—were decisive in salvation.

And it is this same legalism that has destroyed the PRC. The activities of man are decisive in salvation. Ask any Protestant Reformed man in the pew: Is there that which man must do to be saved? He will answer yes. Ask him: Can God forgive if a man does not repent first? He will say no. Ask him: Must a man do good works to have the blessing of God? He will reply yes. Ask him: If a man does more good works, can he attain more of the fellowship of God? He will say of course. This is all legalism, man-first, Arminian theology.

That Is Not Antinomianism

Professor Cammenga then goes on to define antinomianism: “The teaching of the antinomians is that God forgives our sins apart from our repentance” (98, 18:419).

This definition is simply self-serving, and Professor Cammenga assumes what he needs to prove. The definition allows him to take a teaching and then to label it without any proof that it is antinomianism. Neither is the definition historically accurate. I know that Professor Cammenga stands in a long line of men who have attempted throughout history to label the gospel as antinomianism by pointing to certain doctrinal characteristics that supposedly lead to antinomianism or are antinomian. Professor Cammenga has labored hard for the Protestant Reformed Churches to buy into that theory. For one, it frees them from the obvious question: If they are antinomians, where is their lawlessness?

What an antinomian is is not hard to understand. Antinomians taught that the grace of God that delivers the sinner so delivers the sinner that he is free from the obligation to obey the law of God. The antinomians said, “We are delivered to do all this wickedness,” and consequently they lived lawless lives. The scriptures define antinomians as those who turn the grace of God into lasciviousness and use Christian liberty as a pretense for the indulgence and satisfaction of their own lusts (see Jude 1:4; Gal. 5:13).

Professor Cammenga goes on and on about antinomian tendencies and about antinomianism changing its form. But nowhere does he establish that his definition of antinomianism is, in fact, correct. In an attempt to bolster his definition, he quotes from John Flavel, who wrote that one of the main errors of the antinomians was “that believers are not bound to confess their sins, or pray for the pardon of them; because their sins were pardoned before they were committed; and pardoned sin is no sin” (98, 20:470).

Professor Cammenga knows that this has absolutely nothing to do with the present controversy. No one in the Reformed Protestant Churches teaches that because sins are forgiven before they are committed that no one is bound to confess their sins. The issue is not whether or not confession of sin is necessary. The issue is whether God, in fact, can forgive sins before repentance is performed by a man. The issue is whether repentance is first and that without repentance God cannot and does not forgive sins. The issue is whether there is forgiveness and justification of the sinner wholly and completely apart from his repentance.

Flavel was against this idea, and so is Professor Cammenga. Flavel condemned as an antinomian error the idea that sins are forgiven before men repent:

Now as to their errors about justification, the most that I have read do make Justification to be an immanent and eternal act of God; and do affirm, the elect were justified before themselves or the world had a being. Others come lower, and affirm, The elect were justified at the time of Christ’s death. With these Dr. Crisp harmonizes.⁸

According to Flavel it is an error, and an antinomian error, to teach that men are forgiven in eternity or that they are forgiven at the cross. By that standard he would have condemned Abraham Kuyper, Herman Hoeksema, John Heys, and other Reformed stalwarts as antinomian.

Flavel was also a teacher of wretched Puritan doubt. He wrote that the antinomians erred when they taught, “That men ought not to doubt of their faith, or question, Whether we believe, or no: Nay, That we ought no more to question our faith than to question Christ (Saltmarsh of Free Grace, p. 92, 95).”

Flavel also wrote that a dread error of the antinomians was that

they will not allow the new covenant to be made properly with us, but with Christ for us; and that this covenant is all of it a promise, having no condition on our part. They do not absolutely deny that faith, repentance, and obedience are conditions in the new covenant; but say, They are not conditions on our part, but Christ’s; and that he repented, believed, and obeyed for us (Saltmarsh of Free Grace p. 126, 127).

Flavel did not like the unconditional covenant and viewed it as antinomian. Flavel, then, knew about as much about antinomianism as Professor Cammenga does. Flavel would fit very well into the Protestant Reformed Churches of today. They might even make him a professor of theology. However, Professor Cammenga should do some more reading in Hoeksema and Kuyper if he wants to understand what Reformed men believe. John Flavel in his book against antinomians was an earlier Mark Jones and Professor Cammenga: in criticizing many as being antinomian, Flavel revealed that he did not understand or was terrified of the gospel.

I have written enough now. I will deal with more of Professor Cammenga’s theology next time.