A Long Time Coming

I have read and reread the exchange between Professor Engelsma and Reverend Lanning. It was my opinion, and I expressed this very strongly to Reverend Lanning, that this exchange must be printed in the Sword and Shield. I warn you at the outset that if you have not read that exchange, there are parts of my article that will make no sense.

First, I wanted this published in the Sword and Shield because it was this kind of exchange that should have taken place in the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) about five years ago. I have lamented repeatedly the massive censorship and dead silence of the Standard Bearer during the doctrinal controversy in the PRC. The Standard Bearer was a closed forum. Because of this, there was virtually no public writing about the disputed doctrines by the leading ministers in the PRC. That was deliberate and calculated. Such writing would have made them engage publicly, throw off the charade that there were not two sides and that there was no controversy, and come out with their theology.

They agreed with Rev. David Overway. In the early part of the controversy, they defended him, helped him, and encouraged him, and only later did they flee from him like rats abandoning a sinking ship. One of these days the PRC should get around to apologizing to him for her perfidy and betrayal. Reverend Overway did not teach a whit differently from Prof. Ronald Cammenga, Rev. Kenneth Koole, Rev. Ronald Van Overloop, and others too numerous to mention. If the denomination condemned Reverend Overway’s theology, then the denomination must also condemn the ideas that works confirm faith as assurance and that Christ did not personally do everything for our salvation (Cammenga in Hudsonville PR Church); there is something man must do to be saved and the call to seek the grace that is available (Koole in the Standard Bearer and Hope PR Church); and two rails to heaven (Van Overloop in Grace PR Church). If the Protestant Reformed Churches do not condemn those statements—and I will let you in on a little secret: they are not going to condemn them—then they should reinstate David Overway into the ministry. He was not even as blatant or as obnoxious as these others. And if the doctrines of these ministers and others stand as the proclamation of the gospel in the PRC, then the denomination must repent to Jesus Christ for its decision in 2018 condemning the theology of Reverend Overway.

But about this all there is dead silence in the PRC. I could only wish that Professor Engelsma had come out as strongly against the statements of Overway, Koole, Cammenga, or Van Overloop. He will not because these ministers are in his denomination, and Reverend Lanning no longer is. Even if one were inclined to oppose the statements of the Protestant Reformed ministers mentioned, the most one could do is write an impotent protest that would take years to wind its way through the assemblies and would more than likely be DOA (dead on arrival) when it got there. One certainly could not issue such a damning broadside as Professor Engelsma issued against Reverend Lanning. So I say, “Finally, some theological interaction.”

Second, the exchange needs to be printed because it is about the issues at hand in the reformation of the church that is now taking place. Although there was a complete lack of public writing by the leading theologians in the Protestant Reformed Churches leading up to Synod 2018, there was an explosion of writing after Synod 2018. One could never argue that Synod 2018 was a packed synod. Most of the delegates there were completely unprepared—whether from incompetence or malice—to handle the doctrinal issues before the synod. Partly this was because in the previous months they had been busy assuring themselves and others that the real issue was not justification and the experience of covenant fellowship with God but a rabble of antinomians in the churches. It was only after the decision of Synod 2018, which came as a bolt out of the blue to most of the leading theologians, that ministers and professors ramped up their writing and preaching. Men who had been dead silent in their preaching and writing for years and who repeated to anyone who would listen that there was no doctrinal controversy in the churches now stumbled over themselves to talk about the doctrinal controversy. This was not in defense and explanation of the truth that synod had defended, but to undermine the truth by bringing up again all the rejected theological bogeymen; trotting out again all the refuted arguments used to defend false doctrine; repeating to the point of nausea all the deceptive jargon, such as “the need for good works,” “active faith,” the “experience of salvation,” and “conscious enjoyment”; and quoting and twisting all the same articles from the creeds—Lord’s Day 32, Canons 3–4.12–13 and 17, and Canons 5.5—in the service of false doctrine.

The impression was created that the PRC faced—as Vienna, the Turks—a vicious onslaught from an overwhelming horde of those who denied the call of the gospel, the preaching of the law, and the calling to do good works, and, seemingly the worst of all, those who made men stocks and blocks. It was a lie, and those who espoused it knew that it was a lie. No one, not even the most ardent antinomian, has ever made man a stock and a block. That was a slander of the Arminians against the truth of sovereign grace, and those who take it in their mouths pick up the slander the Arminians hurled against the truth. No one, of course, could say where the antinomians and hyper-Calvinists were, or who they were, or when they were coming, or what they were saying that earned the rebukes; but the PRC was assured this was the denomination’s great and dangerous foe. 

This is all laughable, of course. We know that now. The only “antinomians” and “hyper-Calvinists” the PRC actually cared to fight were those who rebuked her for denying justification by faith alone and the unconditional covenant and displacing the work of Christ (!), which is to say, no antinomians at all but those who were contending earnestly for the gospel that the PRC was busy undermining at the seminary, from her pulpits, and in her writing. Professor Engelsma now repeats the slander that has been the line and explanation of the controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches since the beginning.

The behavior of the PRC may be likened to that of the French after World War I, who at great expense of men, money, and material built the Maginot Line to protect themselves from a German assault that came in the back door of Belgium. The French neither learned the lessons of World War I, nor did they listen to the warnings they were given prior to the invasion, and they were completely overrun. Having built a Maginot Line against the hyper-Calvinists, who will never threaten them, the PRC will be overrun by the conditional theology that does.

As a result of all this—and some shady church political maneuvering—there is no longer a doctrinal controversy in the Protestant Reformed Churches. Those who carried it on against the false doctrine that was being preached and written have been ousted or are in the process of being ousted. I say ousted because when the departing church makes decisions that are evil, then she drives the people of God out of their inheritance as really as if they were removed by vote. The apostatizing church departs; she departs from the truth and from the people of God and by her intolerable decisions drives her children from her home as really as a mother who says that her children must do evil in order to live in her home drives them away from her house. The fleeing of the children cannot be blamed on them but must be blamed on the intolerable regime of the mother.

Having driven out many of her children, the PRC now will have her peace. The recent jaunty report in the Standard Bearer about the last Protestant Reformed synod makes that plain. The peace will be the peace of the graveyard—or of the theological museum—where the tombs of the dead prophets are built and they are praised to the heights, while prayers of thanksgiving are offered that the prophets are dead. This is true. I would ask the editors of the Standard Bearer whether they would have liked Rev. Herman Hoeksema as the editor of the Standard Bearer during the recent theological controversy that the PRC went through. They would not have. They never agreed with the way Hoeksema wrote publicly against the false doctrine in 1953 and criticized him for it. He is fine as long as he stays in a book, preferably a very old and not a very well-read book. So little are they his heirs at the editorship of the Standard Bearer that the editors closed the pages of the magazine to Protestant Reformed ministers in the middle of a doctrinal controversy in a stunning historical repeat of what the Christian Reformed Church did to Hoeksema. Then when those ministers started their own magazine, the Standard Bearer editors screamed “Schism” and “Slander,” or got others to scream “Schism” and “Slander” for them.

Having driven out many of her children, the Protestant Reformed Churches will be left with the theology of Professor Cammenga (Christ is not enough) and Reverend Koole (If a man will be saved, there is that which he must do) and with the inane analyses of Professor Dykstra (There was no false doctrine taught). The denomination will have neutered ministers who are unable or terrified to engage in theological controversy, or worse, able teachers of false doctrine and a deadly peace.

That is the thing about false doctrine. It is like a cancer. It must be diagnosed by the doctor. If the doctor tells you that you have gout when you really have cancer, then you die of cancer. Having diagnosed the cancer, the doctor must eradicate it, or it comes back. The PRC suffered from bad physicians who engaged in theological malpractice on a grand scale. The physicians misdiagnosed the disease and worse. It is bad enough when the patient has cancer that the doctor tells him he has gout; but then worse, when the patient’s cancer is diagnosed, that the doctor continues to say the patient has gout and then prescribes an excruciating remedy. So the patient not only dies of untreated cancer but also all the while suffers in agony from the incompetent treatment of his nonexistent gout. The physicians of the PRC, with the patient writhing in agony with treatable cancer for five years, all shouted that the patient had gout (antinomianism). Once the cancer (denying justification and the unconditional covenant) was diagnosed, they continued to shout that the patient had gout and treated that gout with agonizing doses of Herman Witsius. The Protestant Reformed Churches may have such physicians.

The exchange, then, between Professor Engelsma and Reverend Lanning is too late for the PRC. It should have happened years ago. Professor Engelsma’s arguments will serve two purposes in the denomination, as I see it. 

First, those who could not care less about the doctrinal controversy—or doctrine generally, whether Engelsma’s or Lanning’s—will console themselves that everything is fine in the PRC and that the issue was after all a pack of radical, hyper-Calvinistic, antinomian schismatics who have—finally—been driven out and now are definitely and definitively exposed by Professor Engelsma. Many of these people will cheer without ever having bothered to read the exchange or think about the arguments. It is enough for them that Professor Engelsma has said so.

Second, those who are interested in using Professor Engelsma for their purposes—they did not particularly care for his writing before this but find him useful now—will drive the issue of man’s preceding God in the experience of salvation in a supposed defense of the gospel against nonexistent hyper-Calvinists. It will be an explanation of the fellowship of the covenant that does not in fact do justice to the mutuality of the covenant and the believer’s experience, but which makes the covenant bilateral and is a denial of the unconditionality of the covenant at the point of the believer’s experience and his activity in the covenant. It will be the teaching of man’s preceding God at the vital point of his experience and the assurance of his salvation and God’s love of him. Professor Engelsma’s response will serve no positive purpose for the Protestant Reformed Churches.

Profitable for Development

However, the exchange is very profitable for the Reformed Protestant Churches: the reason for her existence is about covenant fellowship; conscious covenant fellowship; assurance of covenant fellowship; the experience of covenant fellowship. The reason for her existence is about what might be called the mutuality of the covenant and how this is to be explained. I want to thank Professor Engelsma for coming to and stating the heart of the issue between us. Finally, a clear statement about what we have been fighting about for five years.

He dismissed this issue in his protest to Synod 2017. He made it strictly about justification and the exegesis of John 14:6, but the issue of covenant fellowship never went away. Justification in relationship to the covenant is precisely about how the believer has peace with his God, lives in peace with God, and is assured of God’s favor toward him. Justification is very much concerned with the believer’s experience and conscious enjoyment of God as his God. John 14:6 is about coming to the Father, and that surely involves this issue of the covenant, for Christ was talking to his disciples, who had grown up with the law of Moses and had been circumcised the eighth day and were all good Jews. They were in the sphere of the covenant. He taught them that in the covenant, initially and always, no man comes to the Father but by Jesus Christ, and no man comes but the one who is drawn by the Father. Christ taught that in covenant fellowship, in its experience, in its enjoyment, in its assurance, and in its mutuality, God is absolutely sovereign, is first, precedes, and draws. Article 26 of the Belgic Confession uses John 14:6 to the same purpose and speaks about the believer’s coming to God through Christ in prayer—covenant fellowship in which the believer draws near to God and communes with the God of his salvation.

The issue always was this matter of the experience of fellowship in the covenant and now especially as that matter comes to a head in such passages as Malachi 3:7, James 4:8, and 2 Chronicles 15:1–7. I lament that Professor Engelsma and I now find ourselves in different churches and on opposite sides of this issue. I do not agree with his analysis of Malachi 3 or the other passages. I will grant him that the passages are talking about the call of the gospel. I will not grant him the rest. But he has sharpened me as no other in this whole controversy over the past five or more years. He has stated the issues clearer and more forcefully than any, and for that he is to be commended. He may insult us that we are merely a pack of the ultra-orthodox, the proverbial two hundred percenters, but with the very forcefulness of his language he agrees with us that this matter is one of truth and lie, orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, and above all is deadly serious—a matter in which the very gospel of Jesus Christ is at stake.

The position that he stakes out is not new. It is perhaps a development, but it is not new. While I was in seminary in his Old Testament history class, he said that the task of a Protestant Reformed minister is to develop the mutuality of the covenant. He said this specifically, as I remember, in connection with our extended treatment of 2 Chronicles 15:1–7. In this instruction he referred favorably to volume 3 of Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics and his treatment of the doctrine of the covenant. Professor Engelsma noted at length that Herman Bavinck taught an unconditional covenant. My professor stressed that within that framework of the unconditional character of the covenant controlled by election, there is development to do in the doctrine of the covenant, especially concerning its mutuality. Then he referred to Bavinck’s statement that the covenant, established unilaterally, is destined to become bilateral. Knowing that the word bilateral was for a seminary student in the Protestant Reformed seminary about the same as saying conditional, Professor Engelsma explained that what Bavinck referred to was the mutuality of the covenant. The mutuality of the covenant he laid before me as the work of the Protestant Reformed theologian. I never forgot that. I do not know if I questioned my professor in class regarding that whole matter of Bavinck’s using the word bilateral, but I never forgot the exhortation. There was work to do on the doctrine of the covenant, and it involved what Professor Engelsma called the mutuality of the covenant and what Herman Bavinck called bilateral.

This is important because Herman Bavinck used the word bilateral. He said that the covenant is destined to become bilateral. Now bilateral and mutual are very different terms. In theology bilateral has come to mean conditional. It simply has that usage. The bilateral covenant means the conditional covenant established with God as one party and man as another party. The term bilateral means two parties involved. Mutual means or intends to teach that the covenant is a real relationship between God and his people. The covenant is a relationship; and for a relationship to be a relationship, it must be reciprocal, or mutual. There are in all covenants contained two parts. You cannot have a relationship with a rock.

Professor Engelsma in this recent exchange has come to the heart of the issue: in explanation of the mutuality of the covenant—for surely no one denies that the covenant is mutual and indeed a real relationship between the triune God and his elect people in Christ—is it proper to explain as part of the mutuality of the covenant that there is an activity of man that precedes an activity of God in any sense? Further, is it necessary in order to maintain that the covenant is a real relationship between God and his people to explain that there is an activity of man that precedes the blessing of God? Is this the only and necessary way to maintain the mutuality of the covenant, the responsibility of man, and the activity of man?

In this exchange we are in the realm of the mutuality of the covenant. No one will deny that. The text in question was preached in Malachi’s day to Israel, and in our day it was preached to a living church, the manifestation of the Israel of God in the New Testament. It was preached to those long familiar with God’s word and law, his doctrine and commandments. It was preached in the sphere of the covenant. It was preached to those who could be accused of straying from Jehovah in his covenant. It was preached as the word of the sovereign Jehovah God. So we are in the realm of the covenant. We are in the covenant, among the baptized and circumcised, and regarding the elect we are in the realm of the communion and fellowship of the covenant people of God with God as their God. Now in that sphere of the covenant is it proper to speak of an activity of man that precedes a blessing of God? And the issue is not merely a temporal one: first this; then this; then this. But the issue is very much a theological one and involves the theology of salvation. Professor Engelsma admits this and states it repeatedly. We are dealing with the explanation of salvation, of the covenant, of repentance, and of blessing. We are talking—not to put too fine a point on it—of the elect, regenerated, justified, and sanctified child of God’s relationship with his God, in which relationship he has strayed from his God and is walking in sin.

Now Professor Engelsma says that there is a certain, important, and specific sense in which an activity of man precedes the blessing of God. Such he says is the plain, idiot-proof meaning of Malachi 3:7, James 4:8 (I would add 2 Chronicles 15:1–7), and any other similar passage of scripture where God says, “Seek me, return to me, repent, believe,” and the like. In all of these passages, there is a specific, important sense in which an activity of man precedes the blessing of God. When asked what this sense is, Professor Engelsma replies that it has to do with the experience of salvation and the assurance of salvation. In the experience of salvation and in the assurance of salvation, the activity of man precedes the blessing of God, not merely in the temporal sense. This is his settled doctrine of experience and assurance in the covenant of grace. There is an activity of man that precedes the blessing of God.

Answering the obvious question, how can man precede God, he explains that God comes to men in the call of the gospel, in which call there is grace and Christ and in which call God allures his people to himself with the promise of blessing. Professor Engelsma says that God has the last word. God calls them. They by nature say, “I will not,” and yet God has the last word; they come to him. He says that God has the last word; but with regard to the experience and assurance of man, there is an activity of man, worked by the grace of God, of course, wherein man precedes God and in the way of which God gives a blessing, and without which there is no blessing.

If I may be permitted an explanation of the professor’s doctrine as stated in this exchange, it is this: God draws nigh to us in the call of the gospel but not all the way because we have not drawn nigh to him yet. God draws nigh to us but stands partly afar off because we have not drawn nigh to him. God calls and by the effectual call draws us, so that our drawing near (by God’s call) is before God’s drawing near to us in our experience and after, of course, he has already drawn near to us in the call, but not totally drawn near to us because we have not drawn near to him (by grace, of course, not in our own strength, of course, and by the call—by which he draws near us—but not all the way draws near to us, but only stands afar off calling sweetly and tenderly and makes us draw near to him, and after which he draws near to us).

Is that clear?

Professor Engelsma says that to deny this is the same as and as obvious as a denial of Genesis 1.

Herman Bavinck, for all his brilliance, was wrong to speak of the covenant as being destined to become bilateral. The covenant is never in any sense whatsoever bilateral any more than the covenant in any sense is conditional. The covenant is mutual, but that is not bilateral. There is real friendship, a real relationship between God and his people, but that is not bilateral. There are two parts in the covenant; there are never two parties. There are two parts in the covenant, and the parts are mutually related.

The question is, how is this mutuality to be explained? When God comes and declares in the gospel, “Return to me, draw near to me, seek me,” and all the rest, how is that to be explained? And when scripture places the matter so strikingly as to reveal God saying, “Draw near to me, and I will draw near to you,” what is it teaching by that language? Is the whole point of that language to teach that there is an activity of man that precedes the blessing of God? Is the whole point of that language to teach that man is active and actively believes?

I do not believe this is the point of the language, because teaching that there is an activity of man that precedes the blessing of God is fundamentally Pelagian, however the one who teaches it may howl that he is not a Pelagian. These passages that are in question in this exchange are not fundamentally different from Christ’s words calling his people to come to him and promising that all who do will find rest. Is the emphasis on man’s activity of coming to Christ? Is it all about man? Man must come, man must believe, man must repent, man must draw near, man must seek God, and all the emphasis is on man? Without that activity of man, man receives nothing from God? Appeals to grace do not change the charge either, because the Pelagians, Rome, the Arminians, and the teachers of a conditional covenant all always appeal to grace.

The emphasis of these passages is on God and his calling—his powerful, effectual, irresistible, infallible calling. What we are dealing with in all of these passages is the call of the gospel in the covenant—the preaching of the gospel within the sphere of the covenant. I maintain that Malachi 3:7, James 4:8, and 2 Chronicles 15:1–7 are not essentially different from Matthew 11:28–30, Acts 2:38–39, and Acts 16:30–31, and the answer to the exegetical questions of Malachi 3:7, James 4:8, and 2 Chronicles 15:1–7 may not be essentially different from the explanation of Acts 16:30–31 and the rest. All the passages involve the call of the gospel, or I will at least grant that argument because Professor Engelsma makes the issue the call of the gospel and really every admonition of scripture.

My question is, what is the Protestant Reformed interpretation of Acts 16:30–31? Not what has the PRC done in the Standard Bearer with that passage of late? But when the truth was on the line, when men were preaching calling and responsibility, and conditions were being introduced subtly in the preaching, what was the Protestant Reformed explanation of that passage? Everyone knows. It was not nonsense.

Unfinished Business

There is the unfinished business in the Protestant Reformed Churches of Rev. Ken Koole’s article in the Standard Bearer on Herman Hoeksema’s sermon on Acts 16:30–31. In his article Koole ridiculed Reverend Hoeksema’s exegesis of the text because as any idiot can see, the apostle did not say, “Nothing, do nothing.” The words of the text inspired by the Holy Ghost were, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and that in response to the question, “What must I DO to be saved?” Reverend Hoeksema was plainly denying the very words of the text and not doing them justice. As any idiot can plainly see, there is something that a man must do to be saved.

Professor Engelsma knows of this because he was involved in that miserable exchange that went nowhere because no one after him was allowed to write about it in the Standard Bearer. In the text the apostle Paul responded to the question of the Philippian jailor. The jailor had asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Reverend Hoeksema explained that memorably as, “Do nothing, nothing but believe.” And he specifically addressed the issue of man’s responsibility and activity. Man’s responsibility means that no one has the right not to believe. All men must believe. All who do will be saved. All who do not will be damned. All men must be called to believe. Believing is also an activity of man worked by the gospel. No one denied any of these things. But that is not the gospel: the call, the urgent, serious call of the gospel in the text was “Believe,” which call meant to do nothing for your salvation.

Reverend Koole, of course, which anyone who cares to remembers, ridiculed that and spoke about his full-orbed gospel and new phrases to prompt godliness. One of those new phrases to prompt godliness and responsibility was, “If a man would be saved, there is that which he must do.” Of course, all of this is to be explained because the people are regenerated, the gospel is a powerful call, and the Holy Spirit works in a man. But man must really do it! That is the emphasis. That is the message. After all the talk about grace, the Holy Spirit, regeneration, and the rest of the wiggle words, the real point of the message is that man MUST do it, MAN must do it, man must DO IT. Recognizing the obviously offensive character of that, Reverend Koole added words such as experientially and in his conscience and consciously, so that if a man would experientially know salvation in Christ, there is that which he must do. All of this was a distraction from the main issue, which was that Koole was teaching that the call of the gospel teaches that if a man would be saved, there is that which he must do. He sailed the ship right into Arminian waters.

That was not merely an exegetical point, but it served a theological point in the midst of a doctrinal controversy about the covenant that only after you do something do you get something; man precedes God. You do the repenting and believing, and God gives the experience and salvation. Reverend Koole made a point in his initial article and in later articles of emphasizing that he was talking about the experience of salvation. He moved the whole matter into the realm of experience—the objective explanation of salvation versus the experience of salvation.

This is unfinished business in the Protestant Reformed Churches. The denomination may not waffle on this matter. Either she has Hoeksema’s do nothing or she has Koole’s do something, and Professor Engelsma has come down squarely on the side of Reverend Koole’s do something, by grace of course and by the call of course—but do something. The Protestant Reformed Churches must come to an understanding on this. I think the denomination already has. She has jettisoned Hoeksema and embraced Koole. She has made up her mind that she will never be accused again of being Reformed with a tendency to one-sidedness.

And this is the result of unfinished business that goes back to the report of the majority committee that came to the May session of Classis East in 1953. That report never was repudiated. That report was a defense of conditions. That report explained in explicit—some might say exquisite and others might say excruciating—detail how and in what context a Protestant Reformed minister could preach and teach conditions in salvation, of course so long as he used the right words, such as in the way of and the like. After all, De Wolf himself insisted that he was not tied too much to the word condition, only as long as the substance remained. His colleagues agreed and found the way for his statements to be defended: we are not talking about the initial entrance into the kingdom but the daily entrance into the kingdom, which pretty soon would become a distinction without a difference. I do not see any discernible difference between what Professor Engelsma has written and the theology of the 1953 majority report.

The issue again is not that the word condition is used or not used, but what does conditional preaching sound like, and in what context is that preaching desirable and indeed necessary? The report made clear that such preaching is not desirable when the issue is the initial entering into the kingdom of heaven or into the covenant of grace. That kind of preaching is, however, desirable when talking about the daily experience of entering the kingdom: that kind of preaching is desirable when the issue is experience and assurance. If a man would be saved—consciously, experientially—there is that which he must do. If a man would have God draw near to him—experientially—he must first draw near to God.

The Protestant Reformed Churches were rocked by controversy for years. As that controversy is now finished for the PRC, Professor Engelsma has stated the denomination’s position: in the realm of experience and assurance, there is that which man must do to be saved. In this realm man precedes God, and man’s activity in this realm is that upon which the blessing of God depends.

Experience is Salvation

What of this matter of man’s experience? Is it true that when we come into the realm of experience, we may begin to speak of man’s preceding God? It must be emphasized strongly over against the false doctrine that has appeared in the PRC that the experience of salvation is salvation. So it must be insisted that what is true of experience is true of salvation, what you say of experience you say of salvation, your doctrine of experience is your doctrine of salvation. That is the fact of it. Justification is the experience of justification. Sanctification is the experience of it. And still more, man is such a liar that he needs God’s word and truth to tell him what his experience is; otherwise he will get it wrong and put himself into places and take honors for himself that he does not deserve.

Now one can kick and scream against that, and holler and yell that the plain word of God says, “Turn and I will turn to you” or something similar to that. But the word of God says, “If” frequently too. The word of God says, “There is no God.” It is that same kind of insistence that we are only talking about the plain sense that false teachers down through the ages have used to corrupt the word of God.

Then there is that whole matter of the distinction that is being made between turning and falling. Professor Engelsma makes a big point of this in his criticism of Reverend Lanning’s sermon. If the point is that if you are falling, you cannot be expected to stop yourself; but if you are turning, then you can be asked to turn yourself; then I deny the distinction between the two terms. Man can as little stop himself from falling as man can turn himself to the living God. But the living voice of the living God can as easily stop a man from falling as he can turn a man in his apostasy from God. The difference in analogy makes no difference as to the substance of the doctrine. Turn is not used instead of fall to emphasize what man can do. If the fact that the word turn is so important is because man can turn, whereas man cannot stop falling, then I say, “Interpret turn as fall, because the point of the text is that man can as little turn himself as he can stop falling. Both are equally impossible.” That man turns to God when God says, “Turn” is as easy for God as that man stops falling and ascends to God when God says, “Stop falling.” Both are to be explained the same way.

The analogy of all this is exactly the one to which Professor Engelsma referred when he said that a denial of his explanation of Malachi, James, and other passages is as much and as plain a denial of the word of God as a denial of Genesis 1. But he must consider that in Genesis 1 God called the things that are not as though they were, and by that call he made the light to stand out of darkness. The light was not in some specific and important sense first. And Professor Engelsma will say that any idiot knows that light is inanimate and not rational and moral, and so that does not hold. But then I would point him to the analogy that the apostle uses to explain the call of the gospel, always, at all times, and everywhere, whether the words are come, seek, turn, or believe: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). The call creates what it speaks; calls into being what it says; moves, draws, turns, and saves; and that according to God’s eternal good pleasure. Many are called, few are chosen. The promise is to all who are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

In the call of God, when he says, “Turn, draw near, repent, believe,” the child of God does not hear the voice of the law but of Christ in the gospel. In that call God does not stand afar off or hold himself aloof from his children until they do something by his grace, and then God gives himself to them as a result. Rather, God calls, and in the very calling of his children, he draws near them. In the very call of the gospel, his child hears God speak to him and experiences God as his God speaking to him, as Christ says, “My sheep hear my voice, and they know me and are known of me, and they follow me.” Because I hear God speak to me, as the result of God’s speaking to me, in the power of the call, I draw near to God, repent, believe, turn, or however else one wants to describe it. All the emphasis when God says, “Draw near to me, and I will draw near to you” is on God and the work of God to save his people. None of the emphasis is on man and what man must do to be saved.

Saying this does not prohibit or hinder me from preaching the call urgently and everywhere God sends me with the gospel. It explains why I give the call. I know that God will work his sovereign good pleasure by it; a savor of life to life and of death to death; dividing man asunder by the powerful voice of him who always speaks in the church; turning in repentance and hardening in unbelief; drawing near to him or pushing away far from him. The relationship between God and his people in the covenant—the covenant mutuality—is always out of God, for all things, including covenant fellowship, covenant mutuality, and covenant experience are of God, through God, and to God. There is never a sense in which an activity of man precedes God’s blessing. God’s blessing, his eternal and unchanging favor toward his people, is the cause and explanation of their part and their fulfillment of their part in the covenant of grace. The relationship between the two parts of the baptism form is that God does his part and fulfills his promise, and as the infallible result man becomes active, believes, repents, and the rest. The mutuality of the covenant is that man’s activity in the covenant is always the result of God’s, always follows God, and is always the fruit of God’s blessing. The very fellowship of the believer with God in every respect is of God; its very experience is of God.

An Invitation

Professor Engelsma can turn on us now with vigor because we have left the Protestant Reformed Churches. I will not lament his strong language. I do not care if he used the word idiot or calls us devils, if that is what we are being. I would ask him to consider why he treats his theological sons worse than he treats outright deniers of the gospel. What is our sin? Why does he repeat now the slander of our enemies? I note that I have no problem with a vigorous argument, even with him. I do not relish it, but if it is necessary—and in this case it is necessary—I will do it. 

But my question is: having vanquished us antinomians and hyper-Calvinists, will he turn on the false theology that is threatening his denomination? I will make it easy for him to inquire of his colleagues by including their names; perhaps he will send out a blistering email against them. Does he agree with grace that is available (Koole); that there is something man must do to be saved (Koole); with the use of the conditional covenant theologian Witsius (Koole); with justification in the final judgment by our works, so that God finds out who believes in the final judgment by works (Bruinsma); with two rails to heaven (Van Overloop); that Christ is not enough (Cammenga); that there are aspects of our salvation that Christ did not personally accomplish (!) (Cammenga)? All of that is a lot about man. I do not see how these are any different than that in some specific, important, and vital sense—experience and assurance (!)—there is an activity of man that precedes the activity of God. Which also is a lot about man.

Further, I do not believe that his emails were written to me or to Reverend Lanning or to anyone who left the Protestant Reformed Churches. They were written for the PRC to dissuade anyone from leaving by making us look like a pile of radicals, like those who have fallen off our theological rockers, those who are reactionary, and those who now confirm with our preaching the charge that has always been raised against us that we are antinomians and hyper-Calvinists.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I would remind him that we are his most congenial disciples, even if we do disagree with him on a point and he is embarrassed by us now. We have taken him dead seriously. He has helped us sharpen. We have listened, read, digested, considered, learned from, and been taught by him. He might do us the courtesy of remembering that.

I also want to make sure that he knows that we have not closed our pages to him. He should stop pretending that he is surprised that his emails get around. He knows that they will get around. He writes them to get around. He may write more of them, and we will answer them. But I want him to know that he may write against us in these pages. I will give him space in my own rubric to do it, if he wants to. But I fear he has written us off. I fear he is blinded by his love for the institute of the PRC. I am sorry for that. I am sorry for him. I never thought it would come to this. But God’s ways are in the sea, and his footsteps are unknown.