With this issue Sword and Shield is starting its fifth volume year. This is by the grace of God alone. Sword and Shield is not our work, but it is God’s work. The effect of Sword and Shield is God’s effect. Sword and Shield publishes the truth. That is our conviction. It publishes the truth as that truth has been delivered to us as a precious inheritance. Sword and Shield publishes that truth especially as the understanding and the confession of that truth have been sharpened through controversy. As controversy continues, we desire that our understanding and thus our writing of the truth may be more and more sharpened. Herman Hoeksema understood and wrote the truth at the beginning of his many years of writing the truth. But who would deny that his statements about the truth later in his ministry could have come about in no other way than through controversy over the truth in the 1940s and 1950s? So we also desire that continued writing and controversy might serve for the sharpening of our understanding and our writing of the truth.
Based on our conviction that Sword and Shield publishes the truth, we also make judgments about the reception of the magazine. Many hate the magazine and no longer read it, or they curse it. This is because they hate the truth, do not want to read the truth, and curse it. Many love the magazine and cannot wait for Sword and Shield to come in their mailboxes. This is because they love the truth. The reception of the magazine and its publication of the truth is indicative of the spiritual state of those who receive or reject the magazine. Those who have the Spirit receive the Spirit’s things. So said the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:11–16,
11. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
16. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
Christ is not divided. He who has Christ receives Christ’s things. Because he is joined to Christ by Christ’s Spirit, he has Christ’s mind; and by the power of that same Spirit, he receives and rejoices in those things that are Christ’s. On that basis we also judge that because Sword and Shield publishes the truth, the rejection of Sword and Shield is the rejection of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus and as it is received by the power of his Spirit alone.
The truth is one harmonious whole. The truth has been developed throughout history and through controversy. It seems that the Lord determined that we would have a controversy about the application of salvation to the elect child of God and thus a controversy about the elect’s possession, experience, and enjoyment of his salvation. This is the place that God has given to us in the history of his church.
The controversy is important. Let no one suppose that the controversy over the possession of salvation is any less important than a controversy over election or the cross of Christ. For the truth is that a controversy over the elect’s possession of salvation must invariably involve in the end a controversy over election and the cross. This controversy over the possession of salvation has wide-ranging implications because the truth is one harmonious whole. One cannot tamper with and corrupt the truth of the elect’s possession of salvation without corrupting the whole of divine doctrine.
We have witnessed this throughout our controversy as well. And this reality has been pointed to on the pages of Sword and Shield. If man has a decisive part in the appropriation of his salvation, then whoever teaches that must end up with a different doctrine of election, a different doctrine of the cross, a different doctrine of man, a different doctrine of the church, and a different god. God is either sovereign and infallibly accomplishes his good pleasure in his elect and in all the world, or God is a god who engages in a mutually dependent relationship with man, so that there is a mutual interplay and interdependence among the grace of God, man’s obedience, and gracious rewards. If man is first in his salvation, then one must end up with a dependent god. Since many will try to deflect the force of that judgment by saying that God’s way is to enable man and graciously to give to man what man must do first, then we say that if man is first by the grace of God, then one must end up with a different god. So our judgment is that the god of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) with her man-first theology is a different god, who is no god at all. The God of the Reformed faith is independent, sovereign, and omnipotent. He is the God who brings to pass and performs all his good pleasure in both the elect and in the reprobate. The god of the Protestant Reformed Churches is dependent. He will not, he cannot, and he may not give certain aspects of the promise until man first performs his part. But such a conception is utterly foreign to the Reformed creeds and the Reformed faith. God is sovereign, and salvation is his work alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone, for the certain and inevitable salvation of the elect alone.
The Reformed faith roots salvation in God’s eternal decree of election. This decree is not a mere blueprint of what God will do, but this decree is what in God’s conception and purpose is perfect with him and what he unfolds, creating history. The Reformed faith’s official statement about election is found in Canons 1.7:
Election is the unchangeable purpose of God whereby, before the foundation of the world, He hath out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of His own will, chosen, from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault from their primitive state of rectitude into sin and destruction, a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ, whom He from eternity appointed the Mediator and Head of the elect, and the foundation of salvation.
This elect number, though by nature neither better nor more deserving than others, but with them involved in one common misery, God hath decreed to give to Christ, to be saved by Him, and effectually to call and draw them to His communion by His Word and Spirit, to bestow upon them true faith, justification, and sanctification; and having powerfully preserved them in the fellowship of His Son, finally to glorify them for the demonstration of His mercy and for the praise of His glorious grace; as it is written: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved (Eph. 1:4–6). And elsewhere: Whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified (Rom. 8:30). (Confessions and Church Order, 156)
This is the Canons’ monumental statement on the doctrine of predestination. The Canons to this point had been leading up to this statement, and everything that the creed says subsequently follows from this statement. The Arminians hated particularly the doctrine of predestination and made it the object of their attack. The Synod of Dordt defended the doctrine of predestination, and from the confession of that doctrine followed the rest of the Reformed churches’ confession of the truth of salvation.
I note at the outset, and this point cannot be lost or obscured: the Reformed faith connects the doctrine of election with the doctrine of the covenant. Canons 1.7 says, “This elect number…God hath decreed to give to Christ…and effectually to call and draw them to His communion…and having powerfully preserved them in the fellowship of His Son…” By the words “His communion” and “the fellowship of His Son,” it is obvious that the article speaks of the covenant and views the covenant in essence as fellowship. To be saved is to be included in God’s covenant. The fathers at Dordt saw that election controls membership in the covenant of grace. God decrees who will be brought into his communion and who will be included in the fellowship of his Son. This thought will be carried throughout the Canons. If the covenant is salvation, and it is, then the creed in teaching that election controls salvation also teaches that election controls membership in the covenant of grace.
In Canons 1.7 we see first that election is an eternal decree of God, which the article calls “the unchangeable purpose of God.” The idea of the word “purpose” is that which God had settled in his divine mind. His works are not only known unto him from all eternity, but his works are also eternally perfect in him. In time God makes that manifest in all his works. In this connection I am not going to trouble you with a dogmatics lesson concerning the decree. But we note briefly that scripture speaks of God’s decree with many different words: decree, counsel, appointed, determination, good pleasure, to know, foreknow, choice, election, predestinated, foreordained, and purpose. Each word has its own emphasis. God’s decree is a grand reality. One part of that decree is the settled purpose of God to save certain individuals.
The creed in 1.7 says that this is God’s purpose “before the foundation of world.” This is the biblical and thus creedal and a picturesque way to speak about eternity. God’s decree is eternal. God can never be conceived of without his decree. The decree of God is the decreeing God. His decree is perfectly free, so that what he decides to do is decided by no necessity. Yet God in his very nature is the decreeing, willing, purposing God, and his decree is ever with him and is the eternal expression of the purpose of his will.
This eternal purpose of God is unchangeable. Of necessity God’s purpose must be unchangeable. If the decree is the decreeing God, then all that applies to God must apply to his counsel. If God is immutable, then his counsel must likewise be immutable. There are many other adjectives or attributes that can be ascribed to God’s counsel. It is omnipotent, sovereign, wise, just, holy, good, eternal, and everything else that can be ascribed to God. Among these attributes the Reformed faith emphasizes that God’s counsel cannot be altered in any way, but that his counsel shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure.
Canons 1.7 also says that God has chosen “a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ” and says later that “God hath decreed to give to Christ, to be saved by Him, and effectually to call and draw them to His communion by His Word and Spirit, to bestow upon them true faith, justification, and sanctification…finally to glorify them for the demonstration of His mercy.” There are no ifs or possibilities in these statements. They are statements of fact, the fact being what God will do. What he decreed he brings to pass. When I said earlier that the decree is the decreeing God and that his works are eternally perfect in him, then that is how we must conceive of the Canons’ statement about the goal of election. The salvation of each individual elect and of the whole elect church is a reality in God from eternity. This reality he unfolds to the praise of his glorious name. The salvation of God’s people is an unfolding, a revelation, a work of God in time that carries out God’s working in the decree in eternity.
This is an entirely different conception from the Protestant Reformed conception of the decree. The Protestant Reformed Churches have God and man responding to one another—God and man in a mutual relationship of two parties in which God does his part, man does his part, and by their cooperation man comes to the final realization of the promise and the covenant of God. It is two-track theology. The decree as it is taught in the Canons is a dead letter in the PRC. The PRC has no decretal theology.
I will give you a recent example of that and one that also proves my contention that the PRC with her Arminian doctrine of covenant experience has also the Arminian god of open theism. The Arminian god of open theism responds to man. The Arminian god of open theism engages with man in such a way that that god is open to man’s decisions and desires and then changes along with man. In a recent protest that was treated at the October 2023 meeting of the Protestant Reformed Classis East, there is written the following:
The relationship between a child and his parent and the relationship between a husband and his wife are used by God’s Word to show how God and His people respond to each other in their fellowship with each other. This is the way in which God receives all of the glory for our justification, our sanctification, and our perseverance, and his rational and moral people grow in grace and knowledge and work out their salvation.
God’s Word is so full of this instruction that passages could be multiplied.
a. The reference to the fifth commandment and to Ephesians 6:1-3 are illustrative of these texts and should be decisive.
b. Hebrews 4:9-11 points to the reward of grace and admonishes the believer to work with the purpose of entering into that reward. “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest,”
c. 1 Corinthians 9:22-24 likewise teaches the believer to strive as he desires the experience of God’s approval. “To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.”
d. Cannons [sic] 5. 7. And 10. likewise demonstrates that God sovereignly works with His rational and moral elect that they experience His delight in a sequence of time and experience, in an organic way in which there is a mutuality of grace, obedience, and gracious reward.1
This is as full and as bald a statement of the Protestant Reformed covenant doctrine as I have ever read. God and his people respond to one another; and “there is mutuality of grace, obedience, and gracious reward.” “Mutuality” here can only mean interdependence. Any other meaning of “mutuality” leads only to nonsense in this case. There is an interdependency of grace and obedience, and then comes the reward. There is no election. Pete VanDer Schaaf even leaves faith out of consideration.
The Reformed view is that God brings to pass, unfolds, and reveals his decree of election not in dependence upon anything in man but according to God’s eternal and unchangeable purpose that is perfect in him from before the foundation of the world.
This election is a choice of God. What governs this choice of God is not anything in the creature. It is not even the misery of man that impelled God to choose man, as the misery of some beggar might pluck at your heartstrings and move you to help the beggar. You are moved by the beggar’s misery. The misery of man is in the sovereignty of God too. That misery is the way through which God reveals the wonders of his grace and the severity of his justice. What motivated God’s choice was his good pleasure. So Canons 1.7 says, “according to the sovereign good pleasure of His own will.” The will is the faculty to choose what the mind and heart present as good. God’s good pleasure is what delights him.
You must say here that at the heart of God’s good pleasure stands the glory of his own name, so that Canons 1.7 goes on to say about the salvation of the elect that issues from election, “finally to glorify them for the demonstration of His mercy and for the praise of His glorious grace.” What pleases God is the glory of his own name demonstrated in the salvation and damnation of sinners equally involved in ruin. What pleases God is the revelation of himself as the covenant God by establishing a covenant of grace with his elect in Christ. You must add to that the glory of God in Christ. God appointed Christ as the foundation of salvation through which God would glorify himself, and so God determined to glorify himself in Christ. You must say too that what pleases God is the salvation of his elect people, through which he is glorified.
This good pleasure that motivated God is sovereign. We mean by the word sovereign that God has the free and unquestionable right so to decide and that his pleasure— his delight one way or the other—is not dependent upon the creature.
In God’s choice of certain human beings, God was gracious. In God’s good pleasure to choose certain persons, he was motivated by a free favor that was also not dependent on the worthiness or the unworthiness of the objects of God’s grace. God was favorably inclined toward them in distinction from others; and in that favorable inclination, he willed, appointed, decreed their salvation.
Key to the presentation of the Canons in its statement about election is Christ. In theology we must always contend with Christ. A Christless doctrine of election is a cold doctrine of election, and ultimately it is not faithful to the biblical revelation and witness. Scripture everywhere presents Christ as the elect one. He is specifically called that in the prophecy of Isaiah, and he is that typically in David, whom God chose. In Canons 1.7 Christ is first. This might not be so clear at first, but consider the phrase “God hath decreed to give to Christ.” Christ is the elect one in this phrase. He is already first, and the elect were chosen to be given to Christ, not merely in time but also in eternity. This eternal relationship between Christ and his elect is further explained in the phrase “to redemption in Christ, whom [God] from eternity appointed the Mediator and Head of the elect, and the foundation of salvation.” Christ’s relationship with the elect is as their head. Christ is the mediator of the elect, but he is their mediator as their head, so that the elect are included in Christ, and he is their Lord. His work as their mediator is to redeem them. This work of Christ to be mediator and redeemer has an eternal, God-ordained mandate. It is not a work that Christ came up with, but God gave that work to Christ, whom God appointed head of the elect. Christ is thus the sole foundation of their salvation. It is not merely the work of Christ as the sole foundation, but Christ is the sole foundation of salvation. All the truth of salvation is founded on Jesus Christ and is meaningless apart from him.
To prove its doctrine, Canons 1.7 cites Ephesians 1:4–6:
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
The article also cites Romans 8:30, the so-called golden chain of salvation: “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” While these passages when properly exegeted will give the doctrine of Canons 1.7, we must ask, what was the fathers’ purpose in citing these specific passages? Ephesians 1:4–6 is a summary of the whole article. The article is basically a brief exegesis of this passage. All the elements of the article are there. Regarding Romans 8:30, I believe that the purpose was to show that as God decreed, so he did. There are no conditions, no possibilities, and no probabilities, and no man first and then God does. Predestination, calling, justification, and glorification are in the same state of realization. God decreed the end from the beginning, and he brings to pass what he decreed. The elect are inevitably saved just as God decreed.
The whole of article 1.7 brings us back to the creed within the creed: the glory of God. This doctrine glorifies God in the highest. What particularly is glorified in God’s decree is his grace—marvelous, rich, and glorious grace. God eternally elected in Christ a people whom he also infallibly saves.
Salvation flows to the elect as a stream from God’s decree of election. This stream is never interrupted by the possibility that man will not perform his necessary part. This stream is never interrupted by a demand of God upon man, which demand man must perform to receive the next installment of salvation, even if man performs that by grace. God’s way is not that God demands of man for salvation, and then God gives to man what God demands. God bestows effectually what God decreed in eternity and what Christ accomplished for the elect at the cross. This is what Canons 1.9 teaches:
This election was not founded upon foreseen faith, and the obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality or disposition in man, as the prerequisite, cause, or condition on which it depended; but men are chosen to faith and to the obedience of faith, holiness, etc. Therefore election is the fountain of every saving good, from which proceed faith, holiness, and the other gifts of salvation, and finally eternal life itself, as its fruits and effects, according to that of the apostle: He hath chosen us (not because we were, but) that we should be holy and without blame before him in love (Eph. 1:4). (Confessions and Church Order, 157)
This article points out the Arminian error about election. Election is not founded upon foreseen faith, obedience, or any other good quality or disposition in man as a prerequisite. In his commentary on the Canons, Homer Hoeksema noted a major translation inaccuracy of the opening sentence of the article:
This election was not founded upon foreseen faith, and the obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality or disposition in man, as the prerequisite, cause, or condition on which it depended; but men are chosen to faith and to the obedience of faith, holiness, etc.
Hoeksema proposed the following substitute:
This same election was not accomplished out of foreseen faith, and the obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality or disposition, as the cause or condition required beforehand in the person to be elected, but is unto faith, and the obedience of faith, holiness, etc.2
Canons 1.7 is the heart of the creed’s doctrine of election. The article is the monumental statement of the truth of election as a creedal confession of Reformed churches. Canons 1.9 is really an expansion upon the thought of article 7 by attacking the main Arminian redoubt of election by foreseen faith. The Arminians taught that faith and other activities are the conditions of election “required beforehand,” and they are then what God sees beforehand (Canons of Dordt 1, error 5, in Confessions and Church Order, 161).
I remark here that when conditional theology makes faith a condition, that theology cannot simply stop at faith, but that theology keeps adding conditions. Added is condition after condition after condition. To faith the Arminians added holiness and perseverance. We had a perfect example of that Arminian necessity with Reverend Koole’s false doctrine. In October 2018 he taught that faith is what man must do to be saved, and by November 2020 he was teaching that works are what man must do to be saved. The error of conditions always eventually takes over all of salvation and finally all of theology, so that conditional theology reconstructs the doctrine of God too. So soon as faith is admitted as a condition, the God of sovereign election becomes the god of open theism. In theology, all of theology, we always are dealing with the doctrine of God.
The fathers at Dordt put the language of conditions in the mouths of the Arminians and condemned that language. In the Reformed churches after Dordt, there was no excuse for Reformed men to use the word conditions. And there are no conditions in a Reformed sense. There are no conditions that are fulfilled by grace. Nothing that man does is the condition or the cause of what God does. Note well here that the language “required beforehand” is also put in the mouths of the Arminians and condemned. Really with that phrase “required beforehand,” we have the Reformed definition of what a condition is. A condition is that which is “required beforehand,” so that an activity of man is required before God can perform what he performs.
This is very relevant. We are doing battle with a theology of conditions in the PRC that cleverly disguises itself as merely being interested in what comes before and what comes after. So, for example, it is necessary for man to repent before God can forgive his sins. But you must ask the men who teach this, why is it so important what is before and what is after? And they will expose themselves as Arminian and conditional when they say that such and such are required before God can do what he wants to do. The PRC can only talk about what is required beforehand. Repentance is required before forgiveness; faith is required before justification; a life of good works is required before blessings. This language is fundamentally Arminian and has completely lost sight of the eternal decree.
The Reformed language is of election as an inexhaustible fountain out of which flows from God to the elect all that he has decreed to give to them. This is Reformed language.
Flows.
Fountain.
It must also be pointed out that when the Canons opposes conditional election, when the creed makes all of salvation flow out of election as from a fountain, then the creed opposes conditions in any sense in salvation. This is the very essence of Reformed theology. Because salvation flows out of election, all of salvation is the sovereign gift of God from that election. This cannot be stressed too much. Reformed theology of salvation is a decretal theology of salvation, and whatever threatens or tends to obscure this fact must be rejected as a threat to the decretal viewpoint.
Heretics and false teachers always play hocus-pocus with words. The men whom we deal with in the PRC are always playing hocus-pocus with words too. So they mention election, grace, Jesus Christ, covenant, repentance, and faith, but they are constantly injecting new meanings into these terms. So one must ask, what do you mean by that term? For instance, they would say, “We are saved by grace alone.” We thought that everyone meant the same thing by that statement. What I mean by “saved by grace alone” is that I am not saved by works at all. What the Protestant Reformed men mean by “saved by grace alone” is that God enables man to believe, God enables man to do good works, and man is saved by his act of faith and in the way of his obedience. The Protestant Reformed men—some of them—will howl that they do not teach that man is saved in the way of obedience, and they will say that they mean only that man experiences his salvation in the way of his obedience—period! But this is only more word games. Salvation in the decree, salvation in the cross, salvation in man’s experience, and salvation in heaven are all salvation and have one and the same doctrine. If man experiences his salvation in the way of his obedience, then necessarily he is elected in the way of his obedience too. There is only one doctrine of salvation.
The Arminians too played word games. The Arminians spoke of an election to faith. They spoke of faith as a gift of God, but they would never say that God gives faith to whomsoever he wills, and whom God wills he hardens. They would never say that faith flows out of God’s eternal decree of election. Rather, the Arminian doctrine is that election is out of faith. Faith is the cause of election; holiness is the cause of election; perseverance is the cause of election. These things are first before God decides to elect, and so God’s decision is based on and derived out of man’s decisions and activities. The lie, while claiming to be simple, makes theology a muddle. The Arminians multiplied conditions and multiplied decrees of election. It was all part of their hocus-pocus with words.
So also today the Protestant Reformed men multiply distinction upon distinction. If you would ask average members of a Protestant Reformed church what their church teaches, they would not be able to tell you, except to say, “We are saved in the way of obedience.” They catch the drift of their teachers; and without all the made-up distinctions to cover the lie, they state the lie baldly.
The Arminians made election out of faith, holiness, and perseverance. Very really, they made faith, holiness, and perseverance the causes of God’s election. God is dependent upon man. Man is first, and God responds to man. These things God supposedly foresees. But the whole Arminian concept of foreknowledge is a corruption of the scriptural teaching of foreknowledge.
Scripture mentions foreknowledge in Romans 8:29: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” In scripture the foreknowledge of God is his eternal love of his people. The scholar Thayer has a worthless comment in his lexicon in the entry on the Greek word for foreknowledge. He writes, “Whom he (God) foreknew, namely, that they would love him, or (with reference to what follows) whom he foreknew to be fit to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, Rom. 8:29.”3 However the word foreknowledge might be applied to men in scripture, God does not know as men know, but God knows in connection with his decree as the expression of what is pleasing to him.
There are two passages of scripture that prove that the Arminian interpretation is false. The first is Romans 11:1–5:
1. I say then, Hath God cast away his people?…
2. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying,
3. Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life.
4. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.
5. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
The question of the apostle—hath God cast away his people which he foreknew?—makes no sense at all if the reference is to the people whom God saw would be “fit to be conformed to the image of his Son.” The question of the apostle applies to the nation of Israel as the nation that God loved (see Deut. 7). Then the apostle defined that people whom God foreknew, not as the nation head for head or the people whom God saw would believe but as “the remnant according to the election of grace.”
The other passage that proves the Arminian interpretation false is 1 Peter 1:20: “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.” The Greek word for foreknowledge, the same word used in Romans 8 and in Romans 11, is translated in 1 Peter 1:20 as “foreordained.” Whatever issues we might have with that translation, what the passage establishes is not that God saw ahead what Christ would be or would do, but that God loved Christ from before the foundation of the world. Besides, as every decent Bible scholar knows, in the Hebrew to know someone is to love that one. Besides, I say that if God made decisions based on what he foresaw the creature would do, then you must radically alter your entire theology of God and his relationship to the world, which, of course, Arminianism does.
Over against the Arminians’ making faith the cause of election, the Reformed make election the cause of faith and of every saving benefit. The Reformed say in Canons 1.9, “Therefore election is the fountain…from which proceed faith, holiness, and the other gifts of salvation…as its fruits and effects.” The word “effects” is important. These things are fruits of election, so that election is a kind of root that bears fruits in the hearts and lives of the elect. Election is also a cause, the effects of which are every saving good mentioned by the Canons: “faith, holiness, and the other gifts of salvation, and finally eternal life itself.” Election is no mere dead decree, mere impotent will, or some divine blueprint. But election is the living will of the living God, and what he decreed is perfect in him. What he decreed he carries out, so that his will bears fruit and causes effects in the lives of the elect.
Remember those three kinds of expressions used by the Canons to express the relationship between election and salvation, and election and faith, obedience, holiness, and eternal life. Election is a fountain. Election bears fruits. Election causes effects. That may never be lost sight of, and that must be preached. Let us just speak, for example, about faith. Election is the fountain of faith, so that faith flows out of election to the elect like waters from the fountain. Election is a kind of eternal root that bears the fruit of faith in the hearts of the elect. Election is the cause of the effect of faith in the hearts of the elect. And then you must never lose sight of the truth that the decree is the decreeing God, so that the overflowing fountain, the deep source, and the divine cause of salvation is God in every respect.
It is simply impossible in light of Canons 1.9 to maintain that there are things that man must do before God can do something else. You simply have a different god, not merely a different doctrine of salvation but a different god, at that point. He is a god whose saving work is out of man, just as the god of Arminianism has the decree out of the activity of man.
Canons 1.9 grounds its attack on the Arminians and its positive statement of the truth that all salvation has its eternal source and cause in election in Ephesians 1:4: “He hath chosen us (not because we were, but) that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” The fathers of Dordt felt it necessary to insert a parenthetical polemic against the Arminians. The Arminian doctrine, if it be true, must necessarily change this passage of scripture. Then God would have chosen us because we were holy. Rather, the apostle says that God chose us with the purpose “that we should be holy.”
This salvation decreed for the elect comes inevitably and infallibly into their possession. Regarding the possession of salvation through the cross of Christ, Canons 2.8 says the following:
For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father, that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of His Son should extend to all the elect, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation; that is, it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross, whereby He confirmed the new covenant, should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to Him by the Father; that He should confer upon them faith, which, together with all the other saving gifts of the Holy Spirit, He purchased for them by His death; should purge them from all sin, both original and actual, whether committed before or after believing; and, having faithfully preserved them even to the end, should at last bring them free from every spot and blemish to the enjoyment of glory in His own presence forever. (Confessions and Church Order, 163–64)
This article in the Canons is the heart of the second head of doctrine. The article is a kind of mini-Canons within the Canons. The article really contains the whole scope of the doctrine of salvation from election to the death of Christ, to regeneration and faith, to preservation and glorification. Canons 2.8 could have stood as a one-article refutation of the whole Arminian corruption of the doctrine of salvation. And the article stands as a one-article refutation of the whole notion that there are activities of man that precede the blessings of God and is a rebuke of those who defend this Arminian doctrine as “the way in which God is pleased to work.” This article explains the way in which God is pleased to work in the bestowal of salvation. The way in which God is pleased to work has nothing to do with activities of man performed by grace preceding the possession and experience of his salvation.
The article indicates its central place in the second head when the article begins with the word “for,” which connects the article to all that precedes. It is as though the fathers at Dordt said, “Now, let us come to the heart of our explanation of the death of Christ and the redemption of men by it.” Here the fathers tangled directly with the Arminian proposition on the death of Christ:
That, agreeably thereto, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the cross, redemption, and the forgiveness of sins; yet that no one actually enjoys this forgiveness of sins except the believer.4
This is the doctrine described as general atonement or universal atonement. Over against that the fathers at Dordt taught the doctrine of the perfect and complete atonement for the elect and them only that accomplished salvation for them, purchased faith and every benefit of salvation for them, is bestowed infallibly on them, and preserves them to eternal glory.
The article breaks into two parts. The first part is the succinct statement of the doctrine of the atonement of Christ. The second part is a further expansion and elucidation of what is said tersely in the first part. The second part begins with the words, “that is, it was the will of God…”
The article roots the death of Christ in God’s eternal decree: “For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father.” And the article says, “It was the will of God.” The decree of God is the fountain of salvation and of every benefit of salvation. And the decree of God is the source of the death of Christ. Christ is the Lamb slain in the decree of God from before the foundation of the world. The decree is the source of all that Christ accomplished on the cross by his blood. I point out particularly and emphatically that the article notes that not only the death of Christ in some general sense is included in the decree, but also the death of Christ and the extension of its saving efficacy to all the elect are included in the decree. The article teaches that the will and counsel of God are that Christ die for the elect and them only and, having died for them and accomplishing all salvation for them, that the saving efficacy of his death be extended to them. There is no disjunction between God’s will for Christ’s death and whether the saving efficacy will come to man. There is no inserting of man anywhere in the will of God for the death of Christ and the will of God that the saving efficacy of Christ’s death extend to all the elect and to them only. God willed that Christ die. God willed that Christ accomplish all salvation and purchase every benefit of salvation. God willed that salvation and its benefits come into the possession of the elect. And this God infallibly carries out in full. Based on Canons 2.8, one cannot insert man anywhere in his salvation, either as salvation was accomplished at the cross or as salvation comes into his possession and he experiences it. The article starts with the decree, flows through the cross, and comes to heaven and eternal life for all the elect, all without man’s works and activities at certain stages along the way. Salvation is one seamless stream of grace. And salvation is all by God. Never does salvation wait on a willing or an activity of man. It is as the apostle says, “Salvation—its possession and enjoyment by the elect—‘is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy’” (Rom. 9:16). The Arminians said that Christ died for a man, but whether Christ’s death is effectual—the saving efficacy of his death—depends on the will and perseverance of that man. And remember this is Arminian language: God gives grace if and when man does his part. It is fundamentally Arminian to say that God will forgive if and when man repents. This is an Arminian conception because it does not proceed from the viewpoint of the sovereign will of God, who brings to pass all that he willed for the elect and all that he accomplished for them at the cross of Christ. God brings about their repentance, not so that he can and may forgive them, but because he willed their repentance as an aspect of their salvation, and God accomplished it at the cross of Christ. God forgives their sins, not because they repent, not in the way of their repentance, not if and when they repent, but because he willed that they be forgiven, and he accomplished that at the cross.
Canons 2.8 clearly and sharply teaches limited atonement. By limited atonement we mean that according to the will and the intention of God, Christ died for the elect. Note that in the article. Christ died for the elect “and those only.” God’s will and purpose were nothing else than that Christ die for the elect and that they alone experience the saving efficacy of his death. I mention in this connection that the counsel of God in the Latin and Dutch of Canons 2.8 is described as a “most free” counsel; whereas our English version has “sovereign” counsel. God is absolutely free in his choice. And further note that the article describes God’s choice as “most gracious.” That sole and exclusive source of the death of Christ is grace and not works. The election of God, the counsel of God, which is the source of the death of Christ and of all its saving efficacy, is a most sovereign, eternal, unchangeable, definite, and personal election. Any other conception of election renders the saving efficacy of the death of Christ null and void. Then the efficacy of the death of Christ must depend in some sense on man. But you must also take that to its logical conclusion. If the possession and enjoyment of the salvation of God are dependent upon man in the least respect, then in that respect one has also made the cross of Christ of none effect and the will of God impotent and ultimately dependent on man.
Further, in Canons 2.8 you must recognize that the intention of God, the “counsel” of God, the “purpose” of God, and the “will” of God are all synonyms. There is no room for another intention of God alongside his sovereign intention that Christ die for the elect and them only and that the saving efficacy of that death extend to the elect and to them only.
Now notice that the death of Christ accomplished all of salvation. Christ saved us at the cross. He saved us completely. The death of Christ is effectual. Christ’s death has a quickening and saving efficacy. The power of our salvation in its application too is the cross of Christ. Christ did not accomplish a mere basis for salvation. He saved us, and the saving power of that death extends to us, so that the power of the cross of Christ is to cleanse us from all sin and to bring us to heavenly glory. At the cross Christ actually redeemed, and we are saved to all eternity. Christ acquired for us every saving gift.
When the article teaches the saving efficacy of the death of Christ and that he purchased for his elect people and them only every saving gift of salvation, the article places the emphasis on “justifying faith.” It was, in the language of the article, God’s intention and purpose that the death of Christ be for the elect and extended to them, “for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith.” First, note the designation “justifying faith.” This is the same designation used by the Belgic Confession in article 24. True faith is the faith that justifies. And in that justification of the sinner, the sinner is saved. He is as saved in that justification as he will be saved in heaven in his justification. His justification is perfect. And if we are justified, then it can never fail that God will always bless us and give to us eternal life. Justification is by faith and not by works, and so salvation is by faith and not by works and comes to us for the sake of Christ’s righteousness and not our own. Further, “justifying faith” is placed in Canons 2.8 as one of the gifts of God purchased by Christ. The Arminians made faith the contingency on which the saving efficacy of the death of Christ depended. The Reformed make faith the gift that Christ purchased and that God intended to give to the elect.
Finally, Canons 2.8 insists that the intention of God was that the whole of salvation in its accomplishment and application be the work of Christ. It is not that Christ accomplished salvation in an objective sense and now the work of man begins. Christ accomplished salvation, and God confers salvation on his elect people. One might even argue that this is the emphasis in the article. The possession of salvation is the work of Christ. From election, to redemption, to the actual bestowal of those benefits purchased by Christ—faith, justification, sanctification, and preservation to eternal glory—salvation is all of God in Christ, and it all comes to us in the power of the cross of Christ extended to us.
It is this salvation that I begin to examine in this series of articles.
We must begin that examination and conclude this article with an explanation of what we mean by salvation. It is a favorite tactic of the Protestant Reformed theologians and ministers to chop up salvation into all manner of different meanings. So they might contend that salvation can refer to Christ’s death on the cross. Man has no part in that. But then they continue that there is also salvation in the sense of its application. When they come to salvation in the sense of its application, then man begins to be active. We should be mindful of the tactic of false teachers of every generation as that is pointed out in Canons 2, error 6. The Synod rejected the errors of those
who use the difference between meriting and appropriating, to the end that they may instill into the minds of the imprudent and inexperienced this teaching, that God, as far as He is concerned, has been minded of applying to all equally the benefits gained by the death of Christ; but that, while some obtain the pardon of sin and eternal life and others do not, this difference depends on their own free will, which joins itself to the grace that is offered without exception, and that it is not dependent on the special gift of mercy, which powerfully works in them, that they rather than others should appropriate unto themselves this grace.
Rejection: For these, while they feign that they present this distinction in a sound sense, seek to instill into the people the destructive poison of the Pelagian errors. (Confessions and Church Order, 166)
When I read this error that the fathers rejected, I immediately thought of Protestant Reformed theologians and ministers. They have distinguished the Reformed faith to death. The purpose of their distinctions is not sound theology. The purpose of their distinctions is to insert man and man’s activities as crucial for the possession of his salvation. For Protestant Reformed men salvation is a discrete series of benefits; and at every point after regeneration, man has a role to play, which activity of man triggers the possession of a particular benefit. The result is the same as the error stated above: “These…instill into the people the destructive poison of the Pelagian errors.” The charge of the fathers at Dordt against the Arminians was that they taught Pelagianism. The charge of the Reformed Protestant Churches against the Protestant Reformed Churches is that they teach Arminianism, and thus they teach Pelagianism. Pelagianism is very simply a man-centered doctrine of salvation. Man accomplishes—by grace, of course—his own salvation.
But salvation is one as God is one. Salvation is one whole. Salvation is one concept. Salvation is one reality. Salvation is one truth. At every point along the way in the explanation of salvation, one truth stands out: salvation is of the Lord. This does not mean merely that the purpose of salvation is of the Lord or that the accomplishment of salvation is of the Lord. But it also means that along the whole line of salvation from the decree of predestination, to the cross, to the possession and enjoyment of salvation, and to the perfection of salvation in heaven and in the new heavens and earth, salvation is of the Lord. Never does man play a part in his salvation. The gift of salvation is exactly that from beginning to end, a gift. The application of salvation by God is never at any point dependent on what man must perform, not even on what man performs by grace and the Holy Spirit. God’s act to bestow salvation is never interrupted by what man must do, but salvation is a golden chain, from election to glorification, uninterrupted by man’s activities. To put a fine point on that concept: man is as little involved in his election as he is in his sanctification. One might contend that in sanctification man becomes active, that man repents, and that man performs good works. But these are simply fruits of the salvation bestowed. One can equally argue that in election too man will become active, he will repent, and he will perform good works. We are, after all, God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works that God before ordained that we should walk in them. But as that repentance and as those good works are fruits of election, so they are also fruits of sanctification. We are elected unto good works. We are sanctified unto good works. Election is the act of God to appoint men to salvation. Sanctification is the act of God to cleanse men from sin. Both are wholly of the Lord. Both have their inevitable fruits. From both man is excluded.
So it is with every benefit of salvation. God makes the elect child of God a partaker of Christ and of all Christ’s benefits. God causes the elect child of God to experience the benefits of salvation, and those benefits of salvation bear their own fruits. Always the deed or activity of man that proceeds from the reception of the benefits of salvation is the fruit of God’s work. Never does one activity of man as the fruit of God’s work precede another benefit of salvation, such that the reception of that other benefit of salvation is dependent on the activity of man, resulting from the prior benefit of salvation. To make that concrete, it is a fundamental corruption of the very concept of salvation as being of the Lord to say that man’s repentance must precede God’s act of forgiveness. That the elect child of God repents is the inevitable fruit of his election. Repentance is the fruit of God’s act of converting the elect child of God. Because God chose him and because Christ died for him, God also converts him, and the fruit is repentance. That repentance does not then have the function of being necessary for God to be able to forgive a man. Repentance and forgiveness appear together, but not in a dependent relationship. They are distinct benefits of salvation, not installments in which one installment and man’s activity with that installment are necessary for the next installment to be given.
In this series of articles, we are interested in the application of salvation. We do not have to speak about the application of salvation. We can just as well say that we are interested in the salvation of the elect people of God. Their possession of salvation, or the application of their salvation to them, is their salvation. Salvation is of God. Salvation in the hearts of the elect is of God and excludes men’s activities as much as those activities are excluded from their election and their salvation at the cross. The proof of this is that God gives to the elect, infant children of believers the full and complete possession of their salvation in Christ. The elect are conceived and born in sin. They are subject to all miseries, even to condemnation itself. They are children of wrath by nature who are born into the darkness of the world fallen in sin in Adam and lying under the curse. As babies, they are sanctified in Christ and thus possess their whole salvation. When we speak, then, of the application of salvation to the elect, we are not talking about salvation in a different sense from what we mean when we speak of salvation in the decree or salvation at the cross.
Salvation is one.
Salvation is of the Lord.
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