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Common Grace
Review by Ray Hoekzema
Christians usually associate the word grace with the wonder of their
salvation. We sing about the amazing grace ‘that saved a wretch like
me’. A popular book currently doing the rounds asks the question: What’s
so amazing about Grace? But grace is simply a word that means favour.
Grace has to do with what people have not deserved.
In Reformed and Presbyterian circles we also speak of common grace.
This, in distinction from saving grace, refers to God’s general goodness
and favour to all people whereby he makes His sun to shine on the evil
and the good. This teaching is based on Scriptures such as Psalm 145
which speak of the Lord satisfying the desires of every living thing. It
lies in the character of God that He deals generously with all His
creatures. Common grace is also seen in the restraining hand of God on
human wickedness and rebellion.
This teaching about common grace is not unique to Reformed Christians
and Reformed Churches. Wayne Grudem has a helpful chapter on it in
‘Bible Doctrine’ – although we would probably take issue with him at a
couple of points. The teaching has strong roots in the Reformed
tradition. It played a major part in the thinking of Abraham Kuyper who
wrote a sizeable work on the subject. He in turn built on the insights
of John Calvin, who asked, “Shall we count anything praiseworthy or
noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God?”
In the U.S. controversy erupted over the teaching in the 1920s when
Herman Hoeksema saw the teaching as the thin edge of the wedge for
Arminian teaching to sneak into the church. He argued that there is only
pure wrath in God’s relationship to the non-elect. Now the debate is
reopened in Richard J. Mouw’s book ‘He Shines In All That’s Fair –
Culture and Common Grace’ (Eerdmans Publishing Company 101p)
However whereas the previous debate centred around mystery of God’s
dealings with humankind. The more likely question we now face is: “To
what degree has the commonness that we have embraced in the culture that
we share with our non-Christian neighbours compromised our commitment to
the Gospel?” According to Mouw that question may provide some motivation
for a re-examination of common grace theology.
Mouw, who is Professor of Christian philosophy and president of Fuller
Theological Seminary, is convinced there is such a thing as common grace
but is not very clear about what it is and advocates the idea that we
stand before a mystery. Calvin, observing ‘secular writers’ said “that
the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is
nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts.”
Mouw revisiting the debate of the 1920s, points out that the elect
experience many evils in their lives, such as sickness, grief and
poverty. But surely, says he, these things are not to be taken as
visitations of divine wrath on the godly. Why, then, Hoeksema asked,
should we take the good things that visit the lives of the ungodly as
evidence of grace? Putting it more starkly, he asks, “How can we
attribute to “grace” something that leads to the recipient’s inevitable
destruction?”
Herman Dooyeweerd and Henry Stob have a different perspective and insist
that, in an important sense, the antithesis cuts right through the whole
human race. It’s not so much about elect and reprobate, believer and
unbeliever, but between sin and grace. The author reckons that we
Christians have no business advertising ourselves as models of
righteousness. Abraham Kuyper said that we can discern the light in the
larger world only by staying very close to the lamp that burns so
brightly in the midst of the gathered people of God. But David Engelsma,
editor of ‘The Standard Bearer’, counters that Kuyper’s “worldview of
common grace” has been a colossal failure. Neither the Netherlands nor
the United States are any more Reformed. In fact, he says, there are
clear signs of increased worldliness.
In a chapter of the same title as the book, Mouw explores the reality of
God’s delight or otherwise in non-elect human beings. He compares God’s
dealing with non-human creation, e.g. the pleasure He takes in seeing an
eagle take flight for the first time (Ps104:31) and God taking delight
in Tiger Wood’s putts as well. He says that God enjoys these things for
their own sake without moral approval of the “inner” lives of non-elect
people.
The author finds that God enables acts of kindness on the part of the
unredeemed people. To perform acts of righteousness that clearly seem to
be in conformity to revealed standards of righteousness. He refuses to
dismiss these acts as nothing more than well-disguised deeds of
unrighteousness. In fact, Mouw goes so far as to suggest that the Canons
of Dort, part 3&4, art 3, as well as the Westminster Confession, chapter
16, art 7, appear to make room for the possibility of deeds that are
morally laudable without ‘meriting’ salvation.
He bolsters this argument by stating that there is divine empathy evoked
when a non-Christian woman is brutally raped, or when marital
reconciliation takes place between two thoroughgoing secularists. He
further suggests that much of what we now think of as common grace may
in the end time be revealed to be saving grace. I get the impression the
author is not really attempting to preserve an area of mystery regarding
God’s dealings with human kind, but entering on dangerous ground by
making attempts to resolve it.
In another chapter, Mouw looks at the debate between Infra and
Supralapsarians. It is the matter of whether God created, permits the
fall and then decides about election and reprobation, or whether God
elected first, then came creation, and lastly the fall. He says that
Calvinist churches have generally expressed a willingness to tolerate
both positions. After raising typical objections to both, he looks at
the divine character of God and reflects upon God’s “Glory” and what
that means for each of the groups, recording some interesting
observations made by the likes of Barth, Bavinck, Hoeksema, MacIntyre
and C S.Lewis.
In search for the common good, Mouw makes a case for Christian civility,
espousing two principles based on 1 Peter 2:11-17. Firstly, Christians
must actively work for the well-being of the larger societies in which
we have been providentially placed. Secondly, sanctified living should
manifest those subjective attitudes and dispositions that will motivate
us in our efforts to promote societal health. In other words, be a
community – a fellowship of people – who, in the pattern of life
together, serve as a sign of faithfulness in the larger world. Much like
the Israelites were asked to do whilst exiled in Babylon.
We are to look for ways God can use us to restrain the power of sin in
the larger human community. To perform our own works of civic good in a
way that affects the lives of unbelievers, and to promote the gifts of
common grace. The author sums it up by stating that God has a positive,
albeit non-saving, regard for those who are not elect, a regard that He
asks us to cultivate in our souls. We are to speak in the public square.
But says he, when we do venture forth to serve the Lord in the broader
reaches of human culture, it is good to anticipate that we too will
inevitably feel the cross lying on our necks.
Though it is a small book and raised a couple of questions for me, it
has a lot going for it and I found it a profitable and enjoyable read.
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