THE second Clause of the Declaratory Act teaches “That this Church holds that all who hear the Gospel are warranted and required to believe to the saving of their souls; and that in the case of such as do not believe, but perish in their sins, the issue is due to their own rejection of the Gospel call. That this Church does not teach, and does not regard the Confession as teaching, the foreordination of men to death irrespective of their own sin.” The first section of this Clause deals with the General Call of the Gospel. In a land which produced such preachers as Rutherford, the Erskines, Boston, MacCheyne, and William C. Burns, and in a Church which had such men as Dr Macdonald, Ferintosh, and Dr Kennedy, Dingwall, to name no others, it does seem strange to all acquainted with the preaching of the Scottish pulpit that it should be considered necessary in the nineteenth century to put such a statement as the above in a Declaratory Act, as if the Reformed Church of Scotland or the Free Church in her Creed did not hold the doctrine of the general call of the Gospel. The most orthodox of our teachers never failed to give prominence to this aspect of the Gospel in their preaching, for while they shunned the Arminian extreme of a universal atonement and an ability of man in his own strength to obey the Gospel call, they declared that the Gospel was to be preached to every creature, and that the hearer was accountable to God for the rejection of the message. The Westminster standards, in common with the Dort Canons, teach that—”It is not the fault of the Gospel nor of Christ offered therein, nor of God who calls men by the Gospel and confers upon them various gifts that
those who are called by the ministry of the Word refuse to come and be converted. The fault lies in themselves.” If our Standards taught this doctrine so clearly, why was it necessary that there should be a declaratory statement on the matter? The late Rev. James S. Sinclair, in his criticism of this section, seems to have pointed to the real cause when he says:—”We are fully agreed that all who hear the Gospel are under obligation to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation. But this obligation, we hold, rests upon the direct command of God, and the suitableness of the Gospel provision to men as sinners, and not upon supposed universal love, or universal atonement, as seems to be the case here, from the close connection between this and the preceding Clause, which we have already dealt with. The Arminian Gospel is, God loves all, Christ died for all, and the Holy Spirit strives with all, and this is almost verbally the Gospel we find in the Declaratory Act. The command to believe, referred to in this Clause, is evidently grounded upon such universal propositions as these, which afford a false and unscriptural basis for faith. We also observe that no reference is made here to the person of Christ as the object of faith. The command of the Gospel is, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Many may believe the Gospel as they believe a piece of history, and remain spiritually ignorant of Christ. On the other hand, saving faith in Christ springs from a revelation to the soul of His divine glory, sufficiency, and suitableness as a Saviour. No one, therefore, savingly believes the Gospel, except he is enlightened by the Holy Ghost as to the person and work of Christ. To believe unto salvation is not something which men can do, upon invitation, as easily as a common task, but can only be performed after the reception of spiritual life and enlightenment by the Spirit of God. This all-important aspect of the Gospel appears here to be lost sight of in the haste to emphasise the universality of the Gospel call” (“Free Presbyterian Magazine,” vol. I., pp. 161, 162). Our Larger Catechism, in answer to the question, “Are the elect only effectually called?” gives the answer—”All the elect, and they only, are effectually called; although others may be, and often are, outwardly called by the ministry of the Word, and have some common operations of the Spirit; who, for their wilful neglect and contempt of the grace offered to them, being justly left in their unbelief, do never truly come to Jesus Christ.” And in their answer to the question, “What is effectual calling?” the Westminster Divines speak of “Jesus Christ freely
offered in the Gospel.” He would be a daring man, however, who would charge these Divines with such Arminian tendencies, as we have in the Declaratory Act, in view of their own explicit statement that the sinner “is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it” (Confession of Faith, chap. x, sec. 2).
The second section of Clause ii. of the Declaratory Act, which asserts—”That this Church does not teach, and does not regard the Confession as teaching, the foreordination of men to death irrespective of their own sin,” has in view sections iii. and vii. of chapter iii. of the Confession, and is a bad piece of theological bungling arising from misunderstanding the teaching of these two sections. The chapter in which these sections appears deals with God’s Eternal Decree—the “high mystery of predestination, and is, in the words of Dr Warfield, “A most admirable chapter—the most admirably clear, orderly, careful, and moderate statement of the great mysteries of God’s Decree to be found in the whole body of the Reformed Confessions.” In dealing with this great doctrine it is well to keep before us the words of the Westminster Divines that the doctrine should be “handled with special prudence and care, that men attending the will of God revealed in His Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation be assured of their eternal election” (Confession of Faith, chap. iii., sec. viii.). For the benefit of our readers we will quote at length the two sections which made such confusion in the minds of the framers of the Declaratory Act as caused them to make the statement in the Clause under review. Section iii. of chap. iii. of the Confession reads as follows:—”By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.” While section vii. reads—”The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.” Now, we hope to show that these sections reveal that there were master minds engaged in their formation—trained theologians of the first rank, and men profoundly taught by the Holy Ghost in the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.
- The chapter on God’s Eternal Decree (chap. iii.) opens with what Dr Warfield, in his “On the Revision of the Confession of Faith,” terms “the finest and most guarded and most beautiful statement of God’s decree in general that has ever been compressed into so small a space (sects. i. and ii.).” The third and fourth sections assert the fact that this sovereign, particular, and unchangeable decree extends over the sphere of the destiny of the creature, while sections v. to vii. deal with God’s consequent dealing with the diverse classes, and section viii. closes with a caution against careless handling of this high mystery. Section iii. is simply a clear statement of one of the facts falling under section i., here restated in order to supply a starting point for a full discussion of God’s special decree given in sections iv. to viii. Dr Shedd admirably sums up the whole matter when he says:—”The Westminster standards, in common with the Calvinistic creeds generally, begin with affirming the universal sovereignty of God over His entire universe: over heaven, earth, and hell; and comprehend all beings and all events under His dominion. Nothing comes to pass contrary to His decree. Nothing happens by chance. Even moral evil, which He abhors and forbids, occurs by ‘the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.’ And yet occurs through the agency of the unforced and self-determining will of man as the efficient” (Calvinism: Pure and Mixed, p. 38). If “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass” (sec. i.) then it follows that “by the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death” (sec. iii.) But would it not improve the Confession if we added to this section that sinners were foreordained to everlasting death “because of their sin” as the Declaratory Act does? To this question an emphatic No! must be given, for the addition of these words would mar, as Dr Warfield puts it, “the logical order and exactitude of statement of this now beautifully ordered and carefully phrased chapter. It would prematurely introduce the statement of the ground of God’s actual dealings with one class into the statement of the fact that two classes are discriminated. It would confound the treatment of preterition, which is sovereign, with that of condemnation, which is based on sin” (On the Revision of the Confession, p. 49). It was this failure to distin-
guish between “preterition” and “condemnation”* that caused the confusion in the minds of the framers of the Declaratory Act, and set them to tinker with the scriptural and logical statements of the Confession in sections iii. and vii. of chapter iii.
- In dealing with the doctrine of Reprobation there are two aspects in which this solemn subject is to be viewed—(1) A negative—God passing by sinners; (2) a positive—God condemning them for their sins. “In respect to this negative element,” says Dr A. A. Hodge, “reprobation is simply sovereign, since those passed over were no worse than those elected, and the simple reason both for the choosing and for the passing over was the sovereign good pleasure of God. In respect to its positive element, reprobation is not sovereign, but simply judicial, because God inflicts misery in any case only as the righteous punishment of sin” (Outlines of Theology, p. 222). The difference between the negative and positive aspects are thus summed up by Dr Shedd:—(1) Preterition is a sovereign act; condemnation is a judicial act. God passes by an individual because of His sovereign good pleasure, but he condemns this individual to punishment, not because of His sovereign good pleasure, but because this individual is a sinner. (2) The reason of condemnation is known: sin is the reason. The reason of preterition is unknown. It is not sin, because the elect are as sinful as the non-elect. (3) In preterition God’s action is permissive: inaction rather than action. In condemnation, God’s action is efficient and positive” (Dogmatic Theology, I. 433). The following quotation from Dr John Arrowsmith, one of the Westminster Divines, will shed further light on this deep and mysterious subject:—”Preterition, or negative reprobation,” he says, “is an eternal decree of God, purposing within Himself to deny
* A word of explanation may be here offered for the benefit of our readers as to the terms used. “Reprobation” is that aspect of God’s eternal decree having reference to sinners finally lost. It is positive and negative. Positive inasmuch as sinners are condemned to eternal misery; negative as sinners are passed by. This is what is meant by the terms “condemnation” and “preterition” respectively used above. It may be here pointed out that the Westminster Divines, instead of using the term “Reprobation,” use the word “Foreordination,” but their teaching on this solemn doctrine is one with that of the great Reformed symbols and divines.
unto the non-elect that peculiar love of His wherewith election is accompanied, as, also, that special grace which infallibly bringeth to glory. . . This description carries in the face of it a clear reason why the thing described goeth under the name of negative reprobation, because it standeth mainly on the denial of these free favours which it pleaseth God to bestow upon His elect. . . . Condemnation for sin: this last is that which, by divines, is usually styled positive reprobation, and is clearly distinguishable from the negative in that the one is an act of punitive justice respecting sin committed and continued in. But the other is an absolute decree of God’s most free and sovereign will, without respect to any disposition in the creature. I call them consequents, not effects, because, though negative reprobation be antecedent to them all, it is not the proper cause of them” (Chain of Principles). The distinctions drawn above may appear to some to be the mere invention of subtle theological minds, but they are distinctions resting on facts—mysterious we admit—nevertheless facts capable of being grasped by the mind. The Westminster Divines were, therefore, not only sound theologians, but good logicians when they did not introduce the question of sin into section iii., which deals with God’s sovereign act in passing by sinners, and reserved it for section vii., which deals with God’s judicial act. The Declaratory Act statement is bad theology arising from confused thinking and erratic logic. In regard to its statement we may apply the words used by Dr Warfield in regard to the attempts made by the revisers of the Confession in the American Presbyterian Church. “The fact,” he says, “that men are sinners does not affect the sovereignty of preterition; it only affects the treatment they are left to by preterition. If, for instance, out of the holy angels God chose sovereignly a certain number for some high service involving special gifts of grace to them to fit them for it, the ‘leaving’ of the rest would be just as truly ‘preterition’ as in the case of fallen men; but the consequent treatment being but the ‘consequent,’ and not the ‘effect,’ of preterition, would be infinitely different in the two cases, seeing that it is the effect of the deserts, whatever they may be, in which those who are ‘passed by’ are found to be left. Consequently, sin is not the cause of preterition; election is the cause of preterition, i.e., the choosing of some is the cause that ‘the rest’ are left. Sin is the cause, however, of how the preterited ones are treated. And to guard this, the Westminster men were accustomed to use a phrase they borrowed from Wollevius, which affirmed that sin is not the
‘causa reprobationis,’ but the ‘causa reprobabilitatis, that is, sin is not the cause of reprobation (otherwise the elect, who also are sinners, would be reprobates), but it is the cause of men being in a reprobatable state. These are not theological subtleties; they are broad, outstanding facts of God’s dealings with men; and it is failure to note them that is causing much (not always intelligent) criticism of the Confession in these last days” (On Revision of the Confession, pp. 47, 48).
The result of our discussion, then, is that the Confessional statements in sections iii. and vii. of chapter iii. are scriptural and logical, while the Declaratory Act statement in its efforts to mix up sections iii. and vii.—God’s sovereign act with God’s judicial act—is unscriptural and illogical—in fact, poor theology and bad logic. In taking leave of the solemn and high mysteries with which we have been dealing we are not unmindful of the rebellion in the natural heart against God’s sovereignty in passing by sinners, and we leave the subject with the following words from Bunyan:—’Eternal reprobation makes no man a sinner. The foreknowledge of God that the reprobate will perish, makes no man a sinner. God’s infallible determining upon the damnation of him that perisheth, makes no man a sinner. God’s patience and forbearance until the reprobate fits himself for eternal destruction, makes no man a sinner’ (Reprobation Asserted, xi.).