"Historic Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism" was published in the Westminster Theological Journal, vol. 36 (1973-74). Editorial revisions by Sherman Isbell of this article and of its footnotes are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission of Sherman Isbell.

Thesis IV: The covenant relation warrants the presumption that children of believers are regenerated from earliest infancy, and are to be treated as possessing saving grace unless and until they should reject the covenant.

This is the Kuyperian thesis of presumptive regeneration (veronderstelde wedergeboorte), a thesis which may well be regarded as the heart of Hyper-Covenantism, although it does not appear to be a direct logical consequence of the axiom. Its tempting attractiveness consists largely in its providing a systematic basis for the defense of infant baptism and for the comfort of believing parents. It fits snugly into the Hyper-Covenant scheme and also proves congenial to High Calvinists who view the elect as justified from eternity. An exhaustive examination of this doctrine in the light of the supreme and only infallible standard of Holy Scripture is not possible in the limits of the present discussion. At present, it will be contended that in spite of Kuyper's claim that this is the historic Reformed doctrine taught by Calvin, by the Reformed standards and by the best Reformed theologians, the doctrine of presumptive regeneration is alien to historic Calvinism, certainly to the Calvinism of Presbyterian and Puritan divines and also to outstanding Dutch writers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The appeal made by Kuyper to Calvin, the Dutch Reformed standards, and to Maccovius, Voetius, Gomarus and others, is far from conclusive. The old writers cited by Kuyper for the most part argue against the Anabaptists that elect infants may be and sometimes are regenerated in infancy, Voetius championing the stronger position that all elect children of believers are regenerated in infancy,(28) a position rejected by Herman Bavinck.(29) But none of the texts cited by Kuyper, with the possible exception of an ambiguous remark of Cloppenburg, asserts the doctrine of presumptive regeneration.

As to the historic position of Princeton Presbyterianism, the following statement by Archibald Alexander is decisive: "The education of children should proceed on the principle that they are in an unregenerate state, until evidences of piety clearly appear, in which case they should be sedulously cherished and nurtured. . . . Although the grace of God may be communicated to a human soul, at any period of its existence, in this world, yet the fact manifestly is, that very few are renewed before the exercise of reason commences; and not many in early childhood."(30) The view of Voetius and Kuyper involves the anomaly of a time gap between regeneration and effectual calling, particularly appalling in the case of the apostle Paul, of whom, on the basis of Gal. 1:15, the younger Kuyper is reported to have preached as an example of a regenerated blasphemer.(31)

In his detailed exposition in E Voto, Kuyper devotes a chapter to documentation and argumentation for his claim that he is introducing no novelty, but simply returning to the doctrine of Calvin and the Reformed fathers which a later generation allowed to fall into oblivion.(32) Does he make out his case?

Kuyper quotes from Institutes IV.xvi.17-20 to find support in Calvin, who does teach: "That some infants are saved; and that they are previously regenerated by the Lord, is beyond all doubt." What Kuyper fails to quote is Calvin's rejoinder to the Anabaptist evasion that the sanctification of John the Baptist in his mother's womb "was only a single case, which does not justify the conclusion that the Lord generally acts in this manner with infants." Calvin's rejoinder is: "For we use no such argument."(33) But Kuyper does use such an argument, in contending that children of the covenant are to be presumed to be regenerated because in fact that is the general manner of the Lord's dealing with them. Calvin does speak of a seed of future repentance and faith implanted by the Spirit,(34) but does not state the false proposition that this is the case with all baptized infants, nor the highly disputable thesis of Voetius that this is the case with all elect children of believers. Certainly there is no hint of the presumptive doctrine of Kuyper in any of these texts of Calvin.

A fundamental fallacy vitiates Kuyper's positive argument in support of presumptive regeneration. This fallacy gives rise to a blind spot in the interpretation first of Calvin and then of the Reformed theologians and confessions that he appeals to in support of his claim that he is promulgating no new doctrine. The fallacy is the following. From the authentically Reformed position that "Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth" (to cite the pure and precise formulation of the Westminster Confession, chapter X, section iii), Kuyper draws the illicit conclusion that not only elect infants dying in infancy are to be regarded as regenerate, but that all children of believers are to be regarded and treated as regenerate, as "being not merely in appearance, but in reality included in the covenant of God's grace."(35)

At least two special, formal fallacies are to be detected in Kuyper's plausible and persuasive argument. There is a quantification fallacy, in arguing from the case of some infants to that of all infants of believers, from infants dying in infancy to infants not dying in infancy. There is also a fallacy of modal logic, in arguing from the possibility of infant regeneration, if not to the actuality then at least to the probability or rather the presumption of regeneration in the case of each child of a believer. The inner inconsistency of this view becomes glaring in view of Kuyper's recognition that of those, presumably those in the covenant as well as others, who grow to adulthood, "only the smaller half dies in faith in the Lord."(36) Kuyper even goes on to speak of "het kleinste deel" of surviving adults inheriting salvation. The presumption consequently ought to be that surviving children of believers have not been regenerated in infancy and are not even to be presumed to be elect, though not yet regenerated; much less to be regenerated, though not yet converted.

In addition to the formal fallacies and inner inconsistency of Kuyper's argument, there is a deadly material fallacy that ever threatens Reformed thought and practice in innumerable subtle forms, the fallacy of making the secret counsel of God the rule of life. What God may sovereignly work in the heart of an infant or even an embryo is the inalienable and impenetrable prerogative of the Most High. To presume to pry into secret counsels and secret operations of the Unsearchable One is presumption indeed, and to make of such presumption the rule of the believer's practice in dealing with his children is downright antinomianism no less than in other matters, even if it conceals itself under the mask of excessive zeal for covenant doctrine.(37) God's revealed will that the law and gospel are to be presented to sinners, calling for faith and repentance, is the rule to be observed in the instruction of children. This rule supposes that those who are addressed are to be regarded as sinners, not as those justified from eternity and regenerated from the womb. Hyper-Covenantism entails its own peculiar variety of Hyper-Calvinism, taking Hyper-Calvinism in the strict and proper sense of the denial or obscuring of the address of the gospel to sinners as such, to sinners in God's sight whatever they may or may not be in their own.

In view of the above exposure of the fallacies in Kuyper's argument and the errors in his conclusion, there should be no difficulty in discerning the similar mistakes in his exegesis of Calvin and of the old Reformed theologians. These men clearly teach the doctrine of regeneration of elect infants dying in infancy, but they simply do not teach the Kuyperian doctrine of presumptive regeneration. While Voetius and Cloppenburg may support certain elements of Kuyper's view, most of his citations, including those from Maccovius, Gomarus, P. van Mastricht, J. Marck and Alting, not to mention à Brakel whom Kuyper cites hesitatingly, prove no more than the texts from Calvin, none of which go beyond the sound doctrine formulated in the Westminster Confession.

Notes

(28) Gysbertus Voetius, Selectarum Disputationum Fasciculus, ed. Abraham Kuyper (Amsterdam: J. A. Wormser, 1887). Disputatio 9 ("De Statu Electorum ante Conversionem"), prob. 2: "An electi externe foederati seu in foedere nati, omnes et singuli in infantia seu ab utero matris sint interne foederati, sancti, et regeniti?", to which, while recognizing difficulties, Voetius replies in the affirmative (pp. 253-55).
(29) Herman Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (Kampen: Kok, 1928), vol. 4, in the discussion of infant baptism.
(30) Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), pp. 13-14.
(31) The source of this item is a homiletics lecture by the late Professor R. B. Kuiper.
(32) Abraham Kuyper, E Voto Dordraceno (Amsterdam: Hoeveker and Wormser, l905), 3:54-60, Zondag 27, hoofdstuk 8.
(33) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by John Allen (Philadephia: Presbyterian Board of Education, 1936), 2:620 (IV.xvi.17); Institutio Religionis Christianae, ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss (Brunswick: C. A. Schwetschke and Son, 1869), 2:989: "Dominum ita solere passim cum infantibus agere. Neque enim nos eum in modum ratiocinamur."
(34) Calvin, Institutio, 2:990 (IV.xvi.20): "Baptizari in futuram poenitentiam et fidem: quae etsi nondum in illis formatae sunt, arcana tamen spiritus operatione utriusque semen in illis latet."
(35) Kuyper, E Voto, 3:12: "En ten vierde, dat bij de onzekerheid, of de kinderen die ons geboren wierden, vroeg of laat zullen sterven, de mogelijkheid van zulk een genadewerk Gods in de ziel van ons kind, bij al onze kinderen moet worden aangenomen. En ten vijfde, dat uit dien hoofde alle kinderen der geloovigen te beschouwen zijn, als niet slechts in schijn, maar wezenlijk in het Verbond van Gods genade begrepen."
(36) Ibid., 3:9: "Want van degenen die in klaar, helder berwustzijn opwassen, zien we zeer wel, dat slechts de kleinere helft afsterft in het geloof aan den Heere."
(37) Thus the decrees of election and reprobation may not be the source either of assurance or despair as to one's being in a state of grace. Rather, the revealed will of God in law and gospel must be the standard for self-examination. Likewise, presumptive regeneration presupposing election may not, in dealing with believers' children, nullify the duty of holding a response to the requirements of repentance, faith, and new obedience as the sure sign of the great change from fallen nature to renewing grace.

Go to the next installment:
Historic Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism: Part IV