Contemporary Antinomianism (continued)

This resistance to an historical means to an end must also be applied to preaching. This is the context for Hoeksema's opposition to the free offer of the gospel. Hoeksema's criticism goes to the foundation of the Westminster doctrine of the free offer of the gospel. His opposition is based on his notion that the covenant can only be the actual possession of communion with God, and has no aspect as a means to bring us into that communion. Hoeksema says that if the call made through preaching is regarded as a means to bring sinners to Christ, the significant role accorded to human agency would mean that we concede moral ability to the unregenerate. It would lead to Pelagianism and Arminianism. "We are so easily tempted to confuse the calling as a step on the way to salvation with the preaching of the gospel as it is proclaimed by men. The calling as a work of salvation in that case becomes general, comes on the part of God to all men, and is gradually changed into an offer, well-meaning on the part of God, to all men, the acceptance of which depends on the free will of man. And thus we come on the track of Pelagius and Arminius."(30)

Clearly Hoeksema has a different definition from that of the Westminster standards as to what constitutes Arminianism. In this connection, Hoeksema is careful to quote the Westminster Confession as representing that concept of covenant which is contrary to his theology: "It also speaks of the covenant of grace as a second covenant, 'wherein he freely offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved.' Here, then," Hoeksema writes, "we meet with the notion that the covenant is something additional and secondary, a means to an end, a way of life, a device unto salvation."(31)

In contrast to the Westminster doctrine that there is an outward calling in which salvation is offered to sinners generally, (Larger Catechism 68), Hoeksema seeks to cut off any concept of preaching as a general offer, by defining external calling as something applicable only to the elect.(32) He follows the very error which Rutherford identified as characteristic of the Antinomians and Anabaptists of his day: they speak only of the internal covenant made with the elect, and will not acknowledge an outward administration of the covenant. Though the Westminster standards appreciate the privileges of participation in the visible church as a means leading to salvation (Larger Catechism 63), Hoeksema protests that preaching is not useful until regeneration has taken place. Thus he says that the means of grace must "presuppose life" in the hearers. "It is only the living that can possibly use means."(33)

Rather than preaching being a means to bring men to salvation, Hoeksema regards it as more appropriate to speak of regeneration coming before preaching, in the case of elect children born in the church. Hoeksema reasons that it must be that elect children of the covenant are regenerated in infancy, so that they will be able to profit from sitting under the preaching when they reach years of understanding. The function of preaching in their case is to develop the new life that is already in them. If they were not already regenerate, the preaching would do them no good. "What possible reason can there be, if God is able to regenerate some children, why he should wait in the case of others until they can understand the preaching of the word to implant in them the seed of regeneration?"(34) "It is especially for this reason that according to our conviction children of the covenant are regenerated from earliest infancy. Why should God according to the rule of the covenant bring little children under the influence of the preaching of the word from their earliest infancy if they were not regenerated? The dead certainly cannot use means, and there is no proper reaction upon the preaching of the word by those that are spiritually dead. Only those that are living are capable to use the means which the Holy Spirit provides for the working of faith and for the development and upbuilding of that faith."(35)

Hoeksema's presumption that elect children in the church are regenerated in infancy is based on precisely the same premise as his opposition to the free offer of the gospel. In both cases, he considers that "It is only the living that can possibly use means."(36) Preaching is not to be regarded as a means to salvation, and therefore the covenant children must have been regenerated before they were able to understand the preaching. Likewise, there could not be an offer of life and of salvation to sinners generally through a preached covenant, because this would imply that spiritually dead sinners were able to respond. This is the premise from which Hoeksema opposes the free offer of the gospel as Arminianism, and from which he dismisses evangelistic preaching to covenant children.

Hoeksema's variance with the Westminster standards may be seen on many points of doctrine. But more than disagreement on a number of individual points, there is a systemic contrast. His opposition to the free offer is not incidental to his theology, but belongs to his wide-ranging reconstruction of covenant theology. Even Presbyterian churches which do not require that their officers subscribe to all the doctrines of the Westminster standards, but only to a system of doctrine, should note that Hoeksema's opposition to traditional covenant theology is systemic. His opposition to the Puritan doctrine of the free offer of the gospel is integral to his alternative system of theology. Moreover, as we have seen, Hoeksema is self-conscious in his identification of the Westminster standards as containing the covenant theology he opposes.

What importance does the free offer have in the Westminster standards? The free offer is the biblical method of presenting the gospel to sinners generally, pointing them to Christ the Mediator, and assuring them that the offer of life and salvation will be fulfilled in them if they rest upon Christ. Christ himself, through his ambassadors, sincerely offers life and salvation to sinners, including the reprobate, upon condition that they believe on him. God never intends the salvation of the reprobate. Never is there a frustrated divine decree. Never do the unregenerate have the moral ability to respond. Sincere offers are means God uses to bring sinners to Christ, but the preached offers belong to God's preceptive will, not to his decree.

Hoeksema's protest against viewing covenant as the means to an end reflects his concern lest human agency jeopardize divine sovereignty. This is the reason for Hoeksema's rejection of conditionality in the covenant in any sense. Larger Catechism 32 speaks of the response God requires in the covenant, when faith is said to be the condition to interest sinners in Christ. But Hoeksema regards conditions as a subversion of God's sovereignty. Likewise, Hoeksema denies that men are parties with God in the covenant. Hoeksema says that there is only one party in the covenant, namely God, and man is brought in under God's side! We remember that Hoeksema claimed that covenant exists in the very nature of God. The genius of this speculation is that it cuts out all occasion for man to appear as a party in the covenant, because the covenant existed before man was ever introduced, and hence human activity is not allowed to compete with divine sovereignty: "The revelation of God's eternal covenant life must be the highest purpose, must never be a means to an end."(37)

However, as "Rabbi" Duncan once pointed out, we are on the wrong track when we think of God's activity and man's responsible activity in competition with one another in history. Duncan indicated the sounder and more helpful way: "Antinomianism says that we (to use the words of Towne) are Christ-ed and God-ed. Arminianism says that half of the work is God's and half is man's. Calvinism asserts that the whole is God's, and the whole is man's also. The second scheme robs God; the first fantacises man; the third is the juste milieu, and stands midway between two ultras."(38) That is, Antinomianism exalts God's sovereignty by displacing man's responsible agency, and Arminianism excludes God's sovereignty in salvation. Thus, says Duncan, "That God works half, and man the other half, is false; that God works all, and man does all, is true."(39)

We note the contrast with Hoeksema, writing in The Standard Bearer: "I always say, beloved: Give me God, if I must make a choice. If I must make a choice to lose God or man, give me God. Let me lose man. It's all right to me: no danger there. Give me God! That's Reformed!"(40) However, we certainly are in trouble if we lose the biblical teaching about man's responsible agency and the means God uses to bring men into communion with himself. This would not be Reformed in the sense of Westminster theology. Jonathan Edwards expresses the balance in the standard Reformed perspective: "That election is not from a foresight of works, or conditional, as depending on the condition of man's will, is evident by II Tim. 1:9, Phil. 2:13, Rom. 9:15-16. Men's labours and endeavours themselves are from God, I Cor. 15:10."(41)

To conclude, let us hear Calvin expounding God's offer to bestow the blessings of the covenant: "But now, seeing it hath pleased him of his infinite goodness to come as it were to a common treaty and to bind himself interchangeably unto us, whereas there is no cause why he should be bound, so as he covenanteth to be our father and savior and to receive us into his flock, to be his inheritance, that we may live under his protection, and he setteth the everlasting life before us, seeing he doth all these things for us, ought not our hearts to yield, though they were of stone? Seeing that the creatures do see that the living God abaseth himself so far as to vouchsafe to enter into treaty with them, as if he should say, Go to, let us see at what point we be. Indeed there is an infinite distance betwixt you and me. I might command you what I think good without having any further to do with you, neither are you worthy to come by me, or to have any acquaintance with him that can command you what he listeth, without making any other protestation than only this, This will I have ye do, this is my mind. And yet for all that, I forbear mine own right, I offer myself to you to be your leader and savior, I am willing to govern you, and you shall be as my little household. I will be your king, if you will be contented with my word. And beside this, think not that my making of my covenant with your fathers was of purpose to gain anything at your hands, for I have no need nor want of any thing, and if I had, what could ye do for me? But I seek your welfare and your salvation, and therefore I am here, ready to enter into covenant with you, and to bind myself to you for mine own part. Seeing that the living God stoopeth so low, I pray you must we not needs be too too unthankful, if we yield not to humble ourselves under him, and forbear all pride and stateliness? . . . And if this took place in the time of the law, there is much greater reason that it should take place at this day. For our Lord's covenanting was not only with the Jews, nor for that one time only. . . . Therefore when we feel any naughtiness in us that keepeth us back from serving God, if we find any slothfulness in us, if we be fallen too fast asleep in this world, then to waken us up, and to cause us to magnify God, let us call to mind the covenant which our Lord hath made with us."(42)

Notes
(30) Ibid., p. 471.
(31) Herman Hoeksema, The Covenant: God's Tabernacle With Men (Grand Rapids: Sunday School of the First Protestant Reformed Church, 1981), p. 2.
(32) Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 476.
(33) Ibid., p. 651.
(34) Ibid.
(35) Ibid., p. 653.
(36) Ibid., p. 651.
(37) Ibid., p. 297.
(38) Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 29-30.
(39) Ibid.
(40) The Standard Bearer, 29:415.
(41) Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman (1834, reprint ed., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 2:534, para. 29.
(42) Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, pp. 179-80.