By Angus Harley

Many decades ago, I gave a lecture in a seminary on John Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement. I gave out a page of quotes by him, but I didn’t tell the students who wrote them. All of the students were Calvinists. Each and everyone said that the quotes were proof not of Calvinism’s view of the extent of the atonement but of Arminianism’s. When I told them that John Calvin had written every single one of the comments, they were, to a man, shocked. And, here is the kicker, even after explaining Calvin’s system of interpretation, of how he viewed the invisible-visible ‘church’ distinction and held to a temporary form of external redemption, the entire class continued to say that Calvin’s quotes were Arminian in nature.

Lesson learned? Those ‘Calvinists’ were committed to their system, not to a true form of historical exegesis and evaluation.

Recently, Stuart Brogden wrote a book on the 1644 London Baptist Confession of Faith. He was countering the Reformed Baptist’s interpretation of that confession. As a group committed to Covenant Theology, the Reformed Baptists were anachronistically reading the confession and eisegetically reading into it their own Covenant Theology system. Unfortunately, it does not matter what solid evidence Brogden’s book brings to bear, for it will not persuade any Reformed Baptist in the room!

Just as recently, I have written a few articles on John Calvin’s view of the extent of the atonement, giving interpretations of supposedly key texts by Calvin that simply do not fit comfortably into either the Arminian/Amyraldian mold, or into a Reformed one. Yet, I am aware that these articles will persuade no one in either camp. ‘System’, not ‘exegesis’, is their watchword.

Let’s take another example, the Westminster Confession of Faith’s (WCF) view of grace. First of all, there is the question of whether there is grace in the Covenant of Works (CoW), as taught by the WCF itself. In the WCF there is a dual covenant structure: the CoW and the Covenant of Grace. To confessional Calvinism, the WCF is the epitome of confessional teaching. A growing group of Reformed confessionalists are persuaded that the CoW was actually a gracious covenant. For, not only was it a covenant given in grace, via God’s condescension, but its whole nature was gracious, too. It held out the gift of eternal life- a veritable grace, indeed. Moreover, even Adam’s obedience, had it been successful, would have issued from God’s free grace, for our obedience to God is the work of divine grace in us.[1] The majority of the Reformed theologians do not agree with this reading of the WCF, and retort that even though the CoW was given in grace, its terms were of works, not of grace itself.

What is happening here is that the Reformed group is splitting over its reading of the WCF and its understanding of grace. As a text, I agree there is not even the remotest suggestion that the WCF teaches that the CoW was a gracious covenant. However, this does not stop a growing minority of traditionalists from reading in their own system into the WCF.

Another example of a grace misreading of the WCF is over the topic of common grace. The vast majority of Reformed readers of the WCF insist that the evidence for God’s ‘grace’ to all of creation was evident from the first moment of creation. For example, the WCF’s reference to the goodness of God is but another way of referring to his grace, as is the mention of God’s condescension. There are many other hints and allusions in the WCF, we are told, to this creational grace, which, even after the Fall, extends to the godly and the wicked, and is now known as ‘common grace’. It is confidently concluded by theologian after theologian that the WCF’s doctrine of common grace is not only very clear but fundamental to its teaching.

Yet, it is far from clear that the WCF teaches common grace. Let us recall the majority interpretation of the CoW. It said that the WCF’s text simply does not relate that the CoW is a gracious covenant. I said this reading of the WCF was undoubtedly correct. However, there is no reference in the WCF to ‘common grace’, or to a related ‘grace’ phrase, concerning God’s act of creation, or in regard to his providence toward the non-elect. Indeed, I think the evidence very strong that God’s ‘grace’, as related in the WCF, is invariably an elective and redemptive-salvific concept. Moreover, the majority reading has to adopt the exact same logic that we referred to before and dismissed: theological extrapolations. For, the majority reading assumes that God’s goodness and condescension are his grace in action. The text nowhere says this about the creational order, but it is assumed to be theologically true. After all, we are told, all the Reformed theologians believed in ‘common grace.’ Perhaps so, but, then again, perhaps not. And even if so, what relevance does this have to the text? Remember, confessionalism is about a given confession and its internal textual content.

That being said, let us, for argument’s sake, concede that there are one or two texts in the WCF that do allude to, or relate, a mention of the theology of common grace. Even if this is so, what does this establish? What it would not establish is that the doctrine of common grace is ‘very clear’ in the WCF. What it would prove is that the doctrine of common grace was, in that case, most likely merely a minor supporting concept, one which the Reformed theology of the day did not really pay too much heed to.

Lesson learned? Even the most die-hard Reformed confessionalist, when reading their own confessional documents, indulges in exaggerated confessional claims and in blatant eisegesis. If this is so, please, dear NCT reader, do not stand down to the Reformed group’s monochromatic reading of history, its strait-jacketing of different historical documents. Stand firm in the text and in the fullness of the historical witness.

[1] Douglas Wilson, “Obedience and Works”, Blog & Mablog, May 1, 2008. https://dougwils.com/the-church/s16-theology/obedience-and-works.html#:~:text=But%20if%20all%20Reformed%20theologians,a%20gracious%20gift%20from%20God.