Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987) on Common Grace from His Introduction to Systematic Theology

Common Grace

It is only if we think concretely of God that we can also think concretely of the things of the created world. And therefore we can think scripturally about the much-disputed doctrine of “common grace.” If we think concretely of the question, we see at once that the term “common” is really applicable only in a very loose sense to the idea of grace. God’s attitude toward the saved and the unsaved can at no point be strictly common. It is well that we begin at this point. God always regards the reprobate as reprobate. When, therefore, he gives to the reprobate certain gifts in this life, of which they are undeserving, and these same gifts (as, for instance, rain and sunshine) also come to the saved, we cannot conclude that, with respect to rain and sunshine, God has the same attitude toward the believer and the unbeliever. When we speak of the attitude of God toward unbelievers we must take into consideration the total picture of the unbeliever’s relationship to God. Thus the gifts of rain and sunshine to the believer are the gifts of a covenant God who has forgiven the sins of his people, and who knows that his people need these gifts. In a similar way, the gifts of rain and sunshine to unbelievers are gifts to those whom God hates, and are given because they too have need of those things to fulfill the purpose that God has with them. God gave Pharaoh life and ability to rule, that he might be able to do that for which God raised him up.

Both the wheat and the tares receive rain and sunshine so that both may reach the day of judgment for the revelation of the glory of God. In all this, God gave a witness to his presence (Acts 14:16). Men are through this witness without excuse. Thus God gave men and nations everywhere what they needed for a natural life and civilization, that they might accomplish the purposes of God. He restrained them in their natural tendency to do only evil continually, so that they, in spite of their own inherent evil nature, do that which externally resembles the requirements of the law of God (Rom. 2:14, 15). It was thus by the gifts of God to sinners that the full demoniacal character of sin appeared and shall appear. When the world by its wisdom shows itself to be ignorant of God, God by his grace saves sinners unto himself. When the righteousness of men is shown to be but as filthy rags, God reveals his righteousness from heaven among men.

We conclude then, that “common grace” is not strictly common. The “common” grace that comes to believers comes in conjunction with their forgiven status before God; the “common” grace that comes to unbelievers comes in conjunction with their unforgiven status. Externally considered, the facts may be the same, but the framework in the two cases is radically different.

When, therefore, we are exhorted to follow God’s example in doing good to our enemies, that is, in giving gifts to them and helping them (Luke 6:35), we are asked to have the same attitude toward them that God has toward them. We are not to forget that they are haters of God. We are to do good to them in spite of this fact. We are to do good to them, in part at least, for the purpose of enabling them to accomplish the purpose that God has with them. To be sure, we are not to judge absolutely. Absolute judgment God reserves for himself. Yet, by the appearance of the wicked deeds of men, we cannot but think of them as enemies of God.

We say that this is one factor of the whole situation. We do not say that it is the only factor. God loves the works of his hands, and the progress that they make to their final fulfillment. So we may and should rejoice with God in the unfolding of the history of the race, even in the unfolding of the wickedness of man in order that the righteousness of God may be most fully displayed. But if God tells us that, in spite of the wickedness of men, and in spite of the fact that they misuse his gifts for their own greater condemnation, he is longsuffering with them, we need not conclude that there is no sense in which God has a favor to the unbeliever. There is a sense in which God has a disfavor to the believer because, in spite of the new life in him, he sins in the sight of God. So God may have favor to the unbeliever because of the “relative good” that God himself gives him in spite of the principle of sin within him. If we were to think of God and of his relation to the world in a univocal or abstract fashion, we might agree with those who maintain that there is no qualitative difference between the favor of God toward the saved and toward the unsaved. Arminians and Barthians virtually do this. Or, we might agree with those who maintain that there is no sense in which God can show a favor to the reprobate. On the other hand, if we reason concretely about God and his relation to the world, we simply listen to what God has told us in his Word on the matter. It may even then be exceedingly difficult to construct a theory of “common grace” which will do justice to what Scripture says. We make Scripture the standard of our thinking, and not our thinking the standard of Scripture. All of man’s activity, whether intellectual or moral, is analogical; and for this reason it is quite possible for the unsaved sinner to do that which is “good” in a sense and for the believer to do what is “evil” in a sense.

With respect to the question, then as to whether Scripture actually teaches an attitude of favor, up to a point, on the part of God toward the non-believer, we can only intimate that we believe it does. Even when we take full cognizance of the fact that the unbeliever abuses every gift of God and uses it for the greater manifestation of his wickedness, there seems to be evidence in Scripture that God, for this life, has a certain attitude of favor to unbelievers. We may point to such passages as the following: In Psalm 145:9, we are told: “The Lord is good to all; and his tender mercies are over all his works.” In seeking the meaning of such a passage, we must be careful. In the first place, it is to be remembered that God is constantly setting his own people in the center of the outflow of his goodness to the children of men. So, in Exodus 34:6, 7 we read: “And the Lord God passed before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generation.” In this passage we are, as it were, warned to think concretely on the question before us. God’s mercy and grace is primarily extended to those whose sins are forgiven. If in any sense it is given to those whose sins are not forgiven, it must always be remembered that God does not overlook iniquity. We may therefore expect that in Psalm 145 the psalmist teaches nothing that is out of accord with what has been taught in Exodus 34. Thus, the primary meaning of Psalm 145 is again that God’s great favor is toward his people. Even when God gives great gifts to non-believers, they are, in a more basic sense, gifts to believers. Gifts of God to unbelievers help to make the life of believers possible, and in measure, pleasant. But this does not detract from the fact that the unbeliever himself is, in a measure, the recipient of God’s favor. There is a certain joy in the gift of life and its natural blessings for the unbeliever. And we may well think that Psalm 145 has this in mind. Such joy as there is in the life of the unbeliever cannot be found in him after this life is over. Even in the hereafter, the lost will belong to the works of God’s hands. And God no doubt has joy that through the works of evil men and angels, he is establishing his glory. Yet that is not what the psalmist seems to mean. There seems to be certain satisfaction on the part of God even in the temporary joy of the unbeliever as a creature of himself, a joy which will in the end turn to bitterness, but which none the less, is joy while it lasts.

Another passage to which we briefly refer is Matthew 5:44, 45. “But I say unto you, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” In this passage, the disciples of Jesus are told to deny themselves the selfish joy of expressing enmity against those that hate them. They are not to express their attitude of hostility. But this is not all they are to do. They are to replace the attitude of hatred with an attitude of love. He does not know but that this one who now hates him may one day become a believer. This is one factor in the total situation. Yet this is not to be made the only factor. It is not even the expressed reason for his loving his enemy. The one guide for the believer’s action with respect to the enemy is God’s attitude toward that enemy. And the believer is told definitely to love his enemy in imitation of God’s attitude toward that enemy. God’s attitude toward that enemy must therefore in some sense be one of love. It is no doubt the love of an enemy, and, therefore, in God’s case, never the same sort of love as the love toward his children. And to the extent that we know men to be enemies of the Lord, we too cannot love them in the same sense in which we are told to love fellow-believers. God no doubt lets the wheat and the tares grow together till the day of judgment, but even so, though God’s ultimate purpose with unbelievers is their destruction and the promotion of his glory through their destruction, he loves them, in a sense, while they are still kept by himself, through his own free gifts, from fully expressing the wicked principle that is in them.

So also ought we to think of what is often called the universal well-meant offer of salvation. We know that there are those whom God, in his secret counsel does not intend to save. Of those round about us, we do not always know who are saved and who are not. In a sense, therefore, our ignorance accounts for the necessity of using a general formula in preaching the gospel. Yet this is not the only reason why Christ wept over Jerusalem, over Jerusalem which he knew would, for the most part, reject him. So God calls those whom he knows will harden their hearts. He labored with Pharaoh to let his people go before the final time of destruction should come. Yet he had raised up Pharaoh for that final destruction. It is the duty of men to repent, as it was originally their duty not to sin. It is always the duty of man to obey the voice of God. The call to repentance that unbelievers receive will add to their judgment because they do not heed it. But to be able to add to their judgment, it must have had a real meaning in their case. To say this is not to fall into individualistic Arminianism. Those who have not heard the call of redemption ill be judged because they are sinners in Adam and with Adam. Yet those who have heard the call and have not accepted it will receive the greater damnation. Thus, there must be a genuine meaning in the call that comes to them. It is only if we really think analogically or concretely of the attributes of God that we can thus do justice to all the aspects of Scripture truth.

It is only if we keep all this in mind that we can understand something of what is meant when Paul says in Romans 2:14, 15 that the natural man does by nature the work of the law. This cannot mean that man’s sinful nature is no longer sinful. If that were the case, it would mean that he had already received the gospel. It can only mean, therefore, that, in spite of his sinful heart, he habitually does things that, externally considered, fulfill the requirements of the law. His good deeds are adventitious as far as his sinful heart is concerned, but there is in him such a thing as an old nature, which, in spite of himself, leads him to do that which is good after a fashion. It is not merely not as bad as it might be, but it is, in a sense, good. It is a gift of God to the unbeliever when in this life he leads an externally good life, even if it be not from his heart. The deeds of the unbelievers are, to be sure, splendid vices; they are that, but they are also at the same time something else. They are, in a sense, a gift of God’s favor; and they, in turn, are the object of a certain favor of God.

All in all the idea of commonness, whether applied to grace or to the gospel call should be closely connected with the idea of earlier and later. Commonness is always commonness up to a point and with a difference. But commonness is more common earlier than later. Men in general, believers and unbelievers, are regarded and treated similarly according as the process of differentiation between them has not come to development. There is a common wrath upon elect and non-elect to the extent that the difference between the elect and the non-elect has not yet come to expression. So also with common grace and the common gospel call. It is to men regarded in their more or less undifferentiated state that the term commonness is applicable. History has genuine meaning; the doctrine of election may not be interpreted so as to destroy its meaning, but rather so as to be the foundation of it.

Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1974), 240–244. [underlining in the original]

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The Contradiction Between the Early and Later John Gerstner (1914–1996) on the Will of God

1) The early John Gerstner:

4. "If predestination is true, God is insincere in inviting all men to salvation!"

Again, you will ask, Why if a man is not elected or predestined to eternal life but is actually passed over in the decrees of God, does God proceed to strive with him nonetheless? Why does God send his gospel to a person who has been predestined to be left to himself and perish? Or in the form of an objection it is said: If predestination is true, God is insincere in inviting all men to salvation.

Now before we come to grips with this question in its fundamental nature, let me call attention incidentally to a significant fact. The situation which is before us at the moment is in no sense different from the situation we would have if there were no such thing as predestination. That is, if there were merely foreknowledge and no predestination of events God would know from all eternity that certain persons were going to disbelieve and to perish in their sins. He has perfect knowledge of all things and therefore knows who will believe and who will not believe. The question can still be raised, just as legitimately as in the predestination context, why does God strive and work and present the gospel and its means of grace to persons whom he knows are going to reject every overture which he makes? We know that God knows the outcome and we also know that God does work strenuously for the salvation of people whose unbelief he has known from all eternity. This is just to remind you once again that as long as there is such a thing as foreknowledge we have problems like this regardless of the doctrine of predestination. Predestination, in other words, does not bring a problem like this into existence; it exists independently of predestination and is made neither better nor worse, that is more or less severe, by the doctrine of predestination.

Otherwise it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask why God strives with men whom he knows and has predestined should perish. Again, incidentally, before coming to this question, let me notice another significant point. This question really does concern God and not us. What I mean is this: we may wonder why God, who knows all things, including the fact that certain persons will in spite of all efforts reject and disbelieve, continues to work with them to persuade them to believe; but, we cannot ask why we would do so with all men. We do not know the outcome. To us there is always a possibility that anybody with whom we work and for whom we pray may be an object of the divine mercy and may be predestined to eternal life and may actually believe and be saved. God knows, in a given instance, that such is not going to happen, but we never know it. Therefore, we can not only work in obedience preaching the gospel but we can work in hope that our preaching will be successful in the salvation of the persons with whom we strive. It does not affect our evangelistic endeavors or zeal in the slightest, but nevertheless it is a question which we may ask concerning God himself.

What reason, then, are we able to discover why God, who knows the futility of certain endeavors to convert certain persons, does proceed to make these endeavors which he knows are going to be futile? There appear to be several reasons. First, God by this means shows the hardness of the sinful heart. As we have said, it is only the wickedness of the human heart and not the decree of God which causes men to reject the overtures of God and his gospel. What more clearly reveals the depths of depravity than the rejection of such invitations from a glorious God? Second, this hardness of the human heart apart from the converting presence of the Holy Spirit shows that God is essential to goodness. Third, God's sincerity is evident in that if any person whosoever accepts the gospel, God will accept him. Fourth, the elect see, in the invitations of God and their rejection by men, how hard their own hearts were apart from the grace of God and what they would have done apart from that grace. They may say now and through all eternity as they contemplate the righteous judgments of God against the wicked, "There but for the grace of God go we.

John H. Gerstner, A Predestination Primer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1963), 35–37. See also Robert Reymond's citation of this early work.

2) The later John Gerstner:

Most Reformed theologians also include, as a by-product of the atonement, the well-meant offer of the gospel by which all men can be saved. Some Reformed theologians take a further step still and say that God even intends that they should be saved by this atonement which nevertheless was made only for the elect. For example, John Murray and Ned Stonehouse write:

Our Lord . . . says expressly that he willed the bestowal of his saving and protecting grace upon those whom neither the Father nor he decreed thus to save and protect.

One may sadly say that Westminster Theological Seminary stands for this misunderstanding of the Reformed doctrine since not only John Murray and Ned Stonehouse but also Cornelius Van Til, R. B. Kuiper, John Frame, and, so far as we know, all of the faculty have favored it. The Christian Reformed Church had already in 1920 taken this sad step away from Reformed orthodoxy and has been declining ever since. The Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. had even earlier, though somewhat ambiguously, departed and the present mainline Presbyterian church affirms that "The risen Christ is the savior for all men."

The Presbyterian Church in the United States (now part of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.) is not far behind, and the separatist Presbyterians such as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America are following in this train. Only the Protestant Reformed Church seems willing to hold to the whole counsel of God on this doctrine.

Serious as this error is, it does not constitute a radical break with the Reformed tradition, though it does lay a foundation for it. For example, Murray and Stonehouse insist that, though God truly desires the salvation of the reprobate, He does not decree that. Rather, He decrees the opposite. They recognize theirs as a very dangerous position and appeal to great mystery:

We have found that God himself expresses an ardent desire for the fulfillment of certain things which he has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass. This means that there is a will to the realization of what he has not decretively willed, a pleasure towards that which he has not been pleased to decree. This is indeed mysterious, and why he has not brought to pass in the exercise of his omnipotent power and grace, what is his ardent pleasure lies hidden in the sovereign counsel of his will.

However this is not "mystery" but bald contradiction, as these two fine Reformed theologians well realized. How does one account for Homer(s) nodding? The answer is simple—the exegesis seemed to demand it. The two authors "tremble at God's word" and God's Word seemed to them clearly to say that God desired what God did not desire. We certainly agree that if God says that He desired what He did not desire we would have to agree with God. Since we know that God does not desire what God does not desire, for this is evident on every page of Scripture, as well as in the logical nature of God and man, we know this exegesis is in error, must be in error, cannot but be in error.

But where is its error? It must be that Murray and Stonehouse are talking literally where He desires to be taken anthropomorphically. Almost everything said about God or by God in Scripture is anthropomorphism. The "everlasting arms," His "riding on the clouds," the "eyes" and "ears" of the Lord—there are literally hundreds of such metaphorical, anthropomorphic expressions describing God. This is, of course, admitted by all. On the other hand, it is rightly contended, God is also described literally as loving, rejoicing, happy, thinking, and so forth. Can we say that when God is described in physical or finite terms the expressions are metaphorical, but when He is described ontologically or psychologically the expressions are literal? No, for sometimes that is the case and sometimes not. When God is described psychologically as suffering, frustrated, or grieved, Murray, Stonehouse, and all sound theologians would deny these to be literally true. They know that, in the early church, patripassionism (the teaching that the Father suffers) was a heresy.

The question facing us here is whether God could "desire" that which He does not bring to pass. There is no question at all that He can desire certain things, and these things which He desires He possesses and enjoys in Himself eternally. Otherwise, He would not be the ever-blessed God. The Godhead desires each Person in the Godhead and enjoys each eternally. The Godhead also desires to create, and He (though He creates in time) by creating enjoys so doing eternally. Otherwise He would be eternally bereft of a joy He presently possesses and would have increased in joy if He later possessed it—both of which notions are impossible. He would thereby have changed (which is also impossible) and would have grown in the wisdom of a new experience (which is blasphemous to imagine).

If God's very blessedness means the oneness of His desire and His experience, is not our question (whether He could desire what He does not desire) rhetorical? Not only would He otherwise be bereft of some blessedness which would reduce Him to finitude, but He would be possessed of some frustration which would not only bereave Him of some blessedness, but would manifestly destroy all blessedness. This is clearly the case because His blessedness would be mixed with infinite regret. Our God would be the ever-miserable, ever-blessed God. His torment in the eternal damnation of sinners would be as exquisite as it is everlasting. He would actually suffer infinitely more than the wicked. Indeed, He would Himself be wicked because He would have sinfully desired what His omniscience would have told Him He could never have.

But why continue to torture ourselves? God, if He could be frustrated in His desires, simply would not be God. When, therefore, we read of God's "desiring" what He does not bring to pass, let us not "grieve" His Spirit by taking this literally, but recognize therein an anthropomorphic expression.

John H. Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, ed. by Don Kistler, 2nd edition (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 2000), 142–146.

3) Here's Gerstner's "Forward" to Engelsma's book that he also wrote later in his life:

This is certainly an interesting, informative, lively, learned discussion of the essence of the gospel call to all mankind. In my opinion, Professor Engelsma carefully defines and convincingly avoids "hyper-Calvinism" himself and clears his denomination, the Protestant Reformed Churches, of so teaching.

The locus of the debate among Calvinists concerns what is called "the well-meant offer." Let me locate first what is mean by "well-meant offer" and the area of difference among Calvinists concerning it.

There is much related to this title that is shared by all Calvinists though sometimes differently phrased; namely, that reprobates hear the call and that is a "serious" call to them. There is one part of the understood meaning of well-meant offer" that is affirmed by many Calvinists today and denied by others; namely, that God desires and intends the salvation of reprobates in that call they hear or read.

The "well-meant offer" is understood, by both sides, to include the notion that God intends and desires the salvation of reprobates when the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to everyone who hears with his ears or reads with his eyes. The late John Murray and Ned B. Stonehouse in The Free Offer of the Gospel and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church could declare in 1948 (citing The Free Offer of the Gospel by Murray and Stonehouse):

...there is in God a benevolent lovingkindness towards the repentance and salvation of even those whom he has not decreed to save. This pleasure, will, desire is expressed in the universal call to repentance.... The full and free offer of the gospel is a grace bestowed upon all. Such grace is necessarily a manifestation of love or lovingkindness in the heart of God, and this lovingkindness is revealed to be of a character or kind that is correspondent with the grace bestowed.

The grace offered is nothing less than salvation in its richness and fullness. The love or lovingkindness that lies back of that offer is not anything less; it is the will to that salvation. In other words, it is Christ in all the glory of his person and in all the perfection of his finished work whom God offers in the gospel. The loving and benevolent will that is the source of that offer and that grounds its veracity and reality is the will to the possession of Christ and the enjoyment of the salvation that resides in him (quoted in Hyper-Calvinism & the Call of the Gospel, p. 43).

I have italicized the three statements that can only mean in that context that God desires and intends ("will" is used on the sense of "intend") the salvation of the reprobates. Much else that is stated can be so interpreted but is not unambiguous. All Calvinists (and indeed all Christians) agree that not all humans persons are saved. Arminians do champion the notion that God desires and intends the salvation of every person. Calvinists do not, but here Calvinists John Murray, Ned Stonehouse, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church do so teach.

On the other hand, Herman Hoeksema, the Protestant Reformed denomination, and our author David Engelsma in this book emphatically reject the "well-meant offer" as including God's desire and intention to save reprobates.

As a Calvinist, not associated ecclesiastically with the tiny Protestant Reformed denomination and sharply divergent from some of her doctrinal positions, I feel it absolutely necessary to hold with her here where she stands, almost alone today, and suffers massive vituperation and ridicule from Calvinists (no less) for her faithfulness at this point to the gospel of God.

I had the incomparable privilege of being a student of Professor Murray and Stonehouse. With tears in my heart, I nevertheless confidently assert that they erred profoundly in The Free Offer of the Gospel and died before they seem to have realized their error which, because of their justifiedly [sic] high reputations for Reformed excellence generally, still does incalculable damage to the cause of Jesus Christ and the proclamation of His gospel.

It is absolutely essential to the nature of the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent that whatever His sovereign majesty desires or intends most certainly--without conceivability of failure in one iota thereof--must come to pass! Soli Deo Gloria! Amen and amen forevermore! God can never, ever desire or intend anything that does not come to pass, or He is not the living, happy God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but an eternally miserable being weeping tears of frustration that He was unable to prevent hell and can never end it thus destroying Himself and heaven in the process.

"God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen" (1 Tim. 6:15, 16).

John H. Gerstner
Ligonier, PA

From John Gerstner's "Forward," in Hyper-Calvinism and the Call of the Gospel by David Engelsma (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1994), vii–ix.

After Gerstner quotes A. H. Strong (in Systematic Theology, p. 290) stating the proposition that love (both in God and in ourselves) implies a desire that all creatures should fulfill the purpose of their existence by being morally conformed to the holy One, Gerstner says “all Calvinists must disagree because what God desires He does.”

See John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 3 vols. (Powhatan, VA: Berea Publications; Orlando, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 1993), 3:285.