Here are the texts:5 ‘special grace (aliquid peculiare),’6 he [Calvin] also calls it ‘special revelation (specialis illuminatio)’ and again ‘spiritual grace (singularis gratia; in 1560 he translates it more precisely as “singular grace” grâce singulière); it is the spirit of regeneration, given only to the elect.1
General grace confers the “virtues, which are by no means common to nature, but are special graces of the Lord, which he distributes even to the wicked (profane hominibus), according to the manner and measure that seems good to him;”2 for “he gives indiscriminately to the good and the bad (impiis etiam et profanis commune).”3 One passage alone states everything: “If someone objects: What has the Spirit of God to do with the ungodly, who are altogether strangers to God? I reply that this argument is not sufficient. For when it is said that the Spirit dwells only in faithful people, this is understood to mean the Spirit of sanctification, by which we are consecrated to God to be his temples. Nevertheless, God does not cease to fill, move, and give life to all creatures through the virtue of this same Spirit.”4
It must therefore be properly understood: there is a diversity of purpose, but no diversity of cause. There is no dualism. The gifts of grace directed toward the elect alone, and the gifts of grace directed toward the wicked as well as the good, are all, and indeed in a sense are all, directly and personally given by God. General grace, which makes no distinction between the good and the wicked, does distinguish between individuals. “And yet it is so [in such a way] universal that everyone, in his own understanding, ought to recognize in it a special grace of God.” Does God not create “madmen and fools”? Thus “the light of God is so [in such a way] natural to all that it is a gratuitous benefit of his generosity toward each person.… [Nevertheless,] since these things are common to the good and the wicked, we may regard them as natural graces.”5
Doubtless this general grace has as its principal object “earthly things.” As for “earthly things … political doctrine, the art of governing one’s household well, the mechanical arts, philosophy, and all the disciplines called liberal arts … we must also acknowledge this: that man is by nature a sociable creature, and is therefore naturally inclined to cultivate and preserve society. Yet we see that there are certain general notions of honesty and civil order imprinted upon the understanding of all men.… It remains firmly established that there is in all men some seed of political order; and this is a great argument that “No one is deprived of the light of reason when it comes to governing the present life.”1
It would nevertheless be a mistake to try to restrict the influence of general grace to “earthly things.” God’s grace acts upon the soul and heart of all men. The maladies that it “purges” (purget) in the elect, it merely “restrains” in the reprobate, as with a bridle (iniecto fraeno coercet), so that they do not run rampant, insofar as God judges it expedient for the preservation of the universal world (rerum universitatem).2
God therefore acts differently, but always by grace, and nothing and no one is exempt from the action of one or another of the forms of this same grace. Calvin thus restores unity where Roman Catholicism had introduced dualism, and does so more vigorously than any other Reformer in combating the two errors arising from this dualism: the moralistic error and the mystical error.3Emilé Doumergue, Jean Calvin: Les hommes et les choses de son temps, 7 vols. (Lausanne: George Bridel & Cie Editeurs, 1899–1927), 4:49–51; AI (ChatGPT) translation.
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5. Note also the following passages: “What little order there has been even among the pagans has come about through God’s admirable providence, who has wished to preserve some degree of decency for the human race.… Although none of the works of the pagans were considered pure before God, nevertheless God labored among them so that things would not become completely confused. When, therefore, we see this, let us learn, whenever God gives us certain signs of his providence by restraining men within some measure of order and decency, to recognize in this that he watches over the human race.… It is certain that today all decency would be erased from among men if there were not God’s admirable providence.” (Sermons on Deuteronomy, Opera XXVIII, p. 110.) “What else can we say, then, except that our Lord has placed a secret bridle upon men, as if to say: ‘I wish there to remain some degree of decency of nature, despite those who rule the world and would like to introduce such confusion that human beings would become like brute beasts, like dogs and horses, seeing that I am above them, so that my law may be so firmly impressed upon human hearts that, despite whatever malice and blindness there may be in them, they still retain some sense of decency in accordance with what I commanded them at the outset.” There, I say, is how God has governed in such a way that human beings, however unbelieving they may be, have always had some restraint, so as not to transgress completely what was forbidden them by this law.” (Ibid., p. 63.)
6. Institutes, 1543 (1545), p. 59.
1. II, 11, 20.
2. Bᶠ, p. 71. II, III, 4.
3. Institutes, 1543 (1545), p. 59. II, II, 20.
4. Bᶠ, p. 57. II, II, 16.
5. Bᶠ, p. 55, 56. II, II, 14.
1. BF, p. 54, 55. II, II, 13.
2. BF, p. 70. II, III, 3. It is because he ignored or misunderstood this role of general grace that R. Stähelin (Realencyklopädie, 3rd ed., art. Calvin, III, 1897, p. 672), for example, draws a complete contrast between Calvin and Zwingli in the following terms: “The idea of a general revelation, granted also to the pagans, to which Zwingli, with his humanism, attached such great importance, completely receded into the background (ganz hinter getreten) behind the positive revelation of the Bible, although Calvin, speaking of truths taught by the pagans, says: ‘Since all truth comes from God, if unbelievers have said anything sound and true, it must not be rejected, for it has proceeded from God’” (Commentary on the Epistle to Titus, 1:12). In reality, this is not an inadvertent admission on Calvin’s part, but a fundamental doctrine that he explicitly taught. And Kuyper can say that, just as Cain and Judas are products of humanity’s corruption, Plato and Cicero are products of God’s general grace (Gemeene gratie, II, p. 22).
3. In the sixteenth century, these two errors are found in Protestantism: the moralistic error among the Socinians, and the mystical error among the Anabaptists; their common mother, despite their enmity, is the Roman Catholic Church. Pelagian Socinianism accepts the Catholic distinction between natural religion and supernatural religion; it begins by accepting only the former and ends by accepting only the latter (see the article “Socin und der Socinianism” in the second edition of the Realencyklopädie). As for Anabaptism, Ritschl, drawing on Bullinger, demonstrated its Catholic lineage (Bullinger, Der Wiedertaufer Ursprung, Furgang, Seckten, Wesen, 1560; A. Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, 1880, I, pp. 24–25). However, since Socinianism and Anabaptism represent two tendencies of the human heart, they are perennial. Anabaptism is found not only among the Mennonites but also in Pietism, among the Moravians, in Independency, and, in our own day, in the religions commonly called religions of the Spirit. Socinianism, meanwhile, is found among the Dutch Remonstrants. Through Spinoza, the Dutch Jew, it exerted its influence on English Deism; through Descartes, who lived in Holland, it influenced Rationalism, and it reappears in Ritschlianism, which is a great denier of natural religion and a great propagator of dualism between religion and philosophy. J. Thikötter, La théologie de l’avenir, 1885, p. 10; Ernest Bertrand, Une nouvelle conception de la rédemption, 1891, pp. 40–41.
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