Common Grace Part 7 : The Relationship Between Common and Special Grace

WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMON GRACE AND SPECIAL GRACE?

Kuyper spends a lot of time in the latter parts of his Common Grace project working out the practical ways that special (or saving) grace overlaps and interacts with common grace. It is an observable deficiency of Kuyper’s treatment of Common Grace that he does not relate the gifts given by God in common grace explicitly to the work of Christ. Rather, he reasons that God is a good God and humankind are in His image and he gives gifts to them on that basis and for His own glory. Arguing for grace being shown on the basis of human beings being the image of God is problematic on an orthodox Christian basis because it would mean that, even in Hell there would be elements of God’s gracious favour present. Louis Berkhof, writing a couple of generations after Kuyper explains the reluctance that might be underpinning Kuyper’s treatment: “Reformed theologians generally hesitate to say that Christ by his atoning blood merited these blessings for the impenitent and reprobate.” Again, we see the tensions between doctrines of grace and reprobation in Reformed theology. The area of the relationship between the work of Christ and bestowal of common grace is a (potentially deliberately), undeveloped area in Kuyper which receives modern treatment from (de Graaf : 1981) and (Tuininga : 1966). However, it does have some antiquity preceding Kuyper as Scottish theologian and one of the founders the Free Church of Scotland William Cunningham writes: “It is not denied by the advocates of particular redemption, or of a limited atonement, that mankind in general, even those who ultimately perish, do derive some advantages or benefits from Christ’s death; and no position they hold requires them to deny this. They believe that important benefits have accrued to the whole human race from the death of Christ, and that in these benefits those who are finally impenitent and unbelieving partake. What they deny is that Christ intended to procure or did procure for all, those blessings which are the proper and peculiar fruits of his death in its specific character as an atonement…Many blessings flow to mankind at large from the death of Christ, collaterally and incidentally, in consequence of the relation in which men, viewed collectively, stand to each other.” (Cunningham : 1870, 332-333). Cunningham lived from 1805-1861 preceding Kuyper by a decade and a half, and considering Kuyper’s familiarity with British Reformed teachers, it is not presumptuous to assume he would have been aware of these thoughts.  John Murray gives a succinct treatment in his work Redemption Achieved and Applied where he writes, “The unbelieving and reprobate in this world enjoy numerous benefits that flow from the fact that Christ died and rose again. The mediatorial dominion of Christ is universal, Christ is head over all things and is given all authority in heaven and in earth. It is within this mediatorial dominion that all the blessings that men enjoy is dispensed. But this dominion Christ exercises on the basis and as the reward of the finished work of redemption… Consequently, since all benefits and blessings are within the realm of Christ’s dominion and since this dominion rests upon his finished work of atonement, the benefits innumerable which are enjoyed by all men indiscriminately are related to the death of Christ and may be said to accrue from it in one way or another… The denial of universal atonement does not carry with it the denial of any such relation that the benefits enjoyed by all men may sustain to Christ’s death and finished work.” (Murray : 2015, 59-60) And even more concisely, Louis Berkhof says in his Systematic Theology: “All that the natural man receives other than curse and death is an indirect result of the redemptive work of Christ.” (Berkhof : 1959)

REFERENCES

Berkhof, Louis. 1959. Systematic theology Banner of Truth.

Cunningham, W. 1870. Historical theology: A review of the principal doctrinal discussions in the christian church since the apostolic age.

de Graaf, S. G. 1981. Promise and deliverance (4 volumes). Trans. Gordon J. Spykman Paedia.

Murray, J. 2015. Redemption accomplished and applied Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Tuininga, J. 1966. The Christological basis of common grace Westminster Theological Seminary.