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Common Grace Part 4 : Roots in Post-Reformation Thought

In articulating a systematic doctrine of Common Grace, Kuyper does not see himself as proposing a novelty, but gathering under one correct heading a hitherto scattered body of Christian dogmatics. A sampling of the writings of a few Puritan / post-Reformation theologians gives a us sense the doctrine’s provenance:

  • Firstly from Robert Harris, one of the Westminster Divines called by parliament to conclude the English Reformation and deliver the Westminster Standards. In answering a hypothetical objection of someone drawing attention to the overall goodness of their life as an outright proof of their salvation, he says: “There are graces of two sorts. First, common graces, which even reprobates may have. Secondly, peculiar, such as accompany salvation, as the Apostle [Paul] has it, proper to God’s own children only. The matter is not whether we have the first sort of graces, for those do not seal up God’s special love to a man’s soul, but it must be saving grace alone that can do this for us” (Harris : 1654, 241) n.b. this work is available on Google Books; here is a scan of the quoted passage.
Scan from p241 of Robert Harris' 'Works' - 1654
Scan from p241 of Robert Harris’ ‘Works’ – 1654
  • Secondly, John Knox the leader of the Reformation in Scotland, writing in C16th says “After these common mercies, I say, whereof the reprobate are often partakers, he openeth the treasure of his rich mercies, which are kept in Christ Jesus for his Elect. Such as willingly delight not in blindness may clearly see that the Holy Ghost maketh a plain difference betwixt the graces and mercies which are common to all, and that sovereign mercy which is immutably reserved to the chosen children” (Knox : 1856, 87)
  • Thirdly, the Swiss reformer and Zwingli’s successor, Heinrich Bullinger says “For there is in God a certain (as it were) general grace, whereby he created all mortal men, and by which he sends rain upon the just and unjust: but this grace doth not justify; for if it did, then should the wicked and unjust be justified. Again, there is that singular grace, whereby he doth, for his only-begotten Christ his sake, adopt us to be his sons: he doth not, I mean, adopt all, but the believers only, whose sins he reckons not, but doth impute to them the righteousness of his only-begotten Son our Saviour. This is that grace which doth alone justify us in very deed” (Bullinger: 1850, 329-330)

REFERENCES

Bullinger, Henry. 1850. ‘Decades’ – the third decade, ed. Rev Thomas Harding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harris, R. 1654. The works of Robert Harris … revised, corrected, and now collected into one volume: With an addition of sundry sermons: Some, not printed in the former edition; others, never before extant …J. Flesher. (Google Books)

Knox, John. 1856. The works of John Knox, on predestination, ed. David Laing. Vol. 5. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society.

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Light in Public Life

Welcome to jonest.org, a site where I am posting my ideas and writings on life, faith and politics. I am privileged to be involved in both the church and academic worlds in the UK (see About) and much of the content here will be works in progress for one or the other. Clearly I’m a challenging party guest who can be fairly relied upon to raise issues of both religion and politics and probably any other off-the-menu topic.

Let me begin by explaining a little about that blog tagline ‘Light in Public Life‘. It encapsulates the conviction that theology can and should bring illumination to the whole of life. John’s Gospel begins by saying of Jesus, “in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it… The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” ‘Light’ then, can be taken to mean a positive theology. The pre-modern world worked with this truth in an unjaded manner: God, through Christ, has flooded the world with his light and we can know and be known in this light. As documented by Charles Taylor, the subsequent turns of history through renaissance, reformation and enlightenment served to replace the full ‘heavens’ with the empty ‘space’. In the modern age, Christianity has to contend with this psychological shift in the Western cultural mindset and theologians must articulate answers across the divide. To my mind, one of the most interesting and arguably the most practically enacted theologies of the past two centuries is that of the Dutch scholar and statesman Abraham Kuyper. Much of my academic work interacts with Kuyper, whose life and thought are becoming more prominent in English-language theology thanks to recent translations.
‘Light in Public Life’ stands for the re-theologising of ‘the political’ in its broadest sense. I have argued elsewhere that politics tends to work on theological assumptions that may well not be acknowledged or properly theorised. That is a dangerous state of affairs and certainly one that needs to be carefully interrogated. That said, my approach is far from alarmist or sombre: I aim to be positive without being glib and critical without being cynical.