Covenant of election or covenant of conditions (3)

This series of blog posts are written by Rev. Nathan J. Langerak.

I continue to answer a Canadian reader who objected to my contention in a book review that “the proponents [of a conditional covenant] hate predestination and now have revived the old Arminian war against predestination.” The reader professed her “love [for] the doctrine of predestination” and her belief “that ALL our children are included in that covenant, both the elect and the reprobate.”

The view that both elect and reprobate children of believers are members in the covenant denies predestination because it denies that predestination controls the covenant. Denial that election controls the covenant is basic to the theology of the conditional covenant and to my contention that it cannot be harmonized with the Reformed creeds. Thus espousal of a conditional covenant is incompatible with the reader’s professed love for predestination.

This covenantal doctrine—which has its origins in James Arminius, was formulated by Klaas Schilder, and is taught in the Canadian Reformed Churches—is totally at odds with the Reformed doctrines of grace as confessed especially in the Canons of Dordt, specifically the doctrines that teach that the grace of God in salvation is to the elect alone.

Canons 1.6 teaches that God gives grace to his elect alone and that the grace of God is controlled by election. “That some receive the gift of faith from God and others do not receive it proceeds from God’s eternal decree…According to which decree he graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however obstinate, and inclines them to believe.” Faith is the outstanding work of grace in the heart of man, and the Canons say that the reason some receive faith and others do not is predestination. According to that decree of predestination God acts in time.

Canons 1.7 explicitly speaks of the covenant in connection with election. The covenant is communion with God, fellowship in his house, to be a son or daughter of God, and salvation itself. “This elect number…[God] hath decreed to give to Christ, to be saved by him, and effectually to call and draw them to his communion by his Word and Spirit.” This is the same as saying that God’s covenant and membership in that covenant—communion with the living God—is controlled by election.

Even if someone would disagree with my definition of the covenant, communion with God, and say the covenant is merely the way or means to be saved, Canons 1.9 says that God “hath chosen us from eternity, both to grace and glory, to salvation and the way of salvation, which he hath ordained that we should walk in them.” The Canons make grace, glory, salvation, and the way of salvation, which is the covenant for many, the particular possession of the elect alone.

The Reformed creeds breathe not a single syllable about grace to the reprobate. Canons 1.15 teaches about the reprobate that God “hath decreed to leave [them] in the common misery into which they have willfully plunged themselves, and not to bestow upon them saving faith and the grace of conversion.” God sovereignly, justly, and eternally said no grace to the reprobate.

Because God’s grace is for the elect alone and not for the reprobate at all, the grace of God is also an effectual grace that infallibly and irresistibly accomplishes God’s saving purpose of election.

The Canadian Reformed covenantal doctrine teaches that the grace of God in the covenant is given to elect and reprobate. Such a doctrine may pay lip-service to predestination, but in reality denies it. It may mention it from time to time as that which belongs to the hidden things of God, but not as that which determines membership in and controls grace in the covenant of grace. Denying the crucial aspect of predestination that it determines who receives grace in the covenant, it denies the truth about election and reprobation.

The proponents of the conditional covenantal doctrine today—as the Arminian theologians, whose war they are reviving and carrying on—hate the doctrine of predestination. They manifest this hatred both by their ridicule of those who teach the truth about predestination—that it controls the covenant—and by their false teaching that predestination does not control the covenant. Such a doctrine as makes grace, covenantal grace, and the covenant itself the possession of reprobates and not the special possession of God’s elect children alone is at war with and cannot possibly be harmonized with the view of election and grace found in the Reformed creeds.

Those who suppose they can hold to both the love of predestination and the conditional covenantal doctrine are currently being disabused of that erroneous notion in a frightening way by the federal vision controversy and the appalling apostasy from the truth of grace and justification that is its inevitable fruit.

A professed love for predestination, including both election and reprobation, must include a rejection of the conditional covenantal doctrine and the condemnation of it as Arminian. For as the Arminians of old taught, it teaches that salvation—covenantal salvation—is not determined by the decree of God and that grace and salvation are offered wider than that decree.

If her love for predestination will not lead her to reject and condemn the conditional covenantal doctrine, perhaps a consideration of the other attacks of this covenantal doctrine on the truth of grace as confessed by the Reformed creeds will induce her to.

To this I turn next time.

Read the next article in this series: Covenant of election or covenant of conditions (4)