All Articles For Editorial

Note to the Readers: Some time ago I had plans to write a series of editorials on the need for Protestant Reformed teacher training. With that in mind I wrote this editorial, intending to follow it up with a number of articles on this subject. In the unfolding of the editorial schedule, that was not possible…until now. We reprint this editorial from June 1, 2014 with modifications, to start this series up once again.—Prof. Russell Dykstra One of the most significant covenant blessings given to the Protestant Reformed Churches is God’s gift of Christian schools. God establishes His covenant not...

The third indictment the complainants bring against Dr. Clark is really twofold: according to them, he is a rationalist and an antinomian. The accusation of rationalism is based on the contention that Dr. Clark tries to solve problems, paradoxes, contradictions, particularly the problem of the relation between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Anyone who makes an attempt to solve this problem, who tries to harmonize these two, who claims that this solution is possible, and especially he who is ready to offer his solution of this problem, is, according to the complainants a rationalist. We quote from the “Complaint.” “Dr....

The Rev. George W. Marston reread the statement which Mr. Hamilton had prepared and with which Dr. Clark had expressed himself in agreement, and asked the complainants to comment upon it. The Rev. Leslie W. Sloat objected that an answer had been prepared by the committee but that the committee had made no attempt to have its printed answer considered for adoption; instead, a wholly hew document which no one had an opportunity to study had been introduced by one individual, and the complainants were now being asked to discuss it as representing Dr. Clark’s position. The Rev. Franklin S....

  The question is whether there is a real or apparent contradiction involved in the truth of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Let us put both truths in propositional form: God is absolutely sovereign, even so that He determines the moral acts of man, both good and evil. Man is responsible before God for all his moral facts. Now, the question is not whether there is a problem here. It may well be that we cannot answer the question how God is able to determine man’s deeds without destroying man’s responsibility. That He is able to do so is asserted...

The last point of the “Complaint” concerns the so-called sincere offer of salvation on the part of God to all men, particularly to the reprobate. Here the “Complaint” descends from the stratosphere of philosophical contemplation and theological debate to the lower spheres of plain, even superficial reasoning, where even common mortals that may have been present at the examination of Dr. Clark, and at the subsequent debate about the questions involved, must have felt that they were able to participate in the discussion. Here, too, the “Complaint” reveals, more clearly than anywhere else, its distinctly Christian Reformed tendency, particularly its...

The complainants insist that the preacher must proclaim that God sincerely seeks the salvation of the reprobate. And in spite of this ostensibly Arminian position they claim the sole right to the name of being Reformed. This claim they defend by appealing to the principle (?) of irrationality. They take the position that the Reformed faith is irrational. And on that position no one can successfully attack them. But, as we have seen, if we deny them the right to that irrational position, and, as rational beings, try to explain their position, we discover that they embrace the Arminian view...

Previous article in this series: October 1, 2016, p. 5. We continue our critique of Kenneth Stewart’s book, Ten Myths About Calvinism (IVP Academic, 2011—cf. SB, Oct. 1 editorial). Our thesis is that Stewart’s book makes it plain that, when all is said and done, what Stewart wants is to retain the right to be called a ‘Calvinist’ (and ‘Reformed’) while undermining doctrines that were central to Calvin himself—doctrines that are fundamental to any theology that has the right to call itself ‘historically Reformed.’ In particular, doctrines that have to do with God’s sovereign will and grace (cf. the Oct....

As far as I know the above is still the name of the congregation of which the Rev. H. Danhof is pastor. Recently, however, there are all kinds of rumors afloat to the effect that efforts are being made to remove the word “protesting” from that name, to lead that church back into the fellowship of the Christian Reformed Churches, and thus to make it virtually, if not literally, confess that their stand in 1924 was an error, and that the “Three Points” adopted by the Synod of Kalamazoo are after all true doctrine. There are also rumors that the...

Superficial, too, is the way in which the “Complaint” makes use of quotations from Calvin to prove that the great reformer supports its contention that God earnestly seeks the salvation of all men, reprobate as well as elect. The complainants quote Calvin on the well-known text in Ezekiel 18:23, and their quotation appears to justify their contention only when you read it very superficially, and especially when you permit it to stand out of its proper context. Yet, even the quotation does not teach that “God sincerely offers salvation to all who hear, reprobate as well as elect, and that...

From a very reliable source in the old country we learned a little about the deposition of Dr. Schilder and others, and the split that occurred in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. A brother wrote me that the Synod of the “Gereformeerde Kerken” in the old country adopted the Kuyperian view of “presupposed regeneration,” that is, the theory that infants are baptized on the ground of the presupposition that they are already regenerated; that Dr. Schilder and others disagreed, came into trouble with the Synod, not only because of this question, but also because of certain questions concerning church...