Dr. Harry Boer submitted to the 1977 CRC Synod a gravamen in which at the outset he states: “I submit herewith for synodical examination and adjudication a gravamen against the Reformed doctrine of reprobation as taught notably in the Canons of Dort, Chapter I, Article 6 and Chapter I, Article 15 . . .” In the closing sentence of his gravamen, Dr. Boer adds: “I submit herewith for Synodical examination and adjudication this gravamen . . . against what I judge to be a grievously unbiblical, therefore unReformed, indeed unChristian doctrine.” This matter will be on the Agenda of the forthcoming 1980 CRC Synod.
Response – Over against Dr. Boer’s denial of the historic doctrine of Reprobation a number of quotations may be adduced from outstanding Bible scholars. Cited in this issue is the following excerpt from a book, The Sovereignty of God (pp. 129, 130), by Arthur W. Pink:
“In closing this .chapter we propose to quote from the writing of some of the standard theologians since the days of the Reformation, not that we would buttress our own statements by an appeal to human authority, however venerable or ancient, but in order to show that what we have advanced in these pages is no novelty of the twentieth century, no heresy of the ‘latter days’ but, instead, a doctrine which has been definitely formulated and commonly taught by many of the most pious and scholarly students of Holy Writ.
“‘Predestination we call the decree of God, by which He has determined in Himself, what He would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny: but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestined either to life or to death—from John Calvin’s ‘Institutes’ (1536 A.D.) Book III, Chapter XXI entitled, ‘Eternal Election, or God’s Predestination of Some to Salvation and of others to Destruction.’”
“We [Pink] ask our readers to mark well the above language. A perusal of it should show that what the present writer has advanced in this chapter is not ‘HyperCalvinism’ but real Calvinism, pure and simple. Our purpose in making this remark is to show that those who, not acquainted with Calvin’s writings, in their ignorance condemn as ultra-Calvinism that which is simply a reiteration of what Calvin himself taught—a reiteration because that prince of theologians as well as his humble debtor have both found this doctrine in the Word of God itself.”
(To be continued)