Perspectief 2019-43

Perspectief 114 Bookreview Dordt in context accenten gelegd. Het gaat dan om teksten waarin God’s universele heilswil benadrukt wordt en/of de eigen verantwoordlijkheid van de mens voor diens eeuwige toekomst” (173). “[H]et perspectief van Gods soevereine, allesbepalende handelen is in de Bijbel niet het enige—er is ook het perspectief van Gods gloeiende liefde die uitgaat naar een hele wereld die haar eigen ruiten ingooit en daardoor vergaat in ellende. En er is het perspectief van de mens die voor de keuze gesteld wordt om zich door deze goddelijke liefde laten bepalen of haar juist te verwerpen” (179). How, then, do we reconcile God’s universal salvific will (Rom 5: 7-11; 1 Tim 2:4-6; 1 John 3:16, 4:10; Titus 2: 11-12) with the mystery of predestination, election, and reprobation (90)? Furthermore, how do we reconcile God’s sovereignty with human freedom, not just in general, but particularly with respect to the church’s full understanding of God’s plan of salvation as a work of grace? 2. Grace and Freedom. Briefly, the conviction regarding the necessity of grace for salvation—saved by grace and not by works (Eph 2: 5, 8)—is the result of the Pelagian controversy (Council of Ephesus, 431). Salvation is a work of God’s grace in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Given man’s fallen nature because of original sin, both his nature and the law are impotent to achieve his salvation (see Trent VI.I). Prevenient grace is an enabling and empowering grace, one that calls, convicts, illumines and moves man such that he can freely respond to the Gospel. On this view, “though free will [is] weakened as it was in its powers and downward bent, [it] was by no means extinguished in them” (Ibid; see also the Synod of Orange, 529). There is here no semi-pelagianism because the free response to the Gospel is not a self-initiating or self-perpetuating act (see Catechism of the Catholic Church , nos. 1989, 2001); rather, his free response is an effect of grace. We come now to the main point of the Canons regarding grace’s efficacy, its irresistibility, so called. On this view, grace does more than empower and move the will by its preveniency. Rather, it effectually moves the human will such that man cannot hold back and resist the work of saving grace. If he could resist this grace, we would have a “semi-semi-pelagianism”—in the words of the American Presbyterian B.B. Warfield (in his 1915 study, The Plan of Salvation ). Does this mean that the only way to eradicate any presence of pelagianism is by teaching a moner- gism of grace, that is, “een alleenwerkzaamheid Gods, waarin alle mènselijke activiteit