The Issue With Kuyper's Common Grace

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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, and we have a wonderful discussion,

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I believe, for you today. A helpful discussion, I think an informative one. We are going to be talking about Abraham Kuyper a little bit.

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And for those who don't know, Abraham Kuyper is a popular theologian. He died some years ago, but he's had an influence on present reformed evangelicalism to a large extent.

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And we're just gonna get a little background on him and then how his ideas, especially his contribution of common grace has made its way into reformed evangelicalism.

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And to do that, I have with me, Professor Emeritus David N.

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Gelsma with me. And he has written a number of books. You can go to the Reformed Free Publishing Association.

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Their website is rfpa .org if you wanna find out more about his books.

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And he was a pastor for 25 years and served at the Protestant Reformed Seminary.

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Like I said, he wrote a book, Professor N. Gelsma, that I know

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I read, and this is what spurred me to wanna have you on called Christianizing the World. And you said things about Kuyper that I didn't hear anyone else in the mainstream that I was reading say about Kuyper.

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And I was reading Richard Mao and I was trying to read some of Kuyper's biographies and things and understanding Kuyper. And some of the things you said really hit me.

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So I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to talk to us about this. Thank you. It's a privilege to be with you.

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The subject is worthwhile. Well, let me start with this then.

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Kuyper, you know a lot about Kuyper. For those who don't know anything about Abraham Kuyper, who was he and then what contributions did he make to theology?

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Abraham Kuyper was an outstanding theologian and political figure in the Netherlands about the turn of the 20th century.

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And he accomplished with the help of especially Herman Bavink, his colleague, something that was extraordinary in the churches in the

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Netherlands. The mainstream church, the mainstream reformed church in the

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Netherlands had become thoroughly liberal, denying all the fundamental truths of scripture and of the gospel, including the deity of Jesus Christ.

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Abraham Kuyper was used by God to reform that church. And that reformation took place mainly by a break in the liberal church and the formation of a new denomination of which

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Kuyper and Bavink were the leaders called the reformed churches in the

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Netherlands. Initials of that name in the Dutch language are GKN.

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So Kuyper was an extraordinarily influential theologian in the restoration of the gospel to many of the members of the church in the

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Netherlands. But Kuyper had political ambitions. In fact, he became prime minister of the

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Netherlands in the early 1900s. And mainly in order to facilitate his political ambitions,

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Kuyper came up with a doctrine called the doctrine of common grace or in the Dutch language, gemeene gratie.

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In fact, he wrote three large volumes on common grace which are now for the first time being translated into English and will be available soon if the third volume has not already been translated into English.

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That doctrine of common grace allowed Kuyper to cooperate with many unbelievers and members of the

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Roman Catholic church in the Netherlands to form a political party that finally did catapult him into the prime minister's office in the

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Netherlands for about four years. The doctrine of common grace, however, had tremendous implications for theology in the

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Netherlands and increasingly for theology among nominally conservative and evangelical churches throughout the world, including very much the

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United States of America. The doctrine of common grace teaches that in addition to God's special saving grace that is shown only to the elect in Jesus Christ, God also has a common grace that is shared in by unbelievers, shared by believers and unbelievers.

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This common grace of God is supposed to keep the unbeliever from being totally depraved and able to perform works of civic righteousness, which really refers to decency among unbelieving people.

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By that common grace of God, believers and unbelievers together are able to cooperate to form a

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Christian society that is Christian in the sense that outwardly the behavior of the citizens conform somewhat to the standards of the

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Christian religion. But Kuyper also insisted that there is an inner aspect to this common grace and everyone who shares that common grace that enables them to be partly good to have good and godly desires and thoughts so that as a result of common grace, contrary to the reformed confession, which

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Kuyper of course was committed to, there is no longer the total depravity of the unbeliever.

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By virtue of common grace, the unbeliever has been delivered from his total depravity and has become partly good.

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That enables the unbeliever to cooperate with the believer in forming an outwardly

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Christian society. Well, that especially of late has been picked up by evangelical and reformed and Presbyterian theologians and churches, especially now in the

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United States to become the basis of an effort, an acknowledged effort to Christianize society.

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Men like Tim Keller in New York City and particularly Richard Mao, retired president of Fuller Theological Seminary in California are appealing to Kuyper's doctrine of common grace to encourage churches that are reformed and Presbyterian and evangelical to cooperate to Christianize the

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United States. And they hold before the minds of believers in these churches that they should cooperate with the ungodly to defeat the powers of corruption that are at work in the

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United States and to reform the United States as a Christian nation.

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But an outstanding and important feature of the doctrine of common grace is that it has nothing to do with Jesus Christ whatsoever.

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Jesus Christ is the source and power of saving grace, but common grace operates to Christianize a nation outwardly apart from the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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And that is one fundamental objection that I and the Protestant reformed churches of which

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I am a member have against the doctrine of common grace. It's a grace of God supposedly operating apart from Jesus Christ.

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Its source and power are not in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And yet to this grace is attributed such tremendous effects as to make a society

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Christian. So you have a Christianity without Christ. And we can get into that if you will.

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Well, I have a few questions. That was stated very well and I think understandable, but I think there's a few people, some young reformed people in particular whose ears are bleeding right now because they have heard common grace out of the mouth of so many people.

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I'm sure I probably used it. I don't know when, but in the past, because it was just, everyone used it.

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And I wonder whether or not most people when they say common grace today, even if they in a vague way think it's related to Piper, really mean by that providence, like the rainfalls and the righteous and the unrighteous and that's common grace, that's providence.

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But what you're saying it sounds like to me is that providence and common grace are two different things that Piper actually was doing something innovative when with his doctrine of common grace.

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Is that correct? That's an astute observation. What the defenders of common grace attribute to this favor and power of God, and that's grace.

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That's common grace too. Grace is first of all, always an attitude of God of love and favor towards someone.

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And then it's also a power to accomplish some good in the object of God's love and favor.

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What Piper and others refer to as grace is in fact God's providence.

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The apparently good deeds that unbelievers perform and the gifts of God to the ungodly of rain and sunshine, of food and drink, all of that is to be ascribed to God's providence.

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He continues to uphold the creation after the fall of Adam and bestows upon his creatures these good gifts.

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But there's a difference between providence and grace. Providence for the elect believer is gracious, but providence as such is simply the power of God to uphold his creation and to distribute gifts and powers as God sees fit.

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It's crucially important to recognize that providence is not necessarily and inherently grace.

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So there's a conflation going on is what I'm hearing you're saying. These terms, providence and grace should not be seen as one in the same.

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They shouldn't be mixed, they're separate categories. And what Piper has done, or at least the people who have come after him and built upon his work, they have mixed these categories essentially.

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They have confused providence with grace and that's a crucially significant error to make.

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Now, I know one of the quotes, I think I don't have it in front of me, but it was from Piper that you wrote about in your book was he said that common grace was the basis for saving grace.

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To me, that was the quote that was the key for me in understanding this a little better. Would you mind explaining that to people?

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What does it mean that common grace is the basis for saving grace? That observation is of crucial importance in our discussion.

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Theoretically, according to Piper, and I quote Piper at length in the book, "'Christianizing the

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World '," that's the occasion for our discussion today, Piper himself insisted that common grace and saving grace are to be distinguished.

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They are essentially different graces of God. They have nothing to do with each other, he asserts at more than one place.

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Saving grace is God's work of salvation in Jesus Christ to bring the elect sinners to salvation and maintain their salvation.

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And common grace is a favor of God that has to do simply with culture. And I refer commonly to common grace as cultural grace.

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According to Piper, those two graces of God are essentially different and are not to be confused.

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But Piper himself found that impossible to do, he could not carry out his own admonition.

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And at one place, or more than one place in his writings, he asserts, as you have indicated in your question, that common grace is preparatory for special grace.

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According to Piper himself, and certainly according to his disciples in evangelical and reformed churches today, common grace is the preparation of a sinner for special grace.

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Common grace is a work of the Holy Spirit that enables that person to respond positively to the gospel.

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And by that assertion, there's a confusion of common grace and saving grace, a dreadful confusion and a confusion that rejects fundamental reform doctrine.

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According to common grace, God is gracious with a kind of saving grace now to the reprobate ungodly wicked.

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And that common grace prepares those persons for the work of salvation.

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But now, according to that teaching, you have a grace of God that is resistible because not everyone who receives common grace actually accepts saving grace.

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And you have a resistible grace of God in the salvation of sinners. Besides, according to Kuyper himself, and certainly in the thinking and teaching of his disciples today, this common grace of God denies total depravity.

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One of the fundamental tenets of the reformed religion confessed in the canons of Dorden and the

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Westminster Standards is that apart from the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ, all human beings are totally depraved.

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They're without any good whatsoever. Kuyper himself acknowledged that his doctrine of common grace rejects the truth of total depravity.

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And he says that sinners would be totally depraved if it were not for common grace working in them.

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So you have the entire body of Calvinism or the reformed faith at stake in this matter of common grace.

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And I may add one other fact that is important in this regard.

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And that is that in the United States, a large important church known as the

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Christian Reformed Church adopted Kuyper's doctrine of common grace, or they suppose they were adopting

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Kuyper's doctrine of common grace and synodical decisions in 1924. But the very first point of the three points of common grace asserts that common grace shows itself in a well -meant offer of salvation by God to all humans without exception, which implies that God loves and desires the salvation of all humans without exception, which denies predestination, and that he expresses this desire for the salvation of all sinners by a well -meant offer to them all.

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There again, you have common grace trespassing on the precincts of saving grace.

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Common grace now becomes a saving grace that is resistible, dependent for its efficacy upon the will of the sinner.

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This is part of the rejection of common grace by the Protestant Reformed Churches of which

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I am a member. That's incredible to me, because people who utilize this term,

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I think most of them probably haven't, they don't have the background to know what

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Kuyper exactly meant. And they're just using it loosely to refer to Providence, but they would all fancy themselves

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Reformed. And most of the Kuyperians, they'll appeal to, I think it was a quote in the

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Stone Lectures that Kuyper gave, that every square inch belongs to Christ, Christ Christ's mind.

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And that's what it means to be Kuyperian. That's what it means to be a Neo -Calvinist. In fact, the Gospel Coalition will say in their,

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I read an article just the other day where they were saying that's what a Neo -Calvinist is. It's someone who follows this

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Kuyperian project. And it's distinct from New Calvinism.

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New Calvinism is according to the Gospel Coalition is more in line with the Puritans. And it's about reforming the church and ecclesiology.

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But the Neo -Calvinists, which they say, which it's the same word, but Neo -New, but they'll say the

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Neo -Calvinists are Kuyperian. Tim Keller would be part of this. And they want to use the church essentially as a tool to reform society, which is what you were just talking about on the basis of common grace.

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And they say that's the Lordship of Christ overall. What I wanted to sort of catapult this discussion into the present, what

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I wanted to ask you is maybe an objector would say to you,

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Professor Engelsma, can't I work with Catholics to overturn abortion?

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Can't I, aren't there good things that I can do? I have a job and my coworkers aren't all

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Christians, right? Maybe they would say that's common grace, which now we know that's not the term they should be using, but let's say providence.

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It isn't that acceptable. What say you about that?

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We may certainly cooperate with the ungodly in everyday earthly affairs, but our motivations are going to be radically different.

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The ungodly may be working at rejecting abortion or pursuing a course that makes for law and order in society simply out of his desire that we have an orderly decent society for the good of mankind.

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But in the motivation of the ungodly, there is no desire for the glory of God in this.

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And the source of his actions is not true faith in Jesus Christ, and the work itself comes short of the glory of God.

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So there's nothing truly good in the activities of the ungodly, even when he is cooperating with the believer.

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Now, the believer engages in all of earthly life freely. It's God's creation, but his goal is not to make society

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Christian apart from Jesus Christ. His goal is to be working out of the reality of God's providence, upholding the creation and governing the creation according to certain laws.

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The motivation of the Christian is radically different from the motivation of the ungodly. The Heidelberg Catechism, one of the reformed creeds, defines a good work as having three characteristics.

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It aims at the glory of God. It originates from faith and is done according to the law of God.

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That makes a work good. The only ones who can perform good works are the believers.

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So the cooperation does not imply that the ungodly involved in this activity is performing good works.

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He comes short in all three of those respects. What would you make of Jesus when he says that not even unrighteous fathers give their children snakes when they ask for fish?

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That's not a good work then. And if it's not part of common grace, how do you categorize that kind of action on the part of believers, where they do things like take care of their own children?

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That's an act of the unbelieving parent looking out for the earthly good of his children.

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And God's providence upholding and governing the creation according to certain laws includes that many fathers, not all of them, seek the earthly good of their children and even live in marriage the way they should, although increasingly that's becoming rare.

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It's all a matter of the providence of God upholding and governing the creation according to certain laws, which unbelievers can also recognize and adhere to, recognizing that these laws, let's say for the family and the care of the children, are for the good of the family and for the good of their children whom they love with a natural love.

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But if the unbeliever, as is always the case, does not engage in these activities with a desire for the glory of God and out of thankful love to God for his salvation of him, the work itself is sinful.

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And that's not recognized by the persons, the theologians today who are ambitious to have the world and the church cooperate in Christianizing society and in Christianizing the world.

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They've rather attained, they think, a genuinely good and gracious relationship between the church and the world in performing an activity that does actually

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Christianize, that's their term, human society. And the danger of that, which is also being realized, is that the church does not influence the world in this cooperation, but the world is increasingly influencing the church.

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Common grace breaks down the spiritual separation that God has put between the church and the world.

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We call that the antithesis in reformed theology. And it's recognizable today that the churches and the persons who are deeply involved in this venture of Christianizing society are themselves being influenced by the world.

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The churches and the theologians are approving of sodomy, for example, and lesbianism.

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That's the agenda of the wicked world, but it's infiltrating the church and affecting the church rather than that the church is influencing the world.

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See, what you just said to me is so perceptive, and I think that's the thing, that people who are listening to this and trying to understand it, that's the clarifying point, because they see this everywhere.

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We all do, that these organizations, even the Gospel Coalition, and even organizations to some extent like Desiring God and places where people think they can go for good theology are shifting, they're acquiescing.

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They sound more, smell more, look more like the world as every day goes by.

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And what's the explanation for it? These are organizations that say they're standing for biblical truth. They wanna affect the world by,

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I don't know that they say Christianizing, but they'll say being winsome or cultural engagement is a term, a buzz term that's used a lot, or Tim Keller likes to say giving a compelling message.

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But in so doing, we can see, wait a minute, you're shifting though. You're changing on core things, like as you just said,

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LGBT, softening on LGBT issues, et cetera. I sent you a quote that I was,

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I wanna read for everyone by Tim Keller. He said that the whole purpose of salvation is to cleanse and purify this material world.

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And this was in a talk he gave in, I think it was 2006 or so, but it was to some businessmen in New York City.

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And he talks about God being a venture capitalist. He quotes Richard Mao. It's a very, if you know anything about Richard Mao and his writings on Kuiper, you can tell in this talk that Keller is very much in that tradition.

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And he says this, that the whole salvation, purpose of salvation is to cleanse and purify this material world.

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Is that ultimately the end of where people who take this Kuiperian common grace concept go, that they have to, in merging these categories, eventually say that cleansing this material world is that's part of salvation.

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In other words, being a venture capitalist is just as much important as being an evangelist of the true gospel.

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A couple of things before I actually take hold of your question and the heart of your question. You've mentioned

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Richard Mao a couple of times. He's one of the most energetic defenders of common grace, its worldview and its ambitions that you can find in North America and maybe in all the world.

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And Richard Mao is also an honest man. He does not misrepresent the stand that I'm defending here and that the

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Protestant Reformed Churches are defending. He acknowledges the concerns that I have and that the

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Protestant Reformed Churches have and tries to do justice to those concerns. In fact, some years ago,

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Richard Mao and I had a public debate in Grand Rapids on this very topic of common grace and its worldview, attended on a

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Friday night by about 3 ,000 members of the Grand Rapids area in which we aired these things and had a frank and honest exchange of our convictions about this matter.

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And then with regard to the purposes of the common grace people, they almost assume that it's legitimate and honorable that the church has as its purpose, the

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Christianizing of society. And that means for them making the world somewhat influenced by Christianity so that at least outwardly the world behaves itself.

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The fact of the matter is that God has never given to the church the calling to Christianize the world.

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The world cannot be Christianized. The fact is that the more the church defends and proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ and a holy life, which certainly ought to be part of Christianizing anything, the world hates the church and rejects the church.

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The relationship between the church and the world has been placed by God himself in Genesis 3, 15.

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The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent are at war with each other. God puts enmity between the believing church and the unbelieving world.

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That does not mean that the child of God personally does not live in the world showing the glory of God and his godly behavior in marriage and work and in all the spheres of life.

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The church and the individual believer is called to live in all spheres of life and to live as a

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Christian. And that has an effect. And that effect is that the world rejects and hates the

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Christian life of the child of God rather than that the life of the individual child of God influences the world and makes the life of the world the

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Christian life. I think I addressed your question.

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If I missed something, repeat it, please. Oh, well, no, I think, yeah,

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I was asking about Tim Keller's quote as to whether or not this is the ultimate end. Is this where people end up when they really drink heavily of this common grace concept where eventually they think that,

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I'll use another example. Richard Mao, since we've been talking about him, he wrote a book, I'm sure you've read it, in 1971 or two called

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Political Evangelism. And in that book, he argues that involvement in politics is,

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I mean, it's in the title, is an evangelistic endeavor. You could have a system, you could have a political system where no one in the structure is

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Christian, but yet it's exerting an influence, an ethical influence upon that institution for them to go in a good direction ends up being, in a certain sense, salvific.

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The atonement extends to not just save individuals, but these political institutions. That has played in, in my opinion, and I'll get your take on this, to the current social justice or woke movement where they wanna say that everything's systemic.

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It's not man's sinful inclinations inside himself that Jesus talks about, but it's these systemic or structural problems that we're dealing with.

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And I just can't help but see that Richard Mao's logic has been picked up by so many other younger evangelicals, and then it dovetails with the way that our world thinks about sin.

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It's all structural. And so then the Christian is left to, if we buy into these claims, instead of simply or only,

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I should say the church, not the Christian, but the church is left not only to engage with the gospel, but to then present a forum for artists like Tim Keller does in New York City, to influence the local culture in various ways as a ministry of the church, as if that's the same thing as proclaiming the gospel.

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There's equivalency there. And so I guess my questions are twofold.

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One, do you see what I'm seeing there, that there's this dovetailing or this complementing of the social justice movement using this

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Kuyperian logic to justify it in the church? And then, secondly, do you think that someone who really goes down this common grace path eventually has to end up there with saying that someone who's a welfare worker and doesn't even share the gospel is doing evangelism or doing

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Christian work just as much as someone who's sharing the gospel? And I shouldn't say

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Christian work, but spreading the, extending the atonement of Christ, extending the grace of Christ.

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To take up your latter question first, that's exactly right. The notion of the common grace people is that the activity of the church in all these areas of life will meet with a positive response on the part of unbelievers so that the effect of this friendship, this union will be what they call the

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Christianizing of the unbelieving world. That's the implication of common grace because there has to be some basis and power for this union and for this positive effect in the ungodly, and that's grace.

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The grace of God, but a grace of God apart from Jesus Christ, a grace of God that's not founded in the gospel, a grace of God that does not originate from the cross and resurrection of our dear savior is what is supposed to accomplish this favorable attitude of the wicked toward the behavior of the

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Christian and toward the teaching of the church. Now, as I said before, the idea of Christianity and the idea of reformed

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Christianity is that every believer lives in all the legitimate areas of life actively in a

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Christian manner as motivated by and empowered by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

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I live as a husband and father in my home by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

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I live on the job, not just working for the sake of a paycheck, but partly motivated by the calling

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I have to support my family, to support the church and to give to the poor. I work in the sphere of labor also out of Jesus Christ.

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And when that happens and the world catches on to my unique motivation, which is also by implication a condemnation of their activity in society, the result is not that he becomes somewhat attracted to Christianity, but that his hatred for Christ and for the church becomes more intense.

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And that spiritual separation called the antithesis between the people of God and the children of the world is maintained.

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That line of demarcation is crucial to the existence and further existence of the church of Jesus Christ.

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You raised a point a little while ago that I want to come back to, and that is, what are the effects of the doctrine of common grace and its notion of worldview, its notion of Christianizing, I should say, upon the agencies and bodies that embrace this?

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The answer to that is evident in Kuiper's own denomination in the Netherlands. There's nothing

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Christian about the formerly GKN anymore whatsoever. It has adopted all the thinking of the ungodly world, and it's not even

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Christian anymore, much less reformed. It's open to all the cultural thinking and compromising of the laws of God that is found in the world.

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The Netherlands today is a hotbed of ungodly thinking and behavior.

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The same thing is true in the Christian Reformed Church today. It has gone so far today by its doctrine of Kuiperian common grace that it has approved of homosexual youth groups at its college,

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Calvin College, of which I am a graduate. The thinking of the world infiltrates and takes over the thinking of the gospel of Jesus Christ and all the agencies that are committed to common grace and its

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Christianizing activity. The proof is in the pudding to be crude about the matter.

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So let me give you an example that someone might bring up.

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If you're on the job, let's say, as you gave this example before, and someone does get saved or is attracted to Christianity because of your witness, they see your life, and let's say that attracts them to the point that they repent of their sins, they put their trust in Christ.

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We would say that's an act of saving grace, right? God did a work on them and he used us as an instrument to do that, but we wouldn't say that's common grace.

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Am I correct in that? That's correct. Okay. So here, if I may interrupt you, here

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I can appeal to Kuiper himself. Kuiper himself taught my common grace is fundamentally different from saving grace.

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Common grace saves nobody. Only God's special, to use that term, saving grace in Jesus Christ accomplishes salvation.

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Whether he was faithful to that notion all the time is another question, but he made that so emphatic.

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There are two kinds of grace. One kind does some good things in culture, but not in the realm of salvation.

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For the realm of salvation, it's strictly empowered by saving grace.

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So if you behave yourself on the job, as you should for God's sake, and somebody recognizes that and says, how come you work differently than I do?

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How come you're faithful? How come you're not obviously enslaved to the notion of money?

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Whatever else you show by your work on the job, you say to him, that's due to the fact that I'm working out of the power of the risen

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Jesus Christ who calls me as a Christian employee to work in a certain way and to work to God's glory.

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That testimony is used by God to work in him by special saving grace.

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Common grace has nothing to do with it. Okay, that makes sense. Now, here's another scenario.

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A church, well, or let's say an individual again, because the church, that we might get into some dicey territory here, but an individual is part of an art club.

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They like to paint, let's say. And they do so in conjunction with other artists who maybe they're not

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Christians, but they can recognize certain aspects of God's creation, and they can create beautiful works of art.

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The basis for that cooperation between a Christian and a non -Christian, let's say over something like art, where they can be part of a process to create a beautiful sculptor or a painting or something.

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Would it be correct to call that providence? Because often it's called common grace today, but can we just say that that's in God's providence, a believer and an unbeliever can work to achieve ends that in the motivations of the believer are good, and there's an earthly good that the unbeliever can be part of, but this has nothing to do with grace.

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That's correct. It's in the area of providence. God's upholding and governing his creation after the fall, which includes distributing great and glorious gifts to unbelieving people.

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You go to the Louvre in Paris and see the paintings by men who despise Jesus Christ.

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You can appreciate the loveliness of their paintings or to take the music of Beethoven or Mozart.

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We recognize the loveliness of the music they produced and the grandeur of their musical abilities.

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But in those ungodly men, it wasn't grace that was working, it was God's providence. And we honor

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God's providence when we appreciate their musical abilities. Okay, now that's very clear, and I think simple enough for everyone to understand.

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What do you say to someone who has just been influenced by reformed theologians who use common grace terminology all the time, and it's worked its way into their terminology.

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And so they call the two examples I just gave you examples of common grace. Do you just tell them, carry on, but use providence instead?

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I mean, that's, I think, what I would do, but this is so pernicious, I had to ask you, what do you do about the habits of people using this term all the time?

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I think recognizing the terminology, you are called to correct their thinking, because to inject the thinking of grace into these matters of providence results in an un -Christian notion of the unity or the uniting of the church in the world, and the breakdown of the spiritual separation.

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This topic of common grace is worth making an issue of in the evangelical church world, and not dismissing it as merely a verbal mistake of using grace instead of providence.

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This is an issue. This is a practical issue. This is an issue that's weakening the preaching of the gospel in reformed churches and weakening the antithetical lives of the people of God, and history has shown the ill effects of this false doctrine so that it's worth calling attention to and making an issue of.

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Well, how have you been met when you bring this message of correcting this notion of common grace?

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Do people despise it when you bring this up? Have you had a lot of opposition to your work?

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It makes a difference how familiar they are with the historical struggle of the

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Protestant Reformed Churches with the Christian Reformed Church and other reformed churches in the area.

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Those who are quite familiar with the controversy tend to dismiss what I say as, well, at the worst, anabaptism, and at the best, just a controversy in which

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I'm interested. But those who are far removed from the actual church struggle that the

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Protestant Reformed Churches have engaged in and see the issues, like yourself, recognize that there is a fundamental issue of the

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Christian religion at stake here and that something important is at stake and ought to be discussed and clarified.

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Now that I mentioned that term, it's common for our adversaries to dismiss the contention of the

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Protestant Reformed Churches and of me personally as anabaptism, which is a slander, and if it were true, devastating to the position

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I espouse. The anabaptists were a group of religious people at the time of the Reformation who did not understand that the

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Christian is warranted and called to live Christianly in every sphere of life, and the anabaptists saw the

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Christian calling as merely to be faithful at church, and their thinking was capsulized in a

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Dutch phrase, but in bukje and in hoekje, which literally means with a little book in a little corner, as if that represents the

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Christian life and calling. Rejection of common grace is not due to anabaptism.

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And it does not lead to anabaptistic behavior. It is the Reformed position that the

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Christian is authorized and called to live actively in every legitimate sphere of life, starting with marriage and the family, but extending to work and the arts and all other aspects of God's creation.

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But we're to live in the way suitable for and commanded by scripture.

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We're to live in every area of life in accordance with the laws of God and for the glory of God, and in such a way as to show our faith.

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That means that we live in every area of life distinctively, and that will draw the ire and opposition of the world in which we live.

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Yeah, that's an interesting objection, because, so what they're trying to say is that you don't think there's any point of contact, because if you, common grace must be the only, that's the assumption, must be the only point of contact between a believer and an unbeliever.

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And you're saying, no, that's not the only point of contact. It's not even, that's not even a point of contact. We have a basis for cooperation and providence.

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And so they're trying to say that you want a holy huddle, where, yeah, sort of a pietist approach.

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So - In the world, but not of the world. That's our position, and that comes straight out of the lips of our savior.

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That's right. Fully in the world. It's our world. Jesus Christ redeemed the world, the creation, and he'll renew it in the day of his coming.

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As no one else does, I have a right to enjoy every legitimate earthly thing and a calling to be engaged in every earthly sphere.

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But at the same time, and here's the difficulty, not to be of it, not to be influenced by it, not to be swallowed up by it.

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So Anabaptists were those who forgot that we're called to be in the world.

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Now, that's good. That's a good point. And I have some Anabaptist friends. I know there's some

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Anabaptists listening to this podcast who are, it's interesting. I don't know if you followed any of this,

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Professor Engelsma, but even in some Anabaptist and Mennonite congregations, there's something going on where some,

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I've even met Anabaptists who accept the five points of Calvinism. So I don't know what's going on out there, but whatever it is, keep doing it.

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I wanna ask you about that debate. You said you had a debate with Richard Mao. Is that available?

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Can we see that anywhere or was it recorded? Yes, it was recorded. It's available. Where would we find it?

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Fascinating discussion. Is it on YouTube? Or I'll look it up.

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Look it up. I'm not sure where you find it, but I know it's available online.

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Okay, I'll try to find it. And I'll put the link in the info section for people watching this video. If you wanna go watch

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Professor Engelsma and Richard Mao debate this topic of common grace.

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Well, I wanna give you the floor to kind of close this off, Professor Engelsma. Is there anything that I left out in my questions that you would like to share or something on your heart that you feel the audience here should know?

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I think astutely you've covered the topic thoroughly.

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I would like to emphasize a couple of things. And first of all, there is no

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Christian life in the world that God made and that God providentially governs that meets with God's approval.

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There is no aspect of Christian life that pleases God that does not come out of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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To speak of Christianizing the world by a grace that is not related to Jesus Christ is self -contradictory if you call that life

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Christian as they do when they speak of Christianizing the world. You can't Christianize the world.

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You may Christianize the world. You may try to Christianize the world apart from a grace that's rooted in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

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And common grace identifies itself as being a grace apart from Jesus Christ.

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Second, what I would emphasize is that the entire theory of common grace, the theoretical part and the practical working out of the theory endangers and ultimately destroys the spiritual separation between the church and the world, which means not the salvation of the world, but the destruction of the church and the influencing of the child of God.

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And history has proved that that's the case. So that common grace ought to be thoroughly reconsidered,

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Kuiper to the contrary notwithstanding, and Calvinistic people in churches should get their moorings back to live in the world out of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much, Professor Engelsma for just coming on, taking the time to share that with us.

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And if people wanna contact you, where can they go? Or should I just, can

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I give them your email or how does that work? My email is engelsma at prca .org.

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That was easy. All right, so if you have any further questions, email Professor Engelsma. And is it

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Engelsma? I've been saying Engelsma this whole episode. Engelsma. Yeah, man, is that so, and I'm assuming is that Dutch or?

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That's Dutch origin, yes. Okay. Yeah, I'm not Dutch, so. I appreciate meeting you,

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John, and I appreciate your ministry. God bless you. Yeah, I appreciate you. God bless you too.