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CALVIN AND COMMON GRACE

CALVIN AND COMMON GRACE

To the celebration of the four hundreth anniversary of the birth of John Calvin by Herman Bavinck Translated by Geerhardus Vos

Note on the text: This work was scanned from a small paperback book that has no publisher or date or place of publication. The pages run from 99 though 130. The text has sixtyfive footnote superscripts (notreproduced here), but none of the footnotes appear in the book.

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CALVIN AND COMMON GRACE

CALVIN AND COMMON GRACE.
By HERMAN BAVINCK

Christianity has from the beginning laid claim to be the one true religion. Already in the Old Testament the consciousness exists that Jehovah alone is Elohim and that the gods of the heathen are things of naught and vanity; and in the New Testament the Fatherof Jesus Christ is the only true God, whom the Son reveals and declares, and access to whom and communion with whom the Son alone can mediate. This conviction of the absoluteness of the Christian religion has entered so deeply into the consciousness of the Church that the whole history of Christian doctrine may be viewed as one great struggle for upholding it over against all sorts of oppositionand denial. For the life of the Church as well as for every individual man the fundamental question is: What think ye of the Christ? This was the issue in the christological and anthropological controversies of the ancient Church, this the issue at the time of the Reformation and in the age of the “Enlightenment”, and this is still the issue at the present day in the spiritual battles witnessed byourselves. No progress can be marked in this respect: the question of the ages is still the question of our time,—Is Christ a teacher, a prophet, one of the

many founders of religions; or is he the Only-begotten from the Father, and therefore the true and perfect revelation of God? But if Christianity bears such an absolute character, this fact immediately gives rise to a most serious problem.The Christian religion is by no means the sole content of history; long before Christianity made its appearance there existed in Greece and Rome a rich culture, a complete social organism, a powerful political system, a plurality of religions, an order of moral virtues and actions. And even now, underneath and side by side with the Christian religion a rich stream of natural life continues toflow. What, then, is the relation of Christianity to this wealth of natural life, which, originating in creation, has, under the law there imposed upon it, developed from age to age? What is the connection between nature and grace, creation and regeneration, culture and Christianity, earthly and heavenly vocation, the man and the Christian? Nor can it be said that this problem has now for the firsttime forced itself upon us, owing to the wide extension of our world-knowledge, the

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entrance of the heathen nations into our field of vision and the extraordinary progress made by civilization. In principle and essence it has been present through all the ages,—in the struggle between Israel and the nations, in the contest between the Kingdom of Heaven and theworld-power, in the warfare between the foolishness of the cross and the wisdom of the world. To define this relation, Scripture draws certain lines which it is not difficult to trace. It proceeds on the principle that for man God is the supreme good. Whatever material or ideal possessions the world may offer, all these taken together cannot outweigh or even be compared with this greatest of alltreasures, communion with God; and hence, in case of conflict with this, they are to be unconditionally sacrificed. “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee.” This, however, does not hinder earthly possessions from retaining a relative value. Considered in themselves they are not sinful or unclean; so long as they do not interfere with man’s pursuit of...