discipulo
Puritan Board Junior
Cesar,
I just wanted to make sure I understand you. Am I correct in concluding that you believe that God's passive hardening of us or letting us fall in sin cannot ultimately work for our good? Or that before our conversion God doesn't work ALL things for our good, if anything at all? I mean, there is a reason why the Bible says "all things work TOGETHER" for our good, that is, not individually.
Also, I'm not suggesting common and saving grace are mutually exclusive. I'm saying ALL things, from ALL times and ALL places, before we even existed, ultimately worked and will continue to work for our good/salvation. And that's why I said for the elect ALL, including (not exclusing) God's common grace, is saving grace.
Samuel, in an interesting way you are closer to what the founder of my Reformed Denomination – GKv – Professor Klaas Schilder understood to be the Doctrine of Common Grace, and he didn’t subscribe it.
He was not supralapsarian like Hoeksema who denied such doctrine, or for that matter Kuyper, a strong proponent of the doctrine, but pretty much like Hoeskema (on this but not on the Covenant per se) he allowed Redemptive Economy to swallow God’s providence. I will try to explain.
For Schilder God’s providence was almost only the ground (in his own words) for God to operate His redemptive plan, bringing the elect to glory and the reprobate to condemnation, in an infallible way. That is true but it is not the whole that is revealed in Scripture.
Romans 8 is clear, yes, God does that, all things work for the good of the Elect, but is it all that God is doing?
God is not only occupied with Redemption, Accomplished and being Applied (to use the words of another reformed defender of Common Grace – John Murray), He is active in History, He is sustaining creation, he is feeding His creatures, and in His providence He bestows blessings, temporal that they may be, but still undeserved - Gracious blessings to mankind.
You may read, as you will see in these passages God did not have to do this, people actually all deserved Him to judge them with His wrath immediately, yet He still gives them good things.
You may call it merely a favor, ok, as it is absolutely undeserved favor, so the word Grace is appropriate, but not salvific Grace but never the less Grace.
That is in my opinion Common Grace, God's working in and through His creation for purposes that are not Soteriological.
Psalm 145:9; Matt. 5:44, 45; Luke 6:35-36; Acts 14:16-17; I Tim. 4:10; Rom. 2:4; Ezekiel 33:11; Ezekiel 18:23
2 other points briefly, in my opinion, may be well and necessarily infered from Scripture:
God also restrains sinfulness that total depravity won’t be absolute depravity and He in a certain sense allows men to do civic good – not good works only able to those who believe by God’s power – but never the less morally good for society like feeding the hungry, helping the sick, and so on.