# Ridderbos, a Calvinist?



## arapahoepark (May 7, 2013)

I was reading this and it says Ridderbos wasn't a Calvinist. Is this true?
Triablogue: Calvin or Wesley?-1


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## davenporter (May 7, 2013)

That is an excellent question. I think that he is a Calvinist, but his language in this section of Ridderbos's Outline of Paul's Theology (cited in "Why I am Not a Calvinist") is rather challenging. I have attached the relevant section, and bolded sections of particular interest. I hope someone smarter than me will help me to understand what Ridderbos is really getting at here. He says something that sounds very Calvinistic, and then seems to backpedal:

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"What prompts Paul to hark back again and again to the divine purpose is not an abstract predestinarianism or reference back to God's decrees as the final cause in the chain of events, but the designation of sovereign, divine grace as the sole motive of his work of redemption in history."

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One can raise the question as to whether after all the idea has not hereby been given of a predestined numerus clausus of the elect and whether with that — even though not said in so many words54 — those who do not belong to this numerus clausus have not been excluded in virtue of this same purpose before the foundation of the world.

Ridderbos, Herman (1997-09-11). Paul: An Outline of His Theology (p. 338). Eerdmans Publishing Co - A. Kindle Edition. 

One can only say of these questions that they place Paul's pronouncements concerning the church as foreknown by God and elect in Christ under another point of view than that of Paul himself and thus abstract and extrapolate them from the context of the Pauline doctrine of salvation, an extrapolation that easily leads to conclusions Paul himself does not draw and which are entirely in conflict with the tenor of his preaching. When — as, for example, in the so-called catena aurea of Romans 8: 29ff —Paul joins God's purpose, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification in one indissoluble bond, this is not an abstract pronouncement concerning the immutability of the number of those predestined to salvation, but a pastoral encouragement for the persecuted and embattled church (cf. v. 36), based on the fixed and unassailable character of the divine work of redemption. This fixed character does not rest on the fact that the church belongs to a certain "number," but that it belongs to Christ, from before the foundation of the world. Fixity does not lie in a hidden decretum, therefore, but in the corporate unity of the church with Christ, whom it has come to know in the gospel and has learned to embrace in faith. It is therefore a metabasis eis allo genos, a crossing over from the economy of redemption revealed and qualified in Christ to a causal predestinarianism abstracted from it, when one chooses to reduce the links of this golden chain fundamentally to one thing only, that only they will inherit glory who have been foreknown and predestined by God to that end. Likewise the expression "chosen in Christ" does not say that Christ is the means or the medium through whom or in whom an antecedent absolute decree would be effected55 — for such a foreknowledge or election of the church abstracted from Christ there is no place within the framework of Paul's doctrine of salvation — but the intention is simply to make the church aware of its solidarity with Christ in all the wealth of the implications this relationship includes. On the one hand this solidarity with him means that the church was chosen in him even before the foundation of the world, predestined to be conformed to his image, that he might be the Firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8: 29). On the other hand, the nature and scope of this "chosen in Christ" are known and defined only by the realization of the divine purpose in history. The links of the catena aurea both actually and cognitively cannot be detached from one another; the predestinarian and the redemptive-historical "in Christ" define each another reciprocally. Those who have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world are also those who in the fullness of the time have died and been raised with him, who have been called through the gospel and have been incorporated into his body in the way of faith and baptism. This means, among other things, that one can speak of the number of those who have been foreknown by God and who have died and been raised with Christ (or: for whom Christ has died) only when he at the same time takes the event of preaching into consideration and respects this to the full according to its nature (that is to say, according to the nature of the divine call to faith and conversion). *That is in no respect to say that, conversely, the center of gravity would have to be shifted from divine predestination to human freedom.* For first of all with such a shift — and now from the human side — everything would be brought under another viewpoint than that from which Paul speaks. *For him individual human freedom of will is not constitutive for the decision with which man is confronted by the preaching of the gospel.* 56 Rather he repeatedly brings out that the contexts in which the preaching of the gospel takes place transcend the individual freedom of man. He says of the church that it is God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (Eph. 2: 10). This also refers to what follows the preaching. *He describes the calling of believers accordingly, as we have already seen, 57 as a divine creative act, a creatio ex nihilo* (cf. Rom. 4: 17 with Gal. 4: 28), or, as he writes of the preaching of the gospel in 2 Corinthians 4: 6: "the God who said: Let light shine out of darkness, has made it to shine in our hearts." And, conversely, he speaks of those who do not follow this call as disobedient and unbelieving, whose thoughts have been stricken with blindness by the way in which this world thinks, by the god of this age, "so that they do not perceive the shining of the gospel of the glory of Christ" (2 Cor. 4: 4). Nothing could be farther from the truth than that in the relationship of election and preaching Paul takes his point of departure in individual human freedom.

Yet the relation between the purpose of God, his election, and the preaching of the gospel remains of paramount importance in order to eliminate every notion of an automatic or deterministic election. Likewise nowhere in Paul's thought does the hidden decree of a numerus clausus function as the background or explanation of the separation that comes about by the preaching of the gospel, as though through this decree the same gospel were for those who are saved a fragrance of life unto life and for those who are lost an odor of death unto death (2 Cor. 2: 16). *Rather, we must ascertain that over against such a deterministic conception he maintains the liberty of God's grace and the religious and ethical character of the encounter of man with his Creator in the gospel* (Rom. 9: 19ff.). Just as little is divine calling only to be defined as the authoritative word that separates between light and darkness. God also places himself, as it were, in a relationship of dependence with respect to those whom he calls. He struggles with Israel to lead it to faith and conversion (Rom. 10: 21); Paul terms himself an ambassador of God as though God through his mouth were issuing the invitation: Let yourselves be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5: 20); his whole effort is bent toward persuading men and moving them to faith (2 Cor. 5: 11); and this he regards as the glory of his ministry that if possible he might provoke Israel to jealousy and save some of them (Rom. 11: 14). Similarly, he declares elsewhere that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all men; he speaks of God's love toward man and of his redemptive will with respect to all men (Tit. 2: 11; 3: 4; 1 Tim. 2: 4; 4: 10). *On the other hand he maintains fully the human responsibility of both believers and unbelievers with regard to the gospel; he qualifies faith as obedience and unbelief as contradiction and disobedience. And even when he speaks of unbelief as a blinding and qualifies it as a consequence of God's righteousness and hardening (cf. Rom. 11: 8ff.), he does not do so in an abstract and timeless manner, but he points out precisely what the function of such a hardening is in the whole of redemptive history, and he makes it understood that this therefore "need" not bear a definitive character, but rather, as with the rejection and hardening of unbelieving Israel, presupposes a situation that is still "open."* 58 Likewise when he comforts the church with the declaration that the Lord is faithful to establish and guard it (2 Thess. 3: 3; 1 Cor. 1: 9), that our unfaithfulness does not nullify his faithfulness (2 Tim. 2: 13; 1 Cor. 10: 13; cf. Rom. 3: 2), and when he repeatedly points the church for this to its inclusion in Christ even before the foundation of the world (Rom. 8: 29ff.; Eph. 1: 4), this assurance nowhere acts as a logical deduction from the immutability of God's decree, but as faith in the trustworthiness of God's promises and in the unshakableness of his eudokia in Christ (cf., e.g., Tit. 1: 2). Hence this comfort is attended with the admonition in faith to continue in the mercy of God, lest he execute the judgment of Israel on those who are now believers and break them off from the olive tree as unprofitable and dead branches (Rom. 11: 18ff.); indeed, Paul is able to say of himself as well that he is always mindful lest he, having preached to others, should himself be rejected (1 Cor. 9: 27). Of course, the certainty and comfort that lie in God's faithfulness and in election in Christ are not again placed in doubt or made contingent on human faithfulness and perseverance, but this certainty is placed and kept within the context where it alone applies and with which the church alone has to do, namely, that of the revelation of the gospel as a power of God for everyone who believes (Rom. 1: 16), and thus of the electing character of God's grace, not resting on human power or wisdom, that he who boasts should boast in the Lord (1 Cor. 1: 16ff.). Seemingly these different "lines" cannot be reconciled with each other: on the one hand, God's creative word of omnipotence by which alone the light can shine in the heart, on the other, human responsibility for faith and conversion; on the one hand, blindness and spiritual impotence, on the other, struggling under commission from God to bring back to him those who have turned away; also on the one hand, the certainty of God's faithfulness and the irrevocableness of his election and calling, on the other, the warning against the danger of being broken off from the olive tree on account of pride and being rejected as a participant in salvation. *There is indeed not only a lack of clarity here but an inner contradiction, if one conceives of the divine purpose and the number of the elect in a deterministic sense as an immutably established decree of the counsel of God; or if, on the other hand, one supposes that without the individual's power of decision human responsibility toward the gospel becomes a fiction.* 59 Of the first it must be said that it is in conflict with the manner in which Paul, and the entire biblical revelation, speaks of God's acting in history. And so far as the second is concerned, *there is nothing more contradictory of the Pauline doctrine of salvation than if man were to become God's workmanship and new creation in virtue of a decision of his own will.* "If a person had this possibility, he would not be a creature but would stand on his own." 60 *We are faced with the unmistakable fact that Paul does not found the responsibility of man with respect to his being saved or lost in the fact that man may be said to be free to decide concerning it, but that through the preaching of the gospel God calls and fits him for this responsibility; and that, where freedom has been lost and has become spiritual impotence and blindness, the responsibility of man as the creature of God is nevertheless not taken away or abrogated. God maintains his right as Creator even where man has been sold and blinded under the power of sin. What remains is not a contradiction resulting from false premises, therefore, but the sovereign manner in which God calls man to faith and conversion and in Christ forms the church for himself.* For while, in order to maintain the free character of his grace, not related to human merits or autonomy, he passes by, blinds, and punishes man in his delusion, at the same time his allembracing love goes forth from the gospel which justifies the ungodly. And while the power of his calling is so great that it calls forth light out of darkness and living from the dead, his calling is an invitation, a stretching forth his hands all the day long to a disobedient and gainsaying people. Of this electing activity and of the purpose of God revealed in it Paul speaks, one may perhaps say, in a dialectical manner, in that he ever and again approaches the freedom of God's grace with respect to sinful man from two sides. What prompts him in doing so, however, is not the desire to find the transcending viewpoint from which he might be able to grasp the divine and the human, as it were, in a single glance, in order thus to arrive at a theodicy that would give a justification of God's doings and an explanation of the being of man. What moves him is something entirely different, namely, according to the measure of the revelation of the mystery in history to reach an increasingly more basic explication of the absolute sovereignty of God's grace. For this reason he relates the preaching of justification by faith alone with God's election and purpose. Also in this election and purpose the church of the New Covenant is to find the ground of its existence as well as its unity with Israel once chosen out of all the nations. Finally, this nature of election enables Paul to connect the meaning of Israel's hardening and the nevertheless irrevocable character of God's calling and gifts of grace with the formation of the New Testament church. This leads us to the last of the three viewpoints mentioned at the beginning of the present chapter. 61


Ridderbos, Herman (1997-09-11). Paul: An Outline of His Theology (pp. 338-342). Eerdmans Publishing Co - A. Kindle Edition.


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