Common Grace?

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I was not suggesting that you personally winced at it, so please forgive me if it came across in that way. I was specifically thinking of a situation in a Reformed church where someone asked the pastor about this passage and was obviously very troubled by it. It was in the sense of "the RYR was lost; how can Jesus be said to love him?"
 
Tim and James are correct. Not only does the Hebrew and Greek vocabulary have a broad enough semantic value to predicate both saving favor and non-saving favor. The semantic range of the English term "grace" is broad enough to include saving favor and non-saving favor. So there's no linguistic or biblical basis to stumble over the terminology or concept of "common grace." Those who argue that the term "grace" must be reserved for salvific favor commit the same fallacy as those who argue that the Greek term agape refers exclusively to godly or noble love.

In my humble opinion after reading several Protestant Reformed works, I do not believe that such theologians commit a fallacy similar to your example. To my knowledge, men such as Engelsma and Hoeksema are not writing under the impression that the Hebrew hen and Greek charis always refer to a salvific favor from God. Moreover, I do not even believe that such writers make the mistake of assuming that "grace" has such a limited semantic range in the English language.

I think these men are saying something more along these lines:
The term "grace" is normally used in Christian theological discourse in such a way that it brings to mind a salvific favor of God through Christ towards sinners who have demerited this favor. We are against the terminology of a common grace because it will cause the confusion of theological categories in an unbiblical manner.​

Other godly Reformed theologians have thought along a similar vein. For instance, Abraham Kuyper, although certainly an advocate of a common grace of God, nonetheless distinguished so sharply between common grace and particular grace that he actually used different Dutch terms for each! Michael Horton and other contemporary theologians oppose the use of "grace" to describe God's relationship to man prior to the Fall for the same reason. These men are not so ignorant as to be unaware of the semantic range of the different Hebrew, Greek, and English terms. They are rather consciously recognizing that theological discourse necessarily creates categories narrower than a term's semantic range which may prohibit otherwise linguistically legitimate use of term.

In other words, a Protestant Reformed theologian would probably acknowledge that you could speak of a common "grace" if you added the qualifications that such a "grace" was no more than presently apparent to the reprobate (ultimately further damning them) and that this "grace" in no manner represented a desire within God to love/save the objects of said grace. However, is such a use of the term really prudent and wise? Protestant Reformed theologians point to the history of "common grace" in the last century and answer with a resounding "No!" I tend to agree with them.

I find myself in substantial agreement with brother Bryan. Yes Abraham Kuyper did distinguish between gemeene gratie and genade. His book on Particular Grace, "Dat De Genade Particulier Is" is excellent and its reading should be encouraged by those who only like to quote from his work on Common Grace. Furthermore, I don't believe it is fair to trot out the Hyper Calvinism bogeyman because some of us don't buy into the claims made for Common Grace.

One thing being restrained is Satan's attempts to limit the spread of the Gospel as far as the restraint argument goes. For those who argue that human evil is restrained, or that human being are restrained from being as evil as they can be, I only point to the horrendous war crimes committed by the Germans and Japanese as an example. I am not convinced of the restraint of evil argument. In Romans 9, Paul's use of "Esau I hated" is not some rhetorical device.

Of course it is not our job to determine who is reprobate but we are to make a judgment as to who is unsaved. We preach the Gospel with total disregard as to who is saved or not. But no, I agree with brother Bryan, no common grace. Any apparent demonstration of God's good will to the world is because He is being gracious to His elect. When all the elect of God have been gathered, then the only restraint shown will be withdrawn and God's Judgment will proceed!
 
I tend not to look at things so simplistically, when we have Scriptures such as Christ weeping over Jerusalem. I know that this was in His human nature, but doesn't His human nature reveal something of the divine nature.

One's Christology will be determinative. It is difficult to know what the human nature could tell us about the divine nature when the two are understood to remain distinct. I prefer Calvin's balance: "since our Lord Jesus Christ is his living image, let us not enter into over-high speculations to know what God is, but let us come to Jesus Christ, acknowledging that it is his office to bring us to God his Father" (Sermons on Ephesians, 180).
 
I tend not to look at things so simplistically, when we have Scriptures such as Christ weeping over Jerusalem. I know that this was in His human nature, but doesn't His human nature reveal something of the divine nature.

One's Christology will be determinative. It is difficult to know what the human nature could tell us about the divine nature when the two are understood to remain distinct. I prefer Calvin's balance: "since our Lord Jesus Christ is his living image, let us not enter into over-high speculations to know what God is, but let us come to Jesus Christ, acknowledging that it is his office to bring us to God his Father" (Sermons on Ephesians, 180).

Christ's human nature must tell us some things about God, since God is supremely revealed in Christ.
 
Christ's human nature must tell us some things about God, since God is supremely revealed in Christ.

Christ our Mediator tells us all we need to know about God's purpose for us, but His human nature does not tell us anything about the divine nature. Calvin was showing the way towards genuine humility and wisdom when he stated that we should not pry into the divine nature. Raising questions as to God's dispositions inevitably leads to confusion. For example, if Christ's lamentation over Jerusalem tells us that God is compassionately disposed towards all men, what does Christ's denunciation of Jerusalem tell us? It necessarily folllows that God must be judgementally disposed towards all men. God forbid! It is God's decree which has determined how He will manifest Himself towards men. Christ Jesus manifests God's purpose to men. Outside of Christ all is condemnation; in Christ is justification and life. God is not disposed to save any person who does not believe in Jesus and He is not disposed to damn any person who believes in Jesus. The gospel preaches Christ, the wisdom of God and the power of God.
 
Here is a helpful article by Scott Clark (from a 2004 Table Talk)

In His providence, God gives many wonderful gifts to humanity. We rejoice in the colors of autumn and the joy of music. These gifts are good in themselves, but they are universal and distinct from His particular gift of redemption in Christ Jesus (Rom. 3:24). All humans know God as Creator and Judge (Rom. 1:18–21), but believers know Him as Redeemer. We know that in His love, He sent His Son not merely to make salvation possible, since in that case none would be saved. Rather, Jesus came to earn it for us (Phil. 2:8) by turning away God’s wrath so that, “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).
 
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