This is a reply to the article "What Does Scripture Mean by Grace?" by Herman Hanko.
Particularly this will be a response to the latter half of the article where Herman Hanko discusses the meaning of grace as given by Herman Hoeksema.
He points out, first of all, that grace is an attribute of God. God, says Hoeksema, is gracious in Himself. As proof of this use of grace in Scripture, he refers to Exodus 34:6: “And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth”; and I Peter 5:10: “But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.”
Hoeksema considers this to be an important point. He argues that God never becomes outside Himself what He is not, first of all, within His own triune covenant life. He is gracious in Himself. The grace that He reveals to sinners is the grace which He is within His own being. And so, such revelations of His grace as He is pleased to show in Christ Jesus are revelations of His own perfections.
Hanko starts off by telling us that Hoeksema teaches that the "grace that He reveals to sinners is the grace which He is within His own being" which means God is revealing his essence to men. This contradicts the doctrine of divine simplicity which denies such a direct communication of attributes is possible since all the attributes of God are his essence and his essence is incommunicable.
Regarding divine simplicity Hoeksema writes:
God's simplicity also signifies that God is not composed, that his essence and his virtues are identical, that he is his virtues, and that all his virtues are absolutely one in him.
Reformed Dogmatics Vol 1, pg 106
We see that Hoeksema defines grace as a virtue as well as an attribute of God.
As an attribute of God, grace is that divine virtue according to which God is the perfection of all beauty and loveliness and contemplates himself as such with infinite delight.
-Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics Vol 1, pg. 160
This means, according to Hoeksema, God's grace is identical to his essence. So when Hanko writes "The grace that He reveals to sinners is the grace which He is within His own being" he is necessarily saying that God is revealing his essence to sinners.
On page 95 of Volume 1 of his Reformed Dogmatics Hoeksema rejects the division of God's attributes into communicable and incommunicable. The closest Hoeksema comes to saying anything regarding the communicable attributes of God is on page 106:
Of the creature, who has a dependent existence, it may be said that it possesses certain virtues, though only as a reflection of the perfections of God.
If the virtues possessed by creatures are only reflections of the perfections of God then it cannot be that, as Hanko writes:
The grace that He reveals to sinners is the grace which He is within His own being. And so, such revelations of His grace as He is pleased to show in Christ Jesus are revelations of His own perfections.
Does God reveal his essence to man or is God's revelation of his grace only a reflection of that perfection? It can't be both.
The affirmation that man receives of God's essence goes beyond even the Eastern Orthodox who make a distinction between God's essence and his energies (attributes) and teach that man participates in God's energies (theosis).
Hanko then goes on to describe how this grace of God applies to man.
It is at this point that the two ideas come together. Grace is attractiveness which is rooted in ethical perfection; but it is also an attitude of God towards men. Now this latter can mean two things. It may mean that the one who is gracious is ethically perfect. God is gracious because He is ethically perfect.
But, quite obviously, this idea does not do justice to the texts cited above in which Scripture states that David and Mary found grace in the sight of God. The idea is here that these two are the objects of God’s attitude of favor, of approval, of delight. The idea here is, then, that God’s attitude towards them is an attitude which cannot possibly be rooted in themselves or in the kind of people they were. They were wicked and ethically impure.
God is favorably inclined to them, therefore, because they were ethically perfect for another reason than the kind of people they actually were. They were ethically pure objectively in Christ Who died for them so that God sees them in Christ. But that great attitude of God’s favor towards them made them ethically pure.
According to Hanko and Hoeksema God can only be gracious to ethically pure beings. In themselves the elect are wicked and ethically impure. How then can God show grace to them? He is gracious to the elect because he sees them in Christ as being ethically pure. They say it is God's favour to the elect that makes them ethically pure.
The problem here is that Hanko and Hoeksema leave no room for any real graciousness towards dead sinners. Paul says we were without God and separate from Him. That we were dead in sins and that in Christ we were made alive. So that means God has mercy on us as sinners not as ethically pure beings.
Ephesians 2:4: But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
Ephesians 2:5: Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
Paul also tells us the Christ came to save sinners.
I Timothy 1:15: This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
He says that God considered us as and loved us as sinners.
Romans 5:8: But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
But Hanko and Hoeksema are saying that elect sinners are never considered as such by God. They are necessarily seen as ethically pure beings in Christ because if they were not then no grace could be given them. If we are to accept this definition of grace we must say that the elect were never sinners in any objective sense (towards God) but only subjectively (towards themselves).
In fact this is exactly what Hanko writes:
They were ethically pure objectively in Christ Who died for them so that God sees them in Christ.
While this scheme seems to be another variation of eternal justification it goes much deeper than that. It is a repudiation of the Scripture teaching that God saves sinners because for Hanko and Hoeksema the elect are never considered as sinners, they are considered as "ethically pure objectively in Christ." This completely undoes the work of Christ which the Scriptures say was done on the behalf of sinners by making sin a moot point.
If man is a sinner and God cannot have communion with sinners then when did he consider them objectively in Chirst since he cannot consider them at all while they are in a state of being sinners? The answer can only be before they were created. Hence eternal justification. And this would mean the whole she-bang. Everything about justification, except for man's receiving of it by faith, is accomplished in eternity. But what does that even matter? Objectively the elect sinner has been considered as ethically righteous in Christ A subjective reception of this by faith is meaningless because there is no consideration of the elect as sinners. Sin is merely an afterthought or not even a thought at all since God cannot commune with sinners according to Hoeksema and Hanko.
There are a lot of problems with this definition of grace. Not the least being that this is not a definition to be found anywhere expect in Hoeskema's Reformed Dogmatics. A God who reveals his essence to man and who does not commune with sinners such as Hoeksema posits and Hanko affirms is simply nowhere to be found in the scriptures or in any of the systems of Reformed dogmatics nor in any theological system East or West.
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