In the following essay, Prof. Nelson Kloosterman of Mid-America Reformed Seminary argues that Klaas Schilder does not deserve to be classed with Norman Shepherd and the Federal Visionists for a rejection of an internal/external distinction in the covenant of grace. Instead, Kloosterman argues that contemporary proponents of the Federal Vision have rejected Schilder's clear recognition of a distinction he preferred to speak of as legal/vital. In this distinction, Schilder stands in the company of Louis Berkhof, not Norman Shepherd.

For the Sake of Accuracy: Berkhof, Schilder, and the Legal/Vital Distinction
by Nelson Kloosterman

I would like to hear your thoughts after perusing this essay. Is Kloosterman on target? Have opponents of the Federal Vision been too quick to concede the FV's appropriation of Schilder?

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Bryan Peters
Providence Reformed Church (URCNA)
Des Moines, Iowa

Doctrinal truth should be preached always, openly, without compromise, and never dissembled or concealed. There is no offence in it; it is the staff of uprightness.
~Martin Luther~

I have not been convinced by Kloosterman's argument. I had a brief email exchange with him, but I wasn't convinced. I don't see how "alles of niks" can be read in any other way than denying the internal/external distinction.

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
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Toni Cunningham, Wife of Bill (Theognome)
Parkwoods OPC, Overland Park KS

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." ~ Alexander Pope

Have you read Schilder's writings in Looze Kalk that Kloosterman cites in his first footnote? If so, what are your thoughts?

BTW, does anyone know if there is an English translation?

I have not. My exposure to Schilder is limited to the three-volume sermons on Christ's suffering, and then I've also read the book Always Obedient.

It seems possible to me that "everything or nothing" may be one of those occasions of emphatic exaggeration that is taken out of context in a direction that the author did not intend (e.g., Luther's "sin boldly"). When the bulk of theologian's work remains untranslated in Dutch, I wonder about the accuracy of his portrayal in American Reformed and Presbyterian circles. If Schilder says what Kloosterman claims in Looze Kalk, it seems as though we shouldn't let the FV lay claim with such ease.

Do either of those works of Schilder that you read address the internal/external or legal/vital distinction? If so, please cite some excerpts to show support for your charge that Schilder should be lumped with the FV.

If not, then perhaps you could tell us upon what source you base your claim, and why you are not convinced by Kloosterman who, unlike you, has read the Dutch work in the original language.

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Mark Van Der Molen
Immanuel URC
DeMotte, Indiana

Since K. Schilder is an important figure in my ecclesiastical heritage, this thread naturally caught my attention.

I've read the Kloosterman piece and, also having read a bit of Schilder (in Dutch and English), I think it's a fair and balanced description of where KS stood. I don't think KS should be regarded as a precursor to FV in any meaningful way. The situation is somewhat analogous to the way in which theonomists have tried to appropriate Calvin as a precursor -- with the important difference that a lot more of Calvin has been translated than Schilder -- so at least there can be a meaningful debate about Calvin.

Very little of Schilder's vast body of work has been translated. This is a big part of the problem. Some of the FV guys can read Dutch, most of us can't. So, a lot of times we have to take their word for it when they say that Schilder says x or Holwerda says y. There is an annotated bibliography of his works in English over here. Looze Kalk is not something that has been translated.

To briefly respond to Lane on "Alles of niks":

1) Alles of niks is Afrikaans, not Dutch. Schilder only wrote in Dutch. He originally wrote, "alles of niets." The Afrikaans comes from Strauss' dissertation on Schilder.

2) When Schilder says "alles of niets" (all or nothing) when it comes to the covenant, it seems to me that he is speaking of the vital aspect. Either you have a vital relation to God through Christ in the covenant of grace, or you don't. All or nothing.

3) From my reading of Schilder, he (and other Vrijgemaakt/liberated theologians) recognize that there are two ways of relating to the covenant of grace.

4) Even if Schilder departed from classic Reformed formulations of the doctrine of the covenant in some respects, he did not proceed to deny the imputation of the active obedience of Christ nor to reformulate the doctrine of justification.

In conclusion, I find it remarkable that the defender of KS in our day is a URC minister and professor. There's very little interest among CanRC theologians and ministers for defending the views of KS anymore. Machen's might still be around, but Schilder's warrior children are no more.

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Wes Bredenhof
Pastor, Providence Canadian Reformed Church
Hamilton, Ontario
www.bredenhof.ca
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If Schilder's currency has waned as you suggest, then Kloosterman's defense is not half as remarkable as another URC minister and seminary professor expending the effort to smear Schilder with the FV label.

Wes,

My experience of KS and his polite Canadian children is rather different. I have yet to write a criticism of KS that doesn't receive a polite but firm Canadian response.

They may not be warrior children, but from the outside of the CanRC looking in --and quite worried by VanDam's endorsement of Norm Shepherd's latest volume on justification -- the picture looks rather different.

My CanRC friends keep telling me that they're not defending KS while they defend him!

Second, Strauss' explanation of alles of niets is rather different from yours and from Nelson's. I find Strauss' explanation more plausible in the light of what I've read of Schilder, from Schilder, about that struggle with the the Kuyperians, the discussions with Hoeksema etc.

As I wrote in another thread, it seems to me, as I argued in CJPM
The Bookstore at WSC: Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry by Clark, R. Scott

that the evidence leads one to the conclusion that Schilder rejected the classic internal/external distinction.
R. Scott Clark: Baptism and the Benefits of Christ (CPJ 2) | The Confessional Presbyterian

"All or nothing" seems to be just a short-hand expression for saying that all baptized persons are in the covenant of grace in precisely the same way.

It seems to me that KS made the covenant of works gracious and the covenant of grace legal.

He rejected the classic covenant theology on the Pactum salutis and the covenant of works.

He was a revisionist and now we're getting a revisionist story that, I fear, is more interested in ecumenism than in history.

__________________
R. Scott Clark, D.Phil
Westminster Seminary California
Associate Pastor, Oceanside URC
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Scott,

You raised all kinds of issues in your response, but I want to stick to the point (for now) of the internal/external or legal/vital distinction. Schilder wrote about the promise of baptism, the sign and seal of the covenant. He noted that the promise is for all who are baptized. He goes on:

"If the words "are for" mean that the promise creates a legal connection and acknowledges the already existing connection and also puts the baptized person individually under legal claims, then we can say the promise is for all.

If, however, someone wants the expression "are for" to be understood in the sense that one will receive, for all eternity the promised contents, down to the last cent, then we assure you that the promise is only for the elect.

It must be clear by now that one does not get very far with a formula unless a clear distinction is made." (Extra-Scriptural Binding, 90-91)

That sounds to me like a theologian who recognizes two ways of relating to the covenant of grace. He even insists that a distinction has to be made. This sort of thing is found more often in Schilder's writings -- this is just one example.

Wes,

I appreciate this but one of the places that has pushed me to my reading of Schilder is language such as this in his little treatise on "The Main Points of the Doctrine of the Covenant." His Kuyperian opponents were arguing for a covenant of works as distinct from a covenant of grace (where Schilder spoke of the "so-called covenant of works") and defended the two ways of being in the one covenant of grace. Schilder rejected this view:

The covenant lives only through promise plus demand: we may never separate those two. Today some are saying that God has chosen His covenant children from eternity. God promises them His grace, and only there where He pours out His grace, is man actually in the covenant. They say the covenant has an inward side and outward side; only the inward side is the real covenant. They say the covenant contains from the Lord's side, as a complete gift in election, eternal salvation: that is the covenant. No, say we, that we will never accept! Those people who describe the promise in this way so that it is stripped of the demand are gutting the covenant of its significance!

This passage is fairly typical. It reflects his view that there is one covenant before and after the fall. In itself this was not necessarily problematic except that he didn't do as "scholastics" (a group he regularly excoriated because he associated them with the Kuyperians) did and distinguish clearly between the pre-lapsarian administration as a legal and the post-lapsarian administration as purely gracious.

It's clear from this passage that Schilder was uncomfortable with the more traditional view that the post-lapsarian covenant is dipleual is administration only. He made it dipleural in nature. Why? Because he was concerned about the looseness and immorality etc he saw as resulting from the Kuyperian doctrine of presumptive regeneration.

I would agree with KS that the "outward side" was real but given what the Kuyperians meant, that, as Olevianus had it, "the substance of the covenant of grace" is between God and the elect and the "administration" of the covenant of grace includes non-elect. Their participation is real but still only external. It does not appear that Schilder accepted this distinction because, for him, it weakened the position of some in the covenant of grace and reduced their obligation. For Schilder "the covenant" is promise and obligation.

After this passage he addressed the concern that he was making "the covenant" all law and no gospel. He denied doing that but just as soon as Schilder seemed to veer toward a more historically orthodox view, he swerved back toward must be said to be a moralistic covenant theology for fear of making it too gracious, too free and without sufficient obligation. For example, a little later he wrote:

There is no separate promise, either in spoken words or written with the ink of Scripture, which is only addressed to a specific person as elected. God does think about the elect; He thinks about them to their good and what He thinks is indeed bone and marrow of the covenant, His glorious promise. But what He says at baptism is not that He establishes His covenant with a specific person as an elect child. At baptism it is not said to a specific person that he is chosen or elect; this is only thought about in the election in God's counsel. The covenant does not originate in what He thinks; in His thinking there is no promise or demand. God's counsel is not spoken or written.

Here his intent seems to be plainly to say that the elect within the covenant of grace have no unique promise from God. I understand what Schilder intended. He thought that, for the Kuyperians, the decree had swallowed up history but in his reaction he seemed to separate covenant administration utterly from the decree. It's true that, as we administer the covenant of grace, we administer it without specific knowledge of the eternal decree. We administer it, however, on the basis of promise and in hope and even expectation that the promise is true for this one whom we baptize.

In this respect, Schilder's apparent rejection of the 4th point of Synod Utrecht (1905) becomes problematic:

that according to the Confession of our churches the seed of the covenant, by virtue of the promise of God, must be held to be regenerated and sanctified in Christ, until upon growing up they should manifest the contrary in their way of life or doctrine;

that it is, however, less correct to say that baptism is administered to the children of believers on the ground of their presumed regeneration, since the ground of baptism is found in the command and promise of God;

that furthermore, the judgment of charity with which the Church regards the seed of the covenant as regenerated, does not at all imply that each child is actually born again, seeing that God's Word teaches that they are not all Israel that are of Israel, and of Isaac it is said, "In him shall thy seed be called" (Rom. 9:6-7), so that it is imperative in the preaching constantly to urge earnest self-examination, since only he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.

Moreover, Synod in agreement with our Confession maintains that "the sacraments are not empty or meaningless signs, so as to deceive us, but visible signs and seals of an inward and invisible thing, by means of which God works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Article 33), and that more particularly baptism is called "the washing of regeneration" and "the washing away of sins" because God would "assure us by this divine pledge and sign that we are spiritually cleansed from our sins as really as we are outwardly washed with water"; wherefore our Church in the prayer after baptism "thanks and praises God that He has forgiven us and our children all their sins, through the blood of His beloved son Jesus Christ, and received us through His Holy Spirit as members of His only begotten Son, and so adopted us to be His children, and sealed and confirmed the same unto us by holy baptism"; so that our Confessional Standards clearly teach that the sacrament of baptism signifies and seals the washing away of our sins by the blood and Spirit of Jesus Christ, that is, the justification and renewal by the Holy Spirit as benefits which God has bestowed upon our seed.

Synod is of the opinion that the representation that every elect child is on that account already in fact regenerated even before baptism can be proved neither on Scriptural nor on confessional grounds, seeing that God fulfills his promise sovereignly in His own time, whether before, during, or after baptism. It is hence, imperative to be circumspect in one's utterances on this matter, so as not to desire to be wise beyond that which God has revealed.

In the passage that follows, we see Schilder rejecting the substance of the internal/external distinction:

If the covenant depends on election a covenant child must be someone who is spoken to in the language of the church or of Scripture in his quality as covenant child. But such a promise to the elect does not exist; there is no promise written personally or individually to a specific person. Here we see the hollowing out of the covenant and also of the promise. People today speak of the promise to the elect, and say that is the real promise, it is as if they are trying to measure the size of the clouds with a pair of dividers. The covenant is with people on the earth. Here, on earth, God speaks, God demands on Sinai and Horeb, and Paul, from his prison table, writes his letters; here God speaks and writes His promise and His demand. That is why we must speak of hollowing out the covenant when people say that the actual covenant promises are not given to those who are not elect, but that the promise can really only be considered in connection with the elect. Please tell me when or where a specific person is addressed as elect, with a special formula, for I don't know. I cannot imagine any promise which has not been promised, but is only an imaginary idea.

Again, it's true that we don't know who is elect or not, but it's not true to say that there's no promise to any specific child. Here Schilder has gone too far. Just because we don't know who are the elect does not mean that there are no specific promises and that it's "all or nothing" or that it's "head for head."

In fact the promise wasn't made with Ishmael nor was it made to Esau. They both participated in the covenant administration and were, in that sense, really in the covenant of grace. We must affirm this against our Baptist friends but when I say that Schilder rejected the internal/external distinction, I don't think I'm making up things.

From Chapter 1 of Strauss' book:

Schilder's book, Looze kalk, was in large measure a vigorous contradiction of the position of J. Ridderbos, who had argued that the covenant came into existence at the point of the heart's renewal.39 When someone like Hepp rejected the “sanctions” of the covenant, Schilder took the trouble of exposing the subjectivism underlying this rejection.

As Wes correctly points out, for Schilder there *is* a differentiated relationship to the covenant. It stands that Schilder's *legal/vital* distinction is blessed by Berkhof and Vos. It stands that this is in contradiction to the FV.

So if Schilder/Berkhof/Vos don't use Clark's preferred terminology {visible/invisible} to define the differentiated relationship to the covenant, then Schilder must be denying the doctrine that the terminology is describing.

So we continue to get a revisionist story that, I fear, is more interested in anti-ecumenism than in history. It is beyond bizarre.

Scott,

I think we've been through this before, but l want to make sure that I'm clear about your position. Specifically, do you agree that:

1) Every baptized person receives the covenant promises

2) Not every baptized person receives what is promised