RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
How would someone who doesn't believe in the free offer of the gospel share the gospel in a witnessing encounter?
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Umm...they don't? At least if they're consistent with their theology.How would someone who doesn't believe in the free offer of the gospel share the gospel in a witnessing encounter?
I think you're right on track, Ruben. One oft-used PRCA summary of the topic is as follows:There's a fairly extensive literature from the PRCA on their position. Hopefully our PR brothers will tighten this up if I am off, but in their case I think the objection is to the idea of offer, rather than to the idea of free. Instead, the call of the Gospel is an authoritative summons or command. Hence it can certainly be preached promiscuously. Perhaps a suitable generalization would be that it has more impact on the mode or tone of evangelism, vs. on the actual fact.
From Barry Gritters' Grace Uncommon (https://www.prca.org/pamphlets/pamphlet_55.html)The PRC's denial of the free offer does not mean that the preacher must not preach to all promiscuously. He must! It does not mean that he does not call all men to repent and believe. He does! It does not imply that God does not promise salvation to all who will believe. God most certainly does!
The PRC's denial of the free offer means this: that we deny that there is grace in the preaching to all men, that we deny that the preaching expresses God's desire and purpose and intent to save all men. He most certainly does not. Else they would be saved, because He is a sovereign God.
(3b) One man even told me that God gives good gifts to the wicked to increase their guilt ("to fatten them up for the salughter")... and that this increase of guilt was not merely the sad result of their sins but was the design of God to further judge the sinner.
What were Dabney's ideas?[Moderator]
Let's make the assumption that Jacob knew what he was doing when he asked this question: he is interested in the witnessing efforts of those who deny the free offer of the Gospel. That language has a historic meaning derived from usage. We do our own understanding no favors if that language is assumed to include the ideas of Dabney, Murray, et al, about non-executive volitions in God. No doubt Murray believed in the free offer of the Gospel; but someone can reject Murray without therefore rejecting the free offer. Anyone who has spent time researching the issue should be well acquainted with this historical fact.
So unless Jacob clarifies that he meant to ask about the "well-meant" offer, replies about that are off-topic, and will be (have been) deleted.
[/Moderator]
From what I can gather from reading early Reformed sources, many divines believed in the WMO, while various other Reformed divines did not believe that the free offer was the same thing as the WMO. I will probably upset partisans on all sides by stating that I believe neither Dort nor Westminster demand that you hold one view or the other.
As much as I am a proponent of the WMO, I agree that the confessions don't explicitly spell out one side or the other, though Dort comes a little closer in my reading. I'm glad, though, since one of the purposes of a confession is to unite without letting the details put parties on opposite sides. We can agree that the gospel should go out to all without agreeing on all of the particulars.
Gill spells out a position that fits with the OP:
"Nor is the gospel-ministry an offer of Christ, and of his grace and salvation by him, which are not in the power of the ministers of it to give, nor of carnal men to receive; the gospel is not an offer, but a preaching of Christ crucified, a proclamation of the unsearchable riches of his grace, of peace, pardon, righteousness, and life , and salvation by him. Yet there is something in which the ministry of the word, and the call by it, have to do with unregenerate sinners: they may be, and should be called upon, to perform the natural duties of religion; to a natural faith, to give credit to divine revelation, to believe the external report of the gospel, which not to do, is the sin of the deists; to repent of sin committed, which even the light of nature dictates; and God, in his word, commands all men every where to repent: to pray to God for forgiveness, as Simon Magus was directed by the apostle: and to pray to God for daily mercies that are needed, is a natural and moral duty; as well as to give him praise, and return thanks for mercies received, which all men that have breath are under obligation to do. They may, and should be called upon to attend the outward means of grace, and to make use of them; to read the holy scriptures, which have been the means of the conversion of some; to hear the word, and wait on the ministry of it, which may be blessed unto them, for the effectual calling of them. And it is a part of the ministry of the word to lay before men their fallen miserable, lost, and undone estate by nature; to open to them the nature of sin, its pollution and guilt, and the sad consequences of it; to inform them of their incapacity to make atonement for it; and of their impotence and inability to do what is spiritually good; and of the insufficiency of their own righteousness to justify them in the sight of God: and they are to be made acquainted, that salvation is alone by Christ, and not otherways; and the fullness, freeness, and suitableness of this salvation, are to be preached before them; and the whole to be left to the Spirit of God, to make application of it as he shall think fit."
He also distinguished between legal and evangelical repentance. With reference to Acts 3:19 ("repent... and be converted..."), he says:
"Though no other repentance and conversion may be here meant than an external one; and the blotting out of sin, and forgiveness of it, may intend no other than the removing a present calamity, or the averting a threatened judgment, or the deliverance of persons from national ruin. These Jews had crucified the Lord of glory, and for this sin were threatened with miserable destruction; the apostle therefore exhorteth them to repentance for it, and to a conversion to the Messiah, that so when ruin should come upon their nation, they might be delivered from the general calamity; when it would be terrible times to the unbelieving and impenitent Jews..."
Hope this helps...
That is what it practically amounts too. And it often ends up leading into antinomianism (God will convert me when he wants too so I'll live as I please until then) or to a hyper-spiritualism (I need a mystical experience to prove I am elect).Regarding the bolded: correct me if I am wrong but it sounds like Gill is basically saying to non-Christians: "You are not converted but start coming to church, reading the bible, praying, listening to the word etc., and you might become converted if the Holy Spirit feels so inclined". So naturally, if I was such a person (or a person who was truly converted but had low assurance), my natural response would be to consciously "do" as many of these works as possible in order to gain the best chance at being converted.
What were Dabney's ideas?
Regarding the bolded: correct me if I am wrong but it sounds like Gill is basically saying to non-Christians: "You are not converted but start coming to church, reading the bible, praying, listening to the word etc., and you might become converted if the Holy Spirit feels so inclined". So naturally, if I was such a person (or a person who was truly converted but had low assurance), my natural response would be to consciously "do" as many of these works as possible in order to gain the best chance at being converted.