Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 31:1 (Nov 1968)
Article: Reviews of Books
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 31:1 (Nov 68) p. 83

Reviews of Books

Herman Hoeksema: Reformed Dogmatics. Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1966. xvii., 917. $14.95.

A Calvin College student sat spellbound, listening to the young preacher who had just come to the Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The preacher had the physique of a blacksmith and the mien of a Napoleon. But his name was Herman Hoeksema. With flaming eyes and resonant voice the preacher said: “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field…but the Word of our God shall stand forever” (Isa 40:6–8).

Hoeksema was, throughout his life, a great preacher. The many doctrinal treatises that later flowed from his pen were all written while he continued to be the pastor of a large congregation. His work on Reformed Dogmatics is the last and most comprehensive of these works.

Two earlier works may be mentioned here:

1) In 1936 Hoeksema published a book under the title The Protestant Reformed Churches in America. These churches sprang into existence, argues Hoeksema, as a Reformation movement. After 1924, when the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church adopted the “doctrine of Common Grace” as a practical addition to its confessional standards, there was no longer any room for an unqualified preaching of the sovereign grace of God in that church. By the adoption of the “doctrine of Common Grace” the door was set ajar for Arminianism to enter into the church.

To be sure, it was Abraham Kuyper’s view of common grace and not that of Arminius that the Christian Reformed Churches were raising to virtual confessional status. But Kuyper’s view led easily to “the Arminian conception of common grace and to the Pelagian conception of the natural man….”1

In fact, says Hoeksema, the teaching of the doctrine of common grace as adopted by the Christian Reformed Church actually “lapses into the Arminian conception” of grace in that, according to it, “the saving grace of God is intended for all men individually.”2

WTJ 31:1 (Nov 68) p. 84

Hoeksema distinguishes between common and general grace. “By common grace is meant the grace of God, not saving, common both to the elect and the reprobate…. By general grace the theory is denoted that holds that the saving grace of God is general, i. e., intended for all men individually. The latter theory is a denial of sovereign election and reprobation and of particular atonement and teaches that Christ...