Archive for November 5th, 2014

De Jong:

Hoeksema’s competitive polarity motif lies at the root of his objections to the idea that gospel preaching can ever be considered as an offer. For implicit in the concept of offer is the idea of conditionality. The concept conditionality involves decision, moral response. Hoeksema believes that the Biblical emphasis of total depravity renders conditional presentation an impossibility. Since no sinner by nature is able to accept an offer of salvation or an invitation to accept salvation "vervalt ook absoluut de mogelijkheid van een aanbod.”68 Hoeksema argues thus because he conceives of the gospel offer in terms of an human offer. The very fact that he argues against the term offer by employing analogies of a human offerer betrays the fundamental misconstruction we ca the competitive polarity motif.

In speaking about the gospel offer we must ever bear in mind that (u>it is God who makes the offer. Because it is God in Christ who meets the sinner in the situation of gospel preaching we can accentuate the offer motif.

The concept offer with its implicit corollary of conditionality accentuates a truth which is. as constitutive of the genius of the Reformed faith as the soteric significance of our predestination in Jesus Christ. It is the truth of human responsibility which comes to its sharpest focus when we consider the sinner’s moral response to the gospel. In the preaching activity of the Church, God in Christ meets the sinner on the moral level. The fact of the gospel offer creates the highly charged dynamic situation when the redeeming Lord meets the redeemable sinner. At this point of soteric confrontation we must sensitively articulate our theological concepts so that we neither prejudice the comforting fact of free, unmerited grace nor the equally comforting fact that we are human beings, not senseless stocks and blocks. Here the dangers of a subtle emergence of various synergistic errors are more than imaginary. The history of Christian theological reflection attests this truth. However, the sensitivity to these synergistic perversions of the gospel ought not’ to force us to create a mechanical construction of the divine-human encounter which takes place when the redeeming Lord offers his saving gospel to sinners. Although it is no easy task to delineate with conceptual precision the full truth at this point of the divine-human confrontation as it comes to focus in the term offer, we must not hesitate to call the sinner to decision.

Read the rest of this entry »