November 2007 - Protestant Reformed Churches in America

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal
But we really think they argue more accurately, who make these, and
the like things in the Elect, to be preparations to the further and more
perfect operations of a more noble and plentiful spirit, and so not
preparations for regeneration, but the fruits and effects of the first
regeneration. 76
Witsius concedes that operations of the Spirit may occur in
the reprobate, but they are “no preparations for regeneration” either
by their intrinsic nature or by God’s design, but these operations
in the reprobate are “consistent with spiritual death,” and
the reprobate, being deceived by these “actings which counterfeit
spiritual life, are the more hardened in a real death.” 77 Having
carefully differentiated between regeneration in the broader and
narrower senses, Witsius concludes by rejecting any means for
preparing a sinner for the new birth. “They are not preparations
for the first regeneration, but effects of it,” because death is no
preparation for life. 78
Witsius believes that there is a sense in which the Lord, by
His providential dealings with the elect before their conversion,
“prepares” them for their future spiritual life. He “preserves them
from base and scandalous crimes,” and they are kept from the sin
against the Holy Ghost. Such sinners may have grown up in an
ecclesiastical environment, so that “many evident principles of
divine truth are understood by the natural mind,” which serve the
believer after he has been regenerated. 79 None of these “dispose
man for regeneration,” but they are providential works of God,
whereby, even before their regeneration, God works all things for
the good of His elect. This is the same kind of preparatory grace
to which Abraham Kuyper refers. Kuyper’s view is that the unregenerate
elect are “the subject of divine labor, care and protection”
even during their godless life before their conversion. 80
Witsius, however, like the Puritans, urges the one who will not
76. Witsius, The Economy, p. 363.
77. Witsius, The Economy, p. 363.
78. Witsius, The Economy, p. 365.
79. Witsius, The Economy, p. 366.
80. Kuyper, The Work, p. 284.
76
Vol. 41, No. 1