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D. THE RELATION BETWEEN SPECIAL AND COMMON GRACE.
Several questions may be raised respecting this relation, of which the following are some of the
most important.
1. DO SPECIAL AND COMMON GRACE DIFFER ESSENTIALLY OR ONLY IN DEGREE?
Arminians
recognize alongside of sufficient (common) grace the grace of evangelical obedience, but aver
that these two differ only in degree and not in essence. They are both soteriological in the
sense that they form part of the saving work of God. The former makes it possible for man to
repent and believe, while the latter, in co-operation with the will, causes man to repent and
believe. Both can be resisted, so that even the latter is not necessarily effectual unto salvation.
Reformed theology, however, insists on the essential difference between common and special
grace. Special grace is supernatural and spiritual: it removes the guilt and pollution of sin and
lifts the sentence of condemnation. Common grace, on the other hand, is natural; and while
some of its forms may be closely connected with saving grace, it does not remove sin nor set
man free, but merely restrains the outward manifestations of sin and promotes outward
morality and decency, good order in society and civic righteousness, the development of
science and art, and so on. It works only in the natural, and not in the spiritual sphere. It should
be maintained therefore that, while the two are closely connected in the present life, they are
yet essentially different, and do not differ merely in degree. No amount of common grace can
ever introduce the sinner into the new life that is in Christ Jesus. However, common grace does
sometimes reveal itself in forms that can hardly be distinguished by man from the
manifestations of special grace as, for instance, in the case of temporal faith. Dr. Shedd does
not seem to bear the essential difference between the two in mind especially when he says:
“The non-elect receives common grace, and common grace would incline the human will if it
were not defeated by the human will. If the sinner should make no hostile opposition, common
grace would be equivalent to saving grace.” In a note he adds: “To say that common grace, if
not resisted by the sinner, would be equivalent to regenerating grace, is not the same as to say
that common grace, if assisted by the sinner, would be equivalent to regenerating grace. In the
first instance, God would be the sole author of regeneration; in the second He would not
be.”[Dogm. Theol. II, p. 483.] This reminds one of Lutheran theology, but the author’s meaning
is not entirely clear, for elsewhere he also ascribes the non-resistance of the sinner to the
operation of the Holy Spirit.[Calvinism Pure and Mixed, p. 101.]
2. WHICH ONE OF THE TWO IS PRIMARY, COMMON OR SPECIAL GRACE?
To this question it
must be answered that in a temporal sense neither one of them can be said to be prior to the
other. The third chapter of Genesis clearly reveals that both of them go into operation at once