In his section on the Word of God as a means of grace, Bavinck discusses the various views of the Holy Spirit’s relation to the means of grace. On the one side are the mystics, who deny any connection between God’s grace and such lowly means, and on the other is Rome, who bind God’s grace to their sacraments to the extent that they work ex opere operato. The Reformed avoid both the mystical error by saying that the Holy Spirit works through the means of grace ordinarily and the Roman error by saying that the Holy Spirit is not restricted to these means and works apart from them in extraordinary circumstances.
An important reason for allowing the Holy Spirit to work apart from the ordinary means is because of the problem raised by members of the covenants who are regenerated before being able to comprehend the Word or sacraments. Namely, if God only works through these means, how can we properly say that these children are regenerated through the Word? By allowing the Holy Spirit to work apart from the ordinary means, children in the covenant of grace can be said to be saved by Christ. Thus, “the Holy Spirit certainly can precede, though it does not always precede, baptism, the hearing of the Word of God, and the exercise of faith.” The Lutherans, in contrast to the Reformed, linked regeneration to baptism in order to solve this problem.
This is why among Lutherans grace was increasingly linked to the means, and specifically regeneration was linked to baptism, and why among the Reformed who viewed the sacraments as signs and seals of conferred grace, regeneration was conceived as preceding baptism, so that the means of grace did not serve to regenerate but to bring those regenerated to faith and repentance.
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 446.
In the next paragraph, Bavinck mentions how the Lutheran view led to Rome (whether this is true or not is not really the point), while the Reformed view led to a weak view of the sacraments. Bavinck’s solution is summed up in this rule: “God freely binds the distribution of his grace to the church of Christ.” (447) This way Bavinck is kept from saying that God’s extraordinary work is apart from any means on the one hand (e.g. saving people apart from the gospel), and still giving assurance that covenant children can be regenerate apart from the Word and sacraments.
Consistent with this train of thought there is a noticeable separation (more than a mere distinction) between the internal and external calling in Bavinck’s writings. No longer is the Spirit bound to the Word, but may also work without it:
Accordingly, he does this [distribute grace] either apart from or through the Word and sacraments, but always through the internal calling of the Spirit, whom he bestowed on the church, in the fellowship of the church, which he instructed to preach the gospel to all creatures; in the way of the covenant that received the gospel as its content and the sacraments as sign and seal. (448)
Bavinck acknowledges that his view differs from the view of the Reformed confessions, saying that the latter provides an answer “not altogether satisfactory.” (446)
Interestingly, Michael Horton addresses this exact issue in his book titled Covenant and Salvation. He argues that
… justification should be seen more clearly not merely as ontologically different from inner renewal, but also as the ontological source of that change (regeneration in both its narrower and broader senses). In that case, we need not formulate a doctrine of regeneration as immediate and direct or even as subconscious and nontransformative, but treat justification as an illocutionary speech-act (verbum externum) that, when identified with the Spirit’s perlocutionary act of effectual calling, issues in repentance and faith.
- Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville, KY: WJK Press, 2007), 198.
Rather than separating the internal (regeneration) and external calling (the Word), so that the latter can work without the former, Horton suggests that we return to the view of the Reformed confessions, maintaining a distinction between the internal and external calling without pulling them apart.
Like the Westminster Confession, the other major Reformed confessions and catechisms shared the view illustrated in question and answer 65 of the Heidelberg Catechism: “The Holy Spirit creates it [saving faith] in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.” The later theologians were not denying that this is how effectual calling occurs, but inserted the distinct event of regeneration prior to it. Passages such as 1 Peter 1:23 and James 1:18, which directly assert that the new birth comes by the Word, were taken by some in the tradition as referring to the act of faith rather than to regeneration itself. (237)
The solution, then, is not to separate the Spirit from the Word so that the Spirit works without the external word, but to link the Spirit’s power to the Word as was done by the early Reformers while also keeping in view the fact that it is not merely the illocutionary function, but the perlocutionary action of the Spirit with and through the Word that makes it efficacious:
Again, part of the problem is that these writers link the Word to “moral persuasion,” to which Arminians (not to mention Socinians and Pelagians) had reduced regeneration. In other words, the ministry of the Word was understood simply in its illocutionary function of presenting the content of the gospel. At that point one could either challenge this moral-influence theory of the Word, reasserting the Reformation’s strong conception of the Word’s efficacy, or one could insert an immediate, subconscious regeneration prior to hearing and believing. From my account thus far, it should be obvious that I prefer the former option. If we treat the instrumentality of the Word in terms of both illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, then the monergism that these writers rightly insist on affirming can be firmly defended without appeal to a regeneration that is logically prior to and separate from effectual calling through the gospel. To borrow Vanhoozer’s expression above, we could say that effectual calling advenes on the external preaching of the gospel. With the older Reformed writers, we still affirm the necessity of the Spirit’s sovereign work of inwardly regenerating hearers while affirming that this operation beyond the mere hearing of the external Word nevertheless occurs with it and through it. (237)
This way the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is linked to the proclamation of the gospel, rather than being a vague, “subconscious and nontransformative” event.
