Gordon Clark: From Another Age (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1956. From Another Age. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. Sep. 26. pgs. 5.

From Another Age

By Gordon H. Clark, Ph.D.

John Donne was born in London in 1571 or 1572. He was reared a Roman Catholic and lived a dissolute life. After a time his studies led him to abandon the Roman church, and still later he became an Anglican. This change was undoubtedly based on a true conversion, for he broke off his evil ways, became a vicar, and preached with evident sincerity to his former companions in vice.

Donne was not favorably impressed with Calvinism. He considered reprobation a harsh doctrine. The diffidence, the gloomy tinge of Puritan character, the morbidity of the Reformed people repelled him. In one of his sermons he says that he met with seven diffident and dejected souls for every presumptuous one.

Well, times have changed. Today we no longer meet so many diffident souls nor so few presumptuous ones. Evangelists sometimes teach that assurance is of the essence of salvation ; they even doubt the salvation of any individual who has not full assurance. This, of course, is not Reformation doctrine.

It is rather strange, at any rate, that Calvinism should be pictured as a gloomy religion. If Donne accepted the Arminian view, if he denied predestination and irresistible grace, we may wonder how he could be so happy about it ? Those who believe that one may fall from grace, those who believe that salvation once possessed can later be lost, have no good reason for confidence. Their perseverance depends on their own power, not on God. How can they be sure that they will attain heaven? It is Calvinistic theology alone that can give solid comfort to the diffident heart.

Now, it may be true that the sixteenth century and early seventeenth had too much of a tendency toward timidity and doubt. John Bunyan, for all of his Pilgrim's Progress, was not a happy soul. But it is also probable that the twentieth century is too light-hearted, too insincere, too careless, too indifferent to the things of God, too comfortable in the sinful world. The times have indeed changed, but not necessarily for the better.

With an acknowledgement of great variety among personalities, each of us should seriously measure his life by the Scriptural standard. Let us then lay aside every weight and run the race with patience and circumspection.