Sunday, March 3, 2019

John Colquhoun on All Being Called to Repent but Only the Elect Given Ability to Repent in Reformed Theology

In my lengthy paper:



I discuss (among many other things!) how, in Reformed theology, all people are commanded to repent, but God only gives the ability to repent to the elect only, having, in the eternal past, overlooked (whether actively [supralapsarian view] or passively [infralapsarian view]) John Colquhoun (1748-1827), a minister in the Church of Scotland and advocate of Calvinism, wrote the following wherein he affirmed both teachings:

Are all unregenerate sinners commanded to repent? It is then the law as a covenant of works, or as the law of creation, under which they are, that requires true repentance, from them. It is true that the law in its federal form knows no place for repentance and makes no provision for exercising it acceptably. It contains no promise of strength with which it may be exercised. But as, the law as a covenant obliges sinners to believe in him; so, supposing the descendants of Adam to have sinned, the same law obliges them to repent or turn to the Lord (It requires them to repent or return to God; but not to seek life by their repentance). The law as a covenant indeed does not expressly and absolutely call for true repentance; yet hypothetically and virtually it calls for it. It commands all unregenerate sinners to repent; and as a rule of duty, it enjoins all true believers to renew the exercise of repentance. The repentance of a believer is called evangelical repentance because it flows from faith in Jesus Christ as offered in the Gospel, and because it is exercised under that influence of the covenant of grace, and according to the law as a rule of life. (John Colquhoun, Evangelical Repentance [Pensacola, Fla.: Mt. Zion Publications, 1993, orig. 1826], 51)