Covenant Hearts’ Blog

2 Chronicles 25:4 However, he did not put their children to death, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, which the LORD commanded, saying, “Fathers shall not be put to death for sons, nor sons be put to death for fathers, but each shall be put to death for his own sin.”

Yet God will “[visit] the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation (Deuteronomy 5:9).” Although God does this He does not allow us to judge others in this manner. We are not God. We must judge based solely on the actions of the individual…Similarly Jesus Christ “of thine own mouth will I judge thee (Luke 19:22)”…Remember sin is ethical, not metaphysical.

Note: God imputes sin but I’m not sure if He condemns solely based on imputation alone. That is a tough issue to answer, which I cannot at this moment.

I first heard this phrase used by an open theist that I am acquainted with (Jesse Morrell). I did not understand what he meant by it.

This is interesting to note since this phrase, I believe, was coined by Cornelius Van Til, a premier Calvinist philosopher and theologian and Professor of Apologetics at Princeton Theological Seminary then Westminster Theological Seminary.

As I was listening to an Apologetics course taught by John Frame (you can download it for free) I heard him use this phrase. I looked it up online and found that Frame cites Van Til.

On another site I found that Frame attributed this phrase as a paraphrase of Herman Bavinck (”…the source is Bavinck…”), another Calvinist theologian/philosopher. I believe that I have discovered the volume in which Bavinck expounds this; his Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 3 Sin and Salvation in Christ.