Paul Helm and Brett Lee-Price, “The Differing Editions of The Sovereignty of God” in Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God, eds. Paul Helm and Brett Lee-Price (Lansvale, Australia: Tulip Publishing, 2022)

A Brief Account of the Different Editions

Arthur Pink’s The Sovereignty of God was originally published by Bible Truth Depot in 1918, with Pink revising the work a further two times, in 1921 and 1929. Pink’s publisher, I. C. Herendeen, the proprietor of the Depot, was to also additionally reprint and release the work in 1949, which became known as the Fourth Edition. The changes that Herendeen made, if any, are unknown, but it is generally believed that he did not make any change of significance and left Pink’s 1929 edition relatively undisturbed. It is this edition, the fourth, that subsequent printings by later publishers such as Reiner Publications, Bible Truth Depot’s successor, and Baker Books utilised.

The Sovereignty of God also became of interest to the Banner of Truth Trust towards the end of the 1950s and was republished in a new edition in 1961 which, in many ways, became in effect a true fourth edition according to the information provided Iain H. Murray’s valuable biography of Pink, The Life of Arthur W. Pink.¹⁾Iain H. Murray, The Life of Arthur W. Pink (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust). Originally published in 1981, a revised and enlarged edition was later released in 2004. Before this first British edition was published, it was reported, in the Publisher’s Preface of the edition, that “the text of the American edition had been carefully read over by several friends and ministers who were familiar with A. W. Pink’s works, and who love the truth which he here sets forth. As a result, the group unanimously agreed that the contemporary value of the book would be increased by certain minor revisions and abridgements.”²⁾‘Publishers’ Preface’ in A. W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (1961; repr., Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2014), vi-vii. It is these revisions and abridgements that set the Banner of Truth’s revised edition apart from the others; changes that we will eventually turn to.

The Banner of Truth Edition

However, before we evaluate the changes so made, we must acknowledge and express gratitude that the Banner of Truth was able to publish the revised edition to begin with. The Trust rightly recognised that the doctrine of the sovereignty of God was being deficiently articulated in evangelicalism, whereby they note in the Publisher’s Preface that, “…it is evident that a great deal of confusion exists about the meaning and implications of the doctrine of divine sovereignty. This truth has been so little expounded in the pulpit and so rarely—in this century—explained in print that it is hardly surprising that this should be. It is also understandable in such circumstances how some Christians, having heard only a caricature of the doctrine, are unconsciously prone to reject both the misrepresentation and the truth together.”³⁾Publishers’ Preface in Pink, Sovereignty of God (Banner Edition), vi-vii.

Thus, the reprinting of The Sovereignty of God met a real need, as was seen by the eventual number of sales and the impact the book had. Murray notes in a 1997 article that the 1961 revision sold some 160,000 copies.⁴⁾Iain H. Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, The Banner of Truth, iss. 407–8 (August–September 1997), 18. The Trust’s decision to make the title available undoubtedly helped many to come to a conviction on the subject, and this is a wonderful thing.

However, the Trust’s revision of Pink’s The Sovereignty of God was, as far as is known, the first edition to truly be prepared by hands other than those of Pink. The degree and extent of the changes made is only touched upon in the Publishers’ Preface, with further information regarding the character of the edition being provided by later articles in The Banner of Truth magazine, such as Murray’s 1997 article (which was published over 30 years after the printing of the Trust’s edition of The Sovereignty of God), and another explanation of the changes written by Murray that appeared in 2013.⁵⁾Iain H. Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, The Banner of Truth, iss. 592 (January 2013), 6–17. The later article was reworked from a chapter of the same name from Murray’s 2004 revised and expanded release of The Life of Arthur W. Pink.

These accounts, given through the Trust over the years, give the impression that the changes were relatively few. Indeed, the Publishers’ Preface, which has continued to be used in recent reprints, makes note only of “certain minor revisions and abridgements” being made. However, the information eventually yields that the revisers removed no less than three of the original chapters from Pink’s work.
Murray’s 1997 article suggests that this was largely due to Pink’s view not being clear regarding the subject of human responsibility, most notably on the point of Pink not clearly linking reprobation to the sinner concerned. Murray cites the late Professor John Murray on Romans 9:22 to vindicate this decision. So too it is further claimed, and later repeated in the 2013 article, that Pink denied free moral agency, with Murray providing several page numbers from The Sovereignty of God as evidence.⁶⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 7. Due to pagination variations between different editions, it is difficult to find the exact portions that Murray refers to. Another challenge, Murray contends, is that when Pink originally wrote the work, and when he made his revisions in 1921 and 1929, he still subscribed to Hyper-Calvinism or, at the very least, still had Hyper-Calvinistic tendencies.

These repeated comments, from the Preface and later articles, reinforce a belief that there was a defect in Pink’s thinking in this area, one undergirded by the fact that he was still developing as a theologian on this subject at the time, though he would go on to improve in this capacity later in life. Indeed, Murray understands there to be a relative theological maturation in Pink’s later years, and believes that his later articles (written after 1929) demonstrate that he rejected his earlier Hyper-Calvinism, embraced human responsibility and man’s free moral agency, and rejected a crucial distinction that he makes in The Sovereignty of God—that of man’s natural and moral ability, a detail we will go further into later.
The Trust was then placed in a position, Murray argues, where they had to either “revise the 1929 text or to leave his Sovereignty of God unpublished in Britain”.⁷⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 15. Any other choice would not have, it was felt, faithfully reflected the changes in Pink’s theology. Had Pink himself had the opportunity to revise his Sovereignty of God in 1949, it is additionally maintained, he would have also made “changes … along the same lines as the Banner followed in the revision of his book in 1961.”⁸⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 16. C.f. Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 7.

Thus, Murray sees an organic development in Pink’s theological thinking that would have led to an amendment, or moderation, of his earlier work. This acts as the justification for the Trust’s changes, which included the removal of three chapters,⁹⁾Those chapters removed were ‘The Sovereignty of God and Reprobation’, ‘God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility’, and ‘Difficulties and Objections’. the excision of four appendices, various omissions, and footnotes that were introduced by the publisher.

While these changes have left not a few people disquieted about the matter, with some questioning the wisdom and ethics of tampering with a dead man’s book, this is not the place for that. The chief question must be whether the justification for the changes is substantially true, and for that we must consider individually each of these matters proposed by Murray and his fellow revisers.

Reprobation

The subject of reprobation has been a prickly one in theology, with theologians having long argued the nature and extent of God’s involvement in the condemnation of the non-elect. It is clear that Pink believed that the reprobate are actively elected to damnation and not merely ‘passed-by’, the latter which he held to be only partially true.¹⁰⁾Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (Lansvale, Australia: Tulip Publishing, 2022), 67. Pink states clearly in the omitted chapter five, ‘The Sovereignty of God in Reprobation’, that “If there be some whom God has elected unto salvation (2 Thess. 2:13), there must be others who are not elected unto salvation. If there are some that the Father gave to Christ (John 6:37), there must be others whom He did not give unto Christ. If there are some whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of Life (Rev. 21:27), there must be others whose names are not written there.”¹¹⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 68.

Murray summarises this omitted chapter as Pink posing the rhetorical question, “If God is sovereign in salvation, bestowing it upon an elect people without regard to their works, is he not equally sovereign in passing by those not so chosen?”¹²⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 6. To this, Murray makes comment that while Scripture makes clear the condemnation that reprobation brings, it also makes it “very clear that the condemnation of those finally lost will not be without regard to their guilt. God passes by some, sovereignly withholding mercy from them, but it is their own sin which procures their condemnation.”¹³⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 6. The issue, Murray contends, is that “Pink goes further and argues that ‘if there were some of Adam’s descendants to whom He purposed not to give faith, it must be because He ordained that they should be damned’.”¹⁴⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 7, citing Pink, Sovereignty of God, 68.

Yet, surely, both statements can be true. This understanding of Pink’s, often termed Double Predestination, should not be understood as Pink holding to Equal Ultimacy, the problematic belief that God works as much in the life of the elect to bring them to salvation, as the reprobate to bring them to damnation. Pink is clear in expressing that there must be room for human responsibility, otherwise “men are nothing better than puppets, and if this be true then it would be unjust for God to ’find fault’ with His helpless creatures.”¹⁵⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 78. Indeed, Pink rejects any notion that “God purposed to take innocent creatures, make them wicked, and then damn them”, arguing that “God does not … compel the wicked to sin, as the rider spurs on an unwilling horse. God only says in effect that awful word, ‘Let them alone’ (Matt. 15:14). He needs only to slacken the reins of providential restraint, and withhold the influence of saving grace, and apostate man will only too soon and too surely, of his own accord, fall by his iniquities.”¹⁶⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 86.

Surely, such a position is in line with the Reformed tradition. In his exposition of Romans 9:23, John Calvin, whom Pink quotes favourably, argues that “There are vessels prepared for destruction, i.e. appointed and destined for destruction. There are also vessels of wrath, i.e. made and formed for the purpose of being proofs of the vengeance and displeasure of God. … Although Paul is more explicit in this second clause in stating that it is God who prepares the elect for glory, when before he had simply said that the reprobate were vessels prepared for destruction, there is no doubt that the preparation of both is dependent on the secret counsel of God. Otherwise Paul would have said that the reprobate yield or cast themselves into destruction. Now, however, he means that their lot is already assigned to them before their birth.”¹⁷⁾John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle is the Romans and to the Thessalonians, trans. Ross Mackenzie (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1973), 211–212. Likewise, William Perkins (1558–1602), the so-called father of Puritanism, in his seminal work A Golden Chain, also rejected any notion that the reprobate “were condemned by the mere will of God alone, without any inherent causes in those to be condemned.”¹⁸⁾William Perkins, A Golden Chain, eds. Mark Smith and Matthew Payne (Lansvale, Australia: Tulip Publishing, 2021), 361. However, Perkins completely believed that God had “decreed to condemn some” even though “all the fault and guilt of condemnation remains in the men only.”¹⁹⁾Perkins, A Golden Chain, 363.

Therefore, there must be room for both human responsibility and divine decree. In passages such as 2 Peter 2 and Jude 8–13, the place of guilt is evident. Perhaps Pink had in mind the verse “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Rom. 9:13). This divine decision cast upon two individuals, twins, while in their mother’s womb and not yet born, is evidence that their destinies could not have been based on their actions. So, Pink has a point, surely, in stressing the place of the divine decree. Indeed, in his Systematic Theology, Louis Berkhof defines reprobation as “that eternal decree of God whereby He has determined to pass some men by with the operations of His special grace, and to punish them for their sins, to the manifestation of His Justice.”²⁰⁾Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (1941; repr., Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994), 116. Both the absolute decree and the elements of guilt and sin are emphasised.

So too, the Westminster Confession of Faith states reprobation as follows:

The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or witholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to his dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice. (Ch. 3.7)

There is quite an emphasis on the will of God here. However, Murray acknowledges that Pink does not completely deny creaturely responsibility, whereupon he states, “Pink does include the qualification, ‘God has not created sinful creatures in order to destroy them… the responsibility and criminality are man’s’”²¹⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 7., but he also believes that Pink’s treatment of man’s responsibility “lacks the clarity which is essential precisely at this point.”²²⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 7. By this, Murray and the 1961 revisers subject Pink to their specific criteria of what must be said about man’s responsibility. While Pink does affirm, at multiple points, man’s involvement in reprobation, if the Trust believed that Pink was somewhat deficient in this area, perhaps what was needed, or warranted, was simply a word of amplification, instead of the excision of the whole chapter.

Nevertheless, Murray remarks that “God’s holy justice in all his dealings with men must not be left out of view. This consideration Pink ignores. The Banner revisers did not disagree with Pink over the existence of the non-elect but in his concern to trace both ‘passing by’ and final condemnation to the naked will of God he failed to do justice to the whole of God’s character as revealed in Scripture. It was this failure which was considered to warrant the omission of the whole chapter.”²³⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 7.

But Pink was acutely aware that there might be those who would read this chapter and go away failing to recognise man’s involvement in their condemnation, and for this he sought to provide “several important considerations to guard [the doctrine] against abuse and prevent the reader from making any unwarranted deductions”²⁴⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 85., thus emphasising man’s responsibility and criminality. Given that Pink would commit another chapter, ‘God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility’, in elaborating how man was responsible, it is also hardly surprising that Pink did not go into the matter in any great detail at this stage.

Instead, the point of the chapter ‘The Sovereignty of God in Reprobation’ was to help individuals recognise that the foundational cause of predestination, both for the elect and non-elect, starts in the will of God and not in any cause outside of himself. On this, Pink, a clear supralapsarian, never wavered. His later series on the Doctrine of Election, appearing in the Studies in the Scriptures in 1938–1940, testify to the same sentiment, whereby Pink declares, “Nowhere does the sovereignty of God shine forth so conspicuously as in His acts of election and reprobation, which took place in eternity past, and which nothing in the creature was the cause of.”²⁵⁾A. W. Pink, Studies in the Scriptures, March 1938, 92 (A. W. Pink, The Doctrines of Election and Justification (Grand Rapids, MI: Guardian Press, 1976), 25). Indeed, Pink spends significant time in these articles arguing that the root, or primary, cause of predestination originates solely in God’s sovereign determination. However, he does so with a purview of primary and secondary causality, recognising that whilst God is the primary cause of all things, that the creature has its own independent ability, or cause, contingent to that of God’s. Both are in harmony. This is why Pink can, then, subsequently attest that “Man is a moral agent, acting according to the desires and dictates of his nature: he is at the same time a creature, fully controlled and determined by his Creator. In each of these cases the divine and human elements coalesce, but the divine dominates, yet not to the exclusion of the human.”²⁶⁾Pink, Studies, November 1939, 254 (Pink, The Doctrines of Election and Justification, 159).

Pink believed, throughout his life, that the predestination of both the elect and non-elect had to be established in God’s sovereign decree, without any other primary cause, but that this in no way infringed on the responsibility and guilt of man due to man’s agency and fallen inclinations. Man was to be held guilty of not heeding and obeying God, and for this, the blame of damnation rested at man’s feet. Pink believed firmly that “Man’s responsibility must be enforced as well as God’s sovereignty insisted upon.”²⁷⁾Pink, Studies, February 1940, 44 (Pink, The Doctrines of Election and Justification, 181).

Moral Agency and Ability

Yet how is man to be held responsible if God had sovereignly determined his destruction? To this question, Pink committed his chapter ‘God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility’ in providing just this answer. However, it is here that we must turn to the revisers’ disagreement and belief in Pink’s deficiency regarding his understanding of the fallen nature of man. Murray states, “It has been near universally believed in Christian theology that human responsibility means that men are free moral agents – they are not machines, deprived of voluntary choice. But in 1929 Pink denied ‘free moral agency’, apparently on the grounds that he believed it had been destroyed by the Fall of man. He wrote, ‘Strictly speaking there are only two men who have ever walked this earth who were endowed with full and unimpaired responsibility, and they were the first and last Adams’. Such a statement inevitably suggests that sin has diminished if not removed the responsibility of everyone else for ‘the natural man is not a “free moral agent”’”.²⁸⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 7–8.

In the chapter leading to responsibility, that is, ‘The Sovereignty of God and the Human Will’, Pink spends some time detailing the condition of the fallen will, namely that it is impotent and unable to do good. Pink states that “In unfallen Adam the will was free, free in both directions, free toward good and free toward evil. … But with the sinner it is far otherwise. The sinner is born with a will that is not in a condition of moral equipoise, because in him there is a heart that is ‘deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,’ and this gives him a bias toward evil.”²⁹⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 118. Subsequently, the sinner’s will is now under the bondage of sin with an inclination to do sin. Therefore Pink can say, “The will is not causative, because, as we have said, something causes it to choose, therefore that something must be the causative agent. Choice itself is affected by certain considerations, is determined by various influences brought to bear upon the individual himself, hence, volition is the effect of these considerations and influences, and if the effect, it must be their servant; and if the will is their servant then it is not sovereign, and if the will is not sovereign, we certainly cannot predicate absolute ‘freedom’ of it.”³⁰⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 114. Man’s faculties have been wholeheartedly affected by sin; his actions are those performed by the will but a will that is influenced, or controlled, and, by consequence, the will cannot be seen as entirely ‘free’. A sinner cannot do spiritual good, but he is free in moving towards one direction, that of evil.

Therefore, Pink believes, while man is a ‘moral agent’, he is not a totally ‘free’ one. He is free in the sense of being free to follow his sinful pleasures; he is also free in that these acts are not externally coerced, but rather they are self-determining—of the sinner’s own volition. Pink is careful to stress that “The sinner is ‘free’ in the sense of being unforced from without. God never forces the sinner to sin.”³¹⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 119. However, it is clear that Pink disagreed with the terminology of a ‘free moral agent’, and this terminology was one that he had vehement distaste for throughout his life, seeing it as little more than an ‘Arminian delusion’.³²⁾i.e., Studies, August 1934, 177; Studies, March 1948. Equally, though, Pink believed that while man was not ‘free’ regarding things spiritual, he was still treated as a responsible ‘moral agent’, noting in 1944 that God has established an “order in which He acts as moral governor and in which man is dealt with as a moral agent. In consequence of the fall, man is filled with enmity against God and is blind to his eternal interests. His will is opposed to God’s, and the depravity of his heart causes him to forsake his own mercies. Nevertheless he is still a responsible creature, and God treats him as such. As his moral governor, God requires obedience from him; and in the case of His elect He obtains it, not by physical compulsion but by moral persuasion, not by mere force but by inclining him to free concurrence. He does not overwhelm by divine might, but declares, ‘I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love’ (Hosea 11:4).”³³⁾Studies in the Scriptures, June 1944.

However, if man’s will was bound and, subsequently, not free, then how could man be held responsible for his sinful acts? It is here that Pink turned to the theological formula of Moral and Natural Ability. While existing in various forms since the Medieval period, the understanding was particularly and popularly proposed by Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and, later, Andrew Fuller (1754–1815). It was an understanding that while man, due to the Fall, is morally unable, or unwilling, to come to God, he retains, by virtue of being created by God, the natural ability to do so. Pink believed, at the time, that this construction helped cut this so-called ‘Gordian knot’ of theology.

It is due to Pink’s reliance on this distinction, along with his rejection of the term ‘free moral agency’, that led to the revisers omitting this chapter from the Trust’s edition. It was felt that Pink failed in what he had set out to do, which was to show the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human accountability.³⁴⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 7. It is clear that Murray, particularly, disagreed with Pink’s use of this distinction, whereby he makes comment that “’The Gordian knot’ has not been cut after all. The truth is, as A. A. Hodge writes, that the attempted distinction between natural and moral ability has no warrant in Scripture, ‘It is essentially ambiguous … misleading and confusing.’”³⁵⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 8. C.f. Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 9, fn 1. Further, Murray believed that Pink eventually abandoned the distinction, whereby, appealing to Pink’s later articles on ‘The Doctrine of Man’s Inability’, he notes that “the distinction between natural and moral inability has gone.”³⁶⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 10.

However, there are several items to note at this point. The first is that while Murray rightly recognises the influence of Jonathan Edwards on Pink, he curiously does not really engage with Edwards whose masterful work, The Freedom of the Will, covers the topic extensively. He simply recognises and dismisses the position without much comment. Secondly, he appeals to the Princeton theologian A. A. Hodge (1823–1886) to demonstrate the deficiency of the distinction, yet Hodge goes further than the comments Murray cites, wherein he prefaces the aforementioned by stating, “President Edwards … adopts the same terms, affirming that men since the fall have natural ability to do all that is required of them, but are destitute of moral ability to do so. By natural ability he meant the possession by every responsible free agent as the condition of his responsibility, of all the constitutional faculties necessary to enable him to obey God’s law. By moral ability he meant that inherent moral state of those faculties, that righteousness disposition of the heart, requisite to the performance of those duties. As thus stated, and as President Edwards held and used it, there is no question as to the validity and importance of this distinction.”³⁷⁾A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology (1860; repr., London, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1972), 341. Instead, rather than the distinction itself, it is the phraseology that Hodge actually disagreed with, noting that the phrase of natural and moral ability “has no warrant in the analogy of Scripture”³⁸⁾Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 341. and that it could be misunderstood. The distinction as phrased did not, Hodge felt, “accurately express the important distinction intended.”³⁹⁾Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 342.

Indeed, such a distinction did not necessarily belong on the outlier of the Reformed tradition either, as the position of holding that man retained the natural capacity of being able to will, or choose, good and evil, was a relatively common distinction that was understood by a number of individuals. Joseph Truman (1631–1671), a Puritan preacher, and a nonconformist after 1662, uses the same distinction in his A Discourse of Natural and Moral Impotency, wherein he states:

Moral Impotency is when a man hath the Natural power, can do the things in respect of his Natural powers, but will not, and not only so, but cannot obtain of himself to will it through yet he hath the Natural power of obtaining this by himself…. These expressions a se impetrare non potest ac velit, he cannot find it in his heart to chuse it, cannot obtain of himself to will it, seem the fittest to represent it to you by.

And it is not from any Natural defect that he cannot find it in his heart, cannot obtain of himself to will it, but from his Wickedness, his Pride, Covetousness, Malice, Voluptuousness, and such things as prevail with his will in a Moral way, to keep it fast to them.⁴⁰⁾Joseph Truman, Discourse of Natural and Moral Impotency, 2nd ed. (London: printed for Robert Clabel, 1675), 24–25.

For Truman, the unregenerate have an intellect and will, and these are warped such that they always have a prevailing preference to continue in their unregeneracy. The unbeliever’s inability to believe is not a natural impotency, but rather one of unwillingness. John Owen makes a similar and succinct point when he notes, in his Exposition of Psalm 130, that “the way [of salvation] is opened and prepared, and it is not because men cannot enter, but because they will not, that they do not enter.”⁴¹⁾John Owen, ‘An Exposition upon Ps. 130’, in Works (1850–1853; repr., Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth Trust, 1981), 6:529. For the differences between Truman and Owen, see Paul Helm, Human Nature From Calvin to Edwards (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), 140–146.

Though he was a Baptist like Pink, John Gill (1697–1771), who owed much to Reformed orthodoxy, in his The Cause of God and Truth, makes this distinction albeit not using the same phraseology, when he says, “and though we cannot allow that man has either will or power to act in things spiritually good, as conversion, faith, and repentance and the like, yet we readily grant that he has a power or liberty of performing the natural and civil actions of life, and external parts of religion.”⁴²⁾John Gill, The Cause of God and Truth (London: Thomas Tegg & Son, 1838), 337

That great 19th-century church historian, William Cunningham (1805–1861), also notes, when discussing the doctrine of the will, that “If it be true, as it certainly is, that fallen and unrenewed men do always in point of fact will or choose what is evil, and never what is good, the cause of this is not to be traced to any natural incapacity in their will or power of volition to will or choose good as well as evil, nor to any external force or compulsion brought to bear upon them from any quarter; for this would be inconsistent with that natural liberty with which God originally endued the will of man, and which it still retains and must retain. It must be traced to something else.”⁴³⁾William Cunningham, Historical Theology (1862; repr., London, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1960) 1:573–4.

It is evidently clear that a number within Reformed orthodoxy held that there was not, as Cunningham above makes mention, a natural incapacity, or impotency, that prohibited man in their ability in choosing good, but that it was something regarding the state of the faculties, namely that they were under a moral bondage which disallowed man from doing the things of God. A bondage that ensured that man did only what their fallen proclivities so desired.

Yet some, like Hodge, were acutely aware of the challenges that the terminology of Natural and Moral Ability presented. Natural ability seemed to grant too much to the state of man’s faculties and did not seem to sufficiently, or truly, factor the effects of the Fall upon man. By this phrase, man’s power and volition appeared to have too much ability.

Pink himself came to such a conclusion, whereby in his 1940–1942 series on The Doctrine of Man’s Impotence, he comments:

Many Calvinists have supposed that in order to avoid the awful error of antinomian fatalism it was necessary to ascribe some kind of ability to fallen man, and therefore they have resorted to the distinction between natural and moral inability. They have affirmed that though man is now morally unable to do what God requires, yet he has a natural ability to do it, and therefore is responsible for not doing it. In the past we ourselves have made use of this distinction, and we still believe it to be a real and important one, though we are now satisfied that it is expressed faultily. There is a radical difference between a person being in possession of natural or moral faculties, and his possessing or not possessing the power to use those faculties right. And in the accurate stating of these considerations lies the difference between the preservation of the doctrine of man’s depravity and moral impotence, and the repudiation or at least the whittling down of it.⁴⁴⁾Pink, Studies, June 1940, 132–133 (A. W. Pink, Gleanings from the Scriptures: Man’s Total Depravity (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1969), 232).

Note Pink’s language: he does not discard the distinction, which he notes as a real and important one, but rather seeks to further qualify it. It is not sufficient to talk about the state of natural man as simply lacking the moral ability by which he could follow God, but also whether man actually has the ability to use his endowed faculties correctly in the first place. A man may have the ability to speak, but that does not naturally mean that he will speak in a God-honouring and sanctified manner. Rather, man’s moral inability is evidence that man will choose not to, but so too the effects of the Fall upon the man also means he knows not how to properly do so. The consequence of the Fall on man’s natural faculties, and use of them, needed to be factored in. While an unregenerate man could do the actions, even spiritual activities, his immoral compass and natural failings would ensure that it would never be done in the properly intended way. As Pink continues:

The deprivation of our nature consists not in the absence of intelligence, but in the ability to use our reason in a wise and fit manner. That which man lost at the fall was not a faculty but a principle. He still retains everything which is requisite to constitute him a rational, moral and responsible being; but he threw away that uprightness which secured the approbation of God. He lost the principle of holiness and, with it, all power to keep the Moral Law. Nor is this all; a foreign element—an element diametrically opposed to God—entered into man, corrupting his whole being. The principle of holiness was supplanted by the principle of sin, and this has rendered man utterly unable to act in a spiritual manner. True, he may mechanically or imitatively perform spiritual acts (such as praying), yet he cannot perform them in a spiritual manner—from spiritual motives and for spiritual ends. He has no moral ability to do so. True, he can do many things, but none rightly—in a way pleasing to God.⁴⁵⁾Pink, Studies, June 1940, 136 (Pink, Man’s Total Depravity, 236).

Thus, it could be said that Pink’s view here is that while man has kept all the faculties in which he was originally endowed, and so is considered a responsible moral agent, his inclination to wickedness ensures he continues to choose evil, and his ability to even use those faculties correctly have been marred as a result of his fallen state. While this provides further qualification to Pink’s earlier understanding of human nature articulated within the pages of The Sovereignty of God, it maintains a remarkable similarity to it. Man still retained his natural ‘ability’ in that he retained all of his prelapsarian faculties, and he was still spiritually and morally impotent due to being under the bondage and indwelling of sin.⁴⁶⁾Pink, Studies, June 1940, 132 (Pink, Man’s Total Depravity, 231). It is clear, however, that Pink felt that the phraseology was deficient, noting that:

Many able writers, in their efforts to solve the problem presented by the moral impotence and yet the moral responsibility of fallen man, have stressed the distinction between natural and moral ability and inability. They have not seen how a man could be held accountable for his actions unless he was, in some sense, capable of performing his duty. That capability they have ascribed to his being in possession of all the faculties requisite for the performance of obedience to the divine law. But it is now clear to us that these men employed the wrong term when they designated this possession of faculties a “natural ability,” for the simple but sufficient reason that fallen man has lost the power or strength to use those faculties right; it is surely a misuse of terms to predicate “ability” in one who is without strength. To affirm that the natural man possesses ability of any sort is really a denial of his total depravity.⁴⁷⁾Pink, Studies, September 1941, 207 (Pink, Man’s Total Depravity, 314).

Ability was too strong a term to use. Man retained his natural faculties, and in that way, his ‘abilities’, but it was not because he was ‘able’ to use them. In this way, the terminology of ‘natural and moral ability’ was redefined. The unregenerate man had natural faculties and could, subsequently, be able to do activities called upon by God, but because he was morally impotent, he would not. His moral impotence shaped the use of his faculties, whereby he did not only seek to follow wickedness, but could not perceive and use the faculties in the way they were initially and rightly intended. Man was still held responsible for he possessed such faculties, even though he was morally impotent to obey. As Pink states,

The absence of natural faculties clears one from blame, for one who is physically blind is not blameworthy because he cannot see, nor is an idiot to be condemned because he is devoid of rationality. Moral inability is of a totally different species, for it proceeds from an evil heart, consisting of a culpable failure to use in the right way those talents with which God has endowed us. The unregenerate man who refuses to obtain any knowledge of God through reading His Word is justly chargeable with such neglect; but the saint is not guilty because he fails to arrive at a perfect knowledge of God, for such an attainment lies beyond the reach of his faculties.⁴⁸⁾Pink, Studies, February 1942, 38 (Pink, Man’s Total Depravity, 343).

Likewise,

The impotence of the natural man to choose God for his portion is greater than that of an ape to reason like an Isaac Newton, yet there is this vital difference between the two: the inability of the former is a criminal one, that of the latter is not so because of its native and original incapacity. Man’s moral inability lies not in the lack of capacity but in lack of desire. One incurs no guilt when there is a willingness of mind and a desire of heart to do the thing commanded but no capacity to carry it out. But where there is capacity (competent faculties) but unwillingness, there is guilt—wherever disaffection for God exists so does sin. Man’s moral inability consists of an inveterate aversion for God, and it is this corruption of heart which alone has influence to prevent the proper use of the faculties with which he is endowed, and issues in acts of sin and rebellion against God.⁴⁹⁾Pink, Studies, February 1942, 40–41 (Pink, Man’s Total Depravity, 345).

It is clear that despite Murray’s claim that in Pink’s later works, specifically The Doctrine of Man’s Impotence, “the distinction between natural and moral inability has gone”,⁵⁰⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 10. it does not seem to be the case. Pink continued to hold to this distinction and believed it to be a real and important one, but one that required proper qualification so as to explain what was meant by the retention of man’s natural faculties. As such, the series provided a helpful qualifier on Pink’s earlier works, like The Sovereignty of God, but it should be seen for what it is: a series that fundamentally maintains and continues the trajectory of Pink’s thought on the subject, as opposed to being a work that significantly rejects or deviates from his earlier position.

This presents a particular challenge to claims that Pink held, in The Sovereignty of God, a “deficiency in terminology … which endangered his whole argument”⁵¹⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 7. concerning human responsibility, as it is undoubted that Pink held that man was overwhelmingly responsible for his actions, and held to a similar formula as to how man was responsible, in both 1929, when his last edition of The Sovereignty of God was published, and in 1940–1942, when Pink wrote The Doctrine of Man’s Impotence. Consequently, comments to the effect that Pink’s position changed and that “his theory that God requires of men only what it is within their ‘natural ability’ to perform is entirely, and rightly, abandoned” cannot be sustained. Even in the 1927 article ‘Gospel Responsibility’, which Murray cites as evidence of the start of Pink’s movement away from such a position, Pink ensures to note that “the sinner’s inability is a voluntary one, and that is why he is accountable for it. There was a vast difference between the blindness of Bartimeus who ardently desired his sight, and that of the Jews of whom it is said, ‘This people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed’ (Matt. 13:15). In this latter case the closing of their eyes was voluntary and criminal.”⁵²⁾A. W. Pink, Studies, November 1927, 260; Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 9–10.

Man, through natural endowment, has eyes to see, but chooses to not do so and is consequently condemned. This is in contrast to Bartimeus who did not have the natural faculties and thus could not see. Note, this is similar to Pink’s language in the omitted chapter, whereupon he says that “it needs to be borne in mind that in addition to the moral inability of the sinner there is a voluntary inability, too. The sinner must be regarded not only as impotent to do good but as delighting in evil. From the human side, then, the ‘cannot’ is a will not; it is a voluntary impotence. Man’s impotence lies in his obstinacy.”⁵³⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 142.

While Murray argues that the ‘Gospel Responsibility’ article demonstrates that Pink did not update the 1929 revision as much as he likely would have liked, it is frankly difficult to understand how exactly the article is at odds with what he states in The Sovereignty of God. Indeed, if anything, the article argues what Pink always held—namely, that man is responsible for what he doesn’t have the power to do—repenting and believing the gospel. While it does not contain the precise terminology of ‘moral’ and ‘natural’, it must be understood that the terminology does not necessarily need to be present for the theological framework to be, and nor was it Pink’s intention for the article to provide an exhaustive answer to how, in his total inability, man was to be held responsible, which he deemed was better suited for a separate article.⁵⁴⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 10.

Despite claims to the contrary, Pink, it seems, maintained his commitment to this theological distinction that he had, in turn, inherited from others within Reformed orthodoxy. However, it was one that he recognised, as his thinking in this area continually developed, as needing further qualification to explain the concept and to safeguard it from misassumptions concerning the state of man’s natural faculties. This, combined with Pink’s continued recognition of man as a responsible moral agent, ‘free’ of external compulsion, casts doubt as to the accuracy of some of the claims therefore made by Murray as to the deficiencies and changes within Pink’s theology.

Certainly, Pink did not deny the typical Reformed understanding of moral agency, but he did deny the phraseology of ‘free moral agency’ for being, he felt, unhelpful. However, his own position on man’s agency largely mirrors John Murray, whereby Murray argues that the “liberty or freedom consists in the fact that the series of volitions is determined by the self; in the sense relevant to our topic volition is self-determined. Action is self-action, volition is self-volition, determined by what the person is, and not by any compulsion or coercion extraneous to the person.”⁵⁵⁾John Murray, ‘Free Agency’ in Collected Writings of John Murray (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1977), 2:62. Indeed, Pink’s concerns with ‘free moral agency’ echo those briefly noted by John Murray about the challenges of ‘free will’ when distinguishing between that term and ‘free agency’.⁵⁶⁾Murray, ‘Free Agency,’ 60. However, both recognised the reality of man’s impotency due to the bondage of sin, yet both also are in complete agreement that man’s total inability for good does not entail the elimination of responsible agency.⁵⁷⁾Murray, ‘Free Agency,’ 65. Pink’s failure seems to be nothing more on this account than simply his choice of words.

However, this is the nature of reading any theologian: they need to be read on their own terms and their language understood without any projection, unintended or otherwise. Many have their own idiosyncrasies and have their own way of wielding words, sometimes in a way that seems to transgress a more established standard. Pink, on this account, is no exception, and while he seems to express himself in a way that appears to be denying a commonly held theological shibboleth, a more holistic approach in treatment tends to generally reveal Pink’s concurrence with the standard, but articulated in his own way.

Hyper-Calvinism

However, one of the most significant claims that has been made about Pink, particularly at the time that The Sovereignty of God was written, was that he was still in thrall to a form of Hyper-Calvinism that undergirded most of his articulated positions in the work. His tendency towards Hyper-Calvinism at the time accounts for, it is argued, much of his holding of the above positions, including on reprobation and human responsibility. Iain Murray paints Pink as having come to see that his own position on man’s responsibility was defective in the 1929 edition of The Sovereignty of God and that he was on a journey that would alter his thinking away from the Hyper-Calvinism that was still prevalent in his thought.⁵⁸⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 12. This was why an “unrevised edition would have been calculated in places to enforce the very Hyper-Calvinism which Pink came to recognise as a real danger to the biblical teaching.”⁵⁹⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 15.

However, the pressing question is whether Pink actually held to Hyper-Calvinism to begin with. Particularly as it is evident that while Pink viewed himself as a high Calvinist, he rejected any attempt to paint his position as being Hyper-Calvinistic. This is demonstrated within The Sovereignty of God itself wherein Pink argues that his position regarding reprobation is “not ‘Hyper-Calvinism’ but real Calvinism, pure and simple.”⁶⁰⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 90. Indeed, as we have seen above, Pink was committed to human responsibility, and in a paper he delivered on the subject in 1925, he affirms that “instead of denying man’s responsibility (as I am accused of doing), I insist upon it, and probably believe in it to a greater degree and further extent than do some of my detractors. I have heard some men say, ‘I do not believe in the perseverance of the saints, but I do believe in the preservation of saints.’ I hope none of you have said anything so silly. Brethren, I believe in both. I believe that we are preserved by means of our perseverance. ‘We are kept by the power of God through faith’ (1 Peter 1:5). There you have both the Divine and the human sides. It is just as foolish to say that there is no need or no room for my ‘perseverance’ if God ‘preserves’ me, as it be to affirm that there is no need for me to breathe, because God has given me breath. … There is equal danger on either side: danger, lest in our zeal to maintain the sovereignty of God we fail to enforce the responsibility of man: danger, lest we are so occupied with the human side of things that we ignore the Divine, and thus fail to ascribe to God the glory which is His due. We are in constant need of wisdom from on High to enable us to preserve the balance of Truth.”⁶¹⁾A paper Pink delivered on ‘Human Responsibility’ on the 4th August, 1925 from Pink, Studies, July 1926, 163.

Pink was to have an eventful encounter with Hyper-Calvinism during his 1925–1927 pastorate at Belvoir Street Baptist Church in Sydney, Australia. The beliefs and deficiencies of Hyper-Calvinism with its rejection of man’s responsibility was not unknown to him. Pink noted in an earlier article of the Studies, that “there are many Calvinists who equally come under the rebuke of our text. They believe in the sovereignty of God, but they refuse to believe in the responsibility of man. I read a book by a hyper-Calvinist only a few weeks ago by a man whose shoe-latched the present author is not fit to stoop down and unloose—a man of God, a faithful servant of His, one from who I have learned not a little—and yet he had the effrontery to say, that responsibility is the most awful word in the English language, and then went on to tirade against human responsibility. They cannot understand how it is possible for God to fix the smallest and the greatest events, and yet not to infringe upon man’s accountability—men themselves choosing the evil and rejecting the good—and therefore because they cannot see both they will only believe in one.”⁶²⁾Pink, Studies, January 1927, 16.

Indeed, Pink was to always emphasise these dual truths: God is sovereign and man has responsibility. Retelling an earlier encounter in 1921 to I. C. Herendeen, Pink was to note “Last night one of the young Brethren who minsters the Word … called out, may I put a question: I said, Yes, if it is pertinent. He said, You’ve just told us the new birth is due solely to the mighty working of God in us—Does God work thus upon all? I replied, No, certainly not. He then said, May I ask another question—I said, What is your object—to seek light, or start an argument? He said—Light. I said, Go ahead: “Then are those who are not born again damned because God did not work so mightily in them as in those who believe?” I said, No—they are damned because they have consciously and deliberately rejected Christ. No doubt he expected a different answer—the one from the Divine side.”⁶³⁾Letter to I. C. Herendeen, 8th February 1921. Arthur W. Pink, Letters of an Itinerant Preacher, 1920–1921, ed., Richard P. Belcher (Columbia, SC: Richbarry Press, 1994), 50.

For Pink, man must be understood as a responsible moral agent, and the distinction he employed of moral and natural ability seemed to be a satisfactory explanation in how it was so. It should be noted that this distinction, far from only being used against Arminianism by Edwards, was also used with great effect by Andrew Fuller, an 18th-century Baptist minister in Kettering, to break the fetters of Hyper-Calvinism among a number of Baptists. His work, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptance, provided a detailed defense of man’s responsibility, or duty, to repent in light of his inability to do so. Subsequently, ‘Fullerism’, ‘duty-faith’, and ‘duty-repentance’ became by-words in Hyper-Calvinist literature for Fuller’s arguments, which were denounced, denying any role for the responsibility of the unconverted to repent and rejecting any notion that they ought to be entreated to savingly repent.⁶⁴⁾Understanding this, and the distinction’s use against Hyper-Calvinism, only draws more questions when Murray asserts: “It is more strange that he allowed his earlier explanation of ability to stand in the 1929 edition in that, only two years earlier, when he was in the midst of his first encounter with hyper-Calvinism.” Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 9.

Pink’s own position mirrored that of Fuller’s, and while holding to man’s inability, he recognised man’s duty to turn and submit to Christ, believing in the necessity of gospel proclamation to the lost.⁶⁵⁾A. W. Pink, ‘Duty Faith,’ Studies, May 1936, 156–159; A. W. Pink, ‘Gospel Responsibility’, in Studies, November 1927, 256–261. Pink’s own confrontation with Hyper-Calvinism during his short tenure in Australia certainly emboldened him to this end, whereby he started to write more rigorously against the errors of Hyper-Calvinism, but it did not take him away from that position, as has been suggested, as he never held to it. Rather, Pink never denied the proclamation of the gospel, as Murray seems to think he did at one stage, whereby he notes that “By the 1930s Pink had thus come to see more clearly how hyper-Calvinism inhibited earnest gospel preaching.”⁶⁶⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 12. In fact, Pink’s own evangelistic endeavours were evident throughout the 1920s: he was involved with Tent Evangelism in California and Seattle, he had a relationship with the ministry of Open-Air Campaigners while in Sydney, and was involved in many Bible Conferences throughout the United States, Australia and Britain, some of which had an explicit emphasis on evangelism.⁶⁷⁾See Brett Lee-Price, ‘Pink and the Gospel “Offer”’, Reformation Today (May–June 2019), iss. 289, 23–31. Note also Pink’s evangelistic focus during his 1916–1917 Scottsville Pastorate, per Samuel Emadi, ‘New Light on the Early Ministry of Arthur W. Pink (2)’, The Banner of Truth, iss. 657 (June 2018), 19. Pink would also encourage his listeners to use the opportunities they had to evangelise⁶⁸⁾Address on Election given by A.W. Pink at Ashfield Baptist Church, 13th June 1925, from Pink, Studies, April 1926, 86–94., and would exhort his unconverted listeners to savingly trust in God with exhortations such as, “Why not believe in him for yourself? Why not trust the precious blood for yourself, and why not tonight? Why not tonight my friend? God is ready. God is ready to save you now if you believe on him. The blood has been shed, the sacrifice has been offered, the atonement has been made, the feast has been spread. The call goes out to you tonight, ‘Come for all things are now ready.’”⁶⁹⁾‘Christian Fools’, Sermon, 30th May 1926.

Indeed, while Murray argues that Pink “along with hyper-Calvinists … still wanted to reject the idea that gospel invitations are an ‘offer’ of Christ”⁷⁰⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 11., Pink never argued against the gospel being offered, but did vehemently push back against the contemporary evangelism of his time, which was heavily based on making decisions for Christ. This form of evangelism tended to laud man’s ability at the expense of God’s sovereignty and gave men assurance without substance. Pink wanted people to have a clearer understanding of what the gospel was, what it entailed, and what it certainly was not. Particularly, he was adamant that the gospel was all about Christ. It was relevant to the sinner, but it was not about sinners. Instead, the gospel was a proclamation of a universal truth about what Christ had done, not something to be simply extended, or offered, to sinners to decide if true. There was, Pink was convinced, an authoritative element to the gospel which meant it had to be proclaimed in an authoritative fashion. It was to be presented in a way where sinners were still implored to trust on Christ, but with a commanding aspect which emphasised both God’s right as sovereign Creator to command sinners to repent and the sinners obligation to do so. This is evident through Pink’s own articulation of what the Gospel is:

The Gospel, in brief, is this: Christ died for sinners, you are a sinner, believe in Christ, and you shall be saved. In the Gospel, God simply announces the terms upon which men may be saved (namely, repentance and faith) and, indiscriminately, all are commanded to fulfill them.⁷¹⁾Pink, Sovereignty of God, 190.

Likewise, Pink clarifies further in the 1927 article, ‘Gospel Responsibility’, whereby he states that:

the Gospel is not an Invitation, though it contains invitations to those who humble themselves before it. Further though, the Gospel is a Proclamation, it is something more than that. From the human side that is, as it falls upon the ears of men, it is a Publication of good news, a declaration to sinners that Christ died for the ungodly. But from the divine side (and, as usual, this has been largely lost sight of both by Calvinists and Arminians), that is, as it comes to us from God, the Gospel is a Mandate or Statute; hence, it is called “the Holy Commandment” (2 Peter 2:21).⁷²⁾Pink, Studies, November 1927, 258.

Pink’s commitment and continued belief of the necessity of gospel proclamation in light of man’s impotency echoed that of John Owen—of whom Pink thought highly and repeatedly cited, calling him “that great champion of free grace”⁷³⁾Pink, ‘Ministerial Address to the Unconverted’, Studies, March 1936. While initially disinterested in Owen, noting in 1919 that Owen “does not appeal to me at all. His style is much too abstract”, Pink started referencing John Owen with increasing regularity from the mid-1920s, with one of the first references being an extract of Owen’s ‘Ability and Inability’ appearing in Studies, February 1925, 48.—who stated:

Preachers of the gospel and others have sufficient warrant to press upon all men the duties of faith, repentance, and obedience, although they know that in themselves they have not a sufficiency of ability for their due performance; for,—(1.) It is the will and command of God that so they should do, and that is the rule of all our duties. They are not to consider what man can do or will do, but what God requires. To make a judgment of men’s ability, and to accommodate the commands of God unto them accordingly, is not committed unto any of the sons of men. (2.) They have a double end in pressing on men the observance of duties, with a supposition of the state of impotency described:—[1.] To prevent them from such courses of sin as would harden them, and so render their conversion more difficult, if not desperate. [2.] To exercise a means appointed of God for their conversion, or the communication of saving grace unto them. Such are God’s commands, and such are the duties required in them. In and by them God doth use to communicate of his grace unto the souls of men; not with respect unto them as their duties, but as they are ways appointed and sanctified by him unto such ends. And hence it follows that even such duties as are vitiated in their performance, yet are of advantage unto them by whom they are performed; for,—1st. By attendance unto them they are preserved from many sins. 2d. In an especial manner from the great sin of despising God, which ends commonly in that which is unpardonable. 3d. They are hereby made useful unto others, and many ends of God’s glory in the world. 4th. They are kept in God’s way, wherein they may gradually be brought over unto a real conversion unto him.⁷⁴⁾John Owen, ‘A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit’ in Works (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1862), 3:295.

Like Owen, Pink was a High Calvinist to be certain, but his emphasis on human responsibility and gospel proclamation during the writing and revisions of The Sovereignty of God does not allow Pink to be neatly classified as a Hyper-Calvinist or as having such tendencies, any more than Owen was Hyper-Calvinistic. Furthermore, it ought to be noted that by holding to Edwards’s and Fuller’s distinction, Pink was clearly differentiating himself from such thought, emphasising why and how man was to be held responsible for that which he could not do.

Conclusion

It would seem that many of the charges against Pink on his positions of reprobation, human responsibility, and alleged earlier Hyper-Calvinism cannot be sustained, at least in the manner that is argued by Murray. Pink’s view on reprobation, while specifically reflecting his position as a double predestinarian, does not challenge that man is involved in his own condemnation, but points out that such a decision starts with God as a primary cause. His view on human responsibility is that man is a responsible moral agent, ‘free’ in the sense to follow his inclinations without any external coercion but under the inward trapping and bondage of sin. The challenge of man’s responsibility in the face of this spiritual reality is explained by Pink’s holding of the distinction of moral and natural ability, which he continued to believe later in life to be ‘real and important’ but requiring further qualification so as not to be misunderstood.

At each turn, it seems that many of the presuppositions that led to the alterations are problematic. There is not as much discontinuity and change as has been suggested, and on many of the points of contestation, there is evidence to show that Pink was fairly consistent in what he actually held throughout his life, such as his view of the phrase ‘free moral agent’. Note Murray’s comments that Pink “had come to recognise that man’s free agency and God’s control of all things are both biblical facts.”⁷⁵⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 10. He then goes on to provide several citations from Pink to evidence his case: “‘These two things we must believe if the truth is not to be repudiated: that God foreordained everything that comes to pass; that He is no way blameworthy for man’s wickedness, the criminality thereof being wholly his. The decree of God in no wise infringes upon man’s moral agency for it neither forces nor hinders man’s will.’ ‘In all God’s dealings with mankind … He exercises His high sovereignty but in no way destroying their moral agency. These may present deep and insoluble mysteries to the finite mind, nevertheless they are actual facts.’ ‘The Fall has not resulted in the loss of man’s freedom of will, or his power of volition as a moral faculty.’”⁷⁶⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 10. Note, the second quote Iain Murray cites in his article contained “…in no way destroying their free moral agency.’ (Emphasis ours). This word was not present in the original work and was accidentally added by Murray. Original per A. W. Pink, Studies in the Scriptures, July 1952, 165–166.

However, much of this same theology is present in The Sovereignty of God. Pink held, as we have seen, to both God’s sovereignty and man’s criminality. He notes that man’s moral agency is ‘free’ and ‘unimpaired’ in that there is no external coercion, whereby God never compels the will of the sinner to sin. This does not mean, though, that God is unable to intervene altogether, as Pink remarked later in life:

It has been asserted has been asserted, most dogmatically, by Romanists and Arminians, that God could not have prevented the fall of our first parents without reducing them to mere machines. It is argued that since the Creator endowed man with a free will he must be left entirely to his own volitions, that he cannot be coerced, still less compelled, without destroying his moral agency. That may seem to be good reasoning, yet it is refuted by Holy Writ. God declared to Abimelech concerning Abraham’s wife, “I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her” (Gen. 20:6). It is not impossible for God to exert His power over man without destroying his responsibility, for there is a case in point where He restricted man’s freedom to do evil and prevented him from committing to sin.”⁷⁷⁾Pink, Studies, September 1952, 205 (Pink, Man’s Total Depravity, 206).

This is not to say that Pink’s terminology and theology did not mature. Certainly, if one was to examine Pink’s theological thought throughout his life, they would, as with any theologian, notice that Pink developed and fleshed out his thinking in certain areas. His later use and description of the natural and moral ability distinction bears testament to this end.

But there is much continuity with Pink, and certainly much more than is observed by the editors of the 1961 edition of The Sovereignty of God and by Murray. On the one hand, the work is critiqued for allegedly not articulating a particular position that it is arguable Pink never wavered from (i.e., an accusation that Pink shifted away from his position on Reprobation), and yet, conversely, Pink is also critiqued for supposedly not adhering to a position which he actually does hold to (i.e., human responsibility and gospel proclamation). Confusion reigns and it is evident that Pink’s theology, more often than not, is not correctly understood.

This is why we cannot fathom why Pink is lambasted for not sufficiently emphasising human responsibility and criminality, and charged for having perceived deficiencies in this area, but, yet, his precise intention of the book, as given in the initial preface, was to address the lack of attention paid to God’s sovereignty in his contemporary setting as pertaining to salvation. Pink was attempting to address a deficiency, and he did so by chiefly focusing on what that deficiency was. Granted, this could mean the book might seem unbalanced, if one did not recognise the greater context, but it does not mean that Pink’s own theology had been, as we have covered above.

Indeed, Pink points out as much, in one of his letters to a Mr. Harold J. Bradshaw, with whom Pink had been interacting in the 1940s. Bradshaw was one of the rising numbers of former Hyper-Calvinists that Pink was interacting with, and it is clear that while Pink spent a considerable amount of time in his earlier years, in the 1910s to early 1930s, addressing contemporary evangelicalism with its high anthropology, Pink’s later years, from the 1930s onwards, was increasingly spent engaging with Hyper-Calvinism, undoubtedly influenced by his Australian experience. Bradshaw, noticing that Pink’s articles were concentrating too much on human responsibility, remarks, “I fear, you would hinder the coming sinner with an over-emphasis on the human responsibility side of things.”⁷⁸⁾Cited by Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 14. Pink replied:

I freely grant that quite a number of my recent articles have been very un-balanced, stressing the human-responsibility side more than the operations of God’s grace; and the same applies to most of my letters written to high and hyper-Calvinists. It is just because they have (many of them, most of their lives) sat under a ministry the very reverse, that I felt such disproportionate emphasis necessary on my part – to counteract and help them obtain a due balance … In like manner, when, 25 years ago, I published my book on the Sovereignty of God (now out of print), in the USA, and devoted most of my time to preaching on that subject, many criticised my lop-sidedness.⁷⁹⁾Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 14.

Note the above comment indicates that Pink recognised that he was writing The Sovereignty of God in a way that was going to be perceived to be lop-sided, yet he did so in order to counteract, correct, and bring a due balance to those for whom he had written the book.⁸⁰⁾Similar concerns by Pink of trying to ensure he was balanced through the totality of his writings is also evident when he notes, at the close of his 1933 Studies in the Scriptures, that “Having written so much of late upon the responsibility of man, a lengthy series on the high sovereignty of God should prevent our readers from becoming lop-sided.” Studies, December 1933, 286. Thus, rather than alter the book to hold a particular standard that was never the intention of the book to convey, the best path forward for the revisers would have likely been to include a few words of clarity, to help the reader understand the purpose and intention of the book and to point them to additional resources to help them achieve the balance that Pink intended.

However, it is evidently clear that the information and claims made, whether in the Trust’s Preface or in the later articles of Murray’s, do not really appear to validate the revision that was undertaken—and, arguably, there is not sufficient information presented in anything so far to demonstrate why such a revision was judged necessary. While a bit is spoken about Pink’s theological maturity as being the justification for such a move, we have seen that there is some confusion and possibly theological projection occurring in reading and understanding Pink holistically.

The conclusion to draw from the revision and its public disclosure is that there is a serious mismatch in the business of editing The Sovereignty of God and publicising what that editing was. While there is some treatment of details in Murray’s two articles, it is not very satisfactory. There is no thorough treatment of the distinction that Pink employed; an incomplete quote from A. A. Hodge; only a partial treatment of reprobation; and a noting of Pink’s rejection of Hyper-Calvinism, but nothing at all as to why precisely the three chapters and four appendices were removed, or the various omissions made.

For example, why the removal of Chapter 8’s ‘God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility’, especially considering Pink’s habitual commitment to human responsibility? Was Chapter 11’s ‘Difficulties and Objections’ also unacceptable, and why? It was for these reasons and changes, that I (Paul) remember objecting to Murray about the very idea of the revision shortly after it came out in 1961, and sixty years later it would appear that there is still much that hasn’t been explained. What we have seen hardly justifies the radical revision of The Sovereignty of God that was undertaken by the Trust, nor does it provide a proper explanation for the severity of changes made. However, sadly, it has achieved something, whether intentional or not, and that is to make Pink’s theology of the 1920s seem much more deficient than it likely was. Most notably though, is that it has led to the perpetuation of the notion that Pink was somehow a Hyper-Calvinist, at least at one point in his life, without providing sufficient evidence to substantiate that claim.

Therefore, while The Sovereignty of God promotes a very high view of divine sovereignty, it must be understood within its greater context of Pink’s thought. Pink had a robust commitment to God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility. Both were truths that needed to be affirmed, as he notes in 1929: “The Divine sovereignty should not be pressed to the exclusion of human responsibility, nor must human responsibility be so stressed that God’s sovereignty is either ignored or denied.”⁸¹⁾Pink, Studies, March 1929, 50. Such affirmations are to be found throughout his life and at no point did Pink ever reject human responsibility, despite those who accused him of doing so.⁸²⁾For examples of further affirmations, see Studies, October 1925, 240; July 1926, 163; February 1932, 38.

Murray remarked that Pink did not amend the 1929 edition in a way that sufficiently reflected the changes in his theology at the time. Murray goes on to assert that “what is certain is that, had he revised it again after 1929 more changes would have been made as his understanding of Calvinistic belief matured.”⁸³⁾Murray, ‘Pink on The Sovereignty of God’, 7, c.f. Murray, ‘A. W. Pink’s Sovereignty of God – Revised or Unrevised?’, 16. It is certainly possible that Pink, had he decided, or was able, to amend The Sovereignty of God after 1929, would have made changes to reflect his more developed thinking, such as regarding the distinction of moral and natural ability.⁸⁴⁾Why Pink did not revise The Sovereignty of God, we cannot know for certain. While Murray points out a breakdown in Pink and Herendeen’s relationship and Herendeen’s claim of the copyright, it is clear through several letters and from Vera’s editorials in the last editions of Studies in the Scriptures, that communication between them still existed. This is also collaborated through the 1952 release of the book Comfort for Christians, a compilation of earlier articles that also carried a foreword by Pink dated that year. It might be possible that Pink was generally satisfied with his last edition of The Sovereignty of God, even though there were small sections that he would have adjusted. Note also that Pink was not against disendorsing certain earlier works, particularly his earlier dispensational titles. He notes to R. Harbach, that “I would not recommend my book on “The Antichrist” which was written twenty years ago.” A. W. Pink, Letters to a Young Pastor, ed. R. Harbach (Grandville, MI: Grandville Protestant Reformed church, 1993), 6. Yet, it is difficult to see how Pink’s revision would have been in any way close to the 1961 revision that was undertaken and performed by the Banner of Truth, as much of what Pink wrote that was removed, he continued, for all intents and purposes, to substantially hold.

So, as we have seen, Pink’s understanding as articulated in The Sovereignty of God, as well as his positions on reprobation, human responsibility and agency, as well as in other areas, are all within the realm of Reformed orthodoxy, and while there is some credence regarding Pink’s later theological development, there is nothing that evidences Pink’s radical shift away from what he speaks about in this book, as has been suggested. Consequently, while Banner of Truth’s 1961 edition of The Sovereignty of God has been of great use to many, it is questionable as to whether it is a true representation of Pink’s final thoughts and whether such a severe revision was at all justified.

We would contest it to be not. While worthy of a few words of explanation and some polish, the 1949 edition of The Sovereignty of God remains the most accurate single-volume reflection of Pink’s theology on the topic, albeit one that ought to be read in light of his later series on The Doctrine of Election (1938–1940) and The Doctrine of Man’s Impotence (1940–1942). Readers would be, perhaps, surprised at the level of continuity between these works.

However, it would be apt to give the final words to Pink’s other biographer, Richard P. Belcher (1934–2020), who, recognising how Pink could be misunderstood, commented:

For another thing, Pink will appear unbalanced in some of his theological views unless one reads extensively from his works. For example, if only one reads The Sovereignty of God, one might get the idea that he was overbalanced in the direction of God’s sovereignty to the point of the denial of human responsibility. Such is not the case, as will be seen in reading all his works. The present writer has numerous cards and notations in his files showing that Pink came out strongly for human responsibility and against any kind of overbalance in the direction of either side of the tension—the sovereignty of God or human responsibility.⁸⁵⁾Richard P. Belcher, Arthur W. Pink: Born to Write (Richbarry Press, 1980), 134.