Nesher Articles
Hypercalvinism
"Hypercalvinism" is a term
of derision that is much used in evangelical circles these days,
but when people who use it are asked for a definition, they are
not so forthcoming with anything distinct, and many different answers
are given. In this article we hope to clarify the several different
positions taken by evangelicals, to try to ascertain the correct
position on each of the main issues involved, and to ask whether
the term "Hypercalvinism" can truly be used, and
if
so, to whom it really refers.
There are several issues involved, the
main ones being:
[1.] Whether it is the duty of all men everywhere to repent and
believe in Christ.
[2.] Whether the gospel ought to be freely offered to all men
everywhere as a promise of salvation conditioned on faith and
repentance.
[3.] Whether God loves or "desires to save" or "wills
to save" all men everywhere.
There are at least five different church groupings within
evangelicalism that take different positions on these issues. These can
be summarised
as follows:
[A.] denies [1.], [2.] and [3.] = position
of the Gospel Standard Baptists
[B.] affirms [1.] but denies [2.] and [3.] = position of the Protestant
Reformed
Churches of America
[C.] affirms [1.] and [2.] but denies [3.] = the orthodox position
we are defending.
[D.] affirms [1.], [2.] and [3.] = position of John Murray, Banner of
Truth.
[E.] affirms [1.], [2.] and [3.] = position of John Wesley, Arminianism.
Now let us look at these positions in turn:
[A.]
This position denies all the above points. This is the position of the Gospel Standard Baptists and many Dutch Reformed churches. No less than six of the thirty-five Articles of the Gospel Standard Baptists are relevant here. These are now given in turn and commented upon:
"Article 24. We believe that the invitations of the gospel, being spirit and life (that is, under the influence of the Holy Spirit), are intended only for those who have been made by the blessed Spirit to feel their lost state as sinners and their need of Christ as their Saviour, and to repent of and forsake their sins."
Here we are told that the "invitations
of the gospel" are only to be preached to those who have
already been regenerated by the Holy Ghost at some point before
their hearing the gospel. This regeneration is manifested by the
fact that they are "thirsting," "hungering,"
"heavy-laden" etc. These people are known as "sensible
sinners" and will always respond to the gospel when they
hear it because God has already regenerated them and therefore
granted them the repentance and faith necessary to savingly embrace
Christ. Therefore, in this system, no-one is ever condemned for
rejecting the gospel.
Passages such as Isaiah 55:1 or Matthew
11:28 are thought of as only applying to those already regenerate
and thirsting after spiritual things, i.e. only the elect:
"Ho, every one that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy,
and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without
price." (Isaiah 55:1)
"Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew
11:28)
These passages, however, are referring
to unregenerate people thirsting after carnal
things, i.e. things that are not bread and that satisfy not (Isaiah
55:2).
Indeed the call is to the wicked (v.7). The call is therefore
to these people to thirst, buy and eat good things, spiritual
things (which by nature they cannot do of course).
How then are the elect saved from amongst
this mass of people thirsting after all sorts of things but the
truth? It is through
the hearing of the gospel that
they are saved. In the preaching of the gospel, the elect come
to embrace the promises and the reprobate come to harden themselves
against the promises. This is the true preaching of the gospel.
It is the door to the house of salvation. The elect will enter,
because God regenerates them and grants them the conditions required
(i.e. faith and repentance) at the time of
hearing. The reprobate may hang around for a
while but will always end
up walking away.
Only in the way of
duty is salvation
to be received. All men have the duty to repent and believe in
Christ. Only in the way of
doing this are they
saved. Of course they could come to Christ many years after
hearing
the gospel, so we should never give up on anyone, but never is
it possible to come to Christ before
or without
hearing it (the case of elect infants and imbiciles excluded,
as these are a special case incapable of being outwardly called,
and will be dealt with later).
The man with the withered hand is our
example here:
"And when he had looked round
about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their
hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he
stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other."
(Mark 3:5)
To stretch forth his hand was something
physically impossible for him to do. Yet upon Christ's command,
he does so and is healed in the way of doing so.
Similarly,
it is in the way of repentance and faith
-
something impossible
for the natural man to do - that we are saved. i.e. only in
the way of repentance and faith do the elect
find that God
gives them the repentance and faith necessary to fulfil the command,
and not before. The reprobate are condemned by the same gospel
because God displays their inability as they reject it accordingly.
The gospel IS
the power of God unto salvation, not regeneration at an earlier point
in time.
"For I am not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ: for it is
the
power of God unto salvation
to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek." (Romans 1:16).
People who believe that regeneration
is before the
preaching of the gospel would call
any other position than their own "mediate regeneration,"
i.e. regeneration through something other than a direct act of
God on the soul (e.g. a response in the sinner to a gospel call),
which they would repudiate. But so would we! This would be the
position of [D.] and [E.] to be dealt with below, and it is the
opposite error. We agree that regeneration is immediate, performed
directly by God alone, but, ordinarily, only
at the moment
of hearing the gospel, not before
and not after.
"Article 26. We deny duty-faith and duty-repentance - these terms signifying that it is every man's duty spiritually and savingly to repent and believe. We deny also that there is any capability in man by nature to any spiritual good whatever. So that we reject the doctrine that men in a state of nature should be exhorted to believe in or turn to God."
This is the denial of what is derisorily
termed "duty-faith" and "duty-repentance"
- that is the truth that it is the duty of all men everywhere
to repent and believe in Christ for salvation (i.e. point [1.]
in the introduction above).
It is rightly pointed out that there
is no "capability in man by nature to any spiritual good
whatever," but it is wrongly concluded from this that men
in a state of nature should therefore not
be exhorted to believe
in or turn to God. Just like the Arminian (position [E.] below),
they equate responsibility with ability. In this case, they say
that natural man is not
capable of responding to
the gospel therefore he is not
responsible for doing
so, whereas the Arminian says that natural man is
capable
of responding therefore he is
responsible.
However, the truth is that God can
command men to do things they have not got the ability to perform.
Just because the non-elect have no ability in themselves to repent
and believe in Christ (and for that matter neither has God decreed
that they should ever repent and believe in Christ), nevertheless
they are still commanded to repent and believe in Christ despite
their inability. It is argued that God would
never command
men to do something that they have not got the ability to perform
as this would make God a mocker of men, but this does not follow
because:
"God hath made man upright; but
they have sought out many inventions" (Ecclesiastes 7:29).
When God created the world He made man
upright, but man fell in Adam his federal head.
"The covenant being made with
Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity; all mankind
descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and
fell with him in his first transgression." (Westminster
Shorter Catechism 16).
Just because man has made himself unable
any longer to keep the law of God (let alone repent and believe
in Christ), that does not change his duty towards God:
"God that made the world and
all things therein, .... hath made of one blood all nations of
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, .... That they
should seek the Lord" (Acts 17:24-27)
"And the times of this ignorance
God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to
repent...."
(Acts 17:30)
"And how I kept back nothing
that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught
you publickly, and from house to house, Testifying both to the
Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ." (Acts 20:21)
For example, if we were given some money
by a rich landowner to build a house, and instead of building
the house we spent it all on a luxurious holiday somewhere and
had no money left afterwards to build the house, it would still
be our duty to build it with what we had been given, even if we
had squandered all those resources elsewhere.
All men are responsible for their not
being able to repent and believe in Christ despite their current
inability to do these things. It is not God that is at fault in
any way for this, because He originally made man upright (even
though Adam's fall was within God's eternal decree). Unregenerate
men will be punished by God justly for their unbelief and unrepentant
ways.
"Article 29. While we believe the gospel is to be preached in or proclaimed to all the world, we deny offers of grace; that is to say, that the gospel is to be offered indiscriminately to all."
Here we see that not
only are commands
to all men to repent and believe denied, but offers
are as well.
They argue that:
(1) God only loves the elect (which is a true statement)
(2) God has not provided salvation for the non-elect (which is
also a true statement);
therefore (they falsely conclude) the non-elect
cannot be offered a salvation that is not available for them.
As we shall be talking more of the "offer"
of the gospel when speaking about point [B.] below, we shall forego
it here and pass on.
"Article 32.
We believe that it would
be unsafe, from the brief records we have of the way in which
the apostles, under the immediate direction of the Lord, addressed
their hearers in certain special cases and circumstances, to derive
absolute and universal rules for ministerial addresses in the
present day under widely different circumstances. And we further
believe that an assumption that others have been inspired as the
apostles were has led to the grossest errors among both Romanists
and professed Protestants.
Article 33. Therefore, that for ministers in the present day to
address unconverted persons, or indiscriminately all in a mixed
congregation, calling upon them to savingly repent, believe, and
receive Christ, or perform any other acts dependent upon the new
creative power of the Holy Ghost, is, on the one hand, to imply
creature power, and, on the other, to deny the doctrine of special
redemption.
Article 34. We believe that any such expressions as convey to
the hearers the belief that they possess a certain power to flee
to the Saviour, to close in with Christ, to receive Christ, while
in an unregenerate state, so that unless they do thus close with
Christ, etc., they shall perish, are untrue, and must therefore
be rejected. And we further believe that we have no Scripture
warrant to take the exhortations in the Old Testament intended
for the Jews in national covenant with God, and apply them in
a spiritual and saving sense to unregenerate men."
All these three Articles hang together.
Again we see a denial that the gospel is to be preached
to unregenerate men (or indiscriminately to a mixed congregation)
because, to holders of this position, it implies "creature-power,"
i.e. it implies that it is within the power of the creature to
respond, and would be dismissed by them as Arminianism. This
implication is not true of course, as explained above.
The really worrying aspect seen here
though, is the denial of the use of Scripture as a guide to how
we should live our lives today. In this particular instance it
is the preaching of the gospel which is in view, but the danger
is that this argument could be used with regards almost anything,
and so all the major truths of the Bible could be denied thereby.
We would agree thoroughly that God does not work in men any more
by direct inspiration. Now we have a complete canon of Scripture,
any direct way of God's revealing His will to men is no longer
necessary. However, it is very dangerous to then use this truth
to say that vast areas of Scripture are not relevant to us any
more. We cannot use the argument that all direct means of communication
by God have now ceased to deny that Scripture is our guide and
example in life, because, on the contrary, we have nothing else
to guide us..... because all other direct means have now ceased!!!
To use this argument to conclude that we can no longer preach
the gospel in the way the apostles did is just an excuse to get
rid of the clear passages in Scripture where the apostles command
all men everywhere to repent and believe in Christ for salvation.
[B.]
This position affirms point [1.] but
denies points [2.] and [3.]. This is the position of the Protestant
Reformed Churches of America (PRC). Seeing the error of position
[A.] in denying "duty-faith" and "duty-repentance,"
they would indeed preach that it is the duty of all men everywhere
to repent and believe in Christ, and their gospel consists of
the command that all men everywhere should do so. They see no
problem with commanding
men to do something they
do not have the ability to perform, for the reasons given above.
However, they would not preach the gospel as a "well-meant
offer" of salvation to all men, because they
again believe that there is no salvation available for the non-elect,
and therefore any offer would not be "well-meant" to
them.
Consequently we see that, according to
the holders of position [B.], an offer to
repent and believe in Christ implies (to them) power
in the creature to respond,
which would immediately be classed by them as Arminianism and
dismissed accordingly. A command,
however,
is seen by them to be quite orthodox.
This whole position actually sounds very
plausible, as on the one hand the denial of "duty-faith"
and "duty-repentance" is rejected, yet at the same time
the awkward idea of "offering" salvation to men whom
it is not for (i.e. the non-elect) is also solved by denying that
the gospel is a "well-meant" offer to them, but rather
a bare command instead. To make this argument more powerful, it
is true that the Bible nowhere uses the word "offer"
or "invitation" with regards the gospel. There are passages
that may appear as such on first glance, but actually are bare
commands:
"Look unto me, and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."
(Isaiah 45:22)
"Seek ye the LORD while he may
be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake
his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return
unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God,
for he will abundantly pardon." (Isaiah 55:6,7)
"Let us hear the conclusion of
the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this
is the whole duty of man." (Ecclesiastes 12:13)
"Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew
11:28)
"Then Peter said unto them, Repent,
and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for
the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and
to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall
call." (Acts 2:38.39)
"Repent ye therefore, and be
converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of
refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord"
(Acts 3:19)
None of these are "invitations"
or "offers" but commands. The words "offer"
and "invitation" are not wrong if used properly, but
it is best not to use them because they immediately produce wrong
thoughts of God in people's minds. When we invite
people to a party, for example, we automatically assume
without
thinking that we want
all those we
invite to
come. This is the usual use of the word "invite" in modern English.
Similarly
with the word offer.
Therefore to use these words
in relation to God is misleading, not because the words in and of
themselves
are wrong - the invitation of a king for example is a command:
you had better attend or you get your head chopped off! - but
because of the implication the use of them produces in people's
minds today. People will automatically think that all those God
invites to salvation
He wants
to come, in line with
the modern everyday use of the word. This is the mistake. At all
costs we must not present God as an impotent being who either
wants to save all men but does not (which is position [D.] below)
or worse, one who cannot or will not save them unless they respond,
which is Arminianism
(position [E.], below).
This position [B.] therefore is very
convincing, and a breath of fresh air for anyone who has become
disillusioned with mainstream Evangelicalism and its quasi-Arminianism.
It is so close to the truth. But there is a problem with it.
The PRC suffered a split in 1953, when
nearly two-thirds of the total membership left the church. In
1950, before the split, the PRC Synod provisionally adopted a
"Brief Declaration of Principles," which was fully adopted
at the Synod of 1951. The relevant passages of interest are as
follows:
"That
the preaching of the gospel
is not a gracious offer of salvation on the part of God to all
men, nor a conditional offer to all that are born in the historical
dispensation of the covenant, that is, to all that are baptised,
but an oath of God that He will infallibly lead all the elect
unto salvation and eternal glory through faith."
"This preaching of the particular promise is promiscuous to all that hear the gospel, with the command, not a condition, to repent and believe."
In April 1951 a PRC minister said from the
pulpit to a mixed congregation of elect and non-elect alike: "God
promises every one of you that if you believe, you will be saved."
This caused turmoil in the church and eventually in 1953 those
who took the side of this minister were put out of the church,
and those who remained kept the name "Protestant Reformed
Churches."
The result of all this is such that, for the
PRC today to justify their separate position, they have to take
a stand that denies that the gospel is a general
conditional promise of salvation to all men.
This would
be their definition of an offer.
Therefore the PRC would be able to say
to an indiscriminate audience "Repent and believe the gospel"
(which would be a command),
but they cannot say
"If you repent and believe, you will be saved"
(which
is a general conditional promise,
i.e. an offer),
because, to them, this implies power in the creature to perform
the conditions.
In truth, there is actually no difference
between a command and a general conditional promise. Both are
legitimate expressions of the same gospel message, because it
is in the way of
repenting and believing in
Christ that God saves His elect by granting them the faith and
repentance required at the moment of hearing.
So the proclaiming of a general conditional promise to all men
everywhere is not
wrong as it does not imply that God has a salvation waiting for
the non-elect if only they would respond, neither does it imply
they have the ability to do so. It merely calls them to do their
duty despite their inability.
So, we see again, like holders of position
[A.], they make the mistake of believing that God grants regeneration
(and therefore the faith and repentance required) in the elect
before giving them
the gospel at a later date:
"And when the apostle teaches here
that regeneration takes place through the living Word itself,
that is, through Christ, it certainly is not proper to replace
that living Word simply by the preaching of the gospel. It is
true that the preaching of the Word stands in connection with
regeneration in the broader sense of the word: for without the
proclamation of the gospel it is impossible that regeneration
will ever become conscious in the people of God." (Herman
Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, chapter on
Regeneration explaining 1 Peter 1:23).
"In that deepest sense, regeneration
is not even as such a matter of his own experience, seeing that
it does not take place within, but below the threshold of his
consciousness. It is therefore independent of age and can take
place in the smallest infants. We may even take for granted that
in the sphere of the covenant of God He usually regenerates His
elect children from infancy." (Herman Hoeksema, Reformed
Dogmatics, chapter on Regeneration).
Here we also see that the PRC believe
that it is actually God's ordinary way of working to regenerate
His elect from the womb or infancy, particularly those born in
the line of the Covenant. However, it seems from the Bible that
the ordinary way of regeneration is rather through the preaching
of the gospel, otherwise, why bother preaching it at all if most
believers are saved before hearing it anyway? Of course the particular
cases of infants and imbeciles are mentioned by the Westminster
Confession:
"Elect infants, dying in infancy,
are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh
when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect
persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry
of the word." (Westminster Confession of Faith 10:3).
The special case is for those incapable
of being called by the ministry of the Word, not the other way
around, as the PRC would have us believe if most of the elect
are actually regenerated in the womb or as infant children of
believers, rather than upon hearing the gospel! Gospel preaching
is vital to salvation, ordinarily. We are saved as truth is revealed
and comes home to us as we embrace it. We can of course only embrace
it by God's Spirit working in us.
"How then shall they call on
him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe
in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without
a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as
it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach
the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!"
(Romans 10:14,15).
Another objection is that when such general
conditional promises are used, it is very likely for the hearer
to conclude that he has got the ability to fulfil the conditions
required in and of himself, without grace. This is indeed the
case and many people do think that they are "saved"
when they are not. This is what the parable of the sower indicates
will happen. The natural man in and of himself will never truly
repent or truly believe, just as he will never keep the law of
God, but he could well kid himself that he has done these things.
The command to repent and believe is good, but if people believe
they can do these things in their own strength
they have got it wrong.
Gospel preaching will therefore manifest
three types of persons:
(1) those who do not respond,
(2) those who seem to respond outwardly, but think they can do
these things in their own strength,
(3) those who respond fully and properly, because God has given
them the faith and repentance required to do so.
We need to distinguish those in group
(2) from those in group (3). Hence it is always a very useful
exercise to look for marks of grace to discern true believers
from hypocrites, something the PRC seem very reluctant to do.
Experimental religion is hardly known in their circles.
So we see that there is no problem as
such with proclaiming the gospel as a general conditional promise
to all men, so long as we neither imply ability
in man to respond by himself [E.], nor present a God longing
or desiring
salvation in any way without doing
anything about it [D.]. The PRC believe that this is not possible using
general
conditional promises, but only possible using a command.
[C.]
This position is the true position. It
affirms [1.] and [2.] but denies [3.] above. This position sits
firmly between the two "railway tracks" of, on the one
hand denying general conditional promises and believing in a
regeneration before
hearing the
gospel (i.e. [A.] and [B.]),
and on the other hand believing that the only way we can preach
a free offer of salvation to all men properly is to believe that
God has some sort of desire for the salvation of all men (i.e.
[D.] and [E.]). We must stay within these "railway tracks"
or we will go wildly astray.
God has His elect. They are a fixed number,
and God knows who they are. We don't. We must preach commands
or general conditional promises freely to all men indiscriminately,
and all the elect (and no more and no less) will be saved through
responding too this, by God's regenerating them and granting
them
faith and repentance, which is the only way they can respond.
This is the true "free offer of the gospel," and is
the ordinary means of salvation. It is an offer free to all men.
If they believe, they surely shall be saved. Indeed
if they could and would
believe of their own strength (which they cannot and will not, because
of their
inability and unwillingness to do so due to their fallen nature
in Adam) they would indeed be saved. So
the gospel, in and of itself taken in isolation, is genuine good
news to all men, if they would fulfil the conditions. The non-elect
will never be willing or able to fulfil these conditions, and
God knows this of course. The elect will fulfil them, because
God will regenerate them and grant them the faith and repentance
to do so. The PRC say that the gospel is a "savour of death
unto death" to the reprobate (quoting 2 Corinthians 2:16),
but this is not quite true as such. In and of itself the gospel
is always a conditional promise of good news - however, the effect
in the reprobate will always be of death unto death, because they
can never fulfil the conditions, neither will God ever grant the
conditions to them.
The important point to note here (to
distinguish position [C.] from position [D.]), is that the true
free offer of the gospel is not based in any way on a perceived
desire of God for the salvation of all men, but it is rather based
solely on the command to preach the gospel to every creature.
[D.]
This position, just like Arminianism
[E.], affirms points [1.], [2.] and [3.], and is the predominant
view in most general so-called "Calvinistic" evangelical churches
today. People who hold to this position are Calvinists in name,
but in reality their theology is completely wrong because they
base it on a desire, or at the very least a "delight"
within God for the salvation of all men. They cannot bear to believe
the truth that God does not actually love all men or desire the
salvation of all men, so they invent ways of trying to pretend
that God does have some sort of love for them all, even though
they are constrained by their lip service to Calvinism to believe
in a limited atonement. They would have God pleading with sinners
to come to him. They would say that God "is willing"
and able to save sinners, the onus being on the sinner to come.
They would invent a "love" in God that embraces the
non-elect. These things cannot be. God is indeed able
to save all men if He wants to. This fact is not in doubt. However,
God has decreed that only a fixed number shall display His mercy
by being saved, whereas the rest display His justice by going
to hell, which is the perfect punishment for their sins - indeed
we should all be in hell if justice was the only attribute God wished
to display. If one sinner is kept from hell, it is a marvellous
thing. But to say that God "wills" or "is willing"
that all men are saved is just a plain lie, because we know that
there is a fixed number only who are saved, a number which can
neither be increased or decreased.
"III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of
his glory, some
men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others
foreordained to everlasting death.
IV. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained,
are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is
so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or
diminished." (Westminster
Confession of Faith 3:3,4)
As God decrees all things in this world
that come to pass to His greatest glory, so fixed is the number
of the elect that if one more or one less than this number were
saved, His glory would not be displayed as much in them as a total
body as in the fixed number that He has decreed.
The fact that not all men are saved means that God either is unable to
save them (which cannot be as He is Almighty) or is unwilling.
God therefore must
be unwilling to save the ones
He has decreed not to save. That is the bottom line. To say that
He "wills" all to be saved, but that His holy nature
must (reluctantly) punish them in hell if they do not repent and
believe is a nonsense. This view makes God a schizophrenic
("schizophrenia" from the Greek "split
mind") with a will opposed to
His nature.
A popular way of trying to get Calvinists
to believe that God wants all men to be saved is to attribute
two "wills" to God. Now there is a correct way of looking
at this, although the use of the word "will" is
rather
misleading. Firstly it is said that God has a "decretive
will" or "secret will," which is what
He decrees,
one aspect of which is that there is a fixed number of elect and
no more that will be saved (although this fact is not secret,
we know about it! Only the number and names of the elect are hidden
from us). This we are all agreed upon. Secondly it is said that
God has a "preceptive will" or "revealed
will,"
which is simply the rule of life for the believer, which is the
moral law, which is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments.
This also includes the commandment given to all men to repent and
believe
in Christ of course. Now it is argued that because God has given
this rule to all men, He therefore "delights" when men
keep this law, i.e. He "delights" that men repent and
turn to him, i.e. He "wants" or "desires"
all men to do so, hence it is said that God "wants"
all men to be saved. This is not a logical train of thought, and
takes what was originally the correct concept (although poor
terminology) of a "preceptive will"
in God too far. God indeed has
given all men a rule of life, which is the moral law, and indeed
all men are commanded to repent and turn to Christ. But God knows
what He wants, and performs all His pleasure ("desire"), sometimes
overruling "right" with "wrong," e.g. the crucifixion of Christ was
truly a wicked act for which the perpetrators are fully responsible and
will be punished accordingly; but God allowed it to come to pass
because He ordained such an evil act to be the means of salvation for
His people. In any case, to say that God "desires" or "delights in"
anything is really a misnomer because He does not have like passions
as we have (Acts 14:15, Westminster Confession of Faith 2:1),
but it is possible to use the word when talking about the will
of God in that God "desires" all that He wills. He cannot
will anything that He does not "desire."
"Remember the former things of
old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there
is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from
ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" (Isaiah 46:9,10)
"But he is in one mind, and who
can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth."
(Job 23:13)
God wants some men to display His wrath,
e.g. Pharoah:
"For the scripture saith unto
Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that
I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared
throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will
have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." (Romans 9:17,18)
"What if God, willing to shew
his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which
he had afore prepared unto glory, Even us, whom he hath called,
not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?" (Romans
9:22-24)
Another twist that is attempted by proponents of position [D.] is to
say that Christ has two wills, a divine and a human; in His divine
nature He only wants the elect to be saved, but
in His human nature He wants all men to be saved. However, this
is a heresy as well. Christ, being one Person, only has one will.
It is a separate will from God the Father and from God the Holy Spirit,
otherwise His sacrifice would not have been voluntary. However, in
every point at all times (even in Gethsemane), all three wills of all
three Persons of the Trinity work in complete harmony. Christ was no
schizophrenic with two opposing wills struggling
inside Him. To affirm such is blasphemy.
God cannot have a "desire" that He does not fulfil. This may
be possible with men, but cannot
be so with God. God commands the reprobate to repent and turn
to him (indeed genuinely offering them salvation if they should
do so), knowing full well that they do not have the ability to
do so themselves, neither is He ever going to give them that ability
(even though He could if He had wanted to). Therefore the whole
purpose of preaching the gospel to the reprobate is purely to
show, display or magnify their guilt before God. This is the effect
of what is otherwise a general conditional promise of good news
for them. Similarly He says to them, "Keep the law and you
will be saved," knowing that they cannot keep the law and
that He is not going to give them the ability to do that either.
Again, many people may object by saying
that this is God "mocking" men by commanding them to
do something knowing that they will never be able to do it. However
nothing could be further from the truth. Man is fallen and no
man deserves to be saved from "most grievous torments in soul
and
body, without intermission, in hell-fire for ever"
(Westminster
Larger Catechism Q. 29). If God sent all of us into hell for ever
it would be just and perfect and right for Him to do so, without
demanding anything from us or doing anything unjust at all. By
nature we are all fallen in Adam. So anyone who is saved from
hell is saved by grace alone, they certainly do not deserve it.
In fact it is the people who say that God desires the salvation
of all men that are the ones who make God a mocker. If God does
desire the salvation of all men then the reprobate are mocked
by God because He supposedly "desires" their salvation,
but knows they cannot save themselves and neither is He going
to save them! The truth is that those who refuse the gospel are
not mocked by God at all because He has no "desire"
to save them, neither have they any desire to be saved. They get
exactly what they justly deserve.
Another argument used is that there are
passages in the Bible that appear to have God longing for the
repentance of sinners, e.g.
"Oh that my people had hearkened
unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!" (Psalm 81:13)
However, we run into serious difficulties
if we start to think that God "longs" for anything when
He has the power to do something about it but does not use that
power. God will perform all His pleasure. All things work in His
own providence to His greatest glory. Nothing happens in this
world without it being decreed of God for His own glory. So He
cannot "long" for anything that He does not immediately
bring to pass to fulfil that "longing." Therefore there
are no unfulfilled longings in God.
"My counsel shall stand, and
I will do all my pleasure" (Isaiah 46:10)
Also it is argued that there are passages
in the Bible which state that God has no pleasure in the death
of the wicked, e.g.:
"Say unto them, As I live, saith
the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but
that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from
your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?"
(Ezekiel 33:11)
It is commonly thought that the opposite
of God's pleasure is His sadness. God cannot be sad for the same
reason that He cannot have unfulfilled longings. The opposite
of God's pleasure is His anger, not His sadness.
This position also effectively puts God's
act of regeneration after
the sinner's choice to
repent and believe, which is really Arminianism (i.e. [E.]) in
disguise. Holders
of this position would deny this vehemently of course, and call
themselves "Calvinists," trying
to make us believe that their position is the same as [C.], i.e.
that God regenerates in the way of
faith and repentance.
However, in practice, in their preaching of the gospel, they go
too far in emphasising the sinner's required response in order
to try to push the sinner into the kingdom of God; to urge him,
plead with him and beseech him with earnest overtures to embrace
Christ. In this, they are not relying on the power of the Holy
Ghost to regenerate at all, but, conversely, the more they urge
and plead, the more they are persuading all who hear to believe
that it is within their own power to embrace or reject Christ
as they will. This view therefore tends towards filling the church
with hypocrites who outwardly respond in their own power, without
inwardly responding through the power of the Holy Ghost working
in them. The reprobate trying to please God in their own efforts
is more abominable to God than if they had not bothered, even
though it is always their duty to perform good works.
Understanding these simple principles
shows clearly that position [D.] is very wrong.
Many good Scots Presbyterians, including
Rutherford, Halyburton and John Knox, held position [C.]. In the
last few years however, those of position [D.] persuasion have
been more and more aggressive in proclaiming the lie that position
[C.] is really position [B.] in disguise, and promoting the view
that position [D.] is the historic Calvinistic position. This
is not true at all. It is position [D.] that is gone astray, its
proponents leaning more and more in the wrong direction towards
Arminianism (i.e. [E.]wards.)
[E.]
This is the out-and-out heresy of Arminianism, which, sadly, it is so prevalent in modern day evangelical circles. It is identical to [D.] in that it affirms points [1.], [2.] and [3.], but unlike [D.] it goes further in that these people do not even bother to give lip service to the truths of "Calvinism," but rather deny it completely (most of them, like John Wesley, hating it), believing in a universal atonement, which "makes salvation possible" for everyone, now giving all men the "opportunity for salvation" if only they exercise their free will to repent and believe in Christ. The idea is, that God deliberately restricts His power with regards the salvation of men, and leaves them completely free to choose or reject Him as they will. God really wants everyone to be saved (again an identical position to [D.]) but has left it up to them whether they choose him or not. So, regeneration in this case is again only ever granted by God after the hearing of the gospel and responding to it. This is completely wrong, simply because if God had left us to our own supposed "free will," no-one would ever be saved. Not one of us would choose God, we would always choose our sin. We are all slaves to sin. All we can do is sin. We are vile. God has not left us with "free will" to choose the good at all. Our own experience proves this to us if we are honest with ourselves. Salvation must be of the Lord, God must be the one who grants faith and repentance, there is no other way.
What is Hypercalvinism?
Now we have seen all five views, we return
to the question at the beginning: How do we define Hypercalvinism?
Well, the fact is that:
1. Holders of position [E.] define
[A.], [B.], [C.] and
[D.] as all being "Hypercalvinism."
2. Holders of position [D.] define [A.], [B.] and [C.] as "Hypercalvinism"
and [E.]
as "Arminianism."
3. Holders of position [C.] define [A.] and [B.] as "Hypercalvinism"
and [D.] and [E.]
as "Arminianism" (This is the correct position).
4. Holders of position [B.] define [A.] as "Hypercalvinism"
and [C.], [D.] and [E.]
as "Arminianism."
5. Holders of position [A.] define [B.], [C.], [D.] and [E.] as all
being "Arminianism."
So one's definition of "Hypercalvinism"
(and "Arminianism" for that matter) is different
depending on the
position one holds! So when one hears someone using either
of these words, we must make sure we know where the person stands
on these issues beforehand in order to know what they are talking
about.
However, if we embrace the true position,
i.e. [C.], we do have a marker that we can use, in that we can look
for where regeneration logically comes (ordinarily) in each scheme
of things. If regeneration is found to come before
the preaching of the gospel (as in [A.] and [B.]) we can safely
use the term "Hypercalvinism;" whereas if
regeneration
is found to come after
the preaching of the gospel
upon man's response to it (as in [D.] and [E.]), we can safely
use the term "Arminianism." Only if regeneration
ordinarily
comes upon the
preaching of the gospel, as a gift
from God granting men faith and repentance to respond, do we begin
to have a correct view of things.