Theopedia

Hyper-Calvinism

Definition

Hyper-Calvinism is a position within the Calvinist tradition holding that, because God has already determined who will be saved, ministers should not call every hearer, indiscriminately, to repent and believe in Christ, since the unregenerate have no duty to do so until God first regenerates them. It arose among the English Particular Baptists in the early to mid-1700s and has always been a minority report within Calvinism, rejected by the wider Reformed confessional family, which requires the gospel to be preached to all without distinction.

Historical Origin

Hyper-Calvinism’s earliest clear statement is Joseph Hussey’s 1707 work God’s Operations of Grace but No Offers of His Grace, whose title names the position outright: God works savingly in the elect, but ministers should not “offer” that grace to sinners in general.1 The position found its most systematic eighteenth-century defenders in Lewis Wayman (d. 1764) and John Brine (1703-1765), both English Particular Baptist pastors.1

John Gill (1697-1771), the most learned Particular Baptist theologian of the century, is more disputed. Some historians place the blame for hyper-Calvinism’s spread squarely on him: W. T. Whitley argues Gill originated it, and Peter Morden judges that “attempts to defend him from the charge of high [hyper] Calvinism are ultimately unconvincing.”2 Others disagree just as firmly. Thomas Nettles writes that Gill “has doubtless been judged more harshly and even maliciously than any man of comparable repute in Baptist history,” and Timothy George has defended him against the charge at length.2 Gill’s own writing supports a narrower reading of his actual objection: during the controversy surrounding George Whitefield’s preaching, Gill maintained that the apostles “did not tender the saving grace of God to all men, without exception; whereas they tendered it to none but preached the gospel to all without exception, without any distinction of persons who came to hear it.”3 That is, Gill’s dispute was chiefly with the language of “offering” or “tendering” saving grace as something handed over, not with preaching the gospel to every hearer or calling sinners to Christ. Elsewhere Gill instructed young pastors to “preach the gospel of salvation to all men, and declare, that whosoever believes shall be saved: for this they are commissioned to do.”4

Not every Particular Baptist of the day agreed with Wayman and Brine’s extremes. Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), a Particular Baptist pastor of the following generation, argued at length against the position and helped turn the wider Baptist movement away from it.5

Core Tenets

Fuller, hyper-Calvinism’s principal refuter, summarized the reasoning he was answering: because Scripture says “no man can come to Christ, except the Father draw him,” and “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God… because they are spiritually discerned,” hyper-Calvinists concluded that fallen sinners are “under no obligation” to repent and believe while still unregenerate, since “none can be obliged to act spiritually, but spiritual men.” On this reasoning, preaching that “invites, pleads, urges, and exhorts sinners to repent and believe is out of the question.”6 Fuller elsewhere compared this to Arminianism’s own error from the opposite direction: “They are agreed in making the grace of God necessary to the accountableness of sinners with regard to spiritual obedience. The one [hyper-Calvinism] pleads for graceless sinners being free from obligation, the other [Arminianism] admits of obligation but founds it on the notion of universal grace.”7

Two claims follow from this reasoning: that the gospel call to repent and believe cannot rightly be addressed to every hearer alike, since addressing it to those under no duty to obey it makes no sense, and that the unregenerate, precisely because they lack the spiritual capacity Scripture says only the regenerate have, bear no duty to repent and believe until God first regenerates them.

Confessional and Biblical Response

The Reformed confessional family, whose consensus the 1689 LBCF shares, rejects both claims directly. The Canons of Dort (1619), source of the “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect” formula that also grounds limited atonement, require in the same breath that “the promise of the gospel… ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of his good pleasure sends the gospel.”8 Dort adds that “many who are called by the gospel, do not repent… this is not owing to any defect or insufficiency in the sacrifice offered by Christ…, but is wholly to be imputed to themselves,” precisely so that the universal call cannot be blamed on a defect in what is offered.8 Dort further states that God “seriously and most genuinely” (serio et verissime) calls sinners, promising “rest for their souls and eternal life to all who come to him and believe.”9

Berkhof summarizes the resulting position: the Canons “teach particular atonement, and also require the universal proclamation of the gospel,” since Scripture teaches both “that Christ atoned only for the elect” (John 10:15; Acts 20:28; Rom. 8:32-33) “and, on the other hand, that the gospel call must be extended to all men indiscriminately” (Matt. 22:2-14; 28:19; Mark 16:15-16). Berkhof concedes that the indiscriminate, sincere offer of salvation cannot be fully harmonized, by human reason, with the doctrine of particular atonement, but insists this “does not depend on our ability to harmonize it with every other doctrine of Scripture.”10 On this reasoning, hyper-Calvinism resolves the tension by dropping the half of Scripture’s teaching it finds harder to hold, rather than by living, as Dort and Berkhof do, with an unresolved tension Scripture itself does not resolve.

Modern Forms

Hyper-Calvinism did not end with the eighteenth century. James Wells (1803-1872) revived it among nineteenth-century English Baptists, and it was answered again in the “Fullerism” of Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892).11 In the twentieth century, Herman Hoeksema (1886-1965), founder of the Protestant Reformed Church, argued that the gospel call cannot rightly be called an “offer,” since an offer implies everyone who hears it is capable of accepting it, which Hoeksema denied is true of anyone but the elect. On this basis he denied any “well-meant offer” of the gospel, on the ground that such an offer would mean God desires the salvation of the non-elect.12 The Christian Reformed Church rejected this conclusion. Anthony Hoekema, criticizing Hoeksema on behalf of that body, wrote that it holds, “in agreement with the majority of Reformed theologians, that the preaching of the gospel is a well-meant offer of salvation, not just on the part of the preacher, but on God’s part as well, to all who hear it, and that God seriously and earnestly desires the salvation of all to whom the gospel call comes.”13

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 129: “Husseyâs hyper-Calvinism can be found in his 1707 work God’s Operations of Grace but No Offers of His Grace.” ↩ ↩2

  2. Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 129, quoting W. T. Whitley, Calvinism and Evangelism in England, Especially in Baptist Circles (London: Kingsgate, n.d.), 27; Peter Morden, Offering Christ to the World (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster, 2003), 15; Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and for His Glory, 2nd ed. (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2006), 84; and Timothy George, “John Gill,” in Theologians of the Baptist Tradition, ed. Timothy George and David S. Dockery (Nashville: B&H, 2001), 11-33. ↩ ↩2

  3. John Gill, The Cause of God and Truth, 1:252, quoted in Steven Tshombe Godet, “Gill’s Context, Life, and Works,” in “The Trinitarian Theology of John Gill (1697-1771): Context, Sources, and Controversy” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015), 57. ↩

  4. John Gill, The Cause of God and Truth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 164, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 129. ↩

  5. Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 129. ↩

  6. Andrew Fuller, The Complete Works of Reverend Andrew Fuller, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1988), 1:360, 376, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 129-30. ↩

  7. Andrew Fuller, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 127-28. ↩

  8. Canons of Dort (Dordrecht, 1619), Second Head of Doctrine, arts. 4-5, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 130. ↩ ↩2

  9. Dort, Third/Fourth Head of Doctrine, art. 8, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 131. ↩

  10. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 428-29. ↩

  11. Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 129, citing Iain Murray, Spurgeon versus Hyper-Calvinism: The Battle for Gospel Preaching (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1995). ↩

  12. Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 129-30, summarizing Herman Hoeksema, Whosoever Will (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1945), 148, and citing Anthony Hoekema, Saved by Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 72-74. ↩

  13. Anthony Hoekema, Saved by Grace, 72, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation,” 130. ↩