https://web.facebook.com/notes/10217728006727397/
March
29, 2013
A
former hyper-calvinist's thoughts on hyper-Calvinism...
In
a study/discussion with a Brother, he said that he was once a hyper-Calvinist, and put down 12 points on
what he thinks the 'hyper-calvinists'
believe, and how they are wrong in his present understanding. I have no idea who are the hyper-Calvinists he has
in mind - whether real or fictional or
just a straw man! I think much of his statements actually reveal his own deficiency in the truth of the gospel of our salvation.
I
said:
"What
happened to you is NOTHING new! Hordes
of old-school Calvinists (mistaken by new-school Calvinists as hyper-Calvinists) degenerated into the new-school Calvinism. It is very easy to
slide down from old-school Calvinism to new-school Calvinism, and then all the way down to full-blown Arminianism! It takes much grace to move
upward from the valley of Arminianism all
the way up to the peak of the old school 'Calvinism'. Your Calvinism is a halfway stop between
Arminianism and old-school Calvinism,
thus full of inconsistencies. Many of your 12 points below levelled against what you called
hyper-Calvinism is actually the truth summarized in your own WCF... what a tragedy!!! When I have time... I will demonstrate them to you one by one. Here, I'm leaving some brief comments on each
of his 12 points below.
======
So I am
picking up the task here. I'm no hyper-Calvinist. I'm an old-school Baptist, and I have no sympathy for
the deficiencies and contradictions and logical fallacies inherent
in the new-school Calvinism that parades itself as the biblical
truth. I would leave some comments (##in italics) in each of his 12 points below.
The dear brother (Rocky) wrote this and the 12 points following [with my brief comments ##]
Rocky
I must admit I was once a Hyper-Calvinist of
the Hardshell type, but through the
grace of our Lord was brought back again to believe once more in the Bible by correct and scientific
exegesis, especially in rightly dividing
the Word of truth. While actually answering you by and bye, I would like to show Hardshell Hyper-Calvinism
is characterized by the following common
presuppositions:
1. That God’s decree of election or and reprobation or divine foreordination is not distinguished from Divine Providence; in other words, there is not distinction in the mind of Hyper-Calvinists between potentiality and actual.
## I believe in election and preterition. I reject reprobation. All the eternal decrees of God are executed in time through His works of creation, providence and redemption (in this number and order).
## In redemption, what God had purposed/decreed in eternity was executed in time and accomplished by His only begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ. Based on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit applies that redemption to each elect personally, without any means or instrumentality, bringing them into the state of grace and salvation, perfectly fitting each one for eternal glory. In God's purpose of redemption, potentiality is CO-EXTENSIVE with the ACTUAL. What is purposed and accomplished, is applied to the same people, not one more and not one less, and all by free and sovereign saving activities of the Triune God.
Rocky
2.
Hyper-Calvinists understand passages such as Rom. 8: 29 as purely decretive
rather than providential.
##Romans 8:29 ¶ For whom he did foreknow, he
also did predestinate to be conformed to
the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom he did
predestinate, them he also called: and
whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
The foreknowing and predestinating happened in eternity, i.e. before time; calling and justification happen in time, and glorification will happen at the end of time. But all the DIVINE activities are stated in the past tense because in the mind and purpose of God, these saving activities are so assured and certain that they are as good as have happened. If by providential, the brother meant in the application in time of what was decreed, then this passage has BOTH the decretive element and the providential element. Even in the application of what was decreed - Christ accomplishing and securing the eternal redemption for His people, and the Holy Spirit applying the same redemption to each individual elect; it is all done by the free and sovereign grace of God; man plays NO ROLE whatsoever. Why? Eternal salvation is applied to each elect when they were spiritually dead in trespasses and sins.
Rocky
3.
Since Divine Providence is confused with
God’s decree, evangelical graces necessary to salvation such as the preaching of the Gospel, faith and repentance are mooted, and, therefore, unnecessary.
## Your statement shows how confused you are concerning Divine Sovereignty in purposing, accomplishing, and applying eternal redemption freely to each elect, and the Divine Providence that involved the practical experience of that redemption through the gospel ministry.
## Consider the distinct aspect of eternal redemption:
- Redemption is Purposed (by God's decree) and
- Redemption is Accomplished (by Christ at the cross) and
- Redemption is Applied (by the Spirit) - all these by the
immediate and direct activities of the
Triune God must be distinguished from the
-Redemption is Experienced through the ministry of the gospel and obedience to the gospel of
their salvation. (Divine Providence operates in this context)
- Redemption is Glorified/Consummated at Christ's return.
New-school Calvinists fail to make the distinction between the ETERNAL salvation purpose, secured and applied, freely and sovereign by God, to the elect in their native state of sin and death, effectually calling them to grace and salvation, and the TEMPORAL salvation ministered to God's children through the gospel ministry.
Nothing of/in man is necessary for eternal salvation... because man in his native state of sin and death has ZILCH evangelical graces. Evangelical graces are fruit and evidence of God's eternal salvation already freely and sovereignly bestowed. Believing evidences the eternal salvation already bestowed by God's free and sovereign grace.
Preaching the gospel of their salvation is necessary
for their temporal salvation...
promoting their spiritual well-being while on their pilgrimage to their eternal home. Evangelical
graces are needful for the well-being of
God's children, most certainly not for their BEINGS as God's children.
Rocky
4.
Hyper-Calvinism is making an absurd and
unscriptural hypothesis, to wit, that since man is incapable of believing the Gospel on his own
due to total depravity and spiritual
death, God cannot demand him faith; and the preaching of the Gospel with an earnest pleading with sinners
to believe on the risen Christ is
necessarily Arminianistic. This logical fallacy is often, if not always, shared by Arminians, hence God
commands him to believe on the ground of
his ability to believe on his own.
## New school Calvinists are very confused as to the purpose and function of the gospel ministry.... believing that the gospel ministry is for calling the dead to believe the gospel.
The truth is this. God had purposed to save a specific people. Jesus came to save them only. The Holy Spirit applies the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ to specific individuals whom God had purposed to save and whom Christ redeemed. Because of these saving activities of the Triune God, there is a gospel of salvation to be preached and heralded to such people.
The gospel is the good news of what the three persons of the Triune God have done to save His people, and such are called to believe the gospel of their salvation. The gospel is for those who ARE SAVED. The gospel is intended for them alone. The gospel ministry to call out and gather God's children - those that ARE SAVED - into NT churches...
God demands His children to believe the gospel
of their salvation... because that is
the truth of what God has done for them. God does not require any man to believe a lie.... to command those
who are still dead in trespasses and
sin to believe the gospel of salvation. God does not do foolish things... many preachers do. They go
around offering spiritual food to the
dead with the hope that they may be brought alive. Food is for the nourishment of living. Jesus told
Peter, "Feed... feed... feed."
Feeding has to do with the living, and not to bring the dead to
life! New-school Calvinists think the
latter!
Thus
Arminians and their superior cousins new-school Calvinists are
like-minded - the gospel ministry is the
means by which God save those who believe.
[Those not saved by God are capable of believing in order to be saved by God. This is your salvation by grace alone!!!]
Rocky
5.
Since regeneration is independent of the
written Word and of the preaching of the Gospel, it must be an inner and interior operation of
the Holy Spirit and always APART from
the ordinary ministry of the Word. While true Calvinists believe that regeneration is not dependent on
the ordinary ministry of the Word but
may take place, on and with it, and in some cases before and without it, simultaneously in the moment
of faith, Hyper-Calvinists make an
unnecessary deduction that to believe that regeneration can take place simultaneously in the moment of faith, it
makes the Word preached to be the cause
of regeneration.
## The new-school Calvinists believe that the Holy Spirit regenerates with the means of the gospel ministry in normal circumstances, and without the means of the gospel ministry in exceptional circumstances.
This popular idea is repudiated by the words
of Christ in John 3:8
"The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither
it goeth: so is every one that is born
of the Spirit."
Sorry, the Lord Jesus does not permit such fiction. "So is everyone born of the
Spirit - in that immediate and sovereign
way. So the new-school Calvinists have to choose one way or the other - either ALL with the instrument of
the gospel ministry or all without the
gospel ministry.
[no number 6]
Rocky
7. Hyper-Calvinists do not usually respect the
ordo salutis or order of salvation and
fail to put distinctions between them, namely, foreknowledge, predestination, regeneration (effectual
call), justification, sanctification and
glorification. They make a false assumption that since a person is foreknown and predestinated
to salvation, that person must be
already justified and glorified. There is no such thing as Saving Faith and evangelical repentance in time.
To affirm the necessity of these graces
to salvation is to deny God’s decree in eternity.
## All these reveal a pitiful deficiency in your understanding of the truth of the Scriptures.
It is the new-school Calvinists who have a very confused and messed up order of salvation. The root cause is the abject failure to distinguish eternal salvation by divine grace alone and temporal salvation involving activities of those already saved by grace.
Take a look here: http://things-new-and-old.blogspot.com/2011/05/order-of-salvation.html
Rocky
8. Most Hyper-Calvinists are Supralapsarians.
They put the priority of the decree of
election of the elect before the decree of the fall; but assuming their logic is correct, the decree
of the fall makes God’s election
changeable and absurd.
## What a straw man you have set up... that
God's decrees of election and the fall are not harmonious but
contradictory!!! I'm a sublapsarian,
anyway.
[How does the supralapsarian's view of the decree of the fall make God's election changeable and absurd? ]
Rocky
9. Hyper-Calvinism in separating justification
from the ordinary ministry of the Word,
has given way to the unbiblical assumption that a man can be justified without hearing the Gospel preached
in a pagan country while believing and
practising the best light of his pagan religion as long as he is one of God’s elect.
## This shows a great deficiency in your understanding of the distinct aspects of the doctrine of justification.
There is a justification decreed by God in eternity;
There
is justification by the blood of Christ - legal justification, justification
accomplished.
There
is justification by the free grace of God - vital justification, justification
applied.
There
is justification by the faith of God's children - practical justification,
justification manifested. You are aware of this aspect of justification and deny the other aspects plainly taught in the Scriptures!
You are obviously ignorant of the first three aspects of the justification taught in the Scriptures. You are fixated on the practical justification through your faith in Jesus Christ.
Faith in Jesus Christ justifies/evidences/vindicates that his justified state by God's free grace. It is those already justified by God's free grace that are able to believe. You are ignorant of this basic truth of free grace!
Rocky
10. Hyper-Calvinism, in separating justification
from the ordinary ministry of the Word, usually neglects the duty to preach the Gospel of Christ to everyone.
## See comment under 9. Justification by God's free grace is apart from the ministry of the word. Justification by faith is through the means of the ministry of the word. You are all confused. Faith cometh by hearing; faith is a saving grace worked in the heart by the indwelling Spirit of adoption; faith is called forth by the gospel ministry. When there is no preaching of the gospel, there will be no manifestation of the faith already worked in the heart by the indwelling Spirit of God.
Rocky
11. Hyper-Calvinists fail to make a distinction
between the inner and irresistible call
of the Spirit in regeneration and the outward call of the Gospel. Every Gospel call or divine
summon is always an inner activity which
cannot be resisted.
## It is the new-school Calvinists who can't distinguish the two because they
believe that the irresistible call of
the Spirit in regeneration is conditioned upon outward gospel call!
I believe that the effectual call out of the native state of sin and death to that of grace and salvation is logically and chronologically prior to the gospel call to faith in Jesus Christ, and it is the former that enables an elect to answer to the latter. The effectual call to grace and salvation enables a child of God to answer the gospel call unto conversion.
Rocky
12. Calvinists believe that all are commanded to
repent, and this is ordinarily carried
out by the ordinary ministry of the Word in obedience to the Great Commission; this can be often
resisted and will always be resisted by
the reprobates. But there is also an inner call and irresistible and interior in the soul of the
elect which shall unfailingly take place
in due time, and the effecting of the same cannot be done by the preaching of the Word but by
the powerful operation of the Spirit.
This inner call is distinguished from, but not separate from, the preaching of the Word. In cases where the
ordinary ministry of the Word is not
possible, like those elect who, by the pleasure of God, should be regenerated in infancy and the
like, the Spirit of God, in His unquestionable sovereignty, is at liberty to regenerate and justify without the ordinary ministry of the Word.
## New-school Calvinists believe in an inconsistent and irrational God!
God declared plainly that He had chosen a people
unto eternal salvation, and gave them to
Christ to secure their eternal redemption.
Christ did exactly that for those whom God the Father
had given Him.... and not one more and
not one less.
The Spirit of Christ, in God's appointed and approved time, applies that redemption to
each individual elect personally.
Only such are called and commanded to believe what God HAS DONE... i.e. to believe the truth of their salvation by God's free grace. A man's duty is determined by the terms of the covenant to which he is a party. Only those embraced in the covenant of redemption are obliged to believe their Redeemer.
Why would God demand those whom He declared He had not given Jesus to be their Saviour to believe in His Son Jesus Christ as their Saviour? Does God require anyone to believe a lie?
Conclusion:
All your 11 points actually reflect your own
deficiency in the understanding of God's
truth of salvation... regardless of whether what you said of the hyper-Calvinists is true or
fictional.
Read
the articles discussing the 11 points above in detail here:
http://things-new-and-old.blogspot.com/2012/10/who-are-damnable-heretics-denouncers-or.html
http://things-new-and-old.blogspot.com/2012/10/damnable-heresy-1-considered.html
http://things-new-and-old.blogspot.com/2012/10/damnable-heresy-2-considered.html
http://things-new-and-old.blogspot.com/2012/10/damnable-heresy-3-considered.html
http://things-new-and-old.blogspot.com/2012/10/damnable-heresy-4-considered.html
http://things-new-and-old.blogspot.com/2012/10/damnable-heresy-5-considered.html
