Spurgeon and Hyper-Calvinism Special Guest Phil Johnson

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All right, I will save a longer introduction. I'll save a longer introduction for right before the worship service, or right during the worship service, before the preaching, for our guest speaker this morning.

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It is Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You. He was here for our conference on Spurgeon, the life and legacy of Charles Spurgeon, and we were fed well at that conference.

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And now Phil is going to give us a lesson today on the subject of Spurgeon and hyper -Calvinism, and what is the difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism.

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So Phil has a presentation he's gonna give here that'll last about 20 minutes, and then after that, he'll have an opportunity for a question and answer, so you will have a chance toward the end of the class to do that.

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So with that, please welcome Phil Johnson. Well, good morning.

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I'll just start right in. Hyper -Calvinism, simply stated, is a doctrine that emphasizes divine sovereignty to the exclusion of human responsibility.

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It tends to eliminate the idea of human responsibility, and to call it hyper -Calvinism is a bit of a misnomer, because while there are a lot of themes that hyper -Calvinists talk about that are similar to what

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Calvinists would affirm, the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of election and all of that, hyper -Calvinism actually entails a complete denial of what is taught both in Scripture and in the major Calvinistic creeds, and it substitutes, instead of that, a kind of imbalanced and unbiblical notion of divine sovereignty that does away with human responsibility.

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It's a sort of mechanistic view to God's sovereignty. I have a document on the web that you can look up.

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It's called A Primer on Hyper -Calvinism that's fairly extensive.

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It quotes some theological dictionaries that give definitions of hyper -Calvinism, and then

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I give my own definition. My own definition of hyper -Calvinism is complex in the sense that I see five different flavors of hyper -Calvinism.

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I don't think hyper -Calvinism is simply one idea.

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There are about five kinds of it, and they range in a gradient from the worst kind to the best kind, and so I'm gonna give you as simply as possible what those five flavors of hyper -Calvinism are.

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You don't need to write this down because you can just Google my name and the word hyper -Calvinism and you'll find the document where all this is spelled out and explained anymore, but five kinds of hyper -Calvinism.

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A hyper -Calvinist is someone who either, number one, denies that the gospel call applies to everybody who hears it.

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Jesus says, come unto me, all you who labor and heavy laden. The hyper -Calvinist says, that's not everybody.

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That's just the ones that labor and are heavy laden. In other words, they've been convicted of their sin.

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This is not an open invitation to everybody for salvation. This applies only to the elect, and so they eliminate the general call of the gospel.

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That is the most sinister kind of hyper -Calvinism because it utterly destroys evangelism. You can't go out and indiscriminately preach the gospel if you believe the gospel doesn't apply to everyone, so that's the most sinister kind because it completely does away with evangelism.

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Only slightly better is number two, hyper -Calvinism that denies that faith is the duty of every believer.

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This flavor of hyper -Calvinism says, well, all right, but we're dead in our trespasses and sins, so we're unable to believe, and therefore, faith isn't really my duty.

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It's God's decision whether he grants me faith or not, and there's a germ of what sounds like truth in that because scripture does say that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, that unbelievers are unable to hear or believe the gospel unless God himself intervenes.

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Where they get it wrong is concluding that just because they're unable to hear or believe the gospel, it's therefore not their duty to do it.

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It's still the duty of the unbeliever to believe, and the reason unbelievers are incapable of hearing or believing the gospel is sin that is their own fault, so they're responsible for their inability, and therefore, that doesn't erase their duty, but if you do away with the idea that faith is the duty of everyone who hears the gospel, then again, you eliminate the need for evangelism that preaches the gospel indiscriminately.

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Third kind of hyper -Calvinism, the person who denies that the gospel makes any kind of offer of Christ or salvation or mercy to the non -elect or someone who denies that the offer of mercy is free and universal.

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You'll easily recognize someone who's flirting with hyper -Calvinism or may be a hyper -Calvinism if they chafe at the word offer in relationship to the gospel.

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They'll sometimes say, the gospel isn't an offer, it's a command, but it's also an offer.

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It's a call, and in fact, the very closing verses of the Bible portray salvation as living water and offered freely, but the hyper -Calvinism denies that.

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I won't go into a whole lot of detail on these, although I'm tempted to do that. Then a fourth kind of hyper -Calvinism is the brand that denies that there's any such thing as common grace.

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Common grace meaning the general goodness that God shows to everyone. In Jesus' words, he makes the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike, that God is good to all his creatures.

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A hyper -Calvinist would deny that that's genuine well -meant goodness. A hyper -Calvinist would typically say anything good that happens to a reprobate person, someone whom

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God has not elected, anything that's good that happens to them is simply God purposely compounding their guilt, that he has no good intention or well -intentioned appeal to them.

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And then similar to that, variety number five is the brand of hyper -Calvinism that denies that God has any kind of love or any attitude that could be legitimately described as love toward the reprobate.

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So, and this you'll find in the writings of Arthur Pink, for example, who opposed the idea of, he opposed the brand of hyper -Calvinism that denied duty faith.

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He said, no, faith is a duty, so he opposed that kind of hyper -Calvinism, but he held to this idea that it's inappropriate to speak of God's love for the non -elect, that there's no sense in which

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God has any kind of love for the non -elect, that his love is limited to the elect alone.

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Now, I would say God's love for the elect is different from his love for the reprobate, just like my love for my wife is different from my love for my neighbor, but it's both, both are a kind of love.

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And the typical hyper -Calvinist will, again, just chafe at the notion that God loves the non -elect.

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He doesn't want the evangelist to say God loves you or speak of God's love to people who aren't already saved because he's not sure that God actually loves those whom he hasn't elected.

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Scripture, I think, is clear about that as well, where Jesus says in Matthew 5, love your enemies and do good to those who treat you badly.

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He goes on to say, do this so that you'll be like your father who is in heaven. And that's when he says,

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God makes the rainfall on the just and the unjust. So he's clearly affirming the idea that God's well -meant goodness applies to all his creatures.

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There are Psalms that say that as well, that God is good to all his creation. And hyper -Calvinism tends to deny that.

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Hyper -Calvinists want to press the logic of a misunderstanding about God's sovereignty to the point where it goes beyond what

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Scripture would tell us. And if you have any questions about that, we'll take questions at the end, but I need to move on because I want to talk about John Gill and Charles Spurgeon and the

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English Baptists and hyper -Calvinism. I made this comment this week during our lectures that John Gill is often labeled a hyper -Calvinist.

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I would classify him as a hyper -Calvinist. Spurgeon said he's the Koryphaeus of hyper -Calvinism, which means the choir leader.

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And yet he seemed to stop short of pinning that label on Gill.

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Now, I want to talk about Gill a little bit and Spurgeon's attitude towards him. Gill was a prolific writer with a brilliant mind.

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He had a knack for examining issues in a meticulous detail.

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He was thoroughly familiar with all the writings of the church fathers. I mentioned that he also was conversant in the rabbinical literature.

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He read in Hebrew the writings of rabbis on the Old Testament, ancient writings.

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He wrote a series of commentaries. And if you've ever used them, you know that they're full of references to the patristics and the rabbis.

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And Gill wrote a defense of the doctrines of Calvinism that was designed to show that all the doctrines of Calvinism, what we call the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism, he had a book designed specifically to show that all five points are specifically taught in scripture and found in the writings of the church fathers.

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It's a great book. It's called The Cause of God and Truth. And it's a good resource to have.

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So he defends the doctrines of grace from scripture and from the writings of the early church fathers.

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And that book, The Cause of God and Truth, was published in 1735 while Gill was still a young man just in his 30s.

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And it's available today. You look it up. I think you can download it for free online. I have an edition, a hardcover edition from the

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Baptist Standard Bearer Press. And all the distinctives of Gill's high

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Calvinism are found in that book already in his 30s. His magnum opus was the final work he published, which is called

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A Body of Divinity. And it's also still in print today. It is, I think, for the most part, a superb and helpful work.

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But it is tainted, like most of Gill's works are, tainted by the effects of this,

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I would call it a kind of incipient hyper -Calvinism. He's just edging into hyper -Calvinist ideas, and it taints what he writes.

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And by the way, the sum of Gill's works make an impressive library. I commented this week that nobody in church history has written and published as many words as Charles Spurgeon, no single individual.

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Gill would be a close second, perhaps. He wrote more than any one man between Richard Baxter, who wrote a lot himself, and Spurgeon.

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And in fact, people jokingly called Gill Dr. Voluminous. He had a friend named

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John Brine, who in 1743 published a pamphlet that became very influential in British Reformed circles.

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It was called The Modern Question Concerning Repentance and Faith Examined with Candor.

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And the pamphlet contained a letter from John Brine to a friend in which he explored the question of whether repentance and faith are really the duty of unbelievers.

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And Brine's conclusion was that since faith is a gift of God, which we would agree with, faith is a gift of God to the elect in particular, we would agree with that as well, he concluded then therefore it cannot possibly be the duty of those who are without grace and without any ability to exercise faith, it can't possibly be their duty to do that.

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Now, you might hear me say several times that this idea actually bears a close resemblance to Arminianism.

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The presupposition that underlies Brine's argument is fundamentally Arminian. It's the notion that ability limits responsibility, that you're not responsible for any more than you are able to do, that no one can be justly held responsible for doing anything that they lack the ability to do.

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But Brine accepted this Arminian presupposition, and so his Calvinism was driven towards hyper -Calvinism.

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And his denial of duty faith was embraced by several leading

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Calvinists in John Gill's day. Some believe that Gill himself stopped short of embracing

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Brine's rejection of duty faith. And I think it's true that Gill never explicitly agreed with the idea that unbelievers have no duty to believe in Christ, but the influence of Brine's rejection of duty faith becomes clear, nevertheless, in other ways in Gill's writings.

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Gill seems to try to explain away or downplay any passage of scripture where unbelievers are commanded to believe or repent.

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And by the way, this would be my answer to people who deny that faith is the duty of unbelievers.

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They're commanded to believe, right? If God commands you to believe, you have a duty to do it. And the same argument that Brine uses against faith would equally work against the 10 commandments.

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I don't have the ability to be perfect as my father in heaven is perfect, but I'm nevertheless commanded to do so, and I'm responsible to do so, and I'm held guilty if I don't.

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And the same thing applies to faith. And if you don't believe that, then you are going to veer into all kinds of extremes or heresies.

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Where was I? So Gill begins to object to terminology then that speaks of the gospel as an offer.

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That's another flavor of the hyper -Calvinism that I listed for you. And Gill wrote a preface to a hymn book, and in the preface, he included this disclaimer.

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He wrote, Whereas the phrasing of offering Christ and grace is sometimes used in these hymns, which may be offensive to some persons and which the worthy author was led to the use of, partly through custom, it not having been at the writing of them objected to.

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In other words, he's acknowledging nobody had ever objected to that kind of language before John Brine.

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But, and he says, and partly he did this through his affectionate concern and zeal for gaining upon souls and encouraging them to come to Christ.

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I can affirm upon good and sufficient testimony that Mr. Davis, that's the writer of the hymn book, before his death changed his mind in the matter and disused the phrase as being improper, being too bold and too free for a minister of Christ to make use of.

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So he's saying in the preface of this hymn book that includes hymns that invite people to come to faith and urge them to come to faith and speak of grace and salvation as an offer.

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He says, the guy changed his mind before he died. And in fact, notice some crucial points

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Gil makes in those words. He virtually acknowledges that his objection to the idea that the gospel is an offer is an innovation.

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This is a new idea. Nobody had objected to it before. And Gil and Brine and other high

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Calvinists of their era were fully aware that these opinions went further than the magisterial reformers.

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Calvin never said these things. And they weren't troubled by that, that they were going further than Calvin because they believed that they were continuing the reformation, refining

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Calvinism and bringing greater clarity to the doctrines of grace. But the truth is they were moving into a realm of extremism that had been carefully avoided by the

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Puritans and the reformers. Now I have to keep moving. In the generation after Gil, all of these things became extremely controversial as you would predict.

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And Gil's successor in the pulpit, you may remember this from our lectures this week, Gil's successor was

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John Ripon, who was a man who clearly did not share Gil's concern about being too bold and too free and proclaiming the gospel as an offer to unbelievers.

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Ripon brought Gil's congregation back to a more moderate stance on these issues.

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But meanwhile, hyper -Calvinism was being taken to new heights by an eccentric preacher in England known as William Huntington.

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Anybody ever heard of him? William Huntington, he went by the name the coal heaver, he called himself that, people called him that.

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And he liked the name. He was a working man who sort of did hack theology.

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He was, I would say the Arthur Pink of his day. He wrote a lot, and a lot of what he wrote was good, but he had these hyper -Calvinistic tendencies that he pushed to an extreme that would have embarrassed even

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Arthur Pink. Huntington was independent, Pato Baptist, hyper -Calvinist, whose chief influence was actually among Baptists, even though he would have been a baby baptizer.

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He was a self -educated man who in some ways was a capable expositor.

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He liked being called the coal heaver. That was a reference to his employment in his pre -conversion days.

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And he pushed hyper -Calvinism to an unheard of extreme. He was a prolific author.

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His books were well -read all over England. And you can download his works as well,

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I think, for free on the internet if you're interested in reading from him. Huntington mingled antinomianism with hyper -Calvinism.

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And ever since, wherever you find hyper -Calvinism, you're gonna find strains of antinomianism.

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Antinomianism meaning if you're elect and if you're saved, it really doesn't matter what you do. And so hyper -Calvinists, especially hyper -Calvinist antinomians, tend to be very careless in their personal lives towards the issue of sanctification.

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Huntington's best -known successor in the development of hyper -Calvinism was

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John Charles Philpott. He was a Baptist hyper -Calvinist who edited a magazine called

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The Gospel Standard. And to this day, wherever you see a publisher or a magazine with the words

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Gospel Standard into it, you can pretty much be sure that's a hyper -Calvinist piece.

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The Gospel Standard, this magazine became a rallying point for the English hyper -Calvinist

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Baptists. And in all of this, there were a few voices of moderation that pushed back.

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But hyper -Calvinism began to be a dominant force in England in those years. One of the people who pushed back, in fact,

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I would say the leading voice of those days was Andrew Fuller. Fuller stood against the advance of hyper -Calvinism and he called for a return to the

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Calvinism of the Puritans. He was a Baptist pastor whose chief polemic against hyper -Calvinism was a tract called

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The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which is a great book, by the way. If you wanna read something from an older writer that's really edifying, find

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Andrew Fuller's The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. I imagine it's on the web as well.

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You can find it. Fuller was unfairly derided by the hyper -Calvinists and called an

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Arminian and a Latitudinarian. And to this day, I encounter a few

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Calvinists here and there who are reluctant to read Andrew Fuller because they've heard that he's not a true

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Calvinist. He's too low in his beliefs. Tom Nettles writes a great book where he explodes that myth.

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His treatise on Baptist history is called By His Grace and For His Glory.

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Tom Nettles. It's a great, fairly recent history of Baptists and he treats

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Fuller in extensive detail and it's really good.

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Fuller's works are available today if you know where to look. There's a three -volume set of his complete works that are available from Sprinkle Publication.

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I think it's not being printed anymore, but you can find copies of it if you look.

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Fuller's Calvinism was strongly evangelical, missions -minded, warm -hearted, experiential in the good sense.

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When Calvinists used the word experiential or experimental, they meant that it was a kind of practical application of holiness alongside

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Calvinism. Now, I wish I had time to cover the history and development of Hyper -Calvinism. I don't really.

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I'll just say, however, that all of this, this growth of Hyper -Calvinism in England set the stage for the launch of Spurgeon's ministry in 1855 when he came to London.

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By that time in England, Arminianism on the one hand and Hyper -Calvinism on the other hand had so polarized evangelicals in England that it's fair to say that the vast majority of churches and Christians belong to one extreme or the other, both bad,

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Arminians on the one side, Hyper -Calvinists on the other. Spurgeon, who held

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Gill in high esteem, nonetheless warned about the influence of Gill and I'm glad he did this.

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I mean, he was just a young man at the time. It was very perceptive of him to be able to read the dangers in Gill's theology, but as a very young man and perhaps owing to the influence of his father or his grandfather, he read

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Gill with a critical eye, thankfully, and detected in Gill's writings this tendency towards Hyper -Calvinism that Spurgeon himself rejected.

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He suggested that Gill's ultra -ism, that's what he called it, ultra -ism, should be discarded and he spoke of the, these are his exact words, the decadence of Gill's rigid system.

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He wrote that in Commenting and Commentaries, the book he wrote to critique various commentaries and like I said, he called

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Gill the Coryphaeus of Hyper -Calvinism, a choir leader, but then he added that if his followers never went any further than Gill, they wouldn't go too far astray.

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So he thought Gill still was a helpful resource, but you just have to be careful of his extremes.

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I mentioned this week that Ian Murray believes that that's an over -generous assessment and in Murray's book,

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Spurgeon and Hyper -Calvinism, he more or less disagrees with Spurgeon's assessment of Gill and says maybe

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Spurgeon's warnings about Gill aren't strong enough. What Murray is saying and I think Spurgeon actually would have agreed with Ian Murray is that the strict followers of Gill, people who march lockstep with Gill are already standing on the precipice of Hyper -Calvinism and leaning over.

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You read too much Gill, you'll be influenced towards Hyper -Calvinism. And in his autobiography,

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Spurgeon wrote this, the system of theology with which many identify Gill's name has chilled many churches to their very soul for it has led them to omit the free invitations of the gospel and to deny that it is the duty of sinners to believe.

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And Spurgeon hastened to add that there are also many things in Gill's works that are nevertheless out of harmony with Hyper -Calvinism.

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And Spurgeon had encountered Hyper -Calvinism as a young man before he came to London while he was pastoring at Waterbeach.

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And that early encounter with people in the Waterbeach Church who were Hyper -Calvinists seems to have prompted him to study the subject and so he was braced for it when he went to London.

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And before he'd been at the New Park Street Church in London for three years, he preached a sermon that was a brilliant attack on Hyper -Calvinism.

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His sermon was titled, Sovereign Grace and Man's Responsibility. And he's defending the idea that God's sovereign grace exists, coexists alongside human responsibility, which is what you have to believe to be a true

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Calvinist. If you deny sovereign grace, you're an Arminian. If you deny human responsibility, you're a

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Hyper -Calvinist. It's that simple. Spurgeon preached that sermon at the

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Royal Surrey Garden, which is the place where he began to preach after the congregation outgrew the

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New Park Street facility. That's where someone shouted fire the first Sunday he was there and it ended in disaster.

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But he kept going back to the music hall and preaching to crowds of 10 ,000 people at a time.

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And you can imagine a sermon on Hyper -Calvinism to a crowd of 10 ,000, it's not the kind of thing you'd expect to hear in modern

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American evangelicalism, but there it was. Now, I want to read you, what time are we done?

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Okay, so I won't go much further. I have a bunch of, no, no, it's okay.

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If any of the questions can be answered by this, I'll read these to you. I've selected several excerpts from some of Spurgeon's sermons where he deals with Hyper -Calvinism.

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I got like 10 pages of it, so I can't read it all anyway. So we'll just take questions and there you go.

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He keeps making me promise to come back. All right, so we'll take questions. All right, we'll just be dismissed.

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It comes and goes, Hyper -Calvinism. At the moment, I would say, I don't think there is a severe threat of looming

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Hyper -Calvinist movement anymore. I would not have said that in the early 1990s when the internet began to foster lots of discussion groups and theological forums, and I hung out on some of them and they were rife with young Hyper -Calvinists.

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There's a tendency, I think, for lots of young men who, when they discover Calvinism, to immediately run to an extreme with it and flirt with Hyper -Calvinism before they discover the fallacies of that way of thinking and leave it.

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And so there was a burgeoning online mass of Hyper -Calvinists, or actually several little nests of really virulent

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Hyper -Calvinists throughout the 90s on the internet. I don't see much influence from them anymore.

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The denominations that tend towards Hyper -Calvinist ideas, would, the outstanding one in the

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United States, probably the most influential one, is the PRC. What's it, the

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Protestant Reformed Church? Is that what that stands for? PRC. But, and you'll find individual

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Hyper -Calvinists among the Reformed Baptists and Sovereign Grace Baptists here and there.

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But I don't know of any, I don't know of any leading Evangelical speakers or figures right now who are pushing

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Hyper -Calvinism. I think John Gerstner flirted with, I'll get killed for saying this, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

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John Gerstner flirted with Hyper -Calvinism towards the end of his career. He, in fact, bought into a lot of PRC doctrines.

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I think he was influenced by some of the leaders in the PRC and began, more and more, to resist the idea that the gospel is an offer or that God loves the reprobate.

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He rejected all of those ideas in one way or another. So, are you, John MacArthur, Grace to you,

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Grace Community Church, ever accused of being Hyper -Calvin? Address that or answer that. Okay, I'm forgetting

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I'm supposed to repeat all these questions, so I'll start doing that. He asked whether John MacArthur or me or any of us are ever accused of being

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Hyper -Calvinists. I think every Calvin, every true Calvinist is going to be accused of Hyper -Calvinism by Arminians.

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And some people think they would define Hyper -Calvinist as anybody who believes more strongly in the sovereignty of God than I do.

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And so it depends on what perspective you're standing at, but those aren't really serious charges.

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I've never had anyone, even Dave Hunt for a while, who despised

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Calvinism and wrote a silly book against it and made some false charges.

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Among those charges he made against John MacArthur, as far as I can recall, he did not accuse

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John of being a Hyper -Calvinist. He misrepresented his views and stuff like that, but I don't think he tagged him as a

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Hyper -Calvinist, but people who follow that brand of thinking, it's sort of the

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Calvary Chapel mentality. Calvary Chapel's also turned very hostile to Calvinism in general around the beginning of the new millennium.

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They had an author, George Bryson, who wrote a book that I don't think it's in print anymore, and it wasn't very good because in attacking

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Hyper -Calvinism he defended Pelagianism, which is a rank heresy, so he got pilloried for that book, which was a bad criticism, but even they don't usually call us

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Hyper -Calvinists, but it's not unusual over the history of dialogue between Arminians and Calvinists for people who oppose

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Calvinism to say basically that all Calvinism is Hyper. I think, what was his name?

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I forgot, the guy that, anyway, yeah, there have been people who've made that argument that any kind of Calvinism, if you take it to its logical end, ends with Hyper -Calvinism.

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That's one of the arguments some Arminians like to use. The fact is that's easily debunked by history.

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Most of the very large missionary works, and in fact, the beginning of foreign missions is attributable to men with Calvinistic convictions, so it's simply not the case that Calvinism historically has turned into Hyper -Calvinism.

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That's an offshoot that really starts with an Arminian presupposition, as I said, the idea that you're not responsible to do what you're not able to do.

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That's the starting point of Arminianism, and Arminians conclude if you're not responsible to do what you're not able to do, then therefore, you must be able to believe because Scripture commands you to believe, so faith is within the realm of human ability.

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It's not a gift of God. It's your own doing, which obviously contradicts the whole point of Ephesians 2.

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The Hyper -Calvinist starts with the same presupposition. You're not responsible to do what you're not able to do, but they conclude the opposite.

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Well, therefore, you're not responsible to believe because you're not able to, but it's the same error at the root.

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Yeah, that's a good question, and I don't know. I'd have to do a little research to find that out. His question was when did the term

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Hyper -Calvinism become the term that labels this kind of thinking, and I'm not sure.

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Spurgeon used it occasionally. He didn't use it all the time, and when he referred to Gill, like I said, he called it ultra -ism, but I would say probably sometime towards the end of the 19th century, the later 1800s, people began universally to just refer to it as Hyper -Calvinism, and there are lots of debates, by the way, today about definitions of Hyper -Calvinism, who gets to define it, and the

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PRC don't like my definitions. The five -hole list

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I gave you is part of an article that I wrote probably 25 years ago, and it was picked up by the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle and published in their magazine, The Sword and the Trowel, and so it got quite a bit of exposure, and various Hyper -Calvinists, various flavors of Hyper -Calvinists worldwide have picked that apart, that article apart, again and again and again, because every

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Hyper -Calvinist wants to define, they all pretty much acknowledge that there is such a thing as Hyper -Calvinism, but they want to define it in a way that excludes them.

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The PRC are very good at that. They'll deny that they are Hyper -Calvinists, but they acknowledge that Hyper -Calvinism exists.

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Justin, yeah, right.

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Yeah, that's a great observation. He's noting the fact that lots of people who buy into Hyper -Calvinist theology also lack assurance of their own salvation, and in fact,

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I think that's one of the reasons, perhaps, that Spurgeon himself took such a keen interest in refuting

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Hyper -Calvinism, because, as you know from his own testimony, he struggled for years before he was saved, but when he was saved, he immediately had deep sense of assurance, and he was baffled,

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I think, by the number of people in the church who could not say with confidence that they were saved, not because they didn't believe.

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They believed, but they weren't sure they were saved because they didn't know how to be certain that they were one of the elect, and so Spurgeon said, if you believe you are one of the elect, that's the telling signal, and someone who's very steeped in Hyper -Calvinism is gonna resist even that argument.

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So, yeah, there are other ideas that sort of are connected with Hyper -Calvinism that you find in tandem.

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As I said, lots of Hyper -Calvinists are also antinomians. They believe that the law has no relevance whatsoever to a

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Christian, and they're totally unconcerned about their own sin. It seems almost like the opposite.

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On the one hand, you've got people who are not sure they're saved because of their Hyper -Calvinism. On the other hand, you've got people who are so careless about their own holiness that they believe that because they're elect, it doesn't matter what they do.

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Another idea that goes hand -in -hand with Hyper -Calvinism, and not always, you can be a

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Hyper -Calvinist and not hold this view, but when you find this view, you've located a Hyper -Calvinist, is a doctrine called eternal justification, the notion that if you're elect, you're eternally justified, so that you are, even if you die before you come to faith, if you're elect, you'll go to heaven because you're elect.

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So they don't even seem to connect the effectual grace and conversion and repentance with the sovereignty of God and realize that the gospel uses means, that God uses means to draw people to Christ, and someone who has not come to faith can't be regarded as elect.

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At least, we don't know if they're elect. And someone who dies without coming to faith, there's absolutely no reason to think he's elect, but a lot of that is lost on Hyper -Calvinists because they're so swept up in the absolute dominance of the idea of divine sovereignty that they're scared of the idea of human responsibility, and so if you say someone must be a believer in order to be saved, you're putting too much weight on human responsibility.

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So it's a weird view, but yes, yes. Please answer and put it as a film or a video.

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Okay. Thank you. Do you find Hyper -Calvinists more among Dispensationalist Calvinists or among Covenant Calvinists?

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The antinomianism that is inherent with that would seem to suggest that would be more of a Dispensationalist approach.

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Yeah, good question. He's asking, would you find Hyper -Calvinism more among Dispensationalists or Covenantalists because Dispensationalists have a tendency to be antinomian.

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So does that make them more susceptible to Hyper -Calvinism? The answer is no. It's a different kind of antinomianism, and I don't know of any

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Dispensationalists who, there may be some, but I don't know of any significant voice that comes from Dispensationalism that is

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Hyper -Calvinist. With Dispensationalists, the tendency is the opposite. They all tend to be Arminians, and it's rare to find a

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Dispensationalist who really is a solid Calvinist even. So no,

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I think the brand of antinomianism that goes hand -in -hand with Hyper -Calvinism is a different flavor than the kind of antinomianism you had with Charles Ryrie or whatever.

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A typical, to give you an example of what I mean, antinomianism and Hyper -Calvinism going hand -in -hand.

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The person I would point to who's most contemporary, he's dead now, but would have been John Robbins.

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John Robbins inherited Gordon Clark's constituency and perpetually republished

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Gordon Clark's works and all that. Gordon Clark was a ultra -high Calvinist. I would classify him as a

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Hyper -Calvinist. People debate over really whether he was or not, but his brand of Hyperism actually fostered an antinomian tendency as well.

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So are Arminians saved?

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I think some of them are, yes. And Spurgeon would have agreed with that, by the way. He defended, say,

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John Wesley against people who said, well, John Wesley couldn't be saved because he was an Arminian. And Spurgeon was the one who famously said,

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Calvinism is the gospel. He would not have agreed with people who wanted to take those words and twist it to mean that if you're not a

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Calvinist, you're not really saved because you haven't embraced the gospel. That isn't what Spurgeon meant. What he meant was the core truth of Calvinism is simply this, and he said it in these terms, that the heart and soul of Calvinist doctrine is salvation is of the

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Lord. That's a quotation from the book of Jonah. Salvation is of the Lord. In other words, God is the one who saves, and salvation, and every aspect of our salvation is his work,

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Ephesians 2 again. So salvation is of the Lord. That's the heart of Calvinist truth.

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It's also the heart of the gospel message. That is the central theme of gospel truth, that you can't save yourself, it's

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God who saves you. So that's what Spurgeon meant, but he had many friends who were Arminians, and in fact, it was during the downgrade controversy, he addressed that very problem because a lot of his allies in that conflict, in fact, it may be true that more of the people who stood behind him, people in ministry, men who were fellow pastors who stood behind him and stood with him, lots of them were

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Arminians, and he was criticized for that, and some of his critics said, yeah, see, all the

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Arminians agree with you, you're Arminian. And so he wrote a piece where he basically said, look, the difference between Calvinists and Arminians doesn't hinge on the cardinal doctrines of the gospel.

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There are many Arminians who are saved. I wouldn't say, though, that all Arminians are saved, and I think there's a tendency in Arminian doctrine that we call it

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Arminianism, but I think a lot of it is simply Pelagianism. Pelagianism starts with a denial of total depravity and the doctrine of original sin.

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The Pelagian says you're born a blank slate and you either sin or be righteous sheerly by choice.

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It totally magnifies human free will, Pelagianism. And a lot of Arminians are actually

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Pelagians. That's what I was saying about George Bryson when he wrote defense of the

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Calvary Chapel attack on Calvinism. The doctrine he went after was original sin.

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Original sin is not a uniquely Calvinistic doctrine. Calvinists believe in original sin, but they're not the only ones.

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And in fact, I would say that's a necessary evangelical doctrine. So that if you deny the principle of original sin, the idea that Adam's fall plunged us all into a state of sinfulness for which we are held guilty, if you deny that doctrine, then you're not an evangelical even.

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You really haven't come to a sufficient understanding of the gospel. So lots of people who we might label

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Arminians actually are Pelagians. So the Pelagian ones, no, I wouldn't count them as Christians, but I do know

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Arminians who have a sufficient understanding of the gospel and justification by faith that I'm happy to embrace them as brothers.

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John Wesley, for example, in his famous testimony, you remember he says his heart was strangely warmed because of what someone was reading the foreword to Luther's commentary on the book of Romans, which is a treatise on justification by faith.

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And when Wesley preached on justification by faith, he preached a clear gospel presentation.

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I'm not a fan of Wesley's. I think he was kind of a creepy guy and he made it very hard for people to get along with him.

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And he was cruel to his wife and there are a lot of things bad about him, right? But I wouldn't consign him to the ranks of the damned.

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And in fact, it was his good friend Whitfield, or let's say one -time friend.

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They were close friends as college students and then grew apart theologically. And Wesley treated

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Whitfield with absolute scorn, but Whitfield was always kind to Wesley. And someone asked him, do you think

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Wesley will be, will you see Wesley in heaven is the way they asked it. And he said, no, I don't think I'll see him in heaven because he'll be so far towards the front and I'm back here.

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We won't encounter each. So he was very gracious towards Wesley, but he believed Wesley was a genuine believer.

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I kind of take that sort of attitude. I, you know, Jesus said a mustard seed of faith is sufficient to move mountains and mulberry trees.

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And meaning I'm sure that just the barest amount of faith is enough to begin the process of regeneration and salvation.

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And so I'm reluctant to say that just because somebody's theology is bad on some peripheral area that they're not a believer.

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You'd have to deny a essential gospel truth for me to say,

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I doubt your salvation. So I, my attitude towards Arminians is until they prove to me that they don't believe the gospel,

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I'll embrace them as brothers. Well, let's take one more question. Yes, sir. Yeah.

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Yeah, that's right. So he's asking about George Bryson and his role with the

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Calvary chapels. And this isn't really about hyper Calvinism, but I'm happy to answer the question.

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Yeah, the Calvary chapel denomination is a mixture of really good things and some bad things.

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And one of the really good things is that they always liked biblical preaching. They wanted the preacher to open the scriptures and teach from it, which is always a good thing.

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And yet they also favored, I think, untrained pastors.

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They didn't send their pastors to seminary or whatever. So a lot of guys who pastored Calvary chapel churches were just men with warm evangelistic hearts who wanted to teach the scriptures and really weren't trained to do it well.

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So thankfully they borrowed material from other sources. They would actually, you know, take sermons from Martin Lloyd Jones and John MacArthur and people like that and re -preach those same sermons.

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But the effect of that was Calvinism began to grow in the Calvary chapels and Chuck Smith wasn't happy with that.

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And around the beginning of the new millennium, he ordered a purge of Calvinism from the

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Calvary chapels. And it was George Bryson's duty to be the apologist who would undermine

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Calvinistic belief among the Calvary chapels. So he wrote this little book. I forget the title of it.

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I have a copy of it. It's a horrible little book because he doesn't understand Calvinism.

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And it came out about the same time as Dave Hunt's book. And when they were equally inept,

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Hunt didn't understand Calvinism either. In fact, James White used to play two recordings that were made like three months apart.

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One where Dave Hunt is saying, I don't know about Calvinism.

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I don't read the Reformers. And then three months later he's saying, I've studied the issue and I know more about Calvinism than the average

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Calvinist or something like that. So, and then he writes this book that totally misrepresents

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Calvinism. Bryson's book was even worse, I think, because as I said, he began his attack with the doctrine of original sin, which isn't a distinctively

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Calvinistic doctrine and ended up, I think, sort of fanning the flames of Pelagianism within the

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Calvary chapels. And that bore a lot of bad fruit. That's been a bad thing.

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So, all right.

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So he wanted a short gospel presentation. The gospel begins in the book of Romans and pretty much everywhere the apostle

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Paul goes into details about giving the gospel.

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The gospel begins with bad news. Gospel means good news, but begins with bad news. The bad news is that we are all fallen, sinful, and incapable of recovering ourselves from that condition.

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So that left to ourselves, all of us deserve punishment. The wages of sin is death, scripture says.

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And it also says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And Paul in Romans goes on for three chapters like that, convicting us of sin and convincing us that we are thoroughly sinful and that there's nothing we can do about it.

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And when you get to that point, the heart says, how is this good news? How is that a positive thing?

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But Paul suddenly shifts in the middle of Romans three and says, however,

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God sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins, meaning that Christ took the guilt of our sins on himself, was sent to the cross and died for our sin.

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If the wages of sin is death, somebody had to die. And he did that in our place and in our stead so that scripture says, and in the most famous verse in scripture,

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John 3, 16, whosoever believes in him won't perish, but will have eternal life. And that's how, because he not only fulfilled the law perfectly in every regard, there was no sin in him.

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Scripture says he was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. So he didn't deserve to die.

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And yet he did die in our place. He basically traded places with us so that he became sin for us, scripture says, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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That's 2 Corinthians 5, 21. And it means that Christ essentially traded places with us so that we get the benefit of his perfect life.

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And he has already paid the debt of our imperfect lives. And that is the gospel that whoever lays hold of Christ by faith is united with him spiritually in such a way that we can stand before God clothed in a robe of perfect righteousness, despite our guilt, because the guilt's been paid for, and thereby we have eternal life.

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That's the gospel. It's available only in Christ. He is the one savior whom

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God has provided as a resource to save us from sins. And anyone who thinks he can save himself or clean up his own life sufficiently to please

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God is going to be sadly disappointed because scripture says all our righteousnesses, all the good things we do are like filthy rags.

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You don't need filthy rags. You need a robe of perfect righteousness, and only Christ can supply that.

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Oh, Spurgeon quote. I just got to look for a short one here.

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Spurgeon's wordy. All right,

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I'll read this. This is from a sermon preached on December 5th, 1858. This is a little bit long.

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Called, Compel Them to Come In. He's responding to hyper -Calvinism here. Oh, my brother, I cannot let you put away religion thus.

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No, think of what is to come after death. I would be destitute of all humanity if I should see a person about to poison himself, and if I didn't dash away the cup, or if I saw another about to plunge from London Bridge and I didn't assist in preventing him from doing so, and I should be worse than a fiend if I did not now, with all love and kindness and earnestness, beseech you to lay hold on eternal life, to labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for the meat that endureth to everlasting life.

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And then he says, some hyper -Calvinist would tell me I am wrong in so doing. I cannot help it.

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I must do it. I must stand before my judge at last. I feel that I shall not make full proof of my ministry unless I entreat with many tears that you would be saved, that you would look unto

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Jesus and receive his glorious salvation. But does not this avail?

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Are all our entreaties lost upon you? Do you turn a deaf ear? Then again, I change my notes.

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Sinner, I have pleaded with you as a man pleads with his friend, and if it were for my own life, I could not speak more earnestly this morning than I speak concerning yours.

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I did feel earnest about my own soul, but not a whit more than I do about the souls of my congregation this morning.

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And therefore, if you put away these entreaties, I have something else. I must threaten you.

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I love that. That's just a sample of the passion with which Spurgeon gave gospel invitations.

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And he was criticized by that with the hyper -Calvinists. Let me say, let me read one other thing that I remember is in here.

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He says, this is from 1868, about 10 years later. I do not understand how it is that my bidding impenitent sinners to repent should in any way be likely to make them do so.

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But I know it does because I see it every day. I love that. Let's pray.

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Lord, we thank you for the free offer of the gospel. We thank you that scripture repeatedly pleads with us, invites us, urges us to come to Christ so that we know the way is freely open.

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Thank you for that. And I pray for any who might be here today who have not responded to that plea, that your spirit would urge them forward even now.