February 7, 2022 Show with Dr. Thomas J. Nettles on “Charles Haddon Spurgeon: The Theologian”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this seventh day of February 2022, and I am so thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest, an old friend who

I've interviewed a number of times, a man whose writings I have benefited greatly from and I know that many in our audience have as well.

His name is Dr. Thomas J. Nettles, retired from full -time teaching after 38 years in the classroom, including his most recent post as professor of historical theology at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1997 to 2014, previously having spent 21 years at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mid -American

Baptist Theological Seminary, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he was professor of church history and chair of the

Department of Church History, and author and editor of a number of books, along with numerous journal articles and scholarly papers.

Today, Dr. Nettles will be addressing Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the theologian, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Tom Nettles. Thank you very much, Chris. It's a delight to be here and thank you for allowing me to talk a little bit about Spurgeon, one of the great preachers and one of the great theologians of evangelicalism.

Amen. Amen. And the last time I saw you, if I'm not mistaken, is when I was online at the men's room at the

Foundations Conference in New York City, and I heard, is that Chris Arnson? And that was you walking out of the bathroom.

Yes, I remember our personal meeting there. Well, Dr.

Nettles, you and I know that Spurgeon is a greatly beloved hero from history, and the real historical

Charles Haddon Spurgeon is a great beloved hero of history by many, but he's also, or should

I say the fictitious version of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, is also a hero of many that are anti -Calvinist and have either in ignorance decalvinized

Spurgeon and have taught that he was either theologically and intentionally not a

Calvinist or that he naively violated the tenets of Calvinism and preached and evangelized to everyone with urgency, which they wrongly believe, these anti -Calvinists wrongly believe, that that would make one a non -Calvinist, to have a passion for the lost, etc.

Yes, there may be Calvinists who have no passion for the lost, who may even be lost themselves, but there are also

Arminians in that category, whether it is because of laziness or whatever the circumstances, a fear of being humiliated in public by identifying themselves as Christians, or whatever the case may be, there are people on both sides of the theological fence, whether a

Calvinist or Arminian, who very rarely involve themselves in evangelism, but being a passionate evangelist does not in any way, shape, or form negate one's firm commitment to the doctrines of sovereign grace,

Reformed theology, and also called Calvinism, am I right? Yes, absolutely, and Spurgeon believed that and practiced that.

His evangelistic zeal was not in any sense a compromise of his firm adherence to the doctrines of grace, and his particular understanding of the doctrines of grace and their implications did not compromise, did not diminish the zeal that he knew he must have for preaching the gospel with a view to seeing people converted.

This is even in the most uncompromisingly Calvinistic sermons, where he would be preaching even on effectual atonement, that Christ has died for his elect only, those who are in the eternal covenant before the foundation of the world.

He has died for it in such a way as they infallibly will come to salvation, and no others will.

Nevertheless, he has very pertinent, appropriate, and zealous calls for the unconverted that are hearing him to turn to Christ with the certainty that if Christ has died for them, he will hear them, and they will be saved.

And there's, in his mind, and I think in reality, in the way he constructs his sermons on those issues, there's not any compromise.

I think that this is due basically to, well, several things, but there are three that I sort of isolate in my mind.

And one is that the, just as surely as God has secured the salvation of the elect through the covenant of redemption, so he secures their salvation through the means that are to be used.

And of course, the primary means is the incarnation and the death of Christ. If people could be saved solely by a decree of election, then

Christ would not have needed to come. But because Christ has come, that shows the absolute necessity of the use of means to accomplish the eternal decree.

And then connected with those means are the preaching of the gospel by the minister of the gospel, his efforts to convince people of the truth of the gospel, his clear explanations of what the gospel is and how it is dependent upon the completed work of Christ that is to be received by faith, and then the means of the

Holy Spirit to change the heart and bring a person to faith. So the use of means he sees preaching the gospel and an urgency about faith to be a thoroughly consistent with that whole fabric of means that God uses to bring his elect to himself.

So he saw his preaching as something that was a vital part of the way

God called the elect and his own passion for them to be consistent both with the passion of Christ himself,

I mean his internal desire for the salvation of the elect, which led then to his true suffering passion for them.

So Christ had a yearning for lost people. The apostle

Paul, from whose writings we develop the most complete picture of God's sovereignty in bringing people to salvation, gave his life to the preaching of the gospel to the lost with the confidence that God would call.

He says, I endure all things for the sake of the elect that they too may obtain salvation and with it eternal glory.

So Spurgeon saw that whole fabric of motivation as something that warranted the evangelistic zeal that he had, along with the uncompromising and clear presentation of the doctrines of grace.

Yes, if anybody wants to get a clear picture of how thoroughly

Calvinistic Spurgeon was, unashamedly, unabashedly Calvinistic, I recommend a booklet that is published by Chapel Library.

The website is chapellibrary .org and they have a little booklet called A Defense of Calvinism which, if I am not mistaken, is an excerpt, a brief excerpt from Spurgeon's autobiography, which

I happen to be blessed to own the first edition four -volume set of that autobiography.

That was a gift to me, that four -volume set, and when I think about it, my mind is still blown away by this, but it was a gift to me by my late wife

Julie's co -pastor before we were married, Andy Montoro, and I am forever in Andy's debt for that wonderful gift, which was actually originally owned by an

Episcopalian minister who passed away. His family was getting rid of his library as if it was garbage, and they just wanted people to come and haul all the stuff away, and I can only wonder what was in that library.

I wasn't there. But that was one of the things, that four -volume set that was there, and Andy gave that to me as a gift, and I'm still blown away.

But one of the things that Spurgeon says in that booklet, and I am remembering this without having it in front of me, so I am not giving an exact quote, but he was so,

Spurgeon was so repulsed by the notion, the teaching of a

God who would punish people in hell when his son, his perfect righteous son, had allegedly already paid for their sins on Calvary.

He found that to be monstrous and equated that understanding of God to the gods of the pagans and thugs, and he listed some other colorful false deities in that quote.

But it's interesting how he had such a revulsion to unlimited atonement, and yet still held in high regard many

Arminian theologians and Christians. Yeah, he saw the central core of the doctrine of the

Trinity, the necessity of the death of Christ, the reality of faith in Christ, the zeal of preaching

Christ and Him crucified in many of those who were not Calvinists. He saw that as admirable, he believed they were inconsistent, and there were points in their theology that he did see as monstrous.

But when they stayed on the central themes of Christ and Him crucified and the necessity of faith in Him, he felt himself at one with them and was quite, sensed his fraternity with them in Christ.

Now, Spurgeon, I think one of the good reasons we are focusing on Spurgeon the theologian is because some who perhaps consider themselves more

Ivy League, the elite of academia and scholarship within the professed

Christian faith, they may look at Spurgeon as more of just a

English country preacher and evangelist. And although he has contributed much of value to the body of Christ through his written sermons that still exist today, they hesitate to highly regard him as a theologian.

But this is coming from arrogance and ignorance of Spurgeon.

He, although not formally trained, was really a brilliant man, wasn't he? Well, yeah, he was brilliant.

He was not formally trained, but he was self -trained and he read so much material, so much theological material that his education was perhaps even superior to many who had been to university.

There is hardly any Puritan that he did not read and of the works of which he did not own.

And more than any person I've ever read, Chris, he is able to characterize the peculiarities of the

Puritans, the things on which they're strong, the kind of vocabulary they use. There are some paragraphs in his messages or in articles that he writes in the

Sword and Trowel. Well, he will go and he will be talking about, oh, seven or eight different Puritans and the specific emphases they have on certain aspects, like of sanctification.

He may talk about so -and -so is good on this and someone else is good on this and someone else is good on this.

And he just lists all of them and has these characterizations. So he knew in detail the

Puritans. He kept up with contemporary literature in the Sword and Trowel, which began in 1865.

There were 30 to 40 book reviews, very short, but nevertheless substantial book reviews in the

Sword and Trowel. And most of those Spurgeon himself did. He was constantly reading.

And he had a foundation that he had gained just as a child when he lived with his grandfather.

He went into the study that was a part of the manse there at Stambourne where his grandfather was pastor.

And there was a full Puritan library there. And he remembers going in there and even before he could read, looking at the pictures of Pilgrim's Progress.

And then later when he learned to read, he would spend hours in there reading the Puritans from the time that he was in the single digits of age.

And so there's no lack of education. It's just that it was not in a formal situation. But his mind, the way he was able to retain things in his mind was quite remarkable.

I mean, he was a pastor when he was 16, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah. He was a pastor when he was 16.

He went to London then when he was still 19. He began publishing his sermons when he was 21 in 1855.

And from then until actually until World War I diminished the amount of paper that people could use for things.

There was this continued publishing of the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit. But in the very first sermon, the very first sermon that he published, it was called

The Immutability of God. And in this sermon, he says the entire course of his preaching, he said,

It has been said by someone that the proper study of mankind is man. I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God's elect is

God. The proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which could ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great

God whom he calls his Father. So that is how he introduced his ministry in that 1855.

Later, he said, again, after all, the most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and him crucified.

And the knowledge of the Godhead is the glorious trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the deity.

So that was his passion. That was his statement at the beginning of that 1855 volume, and that is what characterized his life.

Now, I saw recently a documentary on Spurgeon, and it looked very faithful to the historical facts, but there were a couple of things in there that I know were in contradiction to what other

Spurgeon experts, scholars, people who are historians with a focus on Spurgeon have said.

So it made me wonder how much of the documentary was accurate. But one of the things that the documentary said is that Spurgeon wanted to be formally educated and wanted to receive a seminary degree, not for the sake of getting a degree, but just to take advantage of the learning that would be available.

And the documentary said that in the 19th century that the

Church of England did not permit non -members of the Church of England to attend seminary.

I was surprised by that, and is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah, that's accurate. But he was going to go.

There was a Baptist college that he was going to attend, and he actually had an appointment with the man who was the principal of the college.

And he went to the place that was appointed, and the girl who was sort of the receptionist for this large house, when

Spurgeon came, she put him in one room, and then when Joseph Angus came, the man that was the principal of the college, she put him in another room and never told either one of them that the other were there.

And the time came for Joseph Angus to leave, and so he left, but he left a note for Spurgeon to try to set up another appointment because he would like to talk to him about his education.

And then Spurgeon found out that Joseph Angus had already left, and he was discouraged about this, but as he was walking back to a place where he could take the train back to where he was living, he had this deep impression that came to him in the form of a scripture verse,

Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. And he concluded that since he was already the pastor of a church, rather than interrupt the ministry he had and the weekly preparation of sermons in order to go and get formal education, that he would just continue in the course that he had and not attend that Baptist academy.

So his father had encouraged him to get the education, and his grandfather, but he decided independently as a result of these impressions that he would just continue with his pastoral ministry and give himself to study on his own terms.

But it was true that at that time the centers could not attend and receive degrees from the colleges because they were all specifically designed for Anglicans.

That's amazing that even as recent in history as the 19th century that that was the case.

And so tell us what were the main focuses of Spurgeon in his theology?

We already addressed that he was a thoroughgoing five -point Calvinist, but lay out for us what would be the primary focal points of what he taught and preached.

Spurgeon developed what he called epitomes of doctrine.

One of them I think he actually got from D .L.

Moody. This shows the sort of the Catholicity of spirit that Spurgeon had for people who were doing good work in the preaching of the gospel.

And one of Moody's... And Moody was not Reformed either. What's that? And it shows his

Irenic spirit with the non -Reformed because Moody was not a Calvinist. Right.

And so Moody focused very much on ruin, redemption, and regeneration, the three

R's. And Spurgeon thought that was a very good summary and that anyone who would preach those things could be a sound theologian and a sound evangelist.

He himself said, but there's another epitome that I believe is better, and that is the five points of Calvinism.

And he just listed it, election according to the foreknowledge of God, the natural depravity and sinfulness of man, particular redemption by the blood of Christ, effectual calling by the power of the spirit, and ultimate perseverance by the efforts of God's might.

I think all those need to be believed, he said, in order to salvation.

Now, that last part, he would fluctuate on that. He did believe that the experience must conform to those things.

But he did believe people who were not formally intellectually Calvinist nevertheless could be saved.

But he thought that those were not merely negotiable items in the gospel but actually constituted what the gospel was.

There was also, though, a very strong emphasis, as I've already indicated, that Spurgeon had on seeing everything as arising out of the

Trinity. He believed that fundamental to Christianity was Trinitarian theology and that if anyone became soft on the

Trinity or began to diminish anything about the deity of Christ or reject the reality of the personhood of the spirit and the real operations of the spirit, that this was sub -Christian or anti -Christian theology.

So there was a very strong emphasis he had on the doctrine of the Trinity. And in his sermons, he shows that he does not lack any understanding of what we might call the early

Christological councils and technical Christology and technical

Trinitarianism. But he uses that language and that vocabulary. He talks about the person of Christ as God and man in one person, this complex person who has our nature.

And his personhood is guaranteed by the eternal personhood of Christ. And our nature, the

Son of God took to himself our nature. So he speaks much in terms of the

Orthodox councils concerning the person of Christ. And then concerning the doctrine of the

Trinity, he did the same. He was, there's one section that I read recently where the issue of circumcensio or the participation of all three persons of the

Trinity and everything that is in one sense distinctive of a single person.

For example, the death of Christ is something that Christ alone could do because in his humanity he could die.

But nevertheless, there was in the death of Christ a sustaining power of the Holy Spirit.

And there was the activity of the Father in setting his wrath on Christ with the complete knowledge that this was a part of the eternal covenant of redemption.

In the convicting of sin, the Father was active and the Son was active, but it was most appropriately the work of the

Holy Spirit. And anyway, he would develop these Orthodox, this

Orthodox vocabulary and these Orthodox ideas about the Trinity as something that was absolutely essential for a proper understanding of theology.

So there are several spheres within which Spurgeon operated and where he would expand the implications of believing those ideas and would reason out as to why to reject a particular aspect of it was a theology that could eventually become non -Christian.

So he was quite aware of all the interconnections of the theological, historic theological confessions and was clear in his sermons on these.

He would not go into some of the Latin phrases and some of the discussions that others might, but it's very obvious that he was clear in his own understanding and that he felt that his audience, even those people who lived south of the

Thames there in London, that it would be good for their souls to understand that theology.

Go ahead. I was just going to say, how much, if at all, did

Spurgeon's theology develop or his understanding of biblical theology and teaching?

How much did it develop and change from the time he was a 16 -year -old pastor to the time of his death?

Do we know anything about any radical or even minor changes? Yeah. I have a book called

The Child is the Father of the Man in which I try to take 10 different areas of Spurgeon's life and show how he developed the convictions about those areas very early, some of them even before he was converted, but then very soon after his conversion, how these convictions developed.

What I try to demonstrate in that book is that there was very little change in his understanding.

The only change would be an expansion of understanding, but not a change in the essential commitment to certain doctrinal ideas.

For example, the doctrines of grace. Even just within a week of his conversion, he would be talking about the doctrines of grace and his absolute dependence upon them and that he knows he would not be saved, that if he had not been elected, there was no way in which he could have been saved, that he had not been able to be called.

His heart was so hard that he knows he could not have believed. And he didn't change that all the way through.

Praise God. What's that? I said praise God. Yeah. All the way through, those doctrines were precious to him and he never changed.

His understanding of the infallibility of Scripture. He had a very sophisticated understanding of the doctrine of inspiration and our dependence upon divine revelation for our knowledge of all of these things related to God and the eternal covenant of redemption and so forth.

And so from the very first day, he was vowed that he would never do anything that would indicate any doubt of the full truthfulness of Scripture and its inspiration.

And he maintained that throughout. And so when you come to the downgrade controversy, this is one of the main things that was a point of contention was the rejection of the doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture.

And he still is saying many of the same things that he had said earlier. His expansion of an understanding of the importance is there because now he sees that it is being challenged and he sees what happens in the churches when people forget the infallibility of Scripture and that they are dependent upon God's revealed truth for their knowledge of God and their knowledge of the gospel.

Now, you said that he maintained the doctrines of grace from an early age, even very shortly after his conversion was clearly spelling out the fact that he owes his salvation to the fact that he was unconditionally elected and so on.

Has it known whether or not he ever returned to the primitive Methodist church where he was saved as a teenager and tried to share with them the doctrines of Reformed theology since obviously primitive

Methodists were not at all Calvinist? You know, he did return to the church shortly after his conversion.

And the sermon there had a completely different effect on him. The first sermon that he heard from the layman when he told him to look to Christ, he says, you know, look to me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth.

And he said, this is Jesus talking. He says, it's not the Father that's saying look to me and be ye saved or the

Spirit. He said, you can learn those things later but this is the bleeding Son of God. He says, look to me,

I'm dying on the cross. Look to me, I'm buried. Look to me, I'm being raised. Look to me, I'm intercession. Look to me and be ye saved.

And Spurgeon says, and I looked and I was saved. Then he says he went back and he heard another sermon and he concluded that primitive

Methodist doctrine was good for pointing to Christ in conversion but was good for little after that.

So yeah, he did go back but I don't think he ever went back to try to instruct them. He went back to hear and concluded that God sovereignly had used that message to bring him to see that everything depended upon the work of Christ.

But then when he heard another sermon there, I think he might have heard of something from falling from grace and warnings about losing your faith and things like that.

He just knew that that was not consistent with how

God operated. So he said that Methodist doctrine was good for his conversion but good for little else.

We're going to return and I want you to pick up again on the downgrade controversy since it was such a major phenomenon going on in Spurgeon's, during Spurgeon's ministry.

Something that led him to Great Depression and so on. And we'll have you pick up on that so our listeners have more of an understanding of exactly what that was.

But if anybody wants to send in a question to Dr. Nettles our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com As always, give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away we'll be right back with Dr.

Thomas Nettles on the theme Charles Haddon Spurgeon the theologian right after these messages from our sponsors

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Always give us your first name at least city and state of residence and country of residence. The downgrade controversy is something that was occurring during Spurgeon's ministry and the cause of great grief to him and the catalyst to deep depression in his mind and in his spirit.

If you could let our listeners know more details about this horrible de -evolution of theology that was prevalent in Spurgeon's day.

This is a pretty traumatic event for Spurgeon through the 1880's he was recognizing that modernism was beginning to creep into evangelicalism he observed first of all as it affected the

Andover theology in America how it was changing the doctrine of sin, total depravity of justification by faith of substitutionary atonement these views more and more were seen as immoral anything that related to imputation was seen as out of accord with modern ethical sensibilities so the doctrines were being altered then he began to trace this within English theology

English evangelical theology also and eventually he saw it coming into the

Baptist Union so in 1887 he published a series of articles one written by a man named

I think Robert Schindler it was that was the first one called A Word on the

Downgrade and he discussed how suddenly these false theologies begin to come into evangelicals and he located the first fault line was a rejection of the inerrancy of scripture he talked about how once that is rejected you lose the authority of the

Bible being a revelation something that is simply a work of sort of human theological thinking.

Then you develop cafeteria Christianity where people just pick and choose what they believe is God breathed and reject everything else.

Exactly, yeah, and so it doesn't matter if the scripture speaks very specifically about substitutionary atonement if we have reached the conclusion ethically that that is not a valid way for salvation to come by imputation then we're free to reject it and that's what he saw happening and so once you lose the infallibility of scripture and the doctrine of a revelation that is a revelation from God all these doctrines as you said become negotiable and you can just take what you want to out of the modern consensus of what is right and wrong and Spurgeon recognized that and he published that article and began to get criticism so then he began to publish articles also in which he affirmed what

Schindler had said that there was a downgrade Spurgeon did not give any names he was aware of this because the

Secretary of the Baptist Union S .H. Booth had shared letters with him and shared snippets of sermons with him that had been published but S .H.

Booth asked him not to sort of go public with the names of these people Spurgeon kept his word to Booth but Booth didn't come to his aid when he began to be accused of being a divider of affections among his brethren and so by October he began to see that he was on the losing end of this from the standpoint of making any progress in the

Baptist Union itself and he resigned from the Baptist Union churches and pastors had individual memberships in the

Baptist Union so he resigned his membership as pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

Eventually the church followed suit under the leadership of its deacons and resigned from the

Baptist Union Now how prevalent was the downgrade outside of the

Baptist Union in the 19th century when Spurgeon was back? Yeah well it was present in the

Congregationalists and the Presbyterians. Presbyterians had even earlier and they had just fallen away.

Anyway there was very little Orthodox and English Presbyterianism throughout the 19th century.

It had fallen off into Smithsonianism Congregationalism of course which has the background of people like John Owen had maintained their

Orthodoxy for a while longer but they too were falling away and the

Baptists had maintained their Orthodoxy longer than either the Presbyterians or the

Congregationalists but Baptists had two different groups they had a group that was known as the

Particular Baptists that were Calvinistic Baptists and then they had the General Baptists that were organized into a specific connection and among the

General Baptists this decline began to become much earlier than it did among the

Particular Baptists in fact as early as the last part of the 18th century the the

General Baptists had divided into an old connection and a new connection and Dan Taylor a

General Baptist preacher was instrumental in establishing what was called the

New Connection of General Baptists which maintained its Orthodoxy on the person of Christ on Atonement and so forth but of course it was still

Arminian and then the New Connection of General Baptists began to decline also and by the middle of the 19th century there were overtures for a unity between the

General Baptists and the Particular Baptists and Spurgeon was hesitant about that not only because of the

Calvinistic impact or the Arminian impact that the General Baptists would have but because he saw a decline coming into the

General Baptist connections but then more formal overtures began to be made in the last part of the 1880s and eventually in 1891 there was a union between the

General Baptists and the Particular Baptists and all those divisions of nomenclature were abolished but Spurgeon had resigned from the

Baptist Union four years before that in 1887 so there was decline generally it came to the

Particular Baptists later but it was a noticeable decline in the preaching of many of the prominent pulpits among the

Particular Baptists Now how is this reflected in America at the time was the

Baptist congregations in general and Presbyterians and other evangelical denominations as badly affected at that time as was

England well part of the argument of these articles that appeared to sort of trowel were that this tendency toward liberalism had begun among the

Congregationalists at Andover but then gradually it was making its way into others so we know in the

Baptists we see a person like William Newton Clark who taught at Colgate was the first person that wrote a systematic theology from a liberal standpoint it was not as radically liberal as happened later but nevertheless it was written from a liberal standpoint that denied the inerrancy of scripture that had questions about substitutionary atonement, about total depravity, about it had some pretty wonky views of the doctrine of the

Trinity and placed most of the genius of Christianity in the experience that one could have of God as Father and this is the main value of Christ that he had an unbroken perception of God as Father and when we have faith in Christ and we follow

Christ this means that we adopt his view of God as our Father the

Christian religion is not a religion about Christ but it is Christ's religion so that is what began to happen in Baptist life in the last part of the 19th century and this was concurrent with what was happening in the 1880s in England among the

Baptists so there was a parallel movement and then of course in Baptist life you have, this is followed up not only with William Newton Clark but you have

Shaylor Matthews and Harry Emerson Fosdick and you have many others that come and this leads to the conservative fundamentalist controversy that goes into the 20th century so this was a general phenomenon throughout evangelicalism and we have to get to our midway break right now please be patient with us folks because as you know if you listen regularly the midway break is longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City Florida requires of us a longer break in the show because they use this time which is required by the

FCC to localize geographically Grace Life Radio to Lake City Florida.

We simultaneously while they do that are globally heard commercials so please use this time wisely write down as much of the information as you can provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully reply or respond to our advertisers.

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Oh sure, absolutely there's excellent books that are published by Solid Ground and some books that you can't find anywhere else

Michael searches out these different books and finds them and publishes them just because of their edifying value

In fact, there was one book he published that is, I think by Thomas Moore, it has to do with counsel.

Oh yeah, that's an excellent find because he had never heard of that Thomas Moore, there are several

Thomas Moores from history, we can assure you folks that it is not the Roman Catholic martyr. Nope.

But it is not the one affiliated with Moore College in Australia either, but a very excellent book.

Right, and what happened was, I was reading through all of the minutes of those people that Spurgeon had as counselors, for those who would respond, wanting to be converted, wanting to be baptized, wanting to become members of the church, you had a group of counselors that would work, and one of them was named

Thomas Moore, and I read through all of these things and all of a sudden I realized that this is the

Thomas Moore who wrote that book, and I called Michael and talked to him about it, and so the

Thomas Moore who wrote that book was a person that was a member of Spurgeon's congregation and was actually a person that was responsible for giving advice and giving counsel to those who had responded to evangelistic appeals from the church or from witnesses within the church.

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I need a church in the subject line. That also is the email address where I would like you to send in questions for Dr.

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Please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Dr. Nettles, I don't know if you have completed what you wanted to say about the downgrade controversy, but you can add anything that you'd like, but I also wanted to ask about those within the professed body of Christ that were cause of much grief dispersion on the other end of the spectrum.

Hyper -Calvinists were known for their attacks upon him. I believe if I'm not mistaken, it was largely from the denomination that still exists, although I think it's been greatly reduced in membership numbers, but the strict

Baptists as they were called were, and I believe are,

Hyper -Calvinists. There are two groups. There are some strict Baptists that are

Hyper -Calvinists, but the strict Baptists are not confessionally Hyper -Calvinists.

Their view is strict communion. They're very strong on closed communion. The group that are confessionally

Hyper -Calvinists are called Gospel Standard Baptists. They followed William Gadsby's paper that he published called the

Gospel Standard, and it was a clear anti -Fullerite view, an anti -beauty faith paper.

Is he also the one that developed the great hymnal, though? Yes, yes, the wonderful hymnal.

William Gadsby's got a wonderful hymnal, and I have an anecdote that one of his great hymns was,

Oh, what matchless condescension the eternal God displayed, claiming our supreme attention to his matchless words and ways, his own glory he reveals in gospel days.

And then he's got a line in there that has sinners trust him, sinners trust him, and rejoice in his dear name.

No, worms. Worms approach him. Worms approach him and rejoice in his dear name.

I led a sort of a prayer chapel up in Trinity when

I was there, and I had the congregation sing that Gadsby hymn of Oh, what matchless condescension.

And there is a very outspoken but godly evangelical Arminian on the faculty there named

David Larson, who has written two or three books on preaching. Very, very fine preacher.

And so after the service, David was coming down the aisle singing, Worms approach him.

Worms approach him and rejoice in his dear name. And so he said,

We need to sing that more, brother. He said, That's what we've got to do as worms approach the throne of grace.

And I would smile. I said, You know, this is a unique moment. I said, Here we are. I have an

Arminian coming down the aisle singing the hymn of a hypercalifragilisticexpialidocious. So it just shows that when there is that biblically informed experientialism that sort of oozes out as we worship the

Savior, there are things that we have in common with each other that formally we may not actually be able to say.

Yeah, like, it just flew out of my head. It wasn't John Stott.

It was the other late British Anglican.

J .F. Packer? J .F. Packer, right. And in spite of any serious differences I had with him on ecumenism, he was right on the money so many times.

And one of them was when he said that even Arminians are Calvinists on their knees.

So he was referring to prayer. Right, right, yeah. And of course everyone looks at the great hymn of Charles Wesley.

Long mine prison spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray.

I woke the dungeon flame with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

And of course Calvinists can sing that as effectual calling just as easily as a

Wesleyan can sing it as prevenient grace. Just wonderful words. So there are those points of connection that we don't need to minimize.

We need to make sure that we maintain those without any kind of confusing of our formal doctrine.

Now if you could distinguish between historic, biblically faithful Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism,

I know that some of my audience may be rolling their eyes because I say this so often, but it needs to be pointed out because so many people slander biblically faithful historic

Calvinists as being hyper -Calvinists just because we believe in the five points of Calvinism. And that is not the historic definition of hyper -Calvinism.

So if you could explain what that is and how Spurgeon dealt with it and what kind of an impact did it have this antagonism against him by hyper -Calvinists, what kind of an impact if any did it have on his ministry?

Yeah, well, within the first year of Spurgeon's ministry there in London, the hyper -Calvinists began to rail against him because he was having such,

I mean, large crowds were coming to hear him preach and there were people being converted and he was baptizing converts and there was this thinking that he has to be preaching false doctrine for him to be having that much success.

It has to be some sort of manipulative thing that he has going on. And he preached in the first part of, like in the second week of 1855, he preached a message called

The Sin of Unbelief which I think was largely the influence of one of Stephen Charnock's sermons on the sin of unbelief, the greatest of all sins.

There are some points that are very similar, but of course Spurgeon developed it in his own style, in his own way.

But the point was that he was saying that unbelief is a sin and unbelief is the foundation of all sins.

And then he gives this anecdote where someone had come to him and said, I heard a very orthodox preacher preach and he said that unbelief is no sin.

Spurgeon knew what he was talking about. He was talking about the hyper -Calvinists. Hyper -Calvinism has a theology that sees since faith in Christ is the result of a special operation of the

Holy Spirit and effectual calling. And that it is only by such faith as generated by the

Spirit that a person can be rightly related to God. It is something that is purely a matter of grace that transcends the original instructions given to Adam in the garden.

The original instructions given to Adam in the garden were, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Obey and you will live. If you disobey, you will die. There was nothing in that command that indicated that he could be rightly related to God, could have the knowledge of God that would lead to eternal life through faith in a

Redeemer. There was nothing in those original instructions that led Adam to believe that there could be redemption from sin and that it would be faith in the

Redeemer that would give that redemption. Therefore that is something that is over and above the original regulations.

Since it is that, and since it was not a command to be rightly related through faith in a

Redeemer, then it is something that is not a moral command for any person now.

We are justly condemned for our disobedience to the law because the law was originally written on the heart, but we are not condemned for not believing because belief is something that is a work purely of grace which was not even conceived of as possible by Adam in the unfallen state.

Therefore, since it was not an obligation to Adam to relate himself to the

Redeemer by faith, it is not an obligation to any of the sons of Adam.

And so the idea of grace in a substitute, the idea of faith in a substitute, was something that is purely a matter of something that was hidden in the counsels of God from eternity that cannot pose any moral obligation upon sinners.

So, if we preach that faith is necessary and that lack of faith is a sin, we are unbiblical, so says the

Hyper -Calvinist. Now, these Hyper -Calvinists, because I know there are different kinds, you have

Hyper -Calvinists from the Netherlands Reformed denomination, for instance, who have a very tiny gate to heaven smaller than that which would be biblical.

And then you have the Primitive Baptists who have an enormous gate to heaven because they so remove faith from the regeneration experience that they believe that the elect include people who will never come to faith in Christ on this earth.

That is a great number of them do. I don't want to broad brush. There are Primitive Baptists who are biblically solid, who have even had friends of mine preach at their conferences and so on.

does this group that you are referring to, including the Hyper -Calvinist wing of the

Strict Baptist, did they believe that those without faith would be damned? My understanding,

I don't know that I can give an absolute answer to that based on my knowledge of them, but my understanding of the original

Primitive Baptists that were opposing Spurgeon. And of course there was another

Primitive Baptist movement as you pointed out in America that was opposed to the missionary societies that generated after the conversion of Judson and Rice and so forth.

They were anti -mission society Baptists and they sort of degenerated into Hyper -Calvinists.

But this group in England that Spurgeon was dealing with, as far as I understand them, they did believe that it was just for God to condemn all men who were sinners to hell.

That election is not something that would overcome a lack of having heard the gospel or a lack of faith.

But that God would see to it that people believed somehow. But there was a large group of Hyper -Calvinists that believed that they were elect among all the nations and they would be saved simply because God would save them by sovereign grace without necessarily hearing the gospel.

That's the reason I mentioned earlier that one of the things that Spurgeon was so strong on in his

Calvinism was the use of means. This is present from the very beginning.

And the Primitive Baptists called the means doctrine a heresy. They would say that you are by nature of believing in that an

Arminian which is really ironic because many, if not most, of the Primitive Baptists are

Hypo -Calvinists. They're non -Calvinists when it comes to the providence of God in events that happen in history like earthquakes and volcanoes and people dying of cancer because they smoked habitually.

Many of them would say God had nothing to do with those things that killed thousands, if not millions.

You used the term Hypo -Calvinist? I hadn't heard that. That's good. Hypers become

Hypos. As I understand it, that's the way the doctrine developed in the 19th century among the particular

Baptists that became Hyper -Calvinists. John Brine was one of the leaders of this.

I don't think personally that John Gill fits in with fully Hyper -Calvinist.

You are at odds with Ian Murray on that, I know. Of course, it's just one of those things where it doesn't create enmity between people who disagree with that way of reading the sources.

Spurgeon was dealing with a full -blown Hyper -Calvinism. Particularly the leader of the Hyper -Calvinists in London was a man named

James Wells. Spurgeon tried to reach out to him and be friendly with him. Wells got sick one time and was very ill,

I think, and eventually died from it. Spurgeon was very sympathetic to him and wrote him a note, a very encouraging note.

But he understood even as a 21 -year -old, he understood the point of belief that faith was something that they said was not necessary.

It is not a sin not to have faith. And so Spurgeon has got this sermon called, Unbelief of Sin.

And he goes into all, just goes throughout the Bible, showing how that the root of all sin, including

Adam's sin, is a lack of belief. That belief in Adam's unfallen state carries over to, and his unbelief that he was led into by deceit carries over into unbelief in the world.

And he says if unbelief is not a sin, then the whole Bible is a charade because it is all built upon the fact that the root of all sin is unbelief.

And Jesus himself said he would convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment of sin because they believed not on me.

And so he does sort of this biblical theology of belief to demonstrate that it is a sin not to believe.

And so his conflict with the Hyper -Calvinists is something that was based upon an understanding he had of what he considered to be an unbiblical theology at the foundation of Hyper -Calvinism.

But it was not due to any lack of commitment to the five points of Calvinism that he reiterated over and over and over.

We do have a question that's related to this. We have Christian in western

Suffolk County, New York who asked the question. He wrote this question before you began to defend

John Gill. But his question still is appropriate. He asks in your opinion was the predecessor of Charles Haddon and John Gill a

Hyper -Calvinist. It is my understanding but I may be wrong that Spurgeon himself viewed John Gill as a

Hyper -Calvinist. And I was wondering if you would recommend Gill's commentaries and if you defend

Gill if you would recommend Ian Murray's book, Spurgeon vs. Hyper -Calvinism.

Yeah, well, I'm not much on censoring books and I think there's a whole lot in Ian Murray's book that is really good.

Very insightful. Yeah, I love the book. Yeah, he's a great exegete of primary sources.

And I just think that the idea of John Gill being a Hyper -Calvinist is accepted too uncritically on the basis of the testimonies of some early 19th century

Baptist historians like Joseph Avamey for example, just considers that John Gill is not what he calls a non -application, non -invitation system as Hyper -Calvinism.

But there and Kurt Daniel in our day has argued very strongly that John Gill is a

Hyper -Calvinist and he and I have talked about this individually. And I know that there are some tendencies in Gill that could be interpreted as Hyper -Calvinism.

For example, when he deals with Wesley and Wesley talks about offers of grace and Gill says that he doesn't believe that there are any offers of grace.

That God makes no offers of grace, not even to his elect. Because God doesn't offer that which is purely a sovereign and omnipotent action on his part.

There are actions of grace, but no offers of grace. There are the operations of grace, but no offers of grace.

Now, we are to set forth before sinners the necessity of knowing

Christ and having faith in Him. That is something clearly revealed in Scripture and we come to that only by grace.

But that grace is something that is offered as if we can turn off grace or turn on grace by our will is something that Gill rejected.

But in his commentary on the book of Acts Gill talks about maybe in his commentary on John, Andrew going to John and telling him he's found the

Messiah. He says something like, it is the intrinsic propensity of those who have found the

Savior to go and tell others of the delight they have in Him. That doesn't sound like a

Hyper -Calvinist to me. And there are other things where Gill has particular points of Scripture.

For example, when Jesus is saying that oh, come to me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

And I think that one of the Hyper -Calvinists interpreted that as somehow speaking only to those that he knew were elect.

And that this is not a general invitation that is given to all. And Gill makes the point that there were many there who did not believe in Jesus, who were not elect, but that he is simply stating this.

He would not be telling something to people that would increase their damnation if there was no genuine offer of salvation being made to them.

He didn't say a genuine offer of grace, but he says a genuine offer of salvation if they would come to him.

So there are several exegetical points throughout the commentaries of Gill that do not take the normal Hyper -Calvinist interpretation of them.

So, I'm open to be convinced about Gill. I still hold the position.

I don't think that he was a Hyper -Calvinist. I do believe his systematic theology is very helpful in most ways and deals with questions that a lot of systematic theologies did not deal with.

I think that his commentaries are very helpful. His knowledge of the language and especially his knowledge of the

Hebrew literature is so profound that he gives insight that other commentators do not give.

And so, I would say, you know, you can be careful about Gill at certain points, but Spurgeon read

Gill and Spurgeon commended Gill and was not embarrassed to be the successor of Gill.

He did call him a High -Calvinist. What did he mean by that? H -I -G -H. Yeah, well, in fact, he called himself a

High -Calvinist sometimes. Oh, okay. Yeah, High -Calvinism is a very powerful five -point

Calvinism. It's not... High -Calvinism was developed as a stating that basically the doctrine of the

Atonement is a particular Atonement. It is an Atonement that is rendered efficacious for the elect only and is given for efficacious in the death of Christ itself for the elect only.

And so High -Calvinism was given as sort of a...corrected to what some people believed was

Fuller's compromise of the doctrine of the Atonement by arguing very strongly for the formula of sufficient for all but efficient only for the elect.

Now, that doesn't really mean that you deny particular redemption, does it? I mean, because isn't

Christ's death powerful enough to save a billion sinners on a trillion planets?

Well, that's another question. If you read

Andrew Fuller on that, he is very clear that Christ's death will benefit only the elect, and he has a strong view of particular

Atonement, but he does hold that view of sufficient for all. Now, my view is that the

Atonement is efficient only for those for whom it is sufficient. I think that the idea of substitution and propitiation mean that the justice of God was active in the death of Christ to give all due punishment for the sins of those for whom

Christ has died. If Christ has suffered as a propitiation for those who in the end are not actually justified, then there has been, in a sense, an unjust suffering on the part of Christ.

That's just, I believe, the whole idea that the Scripture teaches that there is quantity of punishment that is necessary for sin, for certain types of sin, where Jesus said it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for Bethsaida and Chorazin.

That means that there are differing degrees of punishment, even in hell. So if there are degrees of punishment for different sins, and Christ has died as an effectual substitute and has died a propitiatory death, then he must have died for all the sins of all of those who will be redeemed.

That's just my personal view. I have loved much of what I have heard from Gil's pen and gave it a hearty amen when

I have heard it, and have been wanting to purchase his commentaries. And I know that there are people, even those that view him as a hyper -Calvinist, many of them still view him as the most brilliant Baptist theologian that ever lived and promote his commentaries, his systematic theology, even with what they would view as a flaw.

Do you have a particular set of his commentaries that you recommend? For instance,

I know the Strict Baptists have published his commentaries. I don't know if they add any commentary of their own in those volumes.

No, they don't. The Baptist Standard Bearer is the one that I have. I think it's out of Arkansas. multivolume set, that's the one

I have and use it. I don't notice that they have altered anything in it. They just reprint one of the editions of Gil's commentaries.

So that's what you would recommend then? Yeah. Alright, we have to go to our final break.

It's a lot more brief than the other two. If you have any questions, send them in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com ChrisArnson at gmail .com as always give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

I'm going to read a question from a listener to you and have you answer it when we come back. We have

Andrew in Avon Lake, Ohio. Every time I hear that city and state

Avon Lake, there was an Avon Lake in Amityville, Ohio where I was raised and we used to go fishing in there, although we never ate anything that we caught because it was a toxic swamp.

But Andrew in Avon Lake, Ohio asks, he obviously tuned in late, but even though we've kind of addressed this, perhaps you could add something to it, to your answer.

I've heard some well -known Reformed pastors criticize Charles Spurgeon's theology on the grounds that he did not receive a formal theological education.

Do you think his preaching and writing was deficient because he did not attend seminary? We'll have you answer that when we come back.

Again, our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com Don't go away, we'll be right back with the conclusion of our interview with Tom Nettles on Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the theologian, right after these messages.

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Or visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's linbrookbaptist .org. Dr. Nettles, going back to our listener,

Andrew in Avon Lake, Ohio, do you know of anything that was deficient in Spurgeon's theology because he did not attend seminary?

No, I don't know of anything deficient in his theology. Every time I read him, I know he knows more theology than I do because, and I've got a

PhD from a Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And you are a professor. Yeah, and I've taught for, as you said, 38 years and then even beyond that.

But I find him insightful. I find him stimulating. I find it is amazing the way that he can speak of orthodox doctrines and historical theology within the framework of his preaching.

I think that his ability to convert sophisticated theology into passionate preaching is amazing.

So - And he started a minister's academy, didn't he? Oh, yes. Yeah, he did.

He started at the, prior to the time that Bosch started

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. And by the end of the century, it had graduated both three or four times as many students as Southern had.

So it wasn't that he was against theological education. It just was something that did not suit him at the time.

And he wanted to make sure that it was an education that was clearly focused on the preparing of men for ministry in local churches.

But as I said at the beginning, if you go through his sermons, it is amazing how you could line up just all the pivotal doctrines of systematic theology and confessional theology, all the way from the

Creed of Nicaea up to the Second London Confession, and how all of those doctrines appear and sometimes appear in the very words in which they are present in the confessions themselves.

And so I don't detect any kind of, any kind of lack of Spurgeon's knowledge of theology.

There's no deficiency in what he does. We have

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks, I read the booklet that Chris mentioned earlier called

The Defense of Calvinism by Charles Spurgeon. And in that booklet, he adamantly opposes and rejects the notion that any infant dying in infancy would be in hell.

That seems to be at odds with what most Reformed Baptist churches believe today.

Most would say that they are agnostic on the issue. They don't really know because they don't think the

Bible gives us sufficient information. What is your view on that? And is Spurgeon at odds with the greater part of Reformed history on that?

He seems to be unaware that any great number of true Calvinists believe that.

Yeah, well, the way the questioner has presented Spurgeon's view is certainly accurate.

And I've read him that in sermons several different places. And he believes that the infants dying in infancy were covered by the blood of Christ.

He doesn't reject their depravity. He doesn't reject the fact that they are children of Adam and that they're corrupt in nature and that should

God so will, he could very well have damned all of them. But he seems to receive the statement of the second line of confession that said elect infants dying in infancy are saved by the grace of God, the blood of Christ and so forth.

And the question there is which elect infants dying in infancy are, which infants dying in infancy are elect?

None of them can hear the gospel. None of them can understand the gospel. So it doesn't matter if they're the children of believers or if they're children of pagans.

And Spurgeon just believed that all infants dying in infancy that are elect and they're saved by the provisions that Christ has made.

Now, could you be a little bit clearer? Did he not believe that an infant would not die in infancy unless it was of the elect?

Probably so. And that would be the foundation of his believing that all infants dying in infancy were saved.

I happen to agree with him on that, by the way. What's that? I happen to agree with him on that, by the way.

Yeah, I have to plead my personal position. I have to plead that I'm agnostic on it.

I don't think that we actually can know that personally. I think that it is a just thing for God to condemn all the sons of Adam that we're,

Ephesians 2 says that we're by nature, children of wrath. And so by nature, we deserve wrath.

David said, behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. And so there would be no injustice in God.

Oh, of course. Infants. Oh yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. I'm not like the

Pelagianists who believe that infants were innocent or are innocent. I don't believe that at all.

But I just, it seems to me every reference to someone being cast into hell in the scriptures always describes willful volition of rejecting

Christ's law and so on. Yeah, well, I think that's a strong argument because whenever you do have those descriptions of who's going to hell, it's though it even lists the sins they've committed of which are always violations of the moral law of God or the sin of unbelief, which is foundational.

So I think that is a strong argument. And that's the reason probably

I would say I'm agnostic on it. I would hope that all infants dying in infancy are among the elect.

Now, how can our listeners get ahold of you if they want to ask you further questions? Should they email me and I'll refer them to you or you have a website?

Tell us how our listeners can get in touch with you. Yeah, I don't have a website, but I do have an email address.

And the easiest one would just be the email address I have at my seminary where I'm still considered a senior professor there.

And so it would be tnettles at sbts .edu.

So that's my first initial, my last name, tnettles at, and then it's one of these education addresses that has the initials of the institution, sbts,

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, dot edu. Thank you so much,

Dr. Nettles. In fact, if you could just wait about 30 seconds so I can give you a proper goodbye off the air.

I want to thank you so much for being such a phenomenal guest as you always are. I want to thank everybody who listened.

I want to thank especially those who took the time to write. I apologize to those who could not have their questions asked and answer on the air due to time restraints, but I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.