Last time
we extracted 2 sections of Dr Owen’s work on the Holy Spirit. The first was a
statement of the stance before God of the unregenerate, which he used I
Corinthians 2 to make clear the second of how those called to preach and others to the regenerate. It is this that attracted me first. Dr Owen is
clearly a Calvinist, or Augustinian – the entirety of volume 3 makes this
clear, but his opening of the section 2 (p.295) make clear his opposition to any
form of hyper – Calvinism.)See 'John Owen , the Preacher'.
24 Gospel Invitations We believe that the invitations of the Gospel, being spirit and life*, are intended only for those who have been made by the blessed Spirit to feel their lost state as sinners and their need of Christ as their Saviour, and to repent of and forsake their sins.
26 Duty Faith and Duty Repentance Denied. We deny duty faith and duty repentance – these terms signifying that it is every man’s duty to spiritually and savingly repent and believe1. We deny also that there is any capability in man by nature to any spiritual good whatever. So that we reject the doctrine that men in a state of nature should be exhorted to believe in or turn to God2.
29 Indiscriminate Offers of Grace Denied
While we believe that the Gospel is to be preached in or
proclaimed to all the world, as in Mark 16. 15, we deny offers of grace; that
is to say, that the gospel is to be offered indiscriminately to all.
32 Preaching of the gospel.
We believe that it would be unsafe, from the brief records we have of the way in which the apostles, under the immediate direction of the Lord, addressed their hearers in certain special cases and circumstances, to derive absolute and universal rules for ministerial addresses in the present day under widely- different circumstances. And we further believe that an assumption that others have been inspired as the apostles were has led to the grossest errors amongst both Romanists and professed Protestants.
Such articles encourage passivity
Hyper-Calvinism developed in the latter part of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century, a time when the Protestant Christians were granted freedom of worship in the 1689? The Calvinists were mainly either Presbyterians or Congregational and Baptist. There were ‘Calvinists’ within them all. They were resistant to whose ministry included were invitations to. Christ. For ‘Calvinists’ such gospel invitations ‘upset’ their understanding of God’s eternal will. Not only election and predestination, added to the godhead itself and Christ’s eternal divinity particularly the work of Goodwin Using. Answer: Christ’s eternal will would keep this the divine eternal will was intact. So the unconverted were directed to one or other of this eternal will of God.
Peter Toon’s small book on Hyper
-Calvinism (Olive Tree, 1967) surprisingly remains a worthwhile account of
these developments, with accounts of individuals and their writings,
particularly Chapter `VI with its accounts of Richard Davis, John Brine and
John Gill, and the following chapter on God’s eternal decrees and covenants,
supplementing by John Skepp and Joseph Hussey. These were days of shiftings between views. The internal acts of
God 108 his immutability and covenants. Early reference 74 & 76. Thomas Goodwin
76-77, who was prominent in discussion on eternal justification
Toon has the following paragraphs
First, we may note that after the Restoration in 1660
orthodox Calvinism became, as it were, a cause under siege.The majority of Puritans
who were orthodox left the Church of England in 1662 to become conform
Nonconformists. Thus the religious leadership of the nation was lodged in the
hands of men who were either Arminian or moderately Calvinistic in theology.
The ejected ministers, being Nonconformists, were placed under harsh and cruel restrictions until 1688 and
this severely curtailed their influence
upon the religious thought of the
nation. As the older men died their
places were taken by younger men who had been educated under liberalising
influences in Holland and so a Moderated Calvinism gradually became popular,
especially amongst the Presbyterian
Dissenters. As the years passed by High Calvinism became more and more the
sole preserve of the Independents and
the particular Baptists. The Antinomian
controversy of the 1690s served to widen the gap between High Calvinism
and Moderated Calvinism, and as the eighteenth century passed by, High
Calvinism became in the main, the faith of the poorly-educated Independents and
Baptists.
These men who clung
to the doctrine of High Calvinism saw themselves as a group preserved by God in
an apostate age to defend “the faith
once delivered to the saints”. Their time was taken up by the defence of their
faith and it was in this atmosphere of
course under siege that
Hyper-Calvinism was born and nurtured. (146-7)
This is a plausible picture, such as was being written by John
Owen at that time, as that the High
Calvinism became ‘eternalised’, into Hyper-Calvinism, to protect the saints
against Arminianism] Let Toon put it in more detail again: often made no
distinction between
It was a system of
doctrines of God, of man and grace, which was framed to exalt the honour and
glory of God and did so at the expense
of minimising the moral and spiritual responsibility of glory of sinners
to God. It placed excessive emphasis on
the immanent acts of God, - eternal
justification, eternal adoption and the
eternal covenant of grace. (144)
In practice this meant that “Christ and Him crucified”, the
central message of the apostles, was obscured.
Let us finally get a closer statement of Hyper Calvinism.
The hyper Calvinist
Baptists.
Calvinist Baptists, Protestants,
confess justification but not justification by faith. But in Romans 4
justification is by faith, believing God, see the verses in Romans 4, verses 3, 5 (twice), 9,11,12, 16,
18, 19, 20, 22, 24 which continues through chapter 5.
In Owen’s volume on justification (in volume V of his Works ed. W.H. Goold, written in 1677
the full title was ‘The Doctrine of
Justification by Faith through the
Imputation of the Righteousness, of Christ; Explained, Confirmed, and
Vindicated’. Despite its thoroughness of the treatment, the phrase of ‘eternal justification’
is utterly absent. Owen is a notable Protestant, showing to be a High Calvinist.
Owen is cited when replied to `Mr Baxter, who charged him with holding eternal
justification: I neither am, nor ever was of that judgment; though as it may be
explained `I know better, wiser, and more learned men than myself…..’’(Gill. Bk.II Ch.V, 208) It is difficult if we say that ‘internal and
immanent acts’, that is, acts of the same eternality of God as his existence
and essence, it becomes difficult to stop oneself being persuaded that God’s
eternality embraces everything. God’s eternality is one thing, events in time
another.
Nonetheless, Gill has a long discussion in support of eternal justification in his Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity. (published in 1769-1770) He claims that ‘Faith is not the cause but an effect of justification’. Calvin used the expression ‘instrumental cause by faith. faith’. In 200, To dominate discussion with internal and immanent acts of God taken up in the mind of God from eternity, and which abide in his will: in which they have their complete esse, or being as eternal election has, being of the same kind and nature (Eph. 1 4-6). Gill continues ‘It is an act that does not first take place in time, or as sat believing – 1. Faith is not the cause of it in any sense; it is the moving cause, that is the free grace of God. But then how are we to understand growth in grace, and the adorning of graces, as the product of the Spirit not in eternity, but in time.There is little of the mysteriousness of the eternal God and his moment-by-moment creation. Little of Paul' ''Oh! the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchaBle are hisjudgments and how inscrutable ways! (Rom.10.33. There is a touch of rationalism in John Gill, I'm afraid.
So, eternal justification
is the mark of Hyper-Calvinism.
