Monthly Archives: July 2018

The Other 5 Points of Calvinism

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Article by Jeffrey D. Johnson (original source here)

In the year 1610, Jan Uytenbogaert and forty-one other followers of Jacob Arminius crafted a remonstrance (a formal protest) consisting of five articles of opposition to the Belgic Confession and the Reformed faith. These five articles of the of the followers of Arminius, who became known as the Remonstrants, were officially reviewed and condemned by a Dutch National Synod held in Dordrecht in 1618-1619. The Synod produced a confession of its own, the Canons of Dort, where each of Remonstrants’s five articles were countered. And subsequently, the five Canons of Dort have become known as the 5-points of Calvinism.

I for one am deeply thankful for this 400-year-old document. As with Charles Spurgeon, I am an unashamed Calvinist. The five points of Calvinism are important to me, and so many other Reformed Christians, because they prescribe all praise and glory to God by affirming the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation.

Though the 5-points of Calvinism stress the sovereignty of God in salvation, they do not deny human responsibility. Yes, God is sovereign in salvation, but man is also responsible to repent and believe. And, in regards to human responsibility, there are another 5-points to Calvinism. These additional 5-points, dealing with human responsibility, are outlined by Paul in Romans 10:14-17. After explaining the doctrine of unconditional election in Romans 9, Paul, with equal clarity and force, explains man’s responsibility in salvation:

Romans 10:14-17: How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Point 1: It is Our Responsibility to Call on Christ, 14a

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

I once heard of church that had a lot of unconverted people who openly thought that they were among God’s elect. Though they continued to attend church, they were told by the pastor of this church that they could not repent, that they could not believe, and that they could not come to Christ. They were told that the gospel was not a promise given to them as sinners. Thus, they could do nothing but wait and see what God would do. So, there they were—waiting and waiting, with some concluding that they must not have been chosen by God.

This, however, is not Calvinism—at least not the Calvinism represented by the Canons of Dort. The Canons of Dort confirms the Scriptural teaching that all who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Rom. 10:13). The Canons of Dort also confirms that all who hear the gospel are equally responsibility to call out to Christ for salvation. Moreover, the Canons of Dort confirms that sinners will be held accountable for their unbelief:

The fact that many who are called through the ministry of the gospel do not come and are not brought to conversion must not be blamed on the gospel, nor on Christ, who is offered through the gospel, nor on God, who calls them through the gospel and even bestows various gifts on them, but on the people themselves who are called (Act. 3.9).

If you refuse to believe the gospel, you are refusing God’s promise to you.

Point 2: It Is Our Responsibility to Believe on Christ, 14b

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

The Puritan, Joseph Hussey (1660-1726), is considered one of the first Hyper-Calvinists. Hussey denied that it was the responsibility of all sinners to repent and believe the gospel. Moreover, Hussey believed it was even wrong for preachers to command sinners to repent and believe the gospel. According to Hussey, it was wrong to offer hope to all not only because it is impossible for the non-elect to believe, but because God did not extend the promise of the gospel to the non-elect. This type of thinking, in 1835, was sadly codified in the Gospel Standard Confession: “We deny duty faith and duty repentance—these terms signifying that it is every man’s duty to spiritually and savingly repent and believe.”

Yet, this is not the Calvinism of the Canons of Dort. As with the Bible, the Canons of Dort stresses that it is the duty and responsibility of everyone to believe the gospel (John 3:36, John 6:40). As John Owen stated:

We are expressly commanded to believe, and that upon the highest promises and under the greatest penalties. This command is that which makes believing formally a duty. Faith is a grace as it is freely wrought in us by the Holy Spirit, the root of all obedience and duties, as it is radically fixed in the heart. But as it is commanded it is a duty; and these commands, you know, are several ways expressed, by invitations, exhortations, propositions.

In fact, the Canons of Dort places the blame for unbelief not on the gospel, but on the unbeliever: “The cause or blame for this unbelief, as well as for all other sins, is not at all in God, but in humanity” (Art. 1.5). “That many who have been called through the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ but perish in unbelief is not because the sacrifice of Christ offered on the cross is deficient or insufficient, but because they themselves are at fault” (Art. 2.6).

Point 3: It Is Our Responsibility to Listen to Christ, 14c

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?

If a sinner is going to be saved, they must call on Christ. But, to call on Christ, a sinner must believe on Christ. And if a sinner is going to believe on Christ, a sinner must know about Christ. If you are not a believer, then you should run to God’s word (seeing that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God).

Point 4: It Is Our Responsibility to Preach Christ, 14d

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

Though Hyper-Calvinists do not deny that the gospel should be preached to all as a historical and factual reality, they deny the gospel is to preached as a promise to all. Joseph Hussey, for instance, stated: “There are no free offers … anyone who claimed to believe in God’s election and yet offered Christ to all was only a ‘half-hearted Calvinist.’” The Gospel Standard Confession states: “While we believe that the Gospel is to be preached in or proclaimed to all the world, we deny offers of grace; that is to say, that the gospel is to be offered indiscriminately to all (Art. 29).” Even John Gill stated: “That there are universal offers of grace and salvation made to all men, I utterly deny.” And in another place Gill claimed:

How irrational it is, for ministers to stand offering Christ, and salvation by him to man, when, on the one hand, they have neither power nor right to give; and on the other hand, the person they offer to, have neither power nor will to receive. . . . It is not consistent with our ideas of God, that he should send ministers to offer salvation to man, to whom he never intended to give it.

This, thankfully, is not the Calvinism of the Bible or the Calvinism of John Calvin or the Calvinism of the Canons of Dort. The Bible says that the gospel is not only to be preached to all the world, but that God in the gospel promises that everyone who comes to Him in faith shall be saved. Likewise, the Canons of Dort confesses:

It is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people (Art. 2.5).

John Calvin himself claimed: “The gospel invites all to partake of salvation without any difference.” And in another place, he said: “It is certain that all those to whom the Gospel is preached are invited to a hope of enteral life.” Loraine Boettner summarized this well when he stated:

The Gospel is, nevertheless, to be offered to all men, with the assurance that it is exactly adapted to the needs of all men, and that God has decreed that all who place their faith in Christ shall be saved by Him. No man is lost because of any deficiency in the objective atonement, or because God has placed any barrier in His way, but only because of subjective difficulties, specifically, because his own evil disposition and his freely exercised wicked will prevent his believing and accepting that atonement. God’s attitude is perhaps best summed up in the parable of the marriage feast and the slighted invitations, where the king sends this message to the invited guests, “I have made ready my dinner; my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come to the marriage feast.” Continue reading →

7 Charismatic Deceptions

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7 CHARISMATIC DECEPTIONS

1. Charismatics proclaim a two tiered Christianity – those with and those without the Spirit
2. Charismatics listen for disembodied voices apart from Scripture
3. Charismatics preach about what these disembodied voices tell them, apart from Scripture
4. Charismatic experience has supremacy over Scripture
5. The Charismatic’s (subjective) feelings is the gauge by which (objective) Scripture is interpreted
6. Unity is based on shared experiences rather than true doctrine about God and the true Gospel
7. Charismatics embrace flagrant heretics as brothers and sisters at the expense of the true God and the true Gospel

A Word Or Two About The Trinity

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Dr. J. I. Packer

Transcript from a portion of a message by Dr. J.I. Packer “What is the Creed and why is it Important?:

…a word or two about the Trinity. Yes, the Trinity is part of a heritage of Christian understanding that all Christendom has received ever since the fourth century but it has always proved a problem to teach. In fact and I say, straight away, that there isn’t a good way of teaching it because it’s a reality for which there is no parallel. And realities for which there is no parallel are very difficult to express in words and equally, difficult to illustrate.

We’re used, I suppose, to the Sunday school illustrations. A teacher will tell the class, “Well, the Trinity is like water. It has three forms: liquid, steam, and ice.” And then there’s another illustration which was very widely used in England, I don’t know whether it’s still widely used over here. But, again, this is Sunday school stuff. You know how the clover leaf is. There are three little clover leaves as it were bound together by a single stalk, that’s how God is. One cloverleaf, three clover leaves, three in one.

You can see, I’m sure, what’s wrong with both of those illustrations. Neither of them makes the point that here we are talking about three persons. Each of them depersonalizes God in a way which really means, I think, that the kids in Sunday school lose more than they gain by being presented with that illustration. It encourages them to think of God as a thing rather than as three persons to each of whom one should be relating.

When I have to teach the Trinity, I offer a couple of different illustrations which try to do justice to the thought that there are three persons here. One of them is the illustration of a family. Now I know that three persons related in a family, whoever they are, are three distinct persons and not, in any sense, one person but they are one family. So, think of the three persons as related in the unchanging way that folk are related in a family. A father is always father in relation to sons and daughters. There’s a pattern there which doesn’t change and so it goes on with other family relationships. The relationship remains the same and that’s what I’m trying to illustrate by using that illustration which a number of theologians these days are working with because they think it’s the best illustration that’s available to us.

My other illustration is purely Packer and may simply be second rate, I’m not sure but, think in terms of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as a team – a team in the same sense that in hockey or in soccer. The 11 players form a team.

Now, how do you define a team. Well, each player is related to 10 others in a way which remains the same whatever is going on in the game. The goalkeeper is always a goalie and the forwards and the backs, they’re related to each other and they are supposed to mark each other and keep together in a pattern. Whatever is happening in the game as the ball goes up and down or the puck if it’s hockey that you’re thinking of. And in the way in the revelation of God that you have in the New Testament, well the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are always are related to each other in the same way. That, I believe, is the best concept to work with when we are thinking about God and the way that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are working for the fulfillment of the Father’s plan.

The Father always does what he does through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus, our divine Savior, always does what He does on the one hand in obedience to the Father’s direction. He made it very plain when he was on earth that everything that He said and did was in obedience to the Father’s direction. And at the same time, now that he is gone from this world, He works through the Holy Spirit doing everything that he does in our human lives.

So, there you have a constant relational pattern and you identify each of the three persons by stating how He, let’s say He for the moment because God is genderless. Everything that’s involved in masculinity and femininity is involved in God’s being, but God isn’t one as distinct from the other. No, but everything, as I say, God does in this world is done by this three-fold pattern of action, which is a pattern of togetherness, as you can see, and explains what is meant by talking about one God. To my mind, this is the most helpful of the illustrations that is available. If you don’t agree, never mind. It’s only a Packer illustration and I’ve never heard it used by anyone else.

But anyway, what we can agree on even if we don’t attach much weight to any of the illustrations, is that here you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons, who yet are one God.

There is at least one Scripture that makes this perfectly explicit with no room for doubt. It’s Jesus’ words recorded right at the end of Matthew’s gospel when He’s giving the church, well, the apostles and through the apostles, the church, their marching orders, which is of course our marching orders – make disciples of all the nations baptizing them, he says, in the name.

Now, name is singular, not in the ‘names’ but in ‘the name.’ So this is one name. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, three persons, one name. That’s the foundational scripture, as I say of all the scriptures that refer to the three persons together. It seems to me that the clearest and solidest in the sense of being foundational, that’s the Lord’s directive. Every disciple is to be baptized and baptized in that three-fold or trio name. So, there we have the Trinity.