Well Meant Hypocrisy – More Observations on the Free Offer

The so-called Well Meant Offer of the Gospel (WMO) has been a major point of contention in Reformed circles for decades. For those who might be unfamiliar, the divide this issue has caused among those calling themselves “Calvinists,” at least of the Presbyterian variety, is in large part the residual of the Clark/Van Til controversy that was settled, oddly enough in Clark’s favor, more than 50 years ago.  What is odd is that even though the complainants aligned against Clark were reprimanded for their unwarranted attack, those behind the attack, Cornelius Van Til, John Murray, Ned Stonehouse, and the rest of the faculty of Westminister Seminary continued their fight against Clark, only this time turning their guns on Clark’s defenders. Even today their many followers remain unrepentant and continue to attack those who side with Clark on this issue as “hyper-Calvinists,” “rationalists,” or worse.

So what’s at stake?  In my view it comes down to the coherence of Scripture.  Do the Scriptures present to the mind a logical system, or what the writers of the Westminister Confession call a  “consent of the parts”?  Or, do the Scriptures consist of disjointed, conflicting, competing, and even contradictory “truths”?  Like a lot of  new Calvinists, when I first started to struggle with the problem of predestination and God’s sovereign control over all things, particularly the means of salvation, it was important for me to understand how the pieces fit. As a typical card carrying Arminian, the idea of man’s inherent free will in salvation had been a self-evident truth if there ever was one.  Like most who have been indoctrinated into the Arminian system, when I was confronted by the faith of the Reformers I could see that what they believed, and the so-called  “Protestantism” I had been taught, were two mutually exclusive religions. Critical in my conversion and repentance was coming to grips with the so-called “Arminian” verses of Scripture; verses like 1 Timothy 2:4,  2 Peter 3:9,  Matthew 23:37, Ezekiel 33:11. What I found, and not surprisingly, was that my original understanding of these verses were paper thin, out of context, and could easily be interpreted to conform completely and in perfect harmony with the doctrines of grace and God’s sovereignty in salvation. More importantly, this discovery occurred simultaneously with my discovery of the Westminister Confession of Faith.

For the first time since accepting Christ and being called out of complete darkness at the age of  18 or 19 (I don’t remember the exact date) and then wandering around the wasteland of modern Evangelicalism for more than a decade, here in the Confession was a Biblically sound method for interpreting the Scripture. I learned that not only does Scripture interpret Scripture, but those things logically deduced from Scripture are Scripture too.  Further, all things taught in Scripture and those things necessarily deduced from them present to the mind a “consent of the parts.” Or to put it another way, Christianity is a rational system and the truth of the Christian system is evidenced by the logical harmony of propositions.  This was my introduction to the old Puritan idea of “the analogy of faith” (not to be confused with Van Til’s errant idea of analogy).  Interpreting Scripture was no longer the biblical equivalent of throwing Rune Stones where we are to glean whatever meaning we might choose in order to fit our own preconceived notions and presuppositions. Rather, the meaning of Scripture “is one and not manifold” and any interpretation must be understood in relation to all of Scripture. That means there can only be one correct interpretation and it must be in harmony with the rest of Scripture.

In my naivety, I thought that all those holding to the Confession and the Reformed faith must agree. Was I wrong.  It wasn’t long before I realized that most of those calling themselves “Reformed” gave the Confessional view of Scripture nothing more than lip service and instead embraced the idea that the Scriptures contain insoluble paradoxes which are nothing more than contradictions at least for the human existent. Rather than harmony in all that God has revealed in Scripture, these men actively advanced the theory that Scripture confronts the mind with antinomies, apparent contradictions, and paradoxes, believing that embracing these exegetical  “points of tension” is a sign of Christian maturity, even piety.

Now, the first thing to stress is that the fight over the Well Meant, Free, or Sincere Offer of the Gospel is that it has nothing to do with the universal and indiscriminate proclamation of the Gospel to all without distinction. What it does have to do with is question of whether or not God desires the salvation of the reprobate; i.e., those sinners God has willfully chose to pass over and who are foreordained to perdition.  In his book, The Clark-Van Til Controversy, Herman Hoeksema put the problem his way:

We may limit the controversy to this question: What must the preacher of the Gospel say of God’s intention with respect to the reprobate…? The answer to this question defines the differences between Dr. Clark and the complainants sharply and precisely.

The complainants answers: The preacher must say that God sincerely seeks the salvation of the reprobate through the preaching of the Gospel.

Dr. Clark answers: That is not true; the preacher may never say that in the name of God. And, in light of Scripture, he should say: God seeks his own glory and justification in preparing the reprobate for their just damnation even through the preaching of the Gospel.

Those Reformed men who side with Van Til, Murray and the other complainants and who say “yes” to the question, does God desire the salvation of the reprobate through the preaching of the Gospel, are in the sticky position of advancing a contradiction where God is said to desire “the fulfillment of something which he had…not decreed to come to come to pass” (John Murray, “The Free Offer of the Gospel”).  Murray in his defense of the Free Offer recognized the sizable knot this position entails:

It must be admitted that if the expression were intended to apply to the decretive will of God then there would be, at least, implicit contradiction. For to say that God desires the salvation of the reprobate and also that God wills the damnation of the reprobate and apply the former to the same thing as the latter, namely, the decretive will, would be contradiction; it would amount to averring of the same thing, viewed from the same aspect, God wills and God does not will.

But how can we know what God desires except by what He says He will do and actually does?  Didn’t Job say; “But He is unique and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, that He does.” Not according to Murray.  The way he attempts to get around this impasse is by attempting to infer God’s desire for the salvation of the reprobate not from God’s “decretive will,” that is, not from what God says He will do and actually does, but rather from His “preceptive will” or His commands which tell us what we ought to do.  Murray writes, “in the free offer there is expressed not simply the bare preceptive will of God but the disposition of lovingkindness on the part of God pointing to the salvation to be gained through compliance with the overtures of gospel grace.” Well, how did Murray arrive at this conclusion?  Murray asserts a “disposition of lovingkindess” toward all those who hear the Gospel by claiming to have inferred it from Biblical precepts.  However, instead of solving the dilemma, Murray attempts to do what simply cannot be done. As Matthew Winzer points out in his excellent review of Murray’s piece, “Free Offer of the Gospel”:

This distinction between a decretive and a revealed (or preceptive) will of God is both sound and necessary, and one to which all orthodox Calvinistic divines have had recourse….  Such a distinction must never be understood as implying that God has two wills. For it is clear from the above definition that the word will is being used in two different senses, i.e., equivocally, having two distinct points of reference.

It is only the will of decree which is the will of God in the proper sense of the term, as an act of volition, for therein God has decreed what shall be done….

The will of precept has no volitional content, for it simply states what God has commanded ought  to be done by man. Whether man wills to do it is absolutely dependent upon whether God has decreed that he shall do it. So it is quite inappropriate to say that God wills something to be with reference to His will of command, for the preceptive will never pertains to the futurition  of actions, only to the obligation of them.

More to the point, Godwell Andrew Chan citing Luther in a slightly different context demonstrates that Murray’s elementary logical blunder isn’t by any means a new one:

Luther replied: “‘If thou art willing’ is a verb in the subjunctive mood, which asserts nothing. As the logicians say, a conditional statement asserts nothing indicatively.” On imperatives, Luther said that “by the Law (commands), God brings us to a knowledge of our impotence, if we are his elect; or else, if we are his proud enemies, he taunts and mocks us by his Law [compare Romans 3:20, 5:20, Galatians 3:19, 24].. Even grammarians and schoolboys at street corners know that nothing is signified by verbs in the imperative mood than what ought to be done, and that what is done or can be done should be expressed by verbs in the indicative. How is it that you theologians are twice as stupid as schoolboys, in that as soon as you get hold of a simple imperative verb you infer an indicative meaning . . . ?” Luther’s biting condemnation applies to all theologians today who commit the same logical blunders.

Yet, in spite of such clear and unambiguous warnings, Murray along with the many who follow him, lumber on in their illogic libeling and slandering good Christian men as “rationalists” or “hyper-Calvinists” for failing to follow them in their error. Aside from Murray’s illogic and being “twice as stupid” as a schoolboy for attempting to infer something in the indicative from something written in the imperative, his exegesis of critical passages is at least as bad and are a major concession to Arminianism. He first tries to buttress, or, better, wrap his lapse in logic by misapplying and misinterpreting  Ezekiel 33:11. Murray writes:

In other words, the gospel is not simply an offer or invitation but also implies that God delights that those to whom the offer comes would enjoy what is offered in all its fullness. And the word “desire” has been used in order to express the thought epitomized in Ezekiel 33:11, which is to the effect that God has pleasure that the wicked turn from his evil way and live.

And, a little later he adds:

It is not to be forgotten that when it is said that God absolutely and universally takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, we are not here speaking of God’s decretive will. In terms of his decretive will it must be said that God absolutely decrees the eternal death of some wicked and, in that sense, is absolutely pleased so to decree.

According to Murray, God is pleased to decree the eternal death of some, while at the same time desiring their salvation. This is absurd and simply asserting that the former is an expression of God’s “decretive will,” whereas the latter is only true of His “preceptive will,” accomplishes nothing. If God’s pleasure is an expression of His desire (I have no idea what else it could possibly entail) then Murray is right back affirming that God desires and does not desire the same thing, which is the salvation of the reprobate. In contrast to Murray, Calvin writes in his Institutes concerning this verse:

But our opponents are in the habit of quoting in opposition a few Scripture passages in which God seems to deny that the wicked perish by his ordination, except in so far as by their clamorous protests they of their own accord bring death upon themselves. Let us therefore briefly explain these passages and prove that they do not conflict with the foregoing opinion.

A passage of Ezekiel’s is brought forward, that “God does not will the death of the wicked but wills that the wicked turn back and live” [Ezekiel 33:11 p.].  If it pleases God to extend this to the whole human race, why does he not encourage to repentance the very many whose minds are more amenable to obedience than the minds of those who grow harder and harder at his daily invitations? Among the people of Nineveh [cf.Matthew 12:41] and of Sodom, as Christ testifies, the preaching of the gospel and miracles would have accomplished more than in Judea [Matthew 11:23]. If God wills that all be saved, how does it come to pass that he does not open the door of repentance to the miserable men who would be better prepared to receive grace? Hence we may see that this passage is violently twisted if the will of God, mentioned by the prophet, is opposed to His eternal plan, by which He has distinguished the elect from the reprobate.

Now if we are seeking the prophet’s true meaning, it is that he would bring the hope of pardon to the penitent only. The gist of it is that God is without doubt ready to forgive, as soon as the sinner is converted. Therefore, in so far as God wills the sinner’s repentance, he does not will his death. But experience teaches that God wills the repentance of those whom he invites to himself, in such a way that he does not touch the hearts of all. Yet it is not on that account to be said that he acts deceitfully, for even though only his outward call renders inexcusable those who hear it and do not obey, still it is truly considered evidence of God’s grace, by which he reconciles men to himself. Let us therefore regard the prophet’s instruction that the death of the sinner is not pleasing to God as designed to assure believers that God is ready to pardon them as soon as they are touched by repentance but to make the wicked feel that their transgression is doubled because they do not respond to God’s great kindness and goodness. God’s mercy will always, accordingly, go to meet repentance, but all the prophets and all the apostles, as well as Ezekiel himself, clearly teach to whom repentance is given.

Concerning the parallel verse in Ezekiel 18:23 Calvin writes:

God is said not to wish the death of a sinner. How so? since he wishes all to be converted. Now we must see how God wishes all to be converted; for repentance is surely his peculiar gift: as it is his office to create men, so it is his province to renew them, and restore his image within them. For this reason we are said to be his workmanship, that is, his fashioning. (Ephesians 2:10.) Since, therefore, repentance is a kind of second creation, it follows that it is not in man’s power; and if it is equally in God’s power to convert men as well as to create them, it follows that the reprobate are not converted, because God does not wish their conversion;for if he wished it he could do it: and hence it appears that he does not wish it.

In addition to Calvin above, I would recommend Matthew Winzer’s review of Murray linked above where he deals at length with Murray’s exegetical errors.  Also see Garrett Johnson’s, The Myth of Common Grace,  where he exposes Murray’s interpretive sloppiness with the help of Owen, Turretin, Gill, Clark and others.

Even aside from the exegetical laziness and obvious violations of the laws of logic, what I have always found particularly offensive in the defense of the WMO is precisely the tacit admission that on verses such as 2 Peter 3:9,  Matthew 23:37, Ezekiel 18:23, 32; 33:11, and others that the Arminians are right.  Of course, the Arminans have the distinct advantage in their exegesis of not imputing irrationality to God simply because they credit man with having the power of salvation in accordance with free will. For the Arminian God’s universal desire for  “the fulfillment of something which he had…not decreed to come to come to pass” is contingent upon the will of man. If God’s will is thwarted, man is to blame. Man’s presumed “free will” is an easy escape. That’s because the God of the Arminian is impotent to do all His good pleasure for even one of his poor pathetic wicked creatures mired in the bondage of darkness, sin and death. Those who claim to be Reformed and who hold that God has decreed “whatsoever comes to pass” and who does all his good pleasure in heaven and on earth, have no such luxury.

Besides, to grant the Arminian exegetical position here is to run headlong into a glaring contradiction with the rest of Reformed theology and soteriology.   This is something that all the appeals to God’s decretive and preceptive will cannot assuage. Murray’s attempt to get around this is a colossal failure. Agreeing with Murray here is not thinking in submission to Scripture, rather it is the rejection of the very idea that the Scriptures are true, that God is the Almighty Sovereign Calvinists have always claimed, and is an admission that the Reformed faith is nothing more than nonsense. If God desired the salvation of all then all would be saved. Not so says John Murray and the rest of the “Free Offer” crowd.  Can there be any wonder why the Reformed faith is so anemic and why Calvinism remains in the backwaters of what passes for Evangelicalism?  The Arminians may be wrong, their doctrines may be unscriptural, and even rob God of His glory in salvation, but at least they don’t openly affirm contradictions and then have the gall to assert any moral superiority for doing so.

It should be pointed out that Murray is not the first Calvinist to make such concessions to the Arminian. Concerning 1 Timothy 2:4 Charles Spurgeon writes:

What then? Shall we try to put another meaning into the text than that which it fairly bears? I trow not. You must, most of you, be acquainted with the general method in which our older Calvinistic friends deal with this text. “All men,” say they,—”that is, some men”: as if the Holy Ghost could not have said “some men” if he had meant some men. “All men,” say they; “that is, some of all sorts of men”: as if the Lord could not have said “all sorts of men” if he had meant that. The Holy Ghost by the apostle has written “all men,” and unquestionably he means all men.

Spurgeon admits that he breaks with “our older Calvinistic friends” who have quite properly exegeted this passage as pertaining to all strata or classes of men and not all men in general. What he fails to say is that those older Calvinistic friends include Calvin himself who wrote concerning this verse:

Hence we see the childish folly of those who represent this passage to be opposed to predestination. “If God” say they, “wishes all men indiscriminately to be saved, it is false that some are predestined by his eternal purpose to salvation, and others to perdition.” They might have had some ground for saying this, if Paul were speaking here about individual men;  although even then we should not have wanted the means of replying to their argument; for, although the: will of God ought not to be judged from his secret decrees, when he reveals them to us by outward signs, yet it does not therefore follow that he has not determined with himself what he intends to do as to every individual man.

But I say nothing on that subject, because it has nothing to do with this passage; for the Apostle simply means, that there is no people and no rank in the world that is excluded from salvation; because God wishes that the gospel should be proclaimed to all without exception.

Calvin affirms in this verse precisely what Spurgeon denies. Even worse, Spurgeon admits his exegesis of this verse is inconsistent with the rest of his theology, which, I assume, he believes is also derived from Scripture. Therefore, it would follow that if Spurgeon is right, the Scriptures do not cohere. Spurgeon continues:

My love of consistency with my own doctrinal views is not great enough to allow me knowingly to alter a single text of Scripture. I have great respect for orthodoxy, but my reverence for inspiration is far greater. I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than be inconsistent with the word of God. I never thought it to be any very great crime to seem to be inconsistent with myself; for who am I that I should everlastingly be consistent? But I do think it a great crime to be so inconsistent with the word of God that I should want to lop away a bough or even a twig from so much as a single tree of the forest of Scripture. God forbid that I should cut or shape, even in the least degree, any divine expression. So runs the text, and so we must read it, “God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

Notice, his exegesis results in a contradiction and renders his theology inconsistent. Yet, he is willing to allow this contradiction to stand because he believes he is being faithful to Scripture. The tragedy is that it is his errant understanding of this verse that has lead him into asserting a glaring and major inconsistency. Had he stuck with Calvin and the older Calvinists, not to mentioned the method of interpretation of the Westminster Confession outlined above, he would have avoided such a glaring contradiction in his own theology and would have remained true to Scripture. Further, and despite his seemingly pious willingness to surrender consistency in order to be true to God’s Word, he imputes irrationality to God.  Rather than this “inconsistency,” or better, contradiction providing the warning telling Spurgeon to go back and recheck his premises, he’d rather embrace nonsense and encourage others to do so as well. Spurgeon merely asserts that his exegesis of this critical verse is sound – even though he admits his exegesis results in a blatant contradiction and an inconsistent theology. Rather than just being the “forgotten Calvinist,” Spurgeon should really be called the “inconsistent Calvinist.”

As should be obvious, disagreeing with Murray, Spurgeon and others who have claimed a desire on the part of God for the salvation of the reprobate based on nothing more than fallacious reasoning and faulty exegesis is not “hyper-Calvinism.”  Nor is maintaining the coherence of Scripture and the analogy of faith “rationalism.”  Yet, for countless Christians, most recently James White and Robert Reymond, they are slandered as “hyper-Calvinists” and “rationalists” by the “Free Offer” crowd who knowingly advance nonsense while piously claiming to be thinking in submission to Scripture. This is a farce and one that all thinking Christians – especially those calling themselves Calvinists – should repudiate.

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