Calvin the Hyper-Calvinist

Hugh McCann recently sent me a few selected quotes from Calvin’s Calvinism : Treatises on ‘The Eternal Predestination of God’ and ‘The Secret Providence of God’  that were so good that I decided to post virtually the entire passage from page 157 through 167.  It has been quite a few years since I’ve read this book, but it is an invaluable resource to anyone still debating the completely discredited and irrational doctrine of the so-called “well meant offer” where God is said to ineffectually wish for, or desire, the salvation of all men universally considered through the preaching of the gospel.  Ineffectually simply because the reprobate, the non-elect, never come to saving faith and is why defenders of the WMO, like John Murray, posit in God “an ardent desire for the fulfillment of certain things [i.e., the salvation of the reprobate] which he has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass.”

To get around this obvious contradiction where God both simultaneously does will and does not will the salvation of the reprobate, WMO defenders assert that God’s imagined desire for the salvation of those He has decreed not to save is found in his “revealed” will and is no “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. 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.”   So says John Murray.

Therefore it follows that God desires or wishes for things which He has not decreed will come to pass.  God clearly does not do all his good pleasure according to His revealed will in Scripture, even though according to His revealed will in Scripture He says that He does (see for example Isaiah 46:10 where God says: “Declaring the end from the beginning And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’”).

As you will see, Calvin would have no patience for such empty modern day “Reformed” sophistry pitting God’s revealed will against His decretive will.  In his colorful refutation of Georgius Blandrata, an Italian Unitarian, Calvin sees only a complete harmony between what God has revealed in His word and what He has decreed to come to pass.  This is in sharp contrast to men like Murray who see in Scripture “a will to the realization of what he has not decretively willed, a pleasure towards that which he has not been pleased to decree. This is indeed mysterious, and why he has not brought to pass, in the exercise of his omnipotent power and grace, what is his ardent pleasure lies hid in the sovereign counsel of his will.”   What is “mysterious” is why anyone would follow Murray and others like him in such patent illogic and deceptively pious sounding doublethink.

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From Calvin’s Calvinism:

When we testify that men are predestinated either to salvation or to destruction by the eternal counsel of God, Georgius considers that we hallucinate and are deceived in that matter on three accounts in particular. The first of which, he says, is that we are ignorant that the word election is received in different senses in the Scripture. For God, he observes, is sometimes said to elect or choose certain persons to a certain temporal office, where no mention whatever is made of eternal life, nor any consideration of it entertained. But by what kind of arguments will this stupid trifler attempt to persuade us that we are so inexperienced in the Scriptures as not yet to know that Saul, who was really a reprobate, was yet chosen or elected to be king and that Judas, who was one of the twelve, whom Christ declares that He Himself had chosen, was called by Christ a devil? Why does not this vain fellow point out some passages of the Scripture as having been evilly and impiously brought forward by us in support of our testimony which will make our errors manifest? The fact is, that this dreamer fabricates dreams of his own which are the children of his own brain, and against these he wages war as if they really were our dreams. And yet it is marvellous, meanwhile, how utterly he forgets himself and his own precept concerning the different meanings of the word election, when he attacks us and applies to us the words of the apostle: “Lest, after I have preached the Gospel to others, I myself should become a reprobate” (or a castaway). For he concludes from this passage that Paul (according to the doctrine of election) positively uttered a falsehood when he expressed his fear lest the immutable election of God should fail in his case; and that he really knew not, or was not certain of, his own election. Now this miserable being does not see that ” reprobate” (or “disapproved “) is, in this passage, opposed to “approved “; and ” approved ” would signify that such an ” approved ” one had given sure evidences and proofs of his godliness. How was it that the different meanings of the term “reprobate” did not come into the mind of our silly opponent? For when “reprobate silver” is spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. vi. 30), and “reprobate earth” in Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. vi. 8), it does not mean that such ” reprobate silver” or “reprobate earth” was ordained of God to eternal destruction; but that it was silver and earth that had become alloyed, adulterated, unfruitful and worthless. And that the term “reprobate” applies to men in this passage of the apostle, as it doth also in another epistle, is at once manifest in each place from the context. And yet, the election to any temporal office is so plainly distinct from that eternal election by which God chooses and adopts us unto everlasting life, that the Scripture sometimes joins them together in the same person, on account of their immediate affinity . . . .

The second account on which Georgius declares we are in error and delusion is, because we do not hold that all the believers (as he calls them) of the New Testament were chosen unto salvation, as those were of whom the apostle speaks in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians. But we have already more than fully shown that Paul in that chapter traces the faith by which the children of God enter upon the possession of their salvation unto eternal election as its true and only source; and most certainly faith is especially to be reckoned among those spiritual riches which are freely given to us in Christ. And from whence does Paul testify that all and every one of our spiritual blessings flow but from that eternal and hidden fountain — the free adoption of God? Again, the apostle uses these words, “Wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.” How did God thus abound? And from what source did this abundance flow? The apostle tells us immediately afterwards, “According to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself” (vers. 8, 9).

Wherefore, if faith be the fruit of Divine election, it is at once evident that all are not enlightened unto faith. Hence, it is also an indubitable fact that those on whom God determined in Himself to bestow faith were chosen of Him from everlasting for that end. Consequently the sentiments of Augustine are truth, where he thus writes: “The elect of God are chosen by Him to be His children, in order that they might be made to believe, not because He foresaw that they would believe.” I forbear to cite here other passages of the apostle similar to the above, because they will have to be considered very shortly in their proper place, but as there is one passage in the evangelist Matthew, where the elect of God seem to be spoken of as an infinite number, where Christ Himself says that ” there shall be such great signs and wonders shown by false christs false prophets that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect;” Georgius explains ” the elect ” in this place as signifying all those who persevere in faith and righteousness. And this interpretation is perfectly right, provided that he at the same time confess that this perseverance depends on election alone. But Georgius, to shut out all idea of special or particular election, makes each individual among men the author of his own election.

The third account or cause why we are in error, according to our worthy friend Georgius, is because, though the Scripture does indeed make mention of men being ” blinded ” and “hardened,” yet we do not bear in mind that such greater punishments are inflicted on sins of greater magnitude. We, however, on our part, do not deny that which is clearly confirmed by numberless testimonies of the Scripture, that God punishes with blindness, and with many other modes of judgment, contempt of His grace, pride, obstinacy, and many other kindred sins. And, indeed, all those conspicuous punishments, of which mention is made throughout the Scriptures, ought to be referred to that general view of the righteous judgment of God in the display of which we ever see, that those who have not duly feared God, after they had known Him, nor have reverenced Him as they ought, have been “given over to a reprobate mind,” and left to wallow in every kind of uncleanness and lust. But on this deep subject we shall dwell more fully hereafter.

Although, therefore, the Lord doth thus strike the wicked with vindictive madness and consternation, and doth thus repay them with the punishment they deserve; yet this does not at all alter the fact that there is, in all the reprobate generally, a blindness and an obstinate hardness of heart. So, when Pharaoh is said to have been “hardened ” of God, he was already, in himself, worthy of being delivered over unto Satan by the Most High. Moses, however, also testifies that Pharaoh had been before blinded of God “for this very purpose ”

(Exod. ix. 16). Nor does Paul add any other cause for this, than that Pharaoh was one of the reprobate (Rom. ix. 17). In this same manner also does the apostle demonstrate that the Jews, when God had deprived them of the light of understanding, and had permitted them to fall into horrible darkness, suffered thereby the righteous punishments of their wicked contempt of the grace of God. And yet the apostle plainly intimates that this same blindness is justly inflicted of God upon all reprobates generally. For he testifies that the “remnant ” were saved ” according to the election of grace,” but that all “the rest were blinded.” If, then, all “the rest,” in the salvation of whom the election of God does not reign, are “blinded,” it is doubtlessly and undeniably manifest that those same persons who, by their rebellion and provocation of the wrath of God, procured to themselves this additional blindness, were themselves from the beginning ordained to blindness. Hence the words of Paul are manifestly true, where he says that the vessels of wrath were “afore prepared unto destruction “; namely, all those who, being destitute of the Spirit of adoption, precipitated themselves into eternal destruction by their own sin and fault. Wherefore, I hesitate not to confess that in the secret judgments of God something always precedes, but “hidden.” For how God condemns the wicked, and yet justifies the wicked, is a mystery that is shut up in that secret mind of God, which is inaccessible to all human understanding. Wherefore, there remains nothing better, nothing more becoming us, than to stand in awe with the apostle, and exclaim, ” How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out ! ” (Rom. xi. 33.) For God’s judgments are a profound abyss.

Georgius then goes on to say “that no one syllable can be found in the whole Scripture from which it can be lawfully concluded that those who were reprobated by the eternal judgment of God were ‘ blinded,’ and that all which we testify concerning predestination rests on the mere craft of philosophic invention; for that God could not be ignorant of any of those things which should come to pass, and that whatsoever things He did foresee, could not but come to pass according to that foreknowledge.” To this lying misrepresentation of our doctrine I give no answer. My books are its standing refutation. The fact is, that as the unbounded favour of the reverend abbot gave this conceited fellow the license of saying what he pleased among his silly brethren, and as he had the audacity to puff off among them all the dreams that entered his brain as the oracles of God, he really promised himself the same credit outside the monastery. But what is the benefit of my now using many words to prove that which I have proved a thousand times over? — that we do not gather that difference between the elect and the reprobate (against which Georgius so violently but vainly wars) from the bare foreknowledge of God (according to this fellow’s stupid perversion of our testimony), but that we prove it to be taught in numberless manifest and solid passages of the Holy Scripture. And yet, this fellow imagines, and would make it appear, that we war with the prescience of God alone. Readers, however, will find above twenty plain passages already cited by me which prove the contrary to this vain imagination. He boasts that special and particular election is a fiction of our own; for that God chooses no special or particular persons. Christ Himself, however, declares aloud on the contrary, “That He knows whom He has chosen” (John xiii. 18).

Behold, then, readers, with what mighty war-engines of his own fabrication Georgius labours to shake that eternal counsel of God, by which some are chosen to salvation and others ordained unto destruction ! Paul does indeed make the righteousness of God common to all by faith, nor does he admit any distinction whatever, testifying that ” all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” I also confess with my whole heart, according to Paul, that the righteousness of God is freely extended to all through faith. But whence cometh faith unto men? Only from the free illumination of the Spirit. And whom does Paul consider to be those who believe in Christ? Those only whom His heavenly Father has drawn. And most certainly Christ on His part reckons no one among His own but him who was given to Him by His Father. He accordingly declares that those who were given to Him were before His Father’s. Georgius, we well know, will here thrust in our faces his mad dream about natural faith, which absurdity it does not belong to my present purpose to stop to refute. I shall only say that the righteousness of God is “unto all, and upon all, them that believe” in Christ. But on the testimony of the same apostle, I assert that where one believeth and another doth not believe, it is God alone that makes the difference; that it is of God alone that some have the advantage of others in obtaining the blessing, that no one might glory. I affirm that, in order that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God, our eternal inheritance is sealed upon our hearts by the earnest and seal of the Spirit. I also affirm that our ability to believe in Christ is given to us of God. I moreover maintain that “the eyes of our understanding are enlightened “of God, that we might know ” what is the hope of His calling.” And finally, I testify that faith is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Paul does indeed declare that “there is no difference.” But his meaning is that there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, for that God invites both, equally, unto salvation. Now Georgius here affirms that these two races of men comprehend all mankind. Be it so, he cannot by that argument prove that righteousness is promised severally and separately to each individual of mankind. And suppose we were to grant this last point, we must come after all to the original proposition and fact, that no one can become a partaker of the good offered him, but by faith. By this argument, then, the monk must be driven to the necessity of making faith common to all men. And this, as we have before abundantly proved, is directly contrary to the mind of the apostle Paul. Our monk will follow up his argument by saying, that according to our doctrine the elect alone have “come short of the glory of God.” And how does he arrive at this conclusion? Because (says he) the grace of Christ is poured out on all who have sinned. But I so hold the grace of God to be universal, as to make the great difference consist in this: that all are not called “according to God’s purpose.”

Georgius imagines himself to argue very cleverly when he says, “Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. Therefore, those who would exclude the reprobate from a participation in the benefits of Christ, must, of necessity, place them somewhere out of the world.” Now we will not permit the common solution of this question to avail on the present occasion, which would have it that Christ suffered sufficiently for all men, but effectually for His elect alone. This great absurdity, by which our monk has procured for himself so much applause amongst his own fraternity, has no weight whatever with me. John does indeed extend the benefits of the atonement of Christ, which was completed by His death, to all the elect of God throughout what climes of the world soever they may be scattered. But though the case be so, it by no means alters the fact that the reprobate are mingled with the elect in the world. It is also a fact, without controversy, that Christ came to atone for the sins ” of the whole world.” But the solution of all difficulty is immediately at hand, in the truth and fact, that it is “whosoever believeth in Him” that ” shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.” For our present question is, not what the power or virtue of Christ is, nor what efficacy it has in itself, but who those are to whom He gives Himself to be enjoyed. Now if the possession of Christ stands in faith, and if faith flows from the Spirit of adoption, it follows that he alone is numbered of God among His children who is designed of God to be a partaker of Christ. Indeed, the evangelist John sets forth the office of Christ to be none other than that of “gathering together all the children of God ” in one by His death. From all which we conclude that although reconciliation is offered unto all men through Him, yet, that the great benefit belongs peculiarly to the elect, that they might be “gathered together ” and be made “together ” partakers of eternal life.

Be it observed, however, that when I speak of reconciliation through Christ being offered to all, I do not mean that that message or embassy, by which Paul says God “reconciles the world unto Himself,” really comes or reaches unto all men; but that it is not sealed indiscriminately on the hearts of all those to whom it does come, so as to be effectual in them. And as to our present opponent’s prating about there being “no acceptance of persons with God,” he must first ” go and learn ” what the word “person ” meaneth agreeably to our preceding explanations of it; and then we shall have no more trouble with him on that score.

“But Paul teaches us (continues Georgius) that God ‘ would have all men to be saved.'” It follows, therefore, according to his understanding of that passage, either that God is disappointed in His wishes, or that all men without exception must be saved. If he should reply that God wills all men to be saved on His part, or as far as He is concerned, seeing that salvation is, nevertheless, left to the free will of each individual; I, in return, ask him why, if such be the case, God did not command the Gospel to be preached to all men, indiscriminately from the beginning of the world ? why He suffered so many generations of men to wander for so many ages in all the darkness of death ? Now it follows, in the apostle’s context, that God “would have all men come to the knowledge of the truth.” But the sense of the whole passage is perfectly plain, and contains no ambiguity to any reader of candour and of sound judgment. We have fully explained the whole passage in former pages. The apostle had just before exhorted that solemn and general prayers should be offered up in the Church ” for kings and princes,” etc., that no one might have cause to deplore those kings and magistrates whom God might be pleased to set over them; because, at that time, rulers were the most violent enemies of the faith. Paul, therefore, makes Divine provision for this state of things by the prayers of the Church, and by affirming that the grace of Christ could reach to this order of men also, even to kings, princes and rulers of every description.

But it is no matter of wonder that the more audacity this worthless fellow betrays in wresting the Scriptures, the more profuse he should be in heaping passages on passages to suit his purpose, seeing that he does not possess one particle of religion or of shame which might restrain his headlong impudence. But the more diffuse he is in his wild discussions, the more brief I shall study to be in my answers, by which I hope to curb his pretensions. He cites that passage of Isaiah lvi. 3: “Neither let the son of the stranger speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from His people.” And he takes it for granted that that text can never be applied to the reprobate. For he judges it absurd to suppose that the elect are ever called “the sons of the stranger.” To this I reply that it is by no means unusual to find in the Scriptures those who were elected before the foundation of the world considered, nevertheless, “strangers,” or “the sons of the stranger,” until they are gathered into the family and among the children of God by faith. The words of Peter, borrowed from the prophet Isaiah, are: “Which in time past were not a people; but now are the people of God” (1 Pet. ii. 10). Now to whom is Peter here speaking? Is it not to those of whom he had testified in the beginning of the epistle, that they were “elect according to the foreknowledge of God”? Paul sets this matter forth in a still more open light in his Epistle to the Ephesians. After he had therein dwelt very largely on their eternal election of God, he subsequently reminds them that, “At that time they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. ii. 12). And is it any cause of wonder if Isaiah, building thus, under the inspiration of the Spirit, the temple of God out of profane stones, should declare that there would be a new consecration of it! For as the calling of the Gentiles lay hidden all along in the heart of God, what else appeared in them outwardly than all damnable uncleanness? All those among them who were at length incorporated in the spiritual body of Christ by faith were, indeed, all that time really the sheep of God, as Christ Himself testifies (John x. 16). But they were sheep as yet shut out of the fold, and “wandering upon the dark mountains.” And though they themselves all the while knew it not, yet the Shepherd knew them, according to that eternal predestination by which He chose His own unto Himself before the foundation of the world. Augustine sets this forth very soundly and beautifully.

“Now if that word of the prophet Ezekiel be true (continues Georgius), ‘ The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,’ no part of mankind are left in original sin.” But I really will have nothing to do with this unclean beast at all (Deut. xiv. 7). My purpose is to come to the help of the ignorant only, that they may not be taken and carried away with such worthless cavillings as these. No one thing is more certain, than that all those remain under the general destruction who are not engrafted into the body of Christ. This good brother monk, prodigal of dealing with strangers, huddles all together and presses into the household even those against whom God has shut and barred the door. But that man is wilfully mad, whoever he may be, who does not confess that no one of those who died naturally in Adam can be restored unto eternal life in any other way than in that ordained of God. The manifest difference between the seed of a believing and that of an unbelieving man, as determined by the apostle, is this, that the former is “holy,” but the latter “unclean.” And on this sacred principle, before the Gentiles were ingrafted into the Church with the Jews by the breaking down of “the middle wall of partition between them,” the apostle calls the branches of Abraham “holy ” from their holy root. But what need is there of a lengthened discussion of this point? Did not the same prophet Ezekiel, whose word this monk so abuses, frequently condemn the uncircumcised Gentiles to destruction as profane persons? Nor would circumcision be the covenant of life even now on any other grounds. How, then, can it be true to assert that the son shall not bear the punishment of the sin of the father? And, on the other hand, I ask, How shall that man boast himself to be innocent who is born an unclean raven from an unclean egg? For original sin is so derived from Adam universally, that it becomes the peculiar property of the nature of every man. No one, therefore, can justly complain, under an imagination that he is bearing the guilt of another’s sin, and considering himself free from fault. But if it is not lawful for God to punish, in their children, the sins of their fathers, what is the meaning of that word, “Visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation “? (Exod. xx. 5.) And, again, “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation “? (Exod. xxxiv. 17.) Moreover, the first part of this visiting vengeance is, that the non-elect children of Adam, being left destitute of the Spirit of God, remain sunk in the original sin of their nature.

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