T J Crawford

The second of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day:

   This controversy brings out the danger which is created when biblical truths are constantly presented to the non-Christian in the wrong order. Spurgeon believed all the truths commonly called Calvinistic but he did not believe that all the truths commonly so designated had to be presented to sinners in order to their conversion. As noted, he wanted to see both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. The tendency of Hyper-Calvinism was to make sinners want to understand theology before they could believe in Christ, as though ‘they cannot be saved until they are theologians.’ But the non-Christian can hear ‘the soul and marrow of the gospel’, that is, Christ as the Savior, and see his responsibility to repent and believe, without understanding ‘the doctrines commonly called Calvinistic’. It is with his responsibility, says Spurgeon, that ‘the sinner has the most to do’, whereas God’s predestining grace is the subject of with which ‘the saint has most to do. Let him praise the free and sovereign grace of God, and bless his name’.
   In so thinking Spurgeon was surely siding with what the wisest preachers in the church had always taught. While Reformed Confessions may begin with statements on the doctrine of God and divine decrees, that is not where preachers and teachers need to begin in addressing men about salvation. In the apostolic teaching to the lost, recorded in the book of Acts, nothing is said of the doctrine of election, while in the Epistles ‘it is scarcely ever omitted’. In accordance with his approach, Calvin, in the later editions of his Institutes, moved his treatment of election to follow teaching on justification. He recognized that Scripture generally introduces the doctrine of election to show believers the security and certainty of their salvation and to make clear who made them to differ. But when election is constantly introduced as a preliminary to hearing the gospel it inevitably comes to be seen as though it were designed to limit or obstruct the salvation of men and women. No one put this point better than John Bradford, the English reformer, whose words were often quoted by Whitefield, ‘let a man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance, before he goes to the university of election and predestination.’
   It ought not to be the business of the evangelist to teach God’s decrees to the unconverted. It is certainly God’s decree of salvation which is fulfilled in conversion but knowledge of that decree is no part of saving faith. As Crawford says, God’s decrees are his fixed purposes and his ‘secret designs for the regulation of his own procedure; but they are not rules of laws prescribed for the guidance of others . . . The doctrine of election is not to be regarded as what an apostle calls “milk that babes have need of,” but as the “strong meat that belongs to them who are of full age.” It ought not, therefore, to be prefixed to the calls of the Gospel, or placed in the fore-front of the calls and invitations which are therein addressed without restriction to all sinners. When so placed, it is apt to perplex and disquiet humble souls . . . No man can be of the number of the elect if he utterly neglects the appointed means of salvation; and no man can be of the number of the non-elect if he truly repents and unfiegnedly believes the Gospel. The salvation of a sinner is actually brought to pass, according to the plainest declarations of the Holy Scripture, in the way of faith and repentance, and no otherwise.’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 114–117.

The third of four “Lessons from the Conflict” with the Hyper-Calvinists of Spurgeon’s day is the vanity of expecting to answer every question satisfactorily to human reason. Murray writes:

This controversy directs us to our need for profound humility before God. It reminds us forcefully of questions about which we can only say, ‘behold, God is great, and we know him not’ (Job 36:26), and, ‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’ (Rom. 11:33). We do not know why God has purposed to save some and not others, nor why, given his desire for the good of all, many are left in their sin. We cannot say why his love to all men is not the same to the elect. We do not know how God works in us ‘to will and to do’ and yet leaves us wholly responsible for our own actions, nor how invitations to all to believe on Christ are to be harmonised with electing grace. As Crawford said, various attempts have been made to solve such mysteries, ‘but, it must be owned, they have been signally unsuccessful.’ He concludes: ‘We do well to be exceedingly diffident in our judgments respecting matters so unsearchable as the secret purposes of God.’
   It is to be feared that sharp contentions between Christians on these issues have too often risen from a wrong confidence in our powers of reasoning and our assumed ability to draw logical inferences. It is arguable that in the eclipse of Calvinistic beliefs at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at a time when ‘reason’ was being made the test of all religious belief, the would-be defenders of orthodoxy who became Hyper-Calvinistic fell into the very mistake which they were seeking to correct. As J. I. Packer writes, ‘In an increasingly rationalistic age, the reaction itself was rationalistic, within the Reformed supernaturalistic frame.’ Joseph Hussey, the standard bearer of the movement, certainly gave justification of that charge. The contentious spirit in which he advocated his views was a discredit to the truth. John Newton was not the only Calvinist to complain that in Hussey’s writings, ‘I frequently found more bones than meat, and seasoned with much of an angry and self-important spirit.’
   Spurgeon, like all the children of men, had to learn humility, and he was not always entirely blameless in this regard in his early years, but it was given to him to see how a system which sought to attribute all to the grace of God had itself too much confidence in the powers of reason. His mature judgment on that point, given below, constitutes a statement of great value. Probably as a young man Spurgeon was, at times, over concerned to assert his agreement with Calvin but in his deepening humility before God, and his refusal to trust in human reason, he truly followed in the spirit of that leader and of all true teachers in the church of God. It was Calvin, shortly before his death, who, on the words, ‘have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?’ (Ezek. 18:3) said this: ‘If any one again objects – this is making God act with duplicity, the answer is ready, that God always wishes the same thing, though by different ways, and in a manner inscrutable to us. Although, therefore, God’s will is simple, yet great variety is involved in it, as far as our senses are concerned. Besides, it is not surprising that our eyes should be blinded by intense light, so that we cannot judge how God wishes all to be saved, and yet has devoted all the reprobate to eternal destruction, and wishes them to perish. While we now look through a glass darkly, we should be content with the measure of our own intelligence (1 Cor. 13:12).’

—Iain Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Banner of Truth, 2002), 117–119.