All you have to do is say that it is hyper-Calvinism that I am refuting on any given instance where I am not refuting basic Calvinism.
- Deuteronomy 19:15 [NKJV] "One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established."
- Proverbs 11:14 [NKJV] Where there is no counsel, the people fall; But in the multitude of counselors there is safety.
Hyper-Calvinism:
GotQuestions:
A simple definition is this: hyper-Calvinism is the belief that God saves the elect through His sovereign will with little or no use of the methods of bringing about salvation (such as evangelism, preaching, and prayer for the lost). To an unbiblical fault, the hyper-Calvinist over-emphasizes God’s sovereignty and under-emphasizes man’s responsibility in the work of salvation.
An obvious ramification of hyper-Calvinism is that it suppresses any desire to evangelize the lost. Most churches or denominations that hold to hyper-Calvinistic theology are marked by fatalism, coldness, and a lack of assurance of faith. There is little emphasis upon God’s love for the lost and His own people but rather an unbiblical preoccupation with God’s sovereignty, His election of the saved, and His wrath for the lost. The gospel of the hyper-Calvinist is a declaration of God’s salvation of the elect and His damnation of the lost.
The Bible clearly teaches that God is sovereign over the entire universe (
Daniel 4:34-35), including the salvation of men (
Ephesians 1:3-12). But with God’s sovereignty, the Bible also teaches that His motivation for saving the lost is love (
Ephesians 1:4-5;
John 3:16;
1 John 4:9-10) and that God’s means of saving the lost is the proclamation of His Word (
Romans 10:14-15). The Bible also declares that the Christian is to be passionate and determined in his/her sharing with unbelievers; as ambassadors for Christ, we are to "beg" people to be reconciled to God (
2 Corinthians 5:20-21).
Hyper-Calvinism takes a biblical doctrine, God’s sovereignty, and pushes it to an unbiblical extreme. In doing so, the hyper-Calvinist downplays the love of God and the necessity of evangelism.
Stephen Nichols (Ask Ligonier)
Dr. Sproul helpfully described hyper-Calvinism this way: when it comes to double predestination, hyper-Calvinism is positive-positive. Dr. Sproul, on the other hand, spoke of double predestination as positive-negative. So, what does that mean?
Positive election is election unto salvation, by which God brings us to Himself out of Adam’s sinful lump of condemnation and damnation. What R.C. described as negative is not damning people to hell, because we were all sinners destined for hell; it’s that God overlooks those who are not elect. That is why he referred to it as positive-negative. A way to summarize hyper-Calvinism is positive-positive. This way of looking at the decrees of God is not represented biblically.
Peter Toon
[Hyper-Calvinism] was a system of theology, or a system of the doctrines of God, man and grace, which was framed to exalt and honour and glory of God and did so at the expense of minimising the moral and spiritual responsibility of sinners to God. It places excessive emphasis on the immanent acts of God–eternal justification, eternal adoption and the eternal covenant of grace. In practice, this meant that “Christ and Him crucified”, the central message of the apostles, was obscured.
It also often made no distinction between the secret and the revealed will of God, and tried to deduce the duty of men from what it taught concerning the secret, eternal decrees of God.
Excessive emphasis was also placed on the doctrine of irresistible grace with the tendency to state that an elect man is not only passive in regeneration but also in conversion as well. The absorbing interest in the eternal, immanent acts of God and in irresistible grace led to the notion that grace must only be offered to those for whom it was intended.
Finally, a valid assurance of salvation was seen as consisting in an inner feeling and conviction of being eternally elected by God. So Hyper-Calvinism led its adherents to hold that evangelism was not necessary and to place much emphasis on introspection in order to discover whether or not one was elect. (144-45)
