Calvinism, Hyperspirituality, & the Use of Means - Glenn Conjurske

Calvinism, Hyperspirituality, & the Use of Means

Introduction: The Hyperspirituality of Calvinism
The Calvinistic system is hyperspiritual throughout, making all of God, and nothing of man, who is made in his image—making all of the direct working of God, and nothing of the means which He has created. We do not accuse all Calvinists of the same degree of error in this, for Calvinism exists in many varying degrees, and most Calvinists are very inconsistent, holding sundry self-contradictory doctrines at the same time. In spite of all its pride, Calvinism is a very shallow system, as much against reason as it is against Scripture. Alas, it is common enough with Calvinists to despise the “carnal reason” which would set them right, speaking their double-talk and holding their self-contradictions directly in the teeth of sound reason.

The Disregard for Means
With regard to the use of means, in common with all the hyperspiritual, they often profess one thing and practice another. This was apparent to the homespun wisdom of Peter Cartwright, who addressed them as follows: “If you so firmly believe in the decrees, why are you afraid of fire, guns, of being drowned, etc.? The truth is, there may be theoretical Calvinists, but there never was nor ever will be a practical one; they are all as fearful of dying as any Arminian on earth.” We trust our Calvinistic friends will take no offense if I—who was once a thorough Calvinist myself—bring them face to face with such reason and Scripture as will force them to face some of the absurdities of their system.

Scriptural Support for Calvinism
Desiring to give Calvinists as much credit for sense and sincerity as we can, we grant at the outset that there is very much in the Bible which gives apparent support to their system. This is doubtless one of the primary reasons for its popularity, from the time of Augustine to the present day. Calvin did not originate the system. He got it from Luther, who got it from Augustine, and it was held by many between Augustine and Luther, including John Wycliffe (in a very moderate form) and many of the papists through the dark ages. All these, of course, professed to stand on Scripture, and we grant that there are many scriptures which give them an apparent footing. But as is the case with hyperspiritual doctrines in general, those scriptures are taken in an extreme or absolute sense, at the expense of sound reason and the rest of Scripture. The scriptures which seem to favor their system are exalted too high, which forces them to reduce the rest of the Scriptures too low, or hiss them out of court altogether.

The Ephesians 5:25 Passage
I pause to illustrate my remarks by one example. The Bible says in Ephesians 5:25, “Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it.” Some will insist that this means He loved the church and none else, and that He gave Himself for it alone. But see how this makes void both reason and other scriptures. First, reason. The same apostle who says that Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it, says in Galatians 2:20 that He “loved me, and gave himself for me.” Now, if the former verse must mean “the church only,” then by parity of reason, the latter must mean “me only,” which is a plain absurdity. As for Scripture, the Bible repeatedly affirms that Christ “gave himself a ransom for all,” that He “tasted death for every man,” that He is the propitiation “not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” But in order to maintain a foolishly technical and extreme interpretation of the one scripture, all the others must be watered down and explained away, to the point that their plain meaning is discarded altogether. Such is the usual method of Calvinism—as it is of hyperspirituality in general, and of all error of every sort.

The Role of Means in God’s Plan
Now as regards the use of means, it is a plain fact that God has created various means, which actually work to secure their several ends. This is warrant enough to common sense to use them. But beyond that, Scripture everywhere ordains and commands the use of means, and in general assumes and appeals to their efficacy. But in Calvinism, there is an inveterate tendency to discard the use of means, or to slight and belittle them, in order that God Himself may be put in their place. Where Calvinism is strong, that tendency is usually strong also. Where Calvinism is inconsistent, or “moderate,” as it is called, that tendency is usually weakened and kept in check.

My Personal Encounter with Calvinism
My first introduction to this tendency came in 1965. I had been converted only about a year, and was a new student at Bible school. My room-mate was a rather bigoted Calvinist—had been expelled from the Baptist college for preaching his Calvinism—and of course went directly to work to make a Calvinist of me. He loved to speak against the Baptists, and wished to take me to a Reformed church, where sound doctrine was preached. I consented to go, and one Sunday morning we went to the Seventh Reformed Church on Leonard Street in Grand Rapids. He evidently did not know the time of the meeting, and we arrived and took our seats just as the pastor was finishing his sermon. He was preaching against preaching the gospel. “You might just as well go to the cemetery,” he said, “and call upon the people to rise from their graves and stand up. They are dead! dead! and cannot respond to your preaching.”

This may have been too much even for my friend the Calvinist, for he never offered to take me to a Reformed church again. Nor was there any need, for there was Calvinism enough at the Bible school, and within a year I was as Calvinistic as anybody.

The Error of Extreme Calvinism
As for the sinners being dead, this is but one example among a myriad of the extreme and technical manner of interpretation upon which Calvinism is based. It must press this single word “dead” to the ultimate of its possible meaning, while a thousand other scriptures, in which God appeals to man as though he were very much alive—possessed of all the faculties of reason, emotion, and will—are made to mean nothing at all. “Come now, let us reason together”—“Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?”—these and a thousand scriptures like them must mean nothing at all, in order that this one word “dead” may mean everything which may be extracted from it. It must mean “as dead as an inanimate object,” and we must be continually presented with either the extreme hypocrisy or the extreme folly of the omniscient God addressing these inanimate objects as though they were living beings. We know, of course, that the salvage crews and damage control teams of Calvinism have invented numerous auxiliary doctrines to sustain the reputation of God and Calvin, such as that “regeneration is the first act of God upon the soul of man”—a dogma held even by Spurgeon. By means of this shift, God is exempted from commanding and reasoning with inanimate objects, but the shift itself stands as directly against the Bible as the doctrine which it aims to salvage.

The Opposition to Means in Evangelism
But we pass on. The distrust of means is one of the reasons for the opposition to revival, evangelism, and missions which persistently cleaves to Calvinism, in spite of the endeavors of many good men to thrust it out. One of the most memorable incidents of such opposition occurred when William Carey first attempted to enlist the sympathies of his Calvinistic Baptist denomination for the evangelization of the heathen. “At a meeting of ministers held about this time at Northampton, Mr. Ryland, senior, called on the young men around him to propose some topic for discussion, on which Mr. Carey rose and proposed for consideration, ‘The duty of Christians to attempt the spread of the Gospel among heathen nations.’ The venerable divine received the proposal with astonishment, and, springing on his feet, denounced the proposition with a frown, and thundered out, ‘Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.’” He will do it, that is, without the use of any of those means which He has ordained.

Calvinistic Opposition to Evangelism
The Calvinists of the Old School strongly opposed “the anxious seat” employed by Charles G. Finney. Of this Finney’s biographer says, “The opposition to the anxious seat arose largely from its theological significance, since the Old School Calvinists were not willing to admit that the human will possessed that self-determining power implied in these urgent appeals to immediate submission. In their view, there was little natural connection between the means used for the persuasion of men and their conversion. According to their theory, conversion could only follow regeneration, and that was a mysterious process wrought directly by God on the hearts of the elect.”

This view of the Calvinistic opposition to evangelism is confirmed by statements from the Calvinists themselves. Jacob Knapp, a Calvinistic Baptist, writes, “About this time, 1833, the practice of holding protracted meetings began to enter in amongst the Baptist churches. These were of rare occurrence, and generally looked upon with distrust and opposition. There prevailed among Baptists, views of the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of men, which led to a practical denial of the necessity of all human agency in bringing sinners to consider the claims of the gospel.”

The Calvinistic Doctrine on Means
Knapp and some few others labored for years under much obloquy among the Baptists of America, where no means for the conversion of sinners were allowed as legitimate, and even prayer was regarded as an unwarranted assumption of the divine prerogative. “They were startled from their lethargy only by their hostility to the encroachments of these new measures. They became active, not to save souls, and elevate society, but to oppose those who had set themselves to promote ‘every good word and work.’”

Now in truth, these Calvinists ought to have had as much objection to the natural means which God Himself employs to persuade and convert sinners, as to the measures of Jacob Knapp and Charles G. Finney, but they managed to find a way to sustain the reputation of God while they blackened that of Finney. They cannot have been ignorant of the fact that God Himself reasons with sinners, commands them, endeavors to move them with fear, pleads with them, even weeps over them, but they quite generally hold that there is no actual connection between the means used and the end to be gained. There is no efficacy in the means. This is “common grace,” and not so much as intended to convert its recipients. The end is to be gained solely by the direct and immediate working of God Himself.

Conclusion: The Hypocrisy of Hyperspirituality
True, most Calvinists will not state the matter so plainly—for double-talk is generally their favorite tongue—but that this is no caricature of Calvinism may be demonstrated with ease enough. A New England Calvinist speaks much on this theme in a sermon on the death of George Whitefield. “Means tending to produce any end or effect,” he says, “have such tendency by a law or constitution of nature: but this is only a certain way or method in which God works. This law has no power or agency of its own, and is nothing but the continued, immediate efficiency of God.”

The whole physical and moral universe, then, is only an empty masquerade. Fire is no more hot than ice. It is not the fire which burns, but the immediate working of God. The sword is not sharp—no more so than a fur coat. It is not the sword which cuts, but the immediate working of God. There is no more heat in the sun than in the moon. It is not the sun which warms the earth, but only the immediate working of God. “Immediate,” by the way, means “without medium,” that is, “without means.” The force of gravity does not lie in the earth or the moon at all. It is “nothing but the immediate efficiency of God.” When Cain undertook to slay his brother, it was nothing in his heavy fist, nor in his hard club, which did the execution. It was “nothing but the immediate efficiency of God.” When Samson tied his foxes tail to tail, with firebrands between them, and set fire to the Philistines’ fields, it was nothing in the nature of the foxes or the fire which set the fields ablaze. It was “nothing but the immediate efficiency of God.”

Let him deny it who can, while he holds that “the means have no self-efficiency to the end, either in the natural or moral world,” that “it is the immediate energy of God which connects means and end together in every case,” and that “A due attention to this may be of great use to shew how means become effectual, either in the natural or moral world.” The sword cuts both ways. Those who bend all their energies to make God all, and His creatures nothing, forget that there is evil in the world. If all means were actually intrinsically ineffectual, God alone making them efficacious by His own direct working, then the devil and the wicked could do nothing—unless the immediate energy of God Himself should make the means effectual in their hands to the accomplishment of their ends. Thus, God is made to be the actual perpetrator of every sin ever committed.

The Folly of Hyperspirituality
But more. On this plan, miracles are nothing. If everything is a miracle—an effect wrought by the direct power of God, without any efficacious means—then nothing is a miracle, and the very term “miracle” is rendered nugatory and deceptive. It is equally miraculous for the iron to sink as to swim. Both are effected by the immediate working of God, irrespective of any intrinsic properties in the iron, the water, or the gravitational pull of the earth. It was no more miracle for Peter to walk on the water than to walk on the land. On this plan, science is nothing. There are no distinctive properties resident in anything which God has created. Chemists, pharmacists, detectives, scientists of every description are all deceived.

But more. On this plan, wisdom is nothing. Wisdom consists precisely of understanding the various properties of all that God has created—physical, mental, moral, and spiritual—so that we know what means are effectual to accomplish our ends. The poor man “by his wisdom delivered the city.” (Eccl. 9:15). He understood and prescribed the means which would be effectual to that end, but such wisdom becomes the merest non-entity, if no means are actually effectual for anything, and all is done by the mere choice and immediate working of God.

Such is the consummate folly of hyperspirituality, when it attempts to make all of God, and nothing of His creatures—and such is the way of Calvinism. While it endeavors to make all of God, and nothing of His creatures, it in fact makes nothing of His wisdom, nothing of the display of His glory in the starry heavens, nothing of the most marvelous instincts native to the teeming life of earth, nothing of the wondrous properties which lie in the physical elements—and nothing of those which lie in the soul and spirit of man, though man is made in the image of God.