Introduction
When you share the gospel with someone, do you need to know first whether they are one of God’s elect? And is the free offer of Christ a genuine invitation, or merely a duty performed without conviction? In this conversation, Pastor Jim Butler, Dr. Richard Barcellos, and Pastor David Charles walk through Calvinism and its five points, the difference between a free offer and a so-called well-meant offer of the gospel, and what hyper-Calvinism actually teaches. Along the way they offer real pastoral help for anyone who has struggled to find assurance by looking inward, pointing instead to the simple, freeing command of God: look to Christ and live.
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Transcript
Keywords: Calvinism, hyper-Calvinism, free offer of the gospel, well-meant offer, TULIP, predestination, election, gospel preaching, evangelism, Reformed theology
Speakers: Dr. Richard Barcellos, Pastor David Charles, Pastor Jim Butler
What Is Calvinism and the Five Points
Pastor Jim Butler: So what is Calvinism? I’ll direct that to Pastor Barcellos.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Can I quote Spurgeon?
Pastor Jim Butler: Sure.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: What did he say? It is nothing but the theology of Jesus and the apostles. We are in the 21st century now, and my experience with what men call Calvinism started in the 1980s. I started listening to lectures and sermons on what men call the doctrines of grace, or the five points. Its emphasis at that time, and I think in most people’s thinking, is soteriological, the doctrine of salvation. The so-called five points spell the flower TULIP: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the preservation or perseverance of the saints. I don’t even know the whole story of how they came to be called the five points, except that it goes back to Dort.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Historically, that understanding collided with a related question. If unconditional election is true, and if limited atonement is true, that Christ did not expiate the guilt of every elect and non-elect person’s sins, then how do we preach? Do we still preach the gospel to people? And if we do, what is the basis on which there is warrant for those who hear the gospel to repent and believe?
The Warrant for the Free Offer of the Gospel
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Some people want to make a distinction between a free offer of the gospel and a free and sincere offer of the gospel. What I understand as a free offer bases the warrant for the preacher to preach it, and for the sinner to comply with what is being said, on this. I heard John Gerstner say it: God commands you. What is the warrant? What is the basis? God in his word. That is the view I hold, and I do not think I need anything more.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: I hope I am accurately stating the other view, which says free and sincere offer. It is that additional language, and sincere. What does that mean?
Pastor Jim Butler: Or well-meant.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Or well-meant, as if this is not a well-meant offer. It is. So what is sincere and well-meant supposed to add? It seems to be that there is this thing we will call a desire in God for, in this case, non-elect people to believe, but he does not decree that they would believe. It is still in him. It is an undecreed, pent-up wish, a frustration. Many years ago somebody had a post with a birthday cake, asking, does God wish? There is actually technical language for this. Some of our heroes use language like that. Robert Dabney uses some, and before him John Gill asked the question, are there undecreed desires within God? There is a Latin term he used, and I wish I had brought it in my notes. He denied it. He said no. And I think he is right. I do not think there is something in God that is really hoping something would happen but, since he does not decree it, it is not going to happen, yet he still has this in him. We do not have to go that far.
Pastor Jim Butler: Beyond the soteriological confusion of such a statement, the theological problems it creates do not help anybody, in terms of positing a God who desires things he has not decreed. That is a place you really do not want to go.
God’s Knowledge, Power, and Decree
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Now listen, God knows things he has not decreed. God knows what his power is able to do, and what he did not decree that he could have decreed.
Pastor David Charles: There are possible worlds.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: He could have decreed that David looked older than me and was older than me. But he did not. He decreed that David looks older than me, even though he is not. I am older than David, believe it or not, by three months.
Pastor David Charles: And more mature.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: God knows he could have done that. That is the distinction between absolute power and ordained power. Could God have executed his power so as to make a world larger than the earth is? Of course he could have. Did he? No. He ordained it to be what it is. Those are good distinctions. When you really think through them, distinguishing between God decreeing somebody’s faith and repentance and God desiring but not decreeing, I can see the logic going backwards, but I do not think it is necessary. I do not think Scripture requires it. There are other ways to understand these texts that do not get you into that kind of speculation.
Pastor Jim Butler: With reference to the exercise of power, as you just explained, that is absolutely correct, and I agree. Back to the birthday cake, I am pretty sure that person was asked, do you believe that God desires to save the reprobate? An affirmative answer to that is not what you have just described. God has determined reprobation, but there is some part of him that really desires that person’s salvation? That introduces a whole host of theological confusion regarding the being of God. To say that God desires the salvation of sinners, you have Bible texts all over. But God desires the salvation of the reprobate, that is another matter.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Yes. And we can make that other distinction, between the so-called secret will of God.
Pastor Jim Butler: And the revealed will of God. Yes.
Theology Before Soteriology
Pastor David Charles: The way God has put me together, I like doing evangelism. Give me a chance and I am talking to somebody, I am moving. That was actually part of what God used in his providence to bring me to what we now call Calvinism. The Reformed faith, the doctrines of grace, it actually rescues me from getting embroiled in all those questions, because now I know God has an elect people, and God in his grace will save them through the gospel. My only responsibility is to publish the gospel. However we work through our soteriology, we can never do that at the expense of our theology.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: And this is downhill from that. Theology is first.
Pastor David Charles: That is right. Theology is first.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: And it conditions our understanding of everything.
Pastor Jim Butler: Who God is before what God does.
Pastor David Charles: So to offer any given sinner the truth of the gospel, we do not need to probe into the mind or the heart of God, the desires of God. Going back to John Gerstner, it is sufficient that we have been commissioned, we have been told, we know the message to be given, and we know we are to publish it far and wide. We do not need to make God more emotive, more human, or more palatable. It was the understanding of these things from a biblical perspective that actually liberated me. This is what I tell my people. I say, look, give them the gospel, because if they are elect, God is going to save them. I know that is the allergy people want to avoid. As I listen to testimonies, one of the things I really like about YouTube is being able to listen to Jewish people, people who used to be trans, or self-righteous, hypocritical people, and hear them talk about how they became a Christian. Even if they do not use the language, it is there. God saved me.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: They acknowledge the effectual call without even knowing the phrase.
Pastor David Charles: I have even heard the Roman church sing “Amazing Grace.” It is right there. I was blind, I was lost, I was wretched.
Repairing Distortions by Returning to Scripture
Pastor David Charles: Now, there may be legitimate historical reasons for distortions. Was it Andrew Murray? No.
Pastor Jim Butler: John Murray?
Dr. Richard Barcellos: John Newton?
Pastor David Charles: The Baptist.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Andrew Fuller.
Pastor David Charles: Andrew Fuller, right. Maybe there have been real distortions of Calvinism that deny the gospel, that deny God’s grace. The way to repair those is to open up your Bible and go back to the language the Bible uses, rather than torturing it.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: That is right, because God says to do it.
Dr. Barcellos on Changing His View
Pastor David Charles: The Gerstner family is going to sue you.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: One of my struggles. I love John Gerstner. I got a nickname from John Gerstner, and I got a book from him, inscribed, “Dear Rich and Nan, thank you for housing such an unlikely transient as myself, John Gerstner, in your exquisite palace,” or something like that. Over the years I have changed my view. I was trained at The Master’s Seminary, and I do not know which professor, if any, taught this, but when I came out I held to the well-meant, sincere offer of the gospel, because of more contemporary expressions of it and hearing sermons and lectures on it. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, okay, what you are doing is telling us God has the knowledge of his own decree. Theologians like to distinguish between simple divine knowledge, God’s knowledge of himself and everything possible, and the knowledge of vision, that which he has decreed to be. Creation and providence are the execution of the decree. So you are saying his knowledge of vision, which includes everything he has decreed and since executed, includes this.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: This is a product of divine providence. The Bible is a creature.
Pastor Jim Butler: You have the New American Standard? I have got the New King James.
Pastor David Charles: I have got the upgraded version.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: So, where was my thought going? Part of God’s knowledge of vision is that which he has decreed to be, other than himself. By the way, God does not decree himself to be. God just is. But things that are other than God have to be decreed to be. So he has decreed the Bible to exist, and he preserves it, and he blesses it. And we are saying the free and well-meant offer wants to go back to God’s simple knowledge to ground the offer of the gospel. And I am going, you really want to do that? You know what that is? It is a real, heart-level, emotive desire for something he does not decree. It just sounds like there is this kind of Frankenstein.
Pastor Jim Butler: And they have killed some texts; they certainly have. There are texts that can be understood in that particular way, but can also be understood another way. Biblical Calvinism is consistent. The texts that seem to go in the well-meant offer direction are better explained alongside the rest of the texts, the theology of the Bible, and who God is in terms of his knowledge and his decree. I would encourage any listener to read John Gill’s The Cause of God and Truth. Any passage that may possibly appear contrary to a biblically regulated approach to soteriology, he deals with.
Pastor David Charles: He dealt with it voluminously. He was never shy to say things like, this is anthropomorphic. And then he would go on to expound the text as it is, because he had provided the necessary theological clarification and then worked through it. He was a master, and we need to recover that, not somehow bring God down.
When the Well-Meant Offer Becomes a Litmus Test
Dr. Richard Barcellos: At some point this understanding of the well-meant offer, which it sounds like we all agree there is a better way to handle, became a litmus test. If you deny it, you are a hyper. You are denying the confession, certainly denying Scripture, and you do not preach the gospel. And I am going, every week, all three of us, I preach every text. I do not care where I am. The purpose we have for each individual text is the same purpose we have for all the texts of the Bible: to present the incarnate Son of God, for us and for our salvation, in his sufferings and glory. Every text is somehow related to that, and I preach it every week. And if I do not preach it in my sermon, we have the Lord’s Supper every week to remind our people.
What Is Hyper-Calvinism?
Pastor Jim Butler: You mentioned hyper-Calvinism. If the well-meant offer goes perhaps too far afield on one side, basically, what is hyper-Calvinism?
Dr. Richard Barcellos: It is, and you can correct me here, only preaching the gospel to somebody who gives evidence of some sort of prevenient work of God in them, instead of preaching indiscriminately. You have an audience, you have no idea who is out there, and you are just preaching the gospel. The hyper-Calvinist preaches the gospel only to people who show signs of being elect. What that produces in people’s hearts, when they are raised in that kind of environment, is that they are looking for evidences. They are not obeying the gospel; they are looking for evidences of whether God has predestined them. My pushback is, go to the Bible and ask yourself if the Bible teaches you to peer into the decree of God, to find out the content of God’s decree before you do what God says. It does not do that. Secondly, go to any Christian and ask them, were you convinced you were predestined before you believed the gospel? You will hear, I did not even know what that word meant. When I came to Christ, I came because I wanted to.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Later I realized I was made willing in the day of God’s power. I came freely and willingly, having been made so by his grace. But that is not what I was experiencing. I was not sitting there thinking, I am being effectually called, divine power is being executed in accordance with the decree of God, the effective will of God is changing my heart, he is taking out the heart of stone, there comes the heart of flesh, and when it is all done, then I will go to Jesus. The warrant for faith in Christ is not the knowledge of the decree. It is that God commanded it.
Pastor Jim Butler: So on the one hand, with the hypers, you have a knowledge of the decree. And with the well-meant offer, there has to be this knowledge of the desire.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: It is not well-meant unless.
God Ordains the End and the Means
Pastor Jim Butler: Preach the gospel. Just preach from the text. And understand, if you are a hyper, yes, God has purposed to save from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. There is a fixed, certain group that God knows. But since in the wisdom of God the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. The hyper-Calvinist says, well, if God is going to save me, he is going to save me, irrespective of means, irrespective of preaching. It is going to be this divine zap.
Pastor Jim Butler: But the God who has ordained the end has ordained the means to get to the end, and that is, preach the gospel, look and live, be saved.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: It is interesting how people who think that way do not apply that principle consistently in their lives. They do not say, God has eternally determined and fixed, in an infinite, eternal, and immutable way, whether or not I will live tomorrow, so I am not going to eat.
Pastor Jim Butler: Or wear a seatbelt.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Or wear a seatbelt. Or, I am not going to stop at stop signs. Nobody lives that way. But they will want to use it against you when it comes to believing the gospel. Why? Because the problem is not outside of them.
Pastor David Charles: Now, my question for you two men, if I can ask a question, because I think we have laid it out.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Well, he has the questions. You are doing what you always do, David. You are taking over. This is Jim’s show.
Pastor Jim Butler: Oh, come on.
Pastor David Charles: I was predetermined to do this.
Pastor Jim Butler: You were predetermined to do this, and so was I. So it was granted.
How Big a Problem Is Hyper-Calvinism?
Pastor David Charles: I think we have given a proper diagnosis of how the well-meant offer is used. My question is this. Like you, I was wonderfully drawn into the Reformed faith by God’s grace. I could not deny it; it is in my Bible, and I loved it.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Against your will?
Pastor David Charles: Well, he empowered my will to do what it did. I have never really encountered a hyper-Calvinist. However, I went to bed one night, a Tuesday night in September, a Calvinist, and I woke up in the morning to discover.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: You were a hyper-Calvinist.
Pastor David Charles: I was a hyper-Calvinist. So like you, I have read this material. I know there are undoubtedly people out there, like you described, who just say, if you are elect, you will be saved. But I have not really encountered those people. How big of a problem is this actually, that all this cure is being given for a problem where we may be creating more problems?
Pastor Jim Butler: It probably depends on the context you live in. We live among a very Dutch Reformed community, and there are certainly tendencies in that direction.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Are there not denominations that would be called hyper-Calvinist?
Pastor Jim Butler: They would not describe themselves that way.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Right, that have a thousand members and so on.
Pastor Jim Butler: I do not want to get into the weeds on some of that. But no, it is a genuine problem.
Pastor David Charles: And the way it was described here, that there are people who genuinely say, if I am elect, I will get there.
Pastor Jim Butler: They may not say it or articulate it, but that is the mindset.
Pastor David Charles: So what I am hearing you say is that it is not so much coming from the mouth of the preachers in the first place, but actually coming from the mouth of the unbelieving?
Pastor Jim Butler: Well, the preachers do not emphasize, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. They emphasize something else. But we do.
Pastor David Charles: I guess, like Rabbi Duncan, what did he say?
Pastor Jim Butler: Arminianism is all door and no house. Hyper-Calvinism is all house and no door. Something to that effect. And I think that is accurate.
Pastor David Charles: A Jew said that?
Pastor Jim Butler: Yes, Rabbi John Duncan.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Was he a Scottish Presbyterian, an Old Testament man?
Pastor David Charles: I take umbrage at the modification of Calvinism, because that is not even Christian.
Pastor Jim Butler: Well, hyper does not indicate an over-and-above. No, I do not like the term either.
Pastor David Charles: Was it Sproul who called it sub-Calvinism?
Dr. Richard Barcellos: I think a lot of this depends on where you minister. You are in British Columbia, you are in Toledo. There is probably not a lot of this.
Pastor Jim Butler: No Three Forms of Unity.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: There is nothing like that.
Pastor Jim Butler: By the way, the Three Forms of Unity are fantastic.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: There is nothing like this where I minister. There is in California, but not where I am.
The Fruit: Assurance Struggles
Pastor Jim Butler: Here is what happens. The fruit is usually a heavy emphasis on, instead of you are a sinner, look to Christ and believe, it is you have to really know your sin, you have to really feel your sin, before there is this warrant to look to Christ. Typically, people brought up under that type of preaching, when they are saved, if they are saved, have huge assurance struggles.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: What does that hymn say? All you need to do is feel your need of him.
Pastor Jim Butler: This he gives you, this he gives you.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: It goes back and forth.
Pastor David Charles: So, Jim, you have actually had to deal with this directly. You have thought through this a lot. If you are saying it is not located in the Three Forms.
Pastor Jim Butler: No, the doctrinal confessions are fine.
Salvation Has Become Complicated
Pastor David Charles: So where do you think this originated, and why?
Pastor Jim Butler: I can provide you and any listener with a very helpful booklet on the subject. There is a man who is an elder in the Netherlands Reformed Congregation in Holland. His name escapes me, and I probably could not pronounce it anyway, but the booklet is called Salvation Has Become Complicated. Essentially he says, the Bible teaches this, our confessions teach this, our fathers taught this, but our preachers presently do not preach this. He locates the change in the 20th and 21st centuries. There has been a more hyper, internal looking at oneself. It becomes mystical too. Heavy mysticism. Very subjective. Honestly, it is horrible. But it is a very helpful booklet.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: And that is in English?
Pastor Jim Butler: Yes, it is translated into English.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: It is not Jan P. von Butlerhaven?
Pastor Jim Butler: No, it is not. He is an elder in a church, I think a Netherlands Reformed Congregation. There are varying degrees within Three Forms churches as to where they might fall on the continuum. But it is a real problem. It does tend to point the sinner to the sinner: his sin, his misery, his experience, his feelings. Not a lot of look and live.
Dr. Richard Barcellos: Look to Christ. Look outside yourself.
Pastor Jim Butler: Look and be saved, all the ends of the earth.
Learning From Church History
Pastor David Charles: Hearing you say it is not in their documents, given my love for church history, it does every group well to go back to their documents, because there are things that happened. I look at even our churches. I think we still view much of our religion through the lens of revivalism. That might be controversial.
Pastor Jim Butler: No, I agree.
Pastor David Charles: The way for us to get a clear view is to go back prior to the evangelical era, including the First Great Awakening. I know that is not popular to say. I am always curious, where did things depart?
Pastor Jim Butler: Where did the wheels go off the track?
Pastor David Charles: One, because I am curious, but also to help those who come after us. We are all old enough that we are thinking about the peace and security of our churches after we are gone. I am always thinking about the health and wellbeing of my church and our sister churches. What is out there that we should avoid, that we are just not aware of?
Dr. Richard Barcellos: So you are saying part of the usefulness of church history and historical theology is to provide an antidote for repeating the errors of history.
Pastor Jim Butler: Yes. Those ignorant of history are going to repeat the same errors.
Pastor David Charles: Of course, somewhere in the Westminster documents it cautions against resurrecting old heresies. We are not talking about that. Just knowing what is going on.
Pastor Jim Butler: Where was the departure, so that we can guard against it?
Pastor David Charles: So you hate revivals?
Pastor Jim Butler: Hang on, I do not want to get into that.
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