. . . The Presbyterian Journal, November 18, 1981,
includes an article by the Reverend Donald A. Dunkerley entitled
“Hyper-Calvinism Today.” This author is to be highly commented because he knows
what hyper-Calvinism is and he states the definition clearly. Most popular
writers and preachers neither state nor know it. Hyper-Calvinism is “that view
of Calvinism which holds that ‘there is no world-wide call to Christ sent out
to all sinners, neither are all men bidden to take him as their Savior.’
Hyper-calvinists . . . maintain that Christ should be held forth or offered as
Savior to those only whom God effectually calls” (14).
It seems that there are such people, people who are
decisively called Hard-shell Baptists. There must be very few such, and I do
not know of any Presbyterians who qualify. Dunkerley himself acknowledges that
they are “an almost negligible minority.”
. . . In spite of his acknowledgment that hyper-Calvinists
are an almost negligible minority and after describing various forms of
evangelism, he complains that “we lack and urgently need in our day [a]
compassionate evangelism.” Well, this is true, but in its context it seems to
mean that hyper-Calvinism is almost the worst aberration of the twentieth
century. Perhaps of the eighteenth century also, for Whitefield – whom he cites
with approval – hardly evinces the evangelistic methods he seems to require.
Of course, the Bible commands us to preach the Gospel to all
men. To a hyper-Calvinist who insisted that a minister should preach the Gospel
only to the elect, Clarence Edward Macartney, if I remember correctly, replied,
“You point out to me which persons are the elect, and I shall confine my
preaching to them.”
But when Mr. Dunkerley wants to tell everyone that “God
loves you,” I wonder how he can defend that phrase when not only Jacob, but
Esau also is in the audience.
Clark, G. H., (1996). The Atonement (pp. 136-137). Hobbs, New Mexico: The Trinity Foundation
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