One night, when our baby daughter, Elisabeth, was crawling, I was lying on the floor studying a folio-sized commentary. I noticed her moving my way and did not object when she crawled onto the massive book. My wife, Betty, said, “You must love your daughter to allow her to drool on that book!” The author of that volume was John Gill, and Betty knew how I treasured his works.1
A few months later, Elisabeth was learning to talk. One day she unexpectedly, and with a mischievous grin, blurted out, “John Gill!” We gasped and asked her to repeat her words. Smiling, she said, “John Gill! … I kiddin’.”
After Elisabeth married, we gave her and her husband the same nine-volume folio set of Gill’s commentary on which she salivated as a babe.
My love and appreciation for John Gill continue; I’ve quoted him more in this blog than any other writer. (See a list of his tags here.) He has been a constant companion for almost fifty years, and I view Gill as the primary instrument God has used to increase my knowledge of Christ and His salvation.
So, I grimaced when a beloved pastor wrote the following on social media:
Sadly, I’ve come to the conclusion that John Gill was a hyper-Calvinist. I don’t want it to be true, but I think it’s unavoidable. He’s still super good on a bunch of other things though.… I found Rathel’s work here to be pretty open-and-shut. I would LOVE to be wrong about this by the way. Please persuade me, Michael Rogers!
The work that persuaded my friend of Gill’s error is John Gill and the Charge of Hyper-Calvinism: Assessing Contemporary Arguments in Defense of Gill in Light of Gill’s Doctrine of Eternal Justification by David Mark Rathel.
Gill’s theological adversaries have accused him of hyper-Calvinism from the days of his ministry until now. “The term hyper-Calvinist [has been] a convenient and baggage-filled one to lob into an argument or discussion”2 about Gill. Rathel has joined a long list of prosecutors.
In one sense, I do not mind applying the term hyper-Calvinist to Gill. As a Baptist, he believed (as do I) that Calvin was sub-scriptural in some areas, including his doctrine of infant baptism. Gill wanted the Lord’s people to go “above and beyond” Calvin in this matter. I join him—Lord, fill the world with hyper-Calvinist baptizers!
However, I object to applying this expression to Gill in another sense. Most Christians probably agree with Tim Challies: “Hyper-Calvinism … undermines evangelism and/or somehow distorts the gospel message.”3 Gill is not guilty of either charge.
I fear Rathel’s charge (and my pastor-friend’s endorsement) will discourage Christians from consulting Gill. The hyper-Calvinist label may damage the cause of God and truth4 by keeping some of God’s sheep from a feast of fat things (cp. Isa 25:6) they might otherwise enjoy in his writings.
In this post, I want to begin my defense of Gill in two ways. First, I want to examine the method Rathel uses to reach his adverse verdict. He surveys Gill’s “primary theological focus—a desire to minimize human agency in the reception of salvation—and its chief accompanying doctrine, eternal justification.” He says eternal justification led Gill to deny the free offer of the gospel and duty faith, and these beliefs make him a hyper-Calvinist.
As Rathel says, “Gill was a systematic theologian who … desired a coherent theological system,”5 and we must “[examine] Gill on his own terms.”6
But Rathel fails to do this. He describes the surface elements of Gill’s system, but this is not enough to convict him of error. As John Brine says,
It is generally allowed, that in refuting any opinion, it is necessary not only to raise objections against it; and to consider with what difficulties it is clogged; but also to answer the arguments offered in defense of it, by those who believe it a truth.… This great doctrine [i.e., eternal justification] has been fully stated, and strongly defended, by, Mr. Gill, and others before him; whose arguments ought to be considered, and answers given to them, if any thing is done to purpose in this controversy.7
Rathel does not examine Gill’s arguments for eternal justification, much less refute them, and he does not describe how Gill uses that doctrine to deny the free offer of the gospel and duty faith. He seems to reason:
Major premise: Believing in eternal justification—and, as a result, denying gospel offers and duty faith—is an error; it makes one a hyper-Calvinist.
Minor premise: John Gill believed in eternal justification and denied gospel offers and duty faith.
Conclusion: Therefore, John Gill was in error; he was a hyper-Calvinist.
The logic is correct, but the major premise collapses if eternal justification is valid and if gospel offers and duty faith—as Gill defined them—are wrong. Rathel does nothing to show Gill’s errors regarding these doctrines; he assumes they are wrong without proof.
Second, I will provide two excerpts from Gill’s commentary on the Bible. They show Gill’s overall tenor and suggest that Rathel has erred in his condemnation. Gill does not “obviate the need to evangelize,”8 as hyper-Calvinists do.
Commenting on Paul’s words, “God … now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30), Gill says,
[God] hath given orders, that the doctrine of repentance, as well as remission of sins, should be preached to all nations, to Gentiles as well as Jews; and that it becomes them to repent of their idolatries, and turn from their idols, and worship the one, only, living and true God: and though for many hundreds of years God had neglected them, and sent no messengers, nor messages to them, to acquaint them with his will, and to shew them their follies and mistakes; yet now he had sent his apostles unto them, to lay before them their sins, and call them to repentance; and to stir them up to this, the apostle informs them of the future judgment in the following verse.… The law gives no encouragement to repentance, and shews no mercy on account of it; it is a branch of the Gospel ministry, and goes along with the doctrine of the remission of sins.9
In his explanation of the Great Commission—“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15)—Gill defines the word creature as “men, the offspring of fallen Adam, the objects of God’s good will.” He says,
Now to these, Christ would have the Gospel preached, as well as to the Jews; even to all, without any distinction of people, Jews and Gentiles, Barbarians, Scythians, bond and free, male and female, rich and poor, greater or lesser sinners, even to all mankind; than which, nothing was more provoking to the Jews; who would, if they could, have revoked and made null this commission of Christ; see 1 Thess. 2:16. It was the Gospel he would have preached to them, the word of peace and reconciliation, by his atoning sacrifice; the doctrine of free and full pardon by his blood; and of justification by his righteousness; and of complete salvation by him: even every doctrine relating to his person, as God and man; to every office of his, as prophet, priest, and king; to his incarnation, sufferings, and death, his resurrection, ascension, session at the right hand of God, and intercession for his people, and second coming to judgment; with every doctrine relating to the grace of God, of the father in election, and the covenant of peace, of the son in redemption, and of the spirit in regeneration and sanctification: all which he would have published and declared in the most free, plain, and open manner, with all boldness, faithfulness, and constancy.10
Gill believed we should preach the gospel to all nations and call them to repentance and that the gospel is for all people with no distinction. These statements came not from a hyper-Calvinist.
Conclusion
Rathel describes Gill’s complex system of salvation but does not address its internal workings. Before charging Gill with error, we should evaluate his arguments for eternal justification. If he is wrong on this, we need proceed no further—Gill’s system is unsound, and we should reject it. But, if he is correct, we should then consider his reasoning regarding the free offer of the gospel and duty faith. We should seek to understand his distinctions between immanent and transient acts, active and passive justification, external and internal calls, etc. This would be “examining Gill on his own terms.”
Until someone does this, I will stand by my longtime guide. I may let my baby daughter drool on Gill’s commentary, but I don’t want to stand silently by as someone misrepresents him.
Footnotes
- The image in this post is Portrait of John Gill by George Vertue (1684–1756). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
- Tim Challies, Hyper-Calvinism: A Brief Definition, https://www.challies.com/articles/hyper-calvinism-a-brief-definition/. I have applied his general observation to Gill.
- Challies, Hyper-Calvinism.
- Pun intended; see John Gill, The Cause of God and Truth (Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1992).
- David Mark Rathel, “John Gill and the Charge of Hyper-Calvinism: Assessing Contemporary Arguments in Defense of Gill in Light of Gill’s Doctrine of Eternal Justification,” SBJT 25.1 (2021), 47.
- Rathel, “John Gill,” 44.
- John Brine, A Defense of the Doctrine of Eternal Justification (London: Printed by A. Ward, 1732), 4–5 (emphasis added).
- George Thomas Kurian, Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary: The Authoritative Resource on the Christian World (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001), s.v. “hyper-Calvinism.”
- John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (1809–10; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 8:312 (emphasis added).
- Gill, “Exposition,” 7:495 (emphasis added).
2 comments
Thank you for your blog post. I am seeking to understand John Gill’s theology better.
The quotes you provide from Gill, however, confirm my opinion that he really was hyper-Calvinist (in a negative sense). In the quotes you provide he very deliberately interprets ‘all’ to mean ‘both Jew and Gentile’ rather than ‘every human being’.
The quotes you provide, far from refuting Rathel’s charge, actually support it because they suggest that Gill did not believe that the gospel should be preached to every person. It rather supports the idea that he believed it should be preached only to those who show evidence of God’s work regardless whether they were Jew or Gentile.
Stephen,
The “beloved pastor” who inspired my post later wrote a paper, “Revisiting John Gill’s Doctrine of Justification.” In it, he reverses his conclusion that Gill was a hyper-Calvinist. I will send a copy of it to you via email.
Yours in Christ,
Mike