Iain Murray on John Gill and Hyper-Calvinism

But Spurgeon would appear to be over-generous to Gill when he writes: ‘Gill is the Coryphaeus of Hyper-Calvinism, but if his followers never went beyond their master, they would not go very far astray.’ The keystone of Hyper-Calvinistic thinking is clearly to be found in Gill and especially in his two volumes, The Cause of God and Truth, published to refute Arminianism. In these he argues at length that men are not responsible for ‘coming to him [Christ], or believing in him to the saving of their souls,’ because they cannot do so ‘without the special grace of God.’ Unregenerate men can only be called to an ‘historic faith,’ that is to say an assent to the facts of the gospel. As far as texts of Scripture were concerned, Gill believed, ‘I know of none that exhort and command all men, all the individuals of the human race to repent, and believe in Christ for salvation.’ His case is that men are only obligated as far as the ‘revelation’ they receive. Men in general are only given an ‘external’ revelation and with this nothing more than an historical, not saving, faith can be required of them. The elect, on the other hand, are given an ‘internal’ revelation, making them ‘sensible’ of their lost estate, acquainting them with Christ and thus leading them ‘to venture on him, rely upon him, and believe in him.’ The gospel makes no promises to ‘dead men,’ only to ‘sensible sinners.’

In accordance with this, Gill claimed that all texts appearing to show a favourable desire on God’s part towards all the lost do not have any reference to their salvation. Thus when God says, ‘Why will ye die?’ Gill believed we are to understand: ‘the death expostulated about, is not eternal, but a temporal one, or what concerns their temporal affairs, and civil condition, and circumstances of life.’ Similarly, when Christ says, ‘How often would I have gathered thy children…’ it is to be understood not of gathering to salvation but only of a gathering to hear him preach and thus be brought to historical faith ‘sufficient to preserve them from temporal ruin.’ And the will of Christ to gather them ‘is not to be understood of his divine will… but of his human will, or of his will as a man; which, though not contrary to the divine will, but subordinate to it, [is] yet not always the same with it, nor always fulfilled.’

Iain H. Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism: The Battle for Gospel Preaching (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 127–29; italics original. In the 2010 larger reset edition, the pages are 113–14; italics original.

…it is hard to see how [Tom] Nettles’ defense of Gill can be sustained.

Ibid., 131, n2. See David Mark Rathel’s critique of Nettles (click).