John H. Gerstner on Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and God’s General Love

John Gerstner noted this about Edwards on God’s love:

If God’s love is known by what it hates, it is also known by what it loves or inclines toward. First, in a sense, it extends to all creatures. All creatures have some good from God.¹³⁶ Even the wicked share in this benevolence. “God is kind to the unthankful and evil.”¹³⁷ Man is now naturally contrary to God and positively evil, but the Luke 6:35 sermon shows that God still loves him in some ways. Indeed, Edwards goes on to say in another sermon: “even in damnation.”¹³⁸ Yet, fundamentally, “holy persons love holy things for their holiness.”¹³⁹
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136. Unpublished MS sermon on Ps. 145:15–21, “All creatures in heaven and earth have their good things from God,” p. 1, St. Ind., Nov. 1, 1753.
137. Unpublished MS sermon on Lk. 6:35.
138. Unpublished MS sermon on Eph. 4:15–16, “In a company of Christians among whom Christianity has its genuine effect, love is the beginning and love is the middle and love is the end of all their affairs,” p. 2, May 1743.
139. Unpublished MS sermons on Ps. 119:[1]40.

John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 3 vols. (Powhatan, VA: Berea Publications; Orlando, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 1993), 2:38.

The Contradiction Between the Early and Later John Gerstner (1914–1996) on the Will of God

1) The early John Gerstner:

4. "If predestination is true, God is insincere in inviting all men to salvation!"

Again, you will ask, Why if a man is not elected or predestined to eternal life but is actually passed over in the decrees of God, does God proceed to strive with him nonetheless? Why does God send his gospel to a person who has been predestined to be left to himself and perish? Or in the form of an objection it is said: If predestination is true, God is insincere in inviting all men to salvation.

Now before we come to grips with this question in its fundamental nature, let me call attention incidentally to a significant fact. The situation which is before us at the moment is in no sense different from the situation we would have if there were no such thing as predestination. That is, if there were merely foreknowledge and no predestination of events God would know from all eternity that certain persons were going to disbelieve and to perish in their sins. He has perfect knowledge of all things and therefore knows who will believe and who will not believe. The question can still be raised, just as legitimately as in the predestination context, why does God strive and work and present the gospel and its means of grace to persons whom he knows are going to reject every overture which he makes? We know that God knows the outcome and we also know that God does work strenuously for the salvation of people whose unbelief he has known from all eternity. This is just to remind you once again that as long as there is such a thing as foreknowledge we have problems like this regardless of the doctrine of predestination. Predestination, in other words, does not bring a problem like this into existence; it exists independently of predestination and is made neither better nor worse, that is more or less severe, by the doctrine of predestination.

Otherwise it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask why God strives with men whom he knows and has predestined should perish. Again, incidentally, before coming to this question, let me notice another significant point. This question really does concern God and not us. What I mean is this: we may wonder why God, who knows all things, including the fact that certain persons will in spite of all efforts reject and disbelieve, continues to work with them to persuade them to believe; but, we cannot ask why we would do so with all men. We do not know the outcome. To us there is always a possibility that anybody with whom we work and for whom we pray may be an object of the divine mercy and may be predestined to eternal life and may actually believe and be saved. God knows, in a given instance, that such is not going to happen, but we never know it. Therefore, we can not only work in obedience preaching the gospel but we can work in hope that our preaching will be successful in the salvation of the persons with whom we strive. It does not affect our evangelistic endeavors or zeal in the slightest, but nevertheless it is a question which we may ask concerning God himself.

What reason, then, are we able to discover why God, who knows the futility of certain endeavors to convert certain persons, does proceed to make these endeavors which he knows are going to be futile? There appear to be several reasons. First, God by this means shows the hardness of the sinful heart. As we have said, it is only the wickedness of the human heart and not the decree of God which causes men to reject the overtures of God and his gospel. What more clearly reveals the depths of depravity than the rejection of such invitations from a glorious God? Second, this hardness of the human heart apart from the converting presence of the Holy Spirit shows that God is essential to goodness. Third, God's sincerity is evident in that if any person whosoever accepts the gospel, God will accept him. Fourth, the elect see, in the invitations of God and their rejection by men, how hard their own hearts were apart from the grace of God and what they would have done apart from that grace. They may say now and through all eternity as they contemplate the righteous judgments of God against the wicked, "There but for the grace of God go we.

John H. Gerstner, A Predestination Primer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1963), 35–37. See also Robert Reymond's citation of this early work. In his work on Acts 3:26, Gerstner said, “Although the crime of the Jews cannot be denied, it can be forgiven; Christ has returned to them through His witnesses, so that they may be saved.” John H. Gerstner, “Acts,” in The Biblical Expositor: Volume 3: Matthew–Revelation, ed. Carl F. H. Henry (1960/1973; repr., A. J. Holman & Co., 2016), 977.

2) The later John Gerstner:

Most Reformed theologians also include, as a by-product of the atonement, the well-meant offer of the gospel by which all men can be saved. Some Reformed theologians take a further step still and say that God even intends that they should be saved by this atonement which nevertheless was made only for the elect. For example, John Murray and Ned Stonehouse write:

Our Lord . . . says expressly that he willed the bestowal of his saving and protecting grace upon those whom neither the Father nor he decreed thus to save and protect.

One may sadly say that Westminster Theological Seminary stands for this misunderstanding of the Reformed doctrine since not only John Murray and Ned Stonehouse but also Cornelius Van Til, R. B. Kuiper, John Frame, and, so far as we know, all of the faculty have favored it. The Christian Reformed Church had already in 1920 taken this sad step away from Reformed orthodoxy and has been declining ever since. The Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. had even earlier, though somewhat ambiguously, departed and the present mainline Presbyterian church affirms that "The risen Christ is the savior for all men."

The Presbyterian Church in the United States (now part of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.) is not far behind, and the separatist Presbyterians such as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America are following in this train. Only the Protestant Reformed Church seems willing to hold to the whole counsel of God on this doctrine.

Serious as this error is, it does not constitute a radical break with the Reformed tradition, though it does lay a foundation for it. For example, Murray and Stonehouse insist that, though God truly desires the salvation of the reprobate, He does not decree that. Rather, He decrees the opposite. They recognize theirs as a very dangerous position and appeal to great mystery:

We have found that God himself expresses an ardent desire for the fulfillment of certain things which he has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass. This means that there is a will to the realization of what he has not decretively willed, a pleasure towards that which he has not been pleased to decree. This is indeed mysterious, and why he has not brought to pass in the exercise of his omnipotent power and grace, what is his ardent pleasure lies hidden in the sovereign counsel of his will.

However this is not "mystery" but bald contradiction, as these two fine Reformed theologians well realized. How does one account for Homer(s) nodding? The answer is simple—the exegesis seemed to demand it. The two authors "tremble at God's word" and God's Word seemed to them clearly to say that God desired what God did not desire. We certainly agree that if God says that He desired what He did not desire we would have to agree with God. Since we know that God does not desire what God does not desire, for this is evident on every page of Scripture, as well as in the logical nature of God and man, we know this exegesis is in error, must be in error, cannot but be in error.

But where is its error? It must be that Murray and Stonehouse are talking literally where He desires to be taken anthropomorphically. Almost everything said about God or by God in Scripture is anthropomorphism. The "everlasting arms," His "riding on the clouds," the "eyes" and "ears" of the Lord—there are literally hundreds of such metaphorical, anthropomorphic expressions describing God. This is, of course, admitted by all. On the other hand, it is rightly contended, God is also described literally as loving, rejoicing, happy, thinking, and so forth. Can we say that when God is described in physical or finite terms the expressions are metaphorical, but when He is described ontologically or psychologically the expressions are literal? No, for sometimes that is the case and sometimes not. When God is described psychologically as suffering, frustrated, or grieved, Murray, Stonehouse, and all sound theologians would deny these to be literally true. They know that, in the early church, patripassionism (the teaching that the Father suffers) was a heresy.

The question facing us here is whether God could "desire" that which He does not bring to pass. There is no question at all that He can desire certain things, and these things which He desires He possesses and enjoys in Himself eternally. Otherwise, He would not be the ever-blessed God. The Godhead desires each Person in the Godhead and enjoys each eternally. The Godhead also desires to create, and He (though He creates in time) by creating enjoys so doing eternally. Otherwise He would be eternally bereft of a joy He presently possesses and would have increased in joy if He later possessed it—both of which notions are impossible. He would thereby have changed (which is also impossible) and would have grown in the wisdom of a new experience (which is blasphemous to imagine).

If God's very blessedness means the oneness of His desire and His experience, is not our question (whether He could desire what He does not desire) rhetorical? Not only would He otherwise be bereft of some blessedness which would reduce Him to finitude, but He would be possessed of some frustration which would not only bereave Him of some blessedness, but would manifestly destroy all blessedness. This is clearly the case because His blessedness would be mixed with infinite regret. Our God would be the ever-miserable, ever-blessed God. His torment in the eternal damnation of sinners would be as exquisite as it is everlasting. He would actually suffer infinitely more than the wicked. Indeed, He would Himself be wicked because He would have sinfully desired what His omniscience would have told Him He could never have.

But why continue to torture ourselves? God, if He could be frustrated in His desires, simply would not be God. When, therefore, we read of God's "desiring" what He does not bring to pass, let us not "grieve" His Spirit by taking this literally, but recognize therein an anthropomorphic expression.

John H. Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, ed. by Don Kistler, 2nd edition (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 2000), 142–146.

3) Here's Gerstner's "Forward" to Engelsma's book that he also wrote later in his life:

This is certainly an interesting, informative, lively, learned discussion of the essence of the gospel call to all mankind. In my opinion, Professor Engelsma carefully defines and convincingly avoids "hyper-Calvinism" himself and clears his denomination, the Protestant Reformed Churches, of so teaching.

The locus of the debate among Calvinists concerns what is called "the well-meant offer." Let me locate first what is mean by "well-meant offer" and the area of difference among Calvinists concerning it.

There is much related to this title that is shared by all Calvinists though sometimes differently phrased; namely, that reprobates hear the call and that is a "serious" call to them. There is one part of the understood meaning of well-meant offer" that is affirmed by many Calvinists today and denied by others; namely, that God desires and intends the salvation of reprobates in that call they hear or read.

The "well-meant offer" is understood, by both sides, to include the notion that God intends and desires the salvation of reprobates when the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to everyone who hears with his ears or reads with his eyes. The late John Murray and Ned B. Stonehouse in The Free Offer of the Gospel and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church could declare in 1948 (citing The Free Offer of the Gospel by Murray and Stonehouse):

...there is in God a benevolent lovingkindness towards the repentance and salvation of even those whom he has not decreed to save. This pleasure, will, desire is expressed in the universal call to repentance.... The full and free offer of the gospel is a grace bestowed upon all. Such grace is necessarily a manifestation of love or lovingkindness in the heart of God, and this lovingkindness is revealed to be of a character or kind that is correspondent with the grace bestowed.

The grace offered is nothing less than salvation in its richness and fullness. The love or lovingkindness that lies back of that offer is not anything less; it is the will to that salvation. In other words, it is Christ in all the glory of his person and in all the perfection of his finished work whom God offers in the gospel. The loving and benevolent will that is the source of that offer and that grounds its veracity and reality is the will to the possession of Christ and the enjoyment of the salvation that resides in him (quoted in Hyper-Calvinism & the Call of the Gospel, p. 43).

I have italicized the three statements that can only mean in that context that God desires and intends ("will" is used on the sense of "intend") the salvation of the reprobates. Much else that is stated can be so interpreted but is not unambiguous. All Calvinists (and indeed all Christians) agree that not all humans persons are saved. Arminians do champion the notion that God desires and intends the salvation of every person. Calvinists do not, but here Calvinists John Murray, Ned Stonehouse, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church do so teach.

On the other hand, Herman Hoeksema, the Protestant Reformed denomination, and our author David Engelsma in this book emphatically reject the "well-meant offer" as including God's desire and intention to save reprobates.

As a Calvinist, not associated ecclesiastically with the tiny Protestant Reformed denomination and sharply divergent from some of her doctrinal positions, I feel it absolutely necessary to hold with her here where she stands, almost alone today, and suffers massive vituperation and ridicule from Calvinists (no less) for her faithfulness at this point to the gospel of God.

I had the incomparable privilege of being a student of Professor Murray and Stonehouse. With tears in my heart, I nevertheless confidently assert that they erred profoundly in The Free Offer of the Gospel and died before they seem to have realized their error which, because of their justifiedly [sic] high reputations for Reformed excellence generally, still does incalculable damage to the cause of Jesus Christ and the proclamation of His gospel.

It is absolutely essential to the nature of the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent that whatever His sovereign majesty desires or intends most certainly--without conceivability of failure in one iota thereof--must come to pass! Soli Deo Gloria! Amen and amen forevermore! God can never, ever desire or intend anything that does not come to pass, or He is not the living, happy God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but an eternally miserable being weeping tears of frustration that He was unable to prevent hell and can never end it thus destroying Himself and heaven in the process.

"God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen" (1 Tim. 6:15, 16).

John H. Gerstner
Ligonier, PA

From John Gerstner's "Forward," in Hyper-Calvinism and the Call of the Gospel by David Engelsma (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1994), vii–ix.

After Gerstner quotes A. H. Strong (in Systematic Theology, p. 290) stating the proposition that love (both in God and in ourselves) implies a desire that all creatures should fulfill the purpose of their existence by being morally conformed to the holy One, Gerstner says “all Calvinists must disagree because what God desires He does.”

See John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 3 vols. (Powhatan, VA: Berea Publications; Orlando, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 1993), 3:285.

Al Martin’s Agreement With John Murray On The Free Offer

Richard Mayhue reports the following about Al Martin's differences with the later John Gerstner, who rejected the well-meant offer:

In a letter dated September 12, 1991, the Elders of Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey, pastored by Al Martin, himself a staunch proclaimer of Reformed doctrine, disavow Dr. Gerstner's teaching on the atonement beginning on p. 118 and continuing through p. 131. They write that, "Dr. Gerstner strays from the mainstream of historic Calvinistic teaching regarding the free offer of the Gospel." This disclaimer letter comes with every copy of Dr. Gerstner's book that they distribute. A review of Dr. Gerstner's work by Reformation Today seriously questions his discussion of total depravity, election, and irresistible grace as it relates to his analysis of dispensational thought.⁶
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6. Tom Wells, "Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism: A Review," Reformation Today 125 (Jan–Feb 1992): 25–32.

Richard L. Mayhue, "Who Is Wrong? A Review of John Gerstner's Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth," in The Master's Perspective on Contemporary Issues, ed. Robert L. Thomas (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1998), 2:62.

Another has reported the content of this letter as follows:

Trinity Book Service (of Reformed Baptist Al Martin’s church) sends a warning with Gerstner’s book that includes the following: “Dr. Gerstner strays from the mainstream of historic Calvinism regarding the free offer of the gospel. . . . [W]e cannot endorse his treatment of the subject of the atonement as it relates to the free offer of the gospel. We in fact commend the writing of Stonehouse and Murray on the Free Offer of the Gospel.

The same goes with Walter Chantry (see here and here) and Erroll Hulse. They are all influential Reformed Baptists who agree with John Murray's view that God desires the salvation of all men in the revealed will.

An Edwardsian Definition of Hell

Hell is a spiritual and material furnace of fire where its victims are exquisitely tortured in their minds and in the bodies eternally, according to their various capacities, by God, the devils, and damned humans including themselves, in their memories and consciences as well as in their raging, unsatisfied lusts, from which place of death God's saving grace, mercy, and pity are gone forever, never for a moment to return. Edwards nowhere gives such a comprehensive definition, but this is the way we put his message together as his overall view of hell, to which he gave so much reflection in his study and in his pulpit.

John H. Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1998), 53.

R. C. Sproul (1939–2017) Evades the Question: "Does God Desire All People to be Saved?"

On November 13th on Twitter, I said:

Though he seems to allow for it [Chosen by God, pp.195-197], I can't recall R. C. Sproul ever teaching on God's willingness to save all men.

Now there is a video (that I originally saw on Justin Taylor's blog) of Mark Driscoll explicitly asking R. C. Sproul the question, "Does God Really Want All People to be Saved?"; and Driscoll even distinguishes so as to reference God's revealed will, not the decretal sense of His will. Instead of answering the specific question put to him, Sproul answers a different question, i.e. "Does God take delight in punishing or meeting out wrath upon people?" I left some comments on Justin's blog regarding the question he was actually asked.

Sproul has popularized Calvinistic and Reformed theology for years, but he has neglected talking about God's revealed will. Consequently, this generation of Calvinists in the U.S. have a massive blind spot on the subject, and this is opening the way for many of them to reject the well-meant offer of the gospel. This is one of the reasons why I frequently post primary Calvinistic sources on my blog. It's crucial for the very life of the church that we understand God's passionate zeal for saving sinners; and although I've benefited from much of his teaching, R. C. Sproul, sadly, has not been helping us in this respect, and neither did John Gerstner in his latter days.

Update: I was able to ask Sproul the same question in different words. His response can be heard and read here (click).

Robert Reymond’s (1932–2013) Denial of God’s Universal Saving Will

25. Some Reformed theologians teach that God can and does earnestly desire, ardently long to see come to pass, and actually work to effect things which he has not decreed will come to pass. Basing his conclusions on his expositions on Deuteronomy 5:29, Ezekiel 18:23, 32; 33:11; Matthew 23:37 and 2 Peter 3:9, John Murray states in “The Free Offer of the Gospel,” Collected Writings of John Murray (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), that God represents himself as “earnestly desiring the fulfillment of something which he had not in the exercise of his sovereign will actually decreed to come to pass,” that he “expresses an ardent desire for the fulfillment of certain things which he has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass,” that he “desires … the accomplishment of what he does not decretively will,” that Christ “willed the bestowal of his saving and protecting grace upon those whom neither the Father nor he decreed thus to save and protect,” that “God does not wish that any man should perish. His wish is rather that all should enter upon eternal life by coming to repentance,” and finally, that “there is in God a benevolent lovingkindness towards the repentance and salvation of even those whom he has not decreed to save” (4:119, 130, 131–132). John H. Gerstner similarly asserts, but without the requisite scriptural support, in A Predestination Primer (Winona Lake, Ind.: Alpha Publications, 1979) 36–37, that God sincerely “strives with men whom He knows and has predestined should perish,” that “God, who knows all things, including the fact that certain persons will in spite of all efforts reject and disbelieve, continues to work with them to persuade them to believe,” and that “God, who knows the futility of certain endeavors to convert certain persons, proceeds to make these endeavors which He knows are going to be futile.” If one followed this trajectory of reasoning to its logical end, one might also conclude that perhaps Christ, though he knew the futility of his endeavor, did after all die savingly for those whom his Father and he had decreed not to save. But all such reasoning imputes irrationality to God, and the passages upon which Murray relies for his conclusions can all be legitimately interpreted in such a way that the Christian is not forced to impute such irrationality to God. For these other interpretations I would refer the reader to John Gill, The Cause of God and Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Sovereign Grace, 1971), 4–6, 22–26, 28, 62.

Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology, 2nd ed. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 692–693n25.

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From the above citation, one can see that Robert Reymond did not think that God in any sense wills, wishes, or desires to save the non-elect, in contrast to John Murray and the early John Gerstner. I say “early” John Gerstner because he changed his position (from that which is in his Primer), as can be seen in his Foreward to David Engelsma’s Hyper-Calvinism & The Call of the Gospel, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1994), vii–ix, and his statements in Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, 2nd ed. (Morgan, Penn.: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 2000), 142–46.

It is also astonishing to see Robert Reymond’s reference to and approval of John Gill on this point.

Similarly, Gordon Clark, who also appeals to John Gill on the will of God, said:

If this verse [Deut. 5:29] or any verse speaks of God as wishing the salvation of someone whom he has rejected as reprobate, there would be an inconsistency implying hypocrisy.

Gordon H. Clark, Biblical Predestination (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1974), 130. Also, in Clark’s commentary on 2 Peter 3:9, he said, “…God does not will the salvation of every member of the human race. It is not his will that every man without exception should repent.” See New Heavens, New Earth: A Commentary on First and Second Peter (Hobbs, NM: The Trinity Foundation, 1993), 231–32.

Gill, Hoeksema, Clark, Engelsma, and Reymond are all in agreement on this particular topic, though they differ on other matters.