example adorn your creed. Above all live in Christ Jesus, and walk in Him, giving credence to no teaching but that which is manifestly approved of Him, and owned by the Holy Spirit. Cleave fast to the Word of God which is here mapped out for you."

 

Q:  Are you “Calvinists,” and if so, isn’t that an extreme position?  Why can’t we just call ourselves “Biblicists”? 

A:  We also wish the term “Biblicist” were sufficient, but the Bible has been used to justify everything from anarchy to socialism to Nazism. As one writer has said, “It is pointless to claim to be merely Biblical when the whole question is, What do the Scriptures actually teach on certain issues?”  We believe the system of theology known as Calvinism most accurately summarizes God’s truth as presented in Scripture, and thus, it is not an extreme position at all.  As Spurgeon once said, “Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.” Thus, though we understand the divisive nature of the word, we would define ourselves as Calvinists (in the tradition of the great preachers and evangelists of times past), but not as hyper-Calvinists.  The distinction between the two has nothing to do with how many of the “five points of T.U.L.I.P.” one holds to.  Spurgeon, who accepted all five and defined a Calvinist simply as “one who says Salvation is of the Lord,” opposed the central error of hyper-Calvinism for his entire ministry.  Briefly stated, Calvinism, hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism are three distinct responses to two clear but irreconcilable truths of Scripture: that man is responsible to believe the Gospel, but because he is totally depraved and dead in trespasses and sin, he is wholly unable to do so.  Iain Murray, in chapter four his book The Forgotten Spurgeon, "Armianism and Evangelism," summarizes the three responses to these two truths as follows: “Arminians say that sinners are commanded, therefore they must be able; Hyper-Calvinists say they are not able, therefore they cannot be commanded…..The only reply which true Calvinism can make…is to assert, as Paul asserts in Romans 9, the inadmissibility of man’s reasoning processes when they applied to subjects which God has chosen not to explain.”  (to view this chapter, see Articles, page 2).  That said, once we accept the Biblical truths of God’s sovereignty which Calvinism refuses to sidestep, we also take God at His Word and accept their application to all aspects of man’s relationship to God, preaching that sinners cannot come to Christ without being drawn, yet they are responsible to do so and we are responsible to tell them so. 

 

Q:  Isn’t it true that Calvinists don’t believe in evangelism?

A: That is generally true of hyper-Calvinism (see above) but not of true Calvinism.  (For more on this, see "Arminianism and Evangelism" in Iain Murray's The Forgotten Spurgeon.)  In our age of rampant Arminianism and human devices to bring sinners to God, we often define evangelism incorrectly, but true Calvinists have a long history of evangelistic and missionary endeavor.   It should not be forgotten that the Reformers themselves, including John Calvin, were evangelists.  Many of the Puritans who colonized America had a great burden to evangelize the native American peoples, as expressed in many of the early colonial charters such as the Massachusetts Bay Charter of 1629:  "Whereby our said people, inhabitants there, may be so religiously, peaceable and civilly governed as their good life and orderly conversation may win and incite the natives of the country to their