Objection 51

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

This is hyper-Calvinism. Andrew Fuller's critique of Gill's circle applies: a system in which regeneration precedes and does not require the gospel dissolves the sinner's duty to believe and the church's urgency to preach. The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation answered this position two centuries ago.

Answer. Fuller is the strongest historical opponent of positions in this neighborhood, and his concern was pastoral and real: preaching in some circles had become a report about salvation rather than a summons to Christ. Two distinctions answer him. First, hyper-Calvinism, properly defined, denies that saving faith is the duty of all who hear the gospel and therefore refuses to call sinners indiscriminately to Christ. Nothing in this study requires that denial, and Part IV expressly affirms that where God gives gospel light, faith, repentance, confession, and baptism are commanded, and their neglect is sin. The document's claim concerns those who never hear, not the obligations of those who do. Second, Fuller's argument for urgency assumed that eternal destiny hangs on the success of the summons; this study locates the urgency elsewhere, in obedience to Christ, the feeding of His sheep, and the temporal deliverance of His people, and it argued in Objection 4 that this ground is both weightier and healthier than the crushing alternative. One may grant Fuller every criticism of a cold, non-inviting pulpit and still deny his premise that the invitation is the mechanism of regeneration. The position defended here is free-invitation, means-honoring particularism with a confessional exception clause taken seriously; that is not what Fuller was shooting at, though it lives on the same street.