I'm going to try to take a whack at reading John Gill's systematic theology. The edition I'm using is this one: A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, or, A System of Evangelical Truths Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures by John Gill; 3 volumes (London: W. Winterbotham, 1796).

The two parts, I understand, were published separately; the Doctrinal (1767), then the Practical (1670). And, these were his last two books, published before his death in 1771, at the age of 73.

I've never read Gill before. Any suggestions?

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Richard T. Zuelch, M.Div
Ruling Elder, OPC (not currently serving)
Westminster Presbyterian Church, CA (OPC)
www.alexandermaclaren.wordpress.com
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Devout souls do not take offence at the depths and difficulties of God's Word, but are, thereby, drawn to intenser contemplation of them. - Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910)

Be advised that Gill was a hyper-calvinist and believed in Eternal Justification.

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Bob, elder, RBC Louisville. 1689 LBCF

"... Of such also, or of those who make a credible profession of being such, all those particular churches consist, which constitute our Lord's visible kingdom. ... Consequently, all the subjects of His government must have spiritual dispositions, , and yield spiritual obedience- obedience proceeding from an enlightened understanding, an awakened conscience, and a renewed heart."- Abraham Booth 1788

With all due respect elder; John Gill was a high calvinist. Not a hyper.

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David E Yoder II
Deacon, serving at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, TN (PCA)
Living in Knoxville, TN

I appreciate the input David and your respectful attitude as well. Indeed there continues to be debate about Gill's particular strand of Calvinism. I do not believe he was as hard-shell as his followers, such as Brine but Gill had by the 1720's begun to distance himself from his 1689 brethren, drawing up his Declaration of Faith and Practice in 1729.

I don't mean to be difficult but a lot of times the same words mean different things to different people. Could you define what you mean the bolded statement above? Is the fact that he believed in eternal justification make him a hyper calvinist or what doctrines did he believe that made him according to your definition a hyper calvinist? Just trying to understand your statement. Thanks.

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John Lanier
Elder in Training
Reformed Baptist Church
Topeka, KS

“It is reported of the dove, that it will allure wild doves by its familiar converses into the dove-house with it: those who are called by grace, will use all proper ways and methods to allure and gain others to Christ, and to compliance with his ways and ordinances, as the church does the daughters of Jerusalem in this Song.” John Gill on Song of Solomon II:14

No, Gill was not a Hyper. I’ve read much, MUCH of his work and highly recommend him to all. The Cause of God and Truth is one of the best works on Calvinism ever written.
jm

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Conscience may lash us, but it cannot replenish a languishing life. Conscience may be God's word and minister to you, telling you of your faults and your follies and your destitution. It may point out, but it will never supply you. Christ must give you new life. Hart has well expressed it: "He to the feeble and the faint, His mighty aid makes known; and when their languid life is spent, supplies it with His own." - J. K. Popham

Gill was an important figure in Baptist history and I will continue to consult his writings all the while seeking to discern his blind spots.

By Hyper-Calvinist I mean the practical outworking of a rigid supralapsarian theology which results in a passivity relative to the gospel.

Gill wrote:That there are universal offers of grace and salvation made to all men, I utterly deny; nay I deny that they are made to any; no not to God's elect: grace and salvation are promised for them in the everlasting covenant, procured for them by Christ, published and revealed in the gospel, and applied by the Spirit from THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION STATED- 1752

Where are you on the Calvinism Chart?

start here: New John Gill Audio

So, you mean because he didn't believe in a "free offer" of the gospel?

I'll reference again, but I believe Tom Nettles does a great job of dispelling the notion that Gill was a Hyper-Calvinist in his By His Grace and For His Glory. I don't have the book handy, so I can't reference the page numbers.

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Dad
Christ Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, RPCGA
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It is God that multiplies our sorrows.... God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more: nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied. - Matthew Henry

I emphatically agree with Gill here, and I'm certainly no Hyper-Calvinist. Where in Scripture is it stated that God offers grace to all men indiscriminately? He does, however, promise salvation to all who would repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Such a repentance and belief can only come by grace.

The audio on Gill is really worth listening to.

"But it may be said, if conversion is not in the power and will of men, to what purpose are such exhortations as these; “Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; turn yourselves, and live ye?” and again, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted?”Ezekiel 18:30,32; Acts 3:19
to which it may be replied, That these passages have no respect to spiritual and internal conversion, but to an external reformation of life and manners."-Gill, Body of Divinity, p.549

Bob, where do those passages speak of God offering grace?

Josh, could you flesh out your question a bit? I am not sure that I understand your meaning.

Let's not hijack the thread.

I am saying that denial of a "gracious well-meant offer by God to all men indiscriminately" is not Hyper-Calvinism, and that Gill's denial of said offer does not qualify him as a Hyper Calvinist.

My question pertains to God offering grace, when all throughout Scripture grace is something given in the context of the Elect, not the reprobate.

My bad, Richard & JM. I desist.

Josh, "grace" has a variety of shades of meaning in both Biblical and Theological speech. If preaching the good news indiscriminately to sinners on God's behalf [2 Cor 5:20] can in some sense be understood to be apprising the sinner that the grace of God is coming to his ears via His messenger then, in this sense God , through us, is bringing the offer of His grace to such a sinner.

Gill, especially in his later years, would no sympathy with this.

Bob, for my own clarification, do you mean to say that God offers grace to some of the very people Whom He has decreed to reprobation?

Seriously, sorry. We should start a new thread.

Gill,

Of a stoical apathy is the phrase to be understood; as if a man should be quite unaffected with an afflictive providence; though the affections are to be checked, when they become inordinate, yet there may be a due use of them; they are not indeed to be set on earth, and earthly things, but upon things in heaven; and such a disposition of them will make a man more quiet and easy under the loss of things temporal; yet he is not wholly divested of his affections under such losses; when Job lost all his substance, as well as his children, and was all submission to the will of God, yet he gave manifest tokens of his affections being moved by the providence; as by rending his mantle, shaving his head, and falling down upon the ground: and though Christians are not to sorrow for the loss of relations and friends, as the heathens, without hope, and in that immoderate and barbarous manner they did, yet may with moderation; Abraham went to Hebron to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her, when dead; and Joseph made a mourning for his father seven days; devout men carried Stephen to his grave, and made great lamentation over him; and Christ himself wept over the grave of Lazarus.

16. Of Resignation to the Will of God.

Amen to that!!!

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Jacob Peters
Layman
URC
Toronto
Canada

The relation between an "offer of grace" and the proclamation of the gospel is an important aspect of understanding Gill. As seen, Gill rejected the idea that grace, Christ, or salvation could be offered. In his rebuttal to Wesley's harangue on predestination, Gill distances himself from any attempt to defend the sincerity of an "offer" of grace when grace is sovereignly withheld. (From, By His Grace and For His Glory by Dr. Tom Nettles pg.47)


It is in this context then that we can rightly read the following;

... That there are universal offers of grace and salvation made to all men, I utterly deny; nay I deny that they are made to any; no not to God's elect: grace and salvation are promised for them in the everlasting covenant, procured for them by Christ, published and revealed in the gospel, and applied by the Spirit; much less are they made to others; wherefore, this doctrine is not chargeable with insincerity on that account. Let the patrons of universal offers defend themselves from this objection, I have nothing to do with it. ( Gill, Doctrine of Predestination pgs. 28.29)



Dr. Gill also believed in the use of means for the conversion of the elect.


...yet they may preach the gospel of salvation to all men, and declare, that whosoever believes shall be saved: for this they are commissioned to do. (Gill, Cause, pg. 164)


...the harvest is great and the faithful and painful ministers are few. There are scarcely any that naturally care for the estate and souls of men, and who are heartily concerned for their spiritual welfare: all comparatively seek their own things, their honor and applause from men, their ease, reputation, and riches; and none or few the things which are Jesus Christ's , or which relate to his honor, glory, kingdom, and interests in the world. (Ivimey, English Baptists, 3,277) (quote from 1750)

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Flavio
Particular Baptist, 1644er
Visiting churches
Bond servant of my Lord Jesus
Husband to Hanna, father to Nathan, Chloe, Caleb, & Lily

In all honestly I can’t think of a theologian that has influenced me more then Gill.

6. Jehovah's Prerogative and His Love to put away the Sins of His People

It is the Lord’s work, and his only, it is his act, and deed, to put away sin from his people. Of this, they themselves are sensible; and therefore, under a sense of sin, apply to him for the removal and putting of it away: hence Job says, I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou Preserver of men?—Why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? (Job 7:21); plainly intimating, that no other could pardon and forgive, or take away his sin, but the Lord himself, against whom he had sinned: and hence David, when he was under a strong and full conviction of the sin he had been guilty of, here referred unto, in the fifty-first Psalm, that penitential Psalm penned on this occasion, entreats, that God would blot out his transgressions, and cleanse him from his sin (Ps.51:1, 2); which is the same thing as in the text, putting away his sin from him. This is the Lord’s act, and his only.

I love gill but he was a hyper calvinist. "How irrational it is, for ministers to stand
offering Christ, and salvation by him to man, when on the one hand, they
have neither power nor right to give; and on the other hand, the persons they
offer to, have neither power nor will to receive." (Sermons and Tracts, 1st
ed, vol.2, p.146) "The grace of God is bestowed upon them, applied to them,
and wrought in them, but not offered. And as for the non-elect, grace is
neither offered to them, nor bestowed on them..." (Cause of God and Truth, p.
156). I have read lots of Gill's writings (and my ex pastor Curt Daniel has read all - some of them several times) - and we
have never seen anything resembling his acceptance of free offers anywhere.
Tom Nettles does not produce any nor any defender of Gill in just calling him a ''high Calvinist''. He was a hyper calvinist just like Hoeksema and at times AW Pink was.

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J. P. Grigoletti II * Lay-man * Église Réformée du Québec
Québec, Québec Canada * Member: Église Reformée St. Marc
http://Grigoletti.blogspot.com - blog
<<There are three things necessary for thee to know, that thou, enjoying this comfort, mayest live and die happily: the first, how great your sins and miseries are; the second, how thou may be delivered from all thy sins and miseries; the third, how thou shall express thy gratitude to God for such deliverance.>>

You are in the company of many hyper calvinists. Don't muddy the waters.

Where are you on the Calvinism Chart?

[quote=JM;670667]You are in the company of many hyper calvinists. Don't muddy the waters.

Where are you on the Calvinism Chart?



Just because someone is a hyper calvinist that doesn't mean they are not a christian... it just means they are not out of the historical mainstream of calvinism.

Where did you cut and paste this from? Have you not read through this thread? Go two posts above yours to PactumServa72's post. From what I have seen of Curt Daniels I am not all that impressed by him.

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R. Martin Snyder
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http://www.puritanboard.com/blogs/puritancovenanter/

"Our object should not be to have scripture on our side but to be on the side of scripture; and however dear any sentiment may have become by being long entertained, so soon as it is seen to be contrary to the Bible, we must be prepared to abandon it without hesitation."
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my personal correspondance with him of course! I did edit a bit of it to make it applicable to the forum.

I'll confess, the first statement is arresting, although I'd have to read the context to better appreciate it.

Concerning the 2nd statement, I agree with it wholeheartedly. Where is grace offered... at all? Salvation is offered to all who would repent and believe. Grace, on the other hand, is not.

The denial of "free offer" (aka read: "well-meant offer") does not = hyper-Calvinism. This is the crux of the matter, and a begging of the question on the part of those who equate the two.

This subject is so sad . . .

The charges of "Hyper-Calvinist" achieve nothing but distraction, dilution, and oftentimes interference and prevention of the fine teachings of many faithful Reformers.

I can only evaluate anyone making such charge, to be an enemy of Scriptural truth and a sincere Christian witness.

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Ronda Rush
Church of the Redeemer
Independent Reformed
California


" . . .It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'" Matthew 4:4

So, I'm wondering. . . .

Does anybody have any suggestions for Richard? He was asking for opinions on what to read, not opinions on Gill.

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Raymond Victor Bottomly
Providence Reformed Baptist Church, Tacoma, WA

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I'm far from an expert on Gill, but have read the work in question; and so to help keep with the OP I would make the following under-educated suggestions for reading his works:

1.) Find and read Richard Muller's articles, "John Gill and the Reformed Tradition," and "The Spirit and the Covenant: John Gill's Critique of the Pactum Salutis."

2.) Read Gill with a deep focus upon the prior tradition and on how he interacts with it. He is consciously outside it in a sense, but makes great use of it (and has an impressive command over it). Though he shares much in common with Reformed doctrine, he is not a "Reformed theologian" and we should not attempt to squeeze him in to all our presuppositions. Understand (both with respect to methodology and content) how Gill differs from and is similar to the Reformed tradition and the theology of his day.

3.) In my unlearned opinion, in the Doctrinal Body, books II and V represent Gill at his finest, even when he departs from orthodoxy. These sections deserve careful reading.

4.) At the time I studied Gill, I was of the opinion that the Practical Body was "less important" than the former, and did not read it as carefully. I wish I had not done so.

5.) Read Gill in conjunction with Turretin or van Mastricht (etc). It will make Gill much more useful.

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Paul Korte
OPC
Flint, MI

They who perceive in themselves discoveries of the divine goodness, so full and absolutely perfect, and who make them the subject of earnest meditation, will never embrace new doctrines, by which the very grace they feel so powerfully in themselves is thrown into the shade. --John Calvin

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Thanks, Prufrock. Those are excellent suggestions.

As for Gill's alleged hyper-Calvinism, I guess what's needed first is a clear definition of hyper-Calvinism, a definition that most could agree to, in the main.

As I said in the OP, I've never read Gill, but I'm going to get to him soon.

If anyone else has suggestions as to how to read him, or anything about Gill's background, etc., I'd be interested to hear it. Perhaps that calls for a different thread, though.

Whether Gill is a hyper or not is often just a semantic game.

Personally, I think denying the free offer of the gospel is a serious problem. My anecdotal observation and experience of modern Gillites is very negative (unloving, harsh, critical etc.). Theology is life! What we believe affects what we do.

Hence, I would encourage people to read other more balanced Systematic Theologies before they read Gill, say Bavinck, Hodge, Shedd, Mike Horton's new one.

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Marty
Ordained Presbyter; Currently Lecturer in Theology
Anglican Church of Australia
(Now finally back! in) Perth, Australia.
"There is nothing so necessary to draw us to repentance as good thoughts of God." (Thomas Manton)

Now I know what you really think of me (unloving, harsh, critical)...

Personally, I think the Murray/Stonehouse, etc. definition of "the free offer" is a serious problem. Of course, I'm not a Gillite. If, in fact, John Gill held to things like Eternal Justification, etc. then that is a problem. But I grow weary of the "crying 'wolf'!" that seems to be concerning those who disbelieve the idea that God "sincerely desires" something which is in complete contradiction to His decree.

The only ""Gilite"" I know personally is the Rev. John Bodner in Mississauga, Ontario. A more humble, loving, irenic Christ-like saint is hard to find. No, I am not a Baptist, just a ""baby-dunking"" Dutch Reformed Believer who loves John Gill and considers him one of the greatest theologians who ever lived.

Hey Joshua,

I suspected I might get a response from you. I didn't want to offend by anything I said; but I am speaking from my raw experience of Gillites. There exists very little in the way of mission activity from them in my experience (I'm not speaking for everyone's experience, only mine).

I guess I grow weary of being told this is a contradiction, when the clear majority in the 16th and 17th century reformed tradition didn't see it as such. Hence, Francis Turretin drew a distinction between between God's will of εὐδοκίας (‘‘good pleasure”, the decretive will) and εὐαρεστίας (“approbation” / “complacency” / "delight" the preceptive will) [Turretin, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae III.xv.8, Opera 1:200]. In this way Turretin explains Ezek. 33:11 that God delights not in the death of anyone (εὐαρεστίας) but wills only the salvation of the elect (εὐδοκίας ).

Hence, other reformed divines taught:

Zacharias Ursinus:
"'God wills that all be saved' [1 Tim. 2:4], (i) in respect that he delights (delectatur) in the salvation of all" . (Ursinus, Doctrinae Christianae Compendium Canterbury: Thomas Thomasius, 1585, p. 483).

Robert Rollock:
"He [God] wills, I say, the salvation also of the reprobate, because the salvation of the creature is in itself a good thing" (Rollock, Analysis Dialectica [...] in Pauli Apostoli Epistolam ad Romanos 8:19-39, p. 140.)

Thomas Manton:
"God may be said to like the salvation of all men, yet not to intend it with an efficacious will" (Manton, Sermons upon Ezekiel XVIII.23 Sermon I, Works 21:465)

Matthew Henry:
"It is true, that God has determined to punish Sinners, his justice calls for it; and pursuant to that, impenitent Sinners will lie for ever under his Wrath and Curse; that’s the will of his Decree, his consequent Will, ‘tis not his antecedent Will, the Will of his delight: Tho the Righteousness of his Government requires that Sinners die, yet the Goodness of his Nature objects against it." (An exposition of The Old And New Testament, 4:459).

There are much better systematic theologies with which to get one's teeth into than Gill.

Blessings,

Marty.