The Crux of the Free Offer of the Gospel. Sam Waldron.
Greenbrier, AR: Free Grace Press, 2019. 143 pages, softcover, $18.00.

“Argument” of Slander

Nevertheless, other aspects of his defense and promotion of the theory of the well-meant offer are noteworthy, if for no other reason than that they are part and parcel of the defense of the offer by many others. First, there is his repeated use of the tactic of slander to defend the free offer against the objection by the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). The slander is that the PRC are “hyper-Calvinists.” What makes the PRC hyper-Calvinists, according to Waldron, is their denial of “God’s indiscriminate desire for the salvation of sinners,” which desire “is the crux of the Free Offer” (9–10). Waldron references this denial, which supposedly constitutes hyper-Calvinism, to a Protestant Reformed book. Hyper-Calvinism, of which false doctrine the PRC are the outstanding proponents in our day, is the denial “that God desires the salvation of all who hear the gospel” (33). Not only is the charge false, indeed slanderous, but it too, like the author’s explanation of the preceptive will of God, betrays ignorance, or malice, by its misunderstanding, and misrepresentation, of the error of hyper-Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism is not the doctrine that God loves only some humans (with His saving love in Christ crucified) and in this love, and grace, wills to save some only in the preaching of the gospel. This doctrine is Calvinism, as a school-boy catechized in a Reformed church knows by heart and as even the world of ungodly intellectual scholarship knows, to say nothing of Calvinism’s religious foes. Hyper-Calvinism, which thinks to advance beyond this Calvinism (“hyper”!!!), denies that the church may seriously call (exhort, command) anyone to repent and believe who does not show himself as regenerated and already saved. The church may issue the gospel-call only to those who show themselves saved and therefore elect, adding the promise that one who believes shall be saved only to the ears of such a (supposedly) saved person. 

Hyper-Calvinism is not the doctrine that God is gracious in the preaching only to the elect. This doctrine is Calvinism—pure, sound, orthodox, historic, creedal, biblical Calvinism. But hyper-Calvinism is the denial of the promiscuous call of the gospel on the (mistaken) ground of election. If Waldron refuses to accept the description of hyper-Calvinism by this reviewer, to whose book on hyper-Calvinism Waldron refers repeatedly, let him hear such an authority as Herman Bavinck. Undoubtedly referring to hyper-Calvinism, Bavinck describes those in the “camp of the Reformed” who “got to the point where they only preached the law to the unconverted and offered the gospel only to those who had already learned to know themselves as sinners and felt the need for redemption” (Reformed Dogmatics, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt, vol. 4, 35).

It serves the purpose of the advocates of the well-meant offer to label those who deny the well-meant offer as hyper-Calvinists. But the charge is neither right, nor brotherly. It is theological slander. And it ought to cease, in the interests of theological accuracy, if for no other reason.

To put the best construction on it (I respond to slander with a judgment of charity), the charge that the PRC and others who deny the well-meant offer are hyper-Calvinists arises out of the conviction that the well-meant offer is necessary for the promiscuous preaching of the gospel, including the indiscriminate call of the gospel to all who hear, “Repent, and believe.” The thinking of Waldron and his allies is that without a theology of a (saving) love of God for all and a sincere desire of God for the salvation of all, a church cannot preach the gospel to all. This was exactly the charge of the Arminians against sound Reformed theology at the Synod of Dordt. Particular grace makes promiscuous preaching impossible. Dordt responded to this charge, or fear, as the case may be, in Canons 2.5:

Moreover, the promise of the gospel is that whosoever believeth in Christ crucified shall not perish, but have everlasting life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of His good pleasure sends the gospel.

This article of the Canons does not respond to the Arminians’ charge by compromising Dordt’s confession of particular grace. It does not respond by affirming universal grace in the preaching in contradiction of particular grace in the decree. But the article demonstrates that Dordt’s confession of particular grace is, in fact, no hindrance to promiscuous preaching. Such preaching does not contradict the truth of particular grace, but is in perfect harmony with the truth of particular grace.

The preaching of the gracious promise is general, or “promiscuous.” The gracious promise itself, originating in God’s gracious will to save, is particular: “whosoever believeth in Christ crucified.” But the particularity of grace in no wise hampers or restricts the preaching of this particular grace, including the serious exhortation to all hearers to believe and the declaration to all that everyone who does believe shall be saved. Pure, sound Calvinism is not hyper-Calvinism. To charge it with hyper-Calvinism is slander. By this time in the Reformed community, to continue to make the charge is deliberate slander, or inexcusable ignorance.

Where Has Reprobation Gone?

Another feature of Waldron’s book that cries for notice is its failure to interact with the creedal, Reformed doctrine of reprobation. If Waldron even mentions reprobation, except to defend Iain Murray’s unconscionable elision of Arthur Pink’s treatment of reprobation from his—Murray’s—reprint of Pink’s Sovereignty of God, I missed it. Silence on reprobation in a book advocating universal grace in the preaching of the gospel is understandable. It is impossible to harmonize a saving love of God for all humans with Dordt’s and Westminster’s creedal doctrine of reprobation.

And then Waldron’s defense of Murray’s omission of Pink’s doctrine of reprobation from the reprint by the Banner of Truth is as significant as was Murray’s omission itself. Whether Pink changed his mind about the doctrine as he aged is not the important thing. What is significant is that ardent advocates of the well-meant offer are quite willing, if not eager, to banish the doctrine of reprobation to oblivion, and to defend those who do so. The reason is obvious and conclusive in the controversy over the well-meant offer: the doctrine of reprobation condemns the theory of the well-meant offer as heresy. It is impossible to reconcile the offer with reprobation. Since reprobation is an essential element of predestination, inability to reconcile with reprobation is inability to reconcile with predestination. Since predestination is the source and foundation of all salvation, inability to reconcile the offer with reprobation is, by virtue of this fact, to damn the offer as heresy.

If Pink did in weakness change his mind about reprobation (something that a reader of Pink finds difficult to accept), a lover of the gospel of sovereign grace would have included the chapter on reprobation in the reprint of Pink’s book, regardless of the change of mind of the author, unless the author strictly forbade doing so, which no one alleges. And if a lover of sovereign grace were reflecting on Murray’s omission of the chapter on reprobation, he would not defend the omission, but criticize it as fatal weakening of the gospel of salvation by grace alone. Murray did not do the one; Waldron did not do the other. Both declined on behalf of the well-meant offer.