Brother Garrett discusses (here) that he takes views I, David Pyles, and Sylvester Hassell espouse(ed) on the effectual call as a middle position between what he takes to be the original position of Old Baptists and the modern Primitive Baptist view.
The title of Brother Garrett's post, "Missionaries not needed?", essentially accuses this position, as he wants to understand it, of rendering the function of Missionaries as redundant. This accusation is simply one that asserts hyper-Calvinism of Primitive Baptists. The idea is that since individuals can be effectually called apart from the gospel as preached by man, it renders Missionaries and the preaching of the gospel unnecessary to eternal salvation.
There are many problems with this accusation. First, Brother Garrett seems to be blind to the problem that even his own view of the effectual call is implicitly "hyper-Calvinistic" by his own standard. As we have pointed out numerous times in numerous posts, Brother Garrett believes, inconsistently with his claim of gospel "instrumentality", that the Spirit alone is the efficient cause of the effectual call. The place of the gospel, even in his view of effectual calling, is one that reveals the work of the spirit immediately after (logically) the Spirit solely effects life. The gospel is not instrumental at all to this direct work of creation - ex nihilo - at the moment in which the divine first touches carnal man in resurrecting power.
The fact that Brother Garrett insists that God imparts life only in contexts in which the man-preached gospel is being delivered, and that the effectual call includes the immediate fruits of the Spirit's work in gospel faith and repentance, does not logically make the gospel "instrumental" to the Spirit's efficient work. This term of "instrumentality" is a misnomer, even in his view, as it is only "instrumental" to faith and repentance, not the spirit's work that necessarily antedates the fruit of the spirit's work. The Primitive Baptists do not deny that the gospel is instrumental to faith and repentance, though they do not limit the gospel to the gospel as preached by man.
Now, Brother Garrett is not prepared to argue that God has never called men apart from a man-preached gospel. Even admitting this possibility at all, which he must or controvert the framers of the LCF and John Gill in their understanding of John 3:3-8, establishes that God has called men without any means whatsoever, as Gill states plainly in his commentary on Romans 10:14.
It is clear, therefore, as Brother Garrett must allow, that the central truth that God is not limited to eternally save man through a man-preached gospel, establishes what he takes to be "hyper-Calvinism" (besides the fact that Brother Garrett's view of "gospel instrumentality" denies any instrumentality to the efficient cause of life). Brother Garrett himself would be judged as a "hyper-Calvinist" by simply being a Calvinist in the erroneous judgment of many Arminians, though even they are blind to the logical implications and incompatibility of prevenient grace with the moral basis of the "island of righteousness" that must logically exist, contrary to grace, in those that end up choosing to be saved.
This brings us to the real central problem of Brother Garrett's objection. The ultimate basis that Christians must be in touch with for the motivation of preaching the gospel is the obligation of doing so simply because God has commanded the gospel to be preached. Preaching the gospel does not rest on the estimation of man as to how effective it will be. It does not rest on the idea that God effectually calls through the gospel because God may not effectually call through every presentation of the gospel, even in Brother Garrett's view.
The irrationality of Brother Garrett's objection is the implicit notion that the only legitimate basis for Missionary work or preaching the gospel is the idea that God eternally saves men only through the man-preached gospel. This is a silly claim because the foundation of preaching the gospel is the command of God alone. The objection that Primitive Baptist soteriology removes the logical basis of preaching the gospel is a facile claim. The basis of preaching the gospel has always been the command of God, as it was to Jonah who fled from his duty because of his estimation of Ninevah.
In a real sense, the debate over the role of the man-preached gospel in salvation is irrelevant to the duty of Christians to preach it. Primitive Baptists who have argued and argue that it is not the duty of Christians to preach on the rooftops what Jesus taught the disciples, have erred from the Scripture. It is pathetically unscriptural to oppose so facile a claim of Brother Garrett's by arguing that it is not the duty of the Christian to preach the gospel wherever there is opportunity.
Therefore, even simply considering Brother Garrett's title to his post alone, his article fails to successfully argue against Primitive Baptist views of the utility of the gospel in the effectual call. Primitive Baptists are presently preaching the gospel across the world in India, the Philippines, Russia, Africa, and Mexico, so there is de facto proof of the erroneous nature of Brother Garrett's claims.
Brother Garrett stated:
"I believe that this position of Elder Hassell represents a middle position between today's Hardshells and the position of the Old Baptists prior to the rise of the Hardshells in the early 19th century. The position of most Hardshells, since the days of Hassell, has been to affirm that only a few of the elect will hear the Gospel and believe in Jesus, and that believing in Jesus is not necessary for final salvation. Some Hardshells today are seemingly going back to the position of Hassell and it is hoped that all will. However, going back to the view of Hassell, though better than today's neo-Hardshell view, nevertheless only goes halfway back to the original view of the Old Baptists who endorsed the Philadelphia and London Baptist confessions. Further, it is a serious error, one fraught with dangerous consequences"
Brother Garrett misrepresents modern Primitive Baptists. He takes their opposition to "belief in Jesus for final salvation" as opposition to Hassell's view that all of the elect will believe in Jesus immediately by the effectual call. Modern Primitive Baptists are opposing "belief in Jesus for final salvtion" in terms of a man-preached gospel, not that the elect will not be effectually called or will not spiritually perceive and believe the person of Christ. Brother Garrett mistakes the inchoate, confused, and ignorant explanations of some modern PB's as a unique position separate from Hassell, mine, or David Pyles, but it is simply the unlearned PB's from the past century that he mistakes as a position distinct from the historic Primitive Baptist position exemplified by the Fulton Confession.
Brother Garrett stated:
"There is no denying that Jesus preached the Gospel. There is no denying that he personally preached the same Gospel to both elect and non-elect. Further, there is no denying that Jesus revealed himself directly to certain men while he was on earth, both before and after his resurrection. But, does Jesus still speak directly to people today? Does he personally appear to people today as he did to the apostles? Apparently the Apostle Paul did not believe so, for he says that God has ordained that men hear the Gospel through preachers."
Surely Brother Garrett concedes that Christ speaks directly today, but that he does so through the gospel; and that he must so appear or the gospel alone is just words. This is the essential Primitive Baptist focus. Now, whether Christ speaks today immediately apart from the gospel as preached by man, is a thing I, John Gill, and the LCF framers are willing to grant as possible from John 3:3-8. What Brother Garrett falsely infers from Romans 10:14-17 is a standard of knowledge for faith beyond what is intrinsically salvific. I insist that what is intrinsically salvific is the spiritual perception of Christ, but, of course, according to the degree of knowledge preached and revealed, it could embrace all true, gospel knowledge, even beyond what is intrinsically salvific, such as the truths of the TULIP over against Arminian doctrines.
I would like to consider Romans 10:14-21 carefully.
Romans 10:14-21 is a polemical defense of the truth of gospel belief in the face of the objections to this truth by unbelief and the fact that many were unevangelized. It basically succinctly reiterates many of the basic elements of chapters 1-3 of Romans.
Notice that Paul queries rhetorically in Romans 10:18, 19, "But I say, Have they (unevangelized Gentiles) not heard?" and "But I say, Did not Israel know?" These rhetorical questions of verses 18 and 19 answer the hypothetical objections Paul raised (as a man might reason) to object to the knowledge and assurance of eternal salvation by gospel confession in 10:9-13. These two texts, Romans 10:18 and 19, echo Romans 1 and 2 respectively. Romans 10:14-17 contain a line of reasoning based on excusing natural men, as carnal men might object to the judgment of God against them for their unbelief in Christ. Paul's objection to this line of reasoning is observed in Romans 10:18 and 19 by the use of "But I say" to preface those texts. Romans 10:14's questions are rhetorically posed from the perspective of natural reasoning, as Paul does in Romans 3:3, 3:5, or 6:1.
Paul's answer to 10:14-17 in verse 16, 18, and 19 is unmistakable. Hearing the audible gospel is not a sufficient condition for the effectual call and obedience (vs. 16), as Israel made plain, and that the essential gospel had already been preached to all men in nature, as Psalms 19:1-4 declare plainly, as there is no speech nor language where the "voice" of knowledge in nature of the eternal power and glory of God is not understood, so that men are without excuse, even if they are not preached to by men (vs. 18).
Paul is not arguing for the necessity of gospel preaching for eternal salvation in verse 14 and 15, but brings these ideas up as foreseen objections and excuses against belief in the gospel to which his answer is that the essence of the gospel is known by nature to the damnation of unevangelized unbelievers (Romans 1:20, 10:18).
The point is that deductions about the necessity of gospel preaching for eternal salvation from these texts is not the primary context. The primary context is to those who would disregard the gospel as true on the basis that it had not been universally preached by man to all men for obedience, or that even those who had heard it, as Israel, did not all believe it. This is the primary thought under consideration to which Paul contends that the essential gospel was apparent from nature beside the fact that Israel should embrace the gospel from the Old Testament alone.
Manifestly, if Paul stated that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing only by the word of God as preached by man, Paul seems to contradict himself to then state in the very next verse, "But I say, Have they not heard from nature?" Is he saying that saving faith is possible from nature alone, Brother Garrett?? Keep in mind that Paul quotes Psalm 19:4 verbatim in Romans 10:18. This surely demonstrates that Paul did not isolate the word of God in the gospel he preached in terms of the judgment of God against unbelievers. It is not that Paul is stating that his preaching is the only sufficient condition for salvation, which emphasis would imply from verse 18 the false view that men could be saved by the gospel and word of God through nature, but he is stating that his preaching is not the sufficient condition for damnation. Unless God directly changed the affections of men, efficiently causing the new birth, the gospel as preached by Paul to the Jews availed nothing, but the Jews were just as damned after Paul preached to them than they were in their disbelief of the O.T. (Rom. 10:19,21).
Paul's main intention in this passage is reiterating the basis of God's judgment on unbelievers, whether by nature alone or by rejecting gospel preachers, as the Jews. The fact that some were not preached to by men made them no less of an unbeliever, even by the gospel testimony of nature.
Clearly, the basis of the damnation of the unevangelized in Romans 1 and 10:18 is not that they did not hear the gospel as preached by man. The basis of the damnation of the unevangelized is their moral wickedness and depravity in willfully rebelling against the glory and power of God revealed in the gospel of nature. Brother Garrett illegitimately appeals to Romans 10:14 to assert that the heathen could be saved, if only they were preached to. This, as we have seen, is not Paul's point, just as this is not his point in Romans 1, as Romans 10:14 evidences a line of reasoning that is not Paul's own. Rather, as Paul clearly answers 10:14's hypotheticals in 10:18, the truly unevangelized would be damned regardless, as they reject the gospel of nature, evidencing their eternal damnation; they would just as assuredly reject Paul's gospel.
One of the problems for Brother Garrett is that he wants to assume that because Paul seems to correlate hearing and believing the man-preached gospel (if we overlook the complications of the disunity of this view with Romans 10:18) with being effectually called and eternally saved, that the physical hearing of the gospel is instrumental to being effectually called. It is still not instrumental in this fashion because even in contexts where the gospel is heard, it is Christ by the efficient power of the spirit alone that is instrumental to new life. This new life would, then, first embrace the spiritual loveliness of the person of Christ before embracing gospel propositions of men about this person they now perceive by faith's sight.
The gospel as preached by man further informs faith, so that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, even in the moment of regeneration; in this manner, Romans 10:17 does not exclude the effectual call. I agree with Garrett that Romans 10:14-17 correlate the effectual call with hearing and believing the gospel, but the spiritual rebirth is still unmediated, it is the faith that it is mediated through the gospel whether immediately by the person of Christ or through a man-preached gospel, which both presuppose unmediated life.
These texts prove that gospel faith can be mediated through the gospel as preached by man, and that it is generally true that there is no spiritual life where the gospel is not believed (as James 1:18 proves this typicality in the N.T. era of the early disciples), yet, as Gill asserts, God may effectually call apart from the gospel as preached by man, and in fact does, as Gill and the LCF saw that John 3:3-8 proved.
So, it is apparent that even for Brother Garrett, Christ does and must "speak directly" to men before a man-preached gospel can be believed, even as those in John 5:38-40 would not believe in Christ because they had not been taught first inwardly by the Father.
Brother Garrett is inconsistent with his acknowledgement of the sole, efficient cause of the effectual call to argue against the necessity of the direct speaking of Christ or the Father which must precede faith.
Brother Garrett stated:
"If the view is correct that Christ preaches the Gospel personally to all the elect, then Paul would not have written these words:
"Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation: But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand." (Rom. 15: 20, 21)
On these words Dr. Gill commented:
"...he chose rather to go to such Heathen nations, as were wholly without any knowledge of him; who had only the dim light of nature to guide them; had had no promises nor prophecies of the Messiah, nor so much as any hints, at least very distant ones, concerning him; and where as yet the sound of the Gospel bad not reached."But, if the heathen must have Christ to personally preach the Gospel to the heathen before Paul could have any success in preaching the same Gospel to them, then Paul could not categorically say that Christ was not known among the heathen."
The fact that the heathen to whom Paul preached were wholly without any knowledge of Christ could refer to direct, historical knowledge of the historical Christ, not that they did not spiritually know the spiritual person of Christ. Or it could be that these specific heathen were not effectually called until Paul's ministry. Brother Garrett seems to infer from these passages that all unevangelized lands or nations cannot even possibly be inhabited by effectually called individuals, which is a claim that Old Baptists disagreed with, as Gill entertains as possible that God could send an angel directly to the heathen, testifying to the gospel. The fact is that the framers of the LCF granted that men could be called apart from the gospel as preached by man, though they claimed that such methods would be "extraordinary".
I will continue my rebuttal of Brother Garrett's article in a future entry.
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