Most Hyper-Calvinists, e.g., b57, Nanja, do not believe that justification—being declared righteous based on the imputed righteousness of Christ—occurs at the time a person is regenerated. Instead, they believe that God's elect are already declared righteous from before the foundation of the world. This heresy is known as eternal justification.
Some Hyper-Calvinists would say that God's people were justified at the cross; however, this has the same implications for the unregenerate elect after the cross as eternal justification. These Hyper-Calvinists claim that eternal justification (or the justification at the cross view) glorifies God by taking the work of man out of the justification equation and that any who believe that faith and justification are inseparably connected believe in a form of salvation conditioned on the sinner.
Along with justification comes all the other objective blessings, including adoption, reconciliation, and sanctification. Thus, eternal justification advocates believe that, when an unregenerate elect person is conceived in the womb, and throughout his time as an unregenerate sinner, he is already counted as perfectly righteous and holy, is thus a child of God and not of the devil, and is not under God's curse or wrath. God is at peace with these unregenerate elect and is not at enmity with them. In short, the Hyper-Calvinist imports the secret things of God (Deut. 29:29) into the revealed will of God contrary to the commands of Scripture that clearly call all men to their duty to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved.
The Scriptures reveal to men, as creatures, to have creaturely confidence, the maximal possible confidence they can have, that Christ is offered for their salvation in the Gospel. They need not peer into hidden things and wonder about whether they have been hypothetically or really decreed to believe the Gospel. It is sufficient for them to hear and believe or reject the historical proclamation of the Gospel. No person has to go up to heaven to discover God's secret decree to give faith and repentance to some. No person has to descend into the depths of their own experience to conclude they have been called. The gospel itself gives a full and free warrant to receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation. Anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will not be turned away, nor lost to Him.
If we bring the decree into the call of God for all men to believe, we will end up like a dog chasing its tail. Many are called but few are chosen. We are bound to keep them distinct. Every attempt to treat them as one thing ends up universalizing the decree (e.g., Robert Pate) or particularizing the call (e.g., beloved57).
The calling is general and indefinite to sinners as sinners. Again, "Many are called but few are chosen." The calling is general and indefinite to sinners as sinners. The One who calls has His chosen among those who are outwardly called, and this secret election only becomes manifest in the personal reception or rejection of the outward calling by the sinner. We have to resist bringing the elect and reprobate into the discussion at the point of the outward administration of the gospel. Doing so, as does the Hyper-Calvinist, distorts Calvinism to impose the secret election on the administration of the gospel because it undermines the historical administration by which the eternal decree will be brought to pass in time.
It is Hyper-Calvinistic to bring the decree into the call of the Lord because it denies the duty of faith. Faith is a moral duty. It is commanded by the law. It presupposes man once had the ability to obey the call and is not able to obey the call now because of his fall. Therefore it is man's own fault that he does not believe for when Adam fell we all fell in Adam just as if we were actually there in the Garden with Adam. Thus we can say that all men are commanded to believe the Gospel but saving faith is an evangelical grace. There's no way to jump from the command to believe (to which natural man is condemned for his unbelief) to making saving faith a work. Saving faith is not a work. Saving faith is something created...by God. Saving faith is something that is created in the hearts of men by the Holy Spirit through the proclamation of the Gospel.
Saving faith is decreed by God to the elect. It is not a condition of salvation, but God has made faith a part of the order of salvation, and it is therefore necessary. The gospel teaches it, but the command and authority to believe comes from the claims of the moral law on man as a creature made in the image of God. In sum, to particularize "saving faith" in the gospel call is hyper-Calvinist because it takes something which is offered indefinitely to all and makes it particular to a few.
From this eternal justification heresy, Hyper-Calvinists wrongly believe that a justified person can be a God-hater. This is contrary to Scripture (see Romans 1 for example), in the teachings that all who are not yet born-anew (regenerated) are at enmity with God. The unregenerate (whether unregenerate elect or reprobate) quite literally hates God with every thought, word, and deed.
The following are the necessary implications of eternal justification (or any view of justification that is not connected with faith) that demonstrate this heresy to be damnable. These Hyper-Calvinist necessarily believes the following:
(1) While they were going about to establish a righteousness of their own and bringing forth dead works, evil deeds, and fruit unto death, they were pleasing to God.
(2) A justified person can commit sins such as believing and confessing a false gospel.
(3) They had the imputed righteousness of Christ while remaining ignorant of that imputed righteousness.
(4) Without faith it is possible to please God, and some who are in the flesh are able to please God.
(5) When they were dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, conducting themselves according to the lusts of their flesh, acting out the things, the wills of the flesh and of the understandings, they were not children of wrath (Ephesians 2:1-3).
(6) There are some who are redeemed, who are God-pleasers, who are friends of God, who also walk as the rest of the nations walk, in the vanity of their mind, having been darkened in the intellect, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart, who, having cast off all feeling, gave themselves up to lust, to the working of all uncleanness with greediness (Ephesians 4:17-19).
b57 and Nanja represent no proper view of Calvinism or the Reformed view of the doctrines of grace. Their Hyper-Calvinism has been declared by all the Reformed to be a heretical.
AMR
