3 Steps to Hyper Calvinism

Hardshellism is the purest form of Hyper Calvinism. What are the leading points of Hardshellism?

First, the Hardshells deny that one must be a believer in Christ to be saved.

Hardshells believe that most of the chosen and called never come to faith in Christ. They even see "evidences" of "regeneration" in the heathen.

The Hardshells believe that many pagans are born again children of God. They see the pagans religiousness and belief in deity or deities as "evidence" of the "new birth."

This view has no biblical support. It also has no historic Baptist support, at least prior to the 19th century.

How did Hardshellism and its brand of Hyper Calvinism come into being? What factors helped to create it?

I believe that Hardshell Hyperism began when some theologians, among Calvinistic Baptists and Presbyterians, began to believe that regeneration preceded faith and repentance, or conversion.

At the beginning of the 19th century, among Particular Baptists, Andrew Fuller represented the view that regeneration preceded faith and conversion. On the other hand, Abraham Booth represented the view that faith preceded, or was at least concurrent with, regeneration.

What followed this hybrid view of regeneration, represented by Andrew Fuller, was a theological "slippery slope."

Those who first promoted the idea that regeneration preceded faith and conversion, men like Andrew Fuller, did not believe that there were any regenerated unbelievers. He believed, like many of today's advocates of the same view, among Baptists, men like James White, Tom Ascol, and those calling themselves "Reformed," that regeneration preceded faith logically, although not chronologically. They affirmed that all the regenerated, at the very instant they are regenerated, do believe in Jesus, or are converted. They did not put any "interval of time" between being regenerated and being converted.

Sadly, however, some who imbibed the notion that regeneration precedes conversion (and therefore distinct from it), did in fact begin to advocate that an "interval of time" often does actually exist. Thus we have the first two steps of the road leading to Hardshellism, the most blatant form of Hyper Calvinism.

Step one is coming to believe that the experience of regeneration must logically precede (or be a completed action before) the experience of conversion. Step two is coming to believe that regeneration not only logically precedes faith and conversion, but also chronologically precedes it, an "interval of time" actually existing between regeneration and conversion.

Then, we have the final step. Those who have gone the previous two steps will finally insist that conversion is not only not necessary to being regenerated, but also not necessary for going to heaven, or being finally saved. This is Hardshellism.

Hardshells are they who have gone down to the bottom of the "slippery slope." You can be "regenerated" though not a convert to Christianity!

To stay away from the road leading to Hyper Calvinism, one needs to avoid these steps.

Closing Observation

At what point does the Hyper Calvinist deny the use of means in regeneration?