It is my belief that Hyper-Calvinism is more common than many Calvinists and Reformed folks are willing to admit.  However, I should admit that I define Hyper-Calvinism more broadly that most Calvinists.   Hyper-Calvinism is anything that distorts the positive claims of the Canons of Dordt.  Basically, Hyper-Calvinism distorts the sovereignty of God.  I want to identify a number of ways that Reformed people have twisted Calvinism. They twist it into something that would be unrecognizable to those who defended this system. Here is a Typology of Hyper-Calvinism.

  1. Missional Hyper-Calvinism or Traditional Hyper-Calvinism:  This is what most people think of when they think of Hyper-Calvinism.  This is the belief that God will save his elect with or without us. The result is that they question the use of mission work.  This attitude faced William Carey when he expressed the desire to go as a missionary to India.  The story is told that an old Calvinist confronted him. He told him that God would save the elect in India without his help.  Ultimately this undermines the call of the divines at Dordt to remember that God uses means (CoD III/IV.17).
  2.  Predestinarian Hyper-Calvinism:  This form of Hyper-Calvinism posits a strict parallel between God’s predestination of the elect and His predestination of the reprobate.  It ignores the Canons’ language of “choosing” the elect and “passing over” the reprobate, (CoD I.7, 15).  The language of the Canons teaches us that the decree of election and the decree of reprobation are accomplished in a different way.  Predestinarian Hyper-Calvinism denies this.  This is a particularly pernicious error because it undermines the character of our God.
  3. Ecclesial Hyper-Calvinism:  This form of Hyper-Calvinism holds that God makes a covenant only with the elect and denies or empties God’s covenant with the baptized. (The fact is, there are many explanations of what it means that God makes a covenant with the baptized.  I argue that a broad variety of answers still belong to Calvinism proper.  It is those who deny that God covenants with babies or empties the covenant of baptism by saying that God only covenants with elect babies that are guilty of this error. see my definition of covenant here.) It tends to diminish the importance of sacraments as marks of the people of God and treats them only as aids to devotion.    Further, It tends to deny that children of believers should be treated as Christians.  The Reformed Baptist position is a form of this error.  The emphasize God’s covenant with the elect to the point that they try to make the number of the baptized and the number of the elect the same. This form of Hyper-Calvinism doesn’t directly contradict the Canons of Dordt, but it does tend to undermine its assurances to those whose children die in infancy (CoD I.17) and its declaration that sacraments are means of grace (CoD III/IV.17).
  4. Hyper-Assurance Hyper-Calvinism: This form of Hyper-Calvinism demands full assurance of election before you can be certain of your election and before you can be certain you are actually a member of Christ’s body.  The Canons of Dordt clearly proclaims the gospel of full assurance (CoD V.9). The Spirit gives us this grace. It does not claim that you need that full assurance to be saved.  Instead, the Canons encourage us to use the means of grace to deal with this lack of assurance (CoD V.14).  In fact, this position directly contradicts the Canons, which claims that the elect vary in their assurance in their lifetimes (CoD V.11).
  5. Hyper-Grace or Antinomian Hyper-Calvinism: This form of Hyper Calvinism puts all the weight on God’s irresistible grace in converting the soul.  Man can sit back after salvation and the good works will come.  The responsibility of man to live out his salvation in fear and trembling is ignored or even denied.  This contradicts the call of the Canons to persevere (CoD V.13,14).
  6. Hyper-Depravity Hyper-Calvinism: This form of Hyper-Calvinism emphasizes the total depravity of man.  Man can do no good before God.  It tends to undermine or deny that the saved man can please God. Ultimately it denies the power of God in regenerating the will of man and the new life that he gives him.  (CoD V.16)
  7. Hyper-Glory or Hyper-Sovereignty Hyper-Calvinism: I use the term Hyper-Glory because this is the result of a false type of piety, which thinks that the glory of God is a zero-sum game.  God gets all the glory and nobody else gets any.  Rather, when God gets all the glory, he is generous that glory and shares it with his saints.  By the term Hyper-Sovereignty, I refer to a sort of fatalism or  Stoicism.  You might hear, “We should be happy with whatever God does.  We need to receive it as God’s will.”  There is a sense where we can’t really take joy in life.  They forget that God’s own son sweat blood, while he pleaded with God to “Let this cup pass.”  He didn’t receive the cross stoically or fatalistically.  The working out of God’s plan of salvation is more complicated than we are willing to admit. This is another form of Hyper-Calvinism that does not directly contradict the Canons of Dordt. However, it does contradict the tenor of that piece of work.

Some hold to one of these errors.  Many more hold to a combination of these errors.

Many will be quick to point out that many errors in Calvinism share space with the errors of Jacobus Arminius as well. We can think of neonomianism for example.  This is the idea that Christ came and justified us through faith and we need to add good works, alongside Christ’s work, in order to reach final justification.  This is an error. However, the point of this post is to demonstrate a certain category of errors.  Namely, how people misuse the truth of God’s absolute sovereignty, while claiming to defend it.