The Life and Thought of John Gill

by Michael A.G. Haykin

This volume of essays focuses on the thought of John Gill, the doyen of High Calvinism in the transatlantic Baptist community of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Among the topics covered are Gill's trinitarian theology, his soteriological views, his Baptist ecclesiology, and his use of Scripture. Other papers are more focused, examining, for instance, his clash with the Arminian Methodist leader John Wesley over the issues of predestination and election, a clash that decisively shaped Wesley's perspective on Calvinism.
The tercentennial of Gill's birth in 1997 is a fitting occasion to issue this study of a man whose systematic theology and exposition of the Old and New Testaments formed the mainstay of many eighteenth-century Baptist ministers' libraries and who has never been the subject of a major critical study.

240 pages, Leather Bound

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin is the Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is also the editor of Eusebeia: The Bulletin of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. His present areas of research include 18th-century British Baptist life and thought, as well as Patristic Trinitarianism and Baptist piety.

Haykin is a prolific writer having authored numerous books, over 250 articles and over 150 book reviews. He is also an accomplished editor with numerous editorial credits.

Reviews

[Jordan Coy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is a collection of essays that examines the theology of John Gill. Perhaps the greatest Baptist theologian in the denomination's history, Gill is both a well respected and maligned figure in 18th century Baptist history. A self-taught theologian who would write one of the first verse-by-verse commentaries on the Bible and the first Baptist systematic theology. He was also a controversial figure who would be accused of holding to heterodoxy such as Hyper-Calvinism, antinomianism, and Eternal Justification. The essays of this volume examine the various subjects and controversies in Gill's life and ministry. My favorite essays were by Richard Muller, Curt Daniel, and Gregory Willis

John Gill and the Reformed Scholastics
Richard Muller's essay examines Gill's relationship to Reformed Theology of the 17th-18th century. Even though there are significant disagreements between Baptists and the Presbyterians/Reformed due to Sacramentology and Covenant Theology, John Gill is seen as a connection between the Reformed and Baptist traditions. Per Richard Muller, Gill's theological sources in his writings consist of the "major English and continental Reformed thinkers of the era of scholastic orthodoxy, primarily of the seventeenth century-such thinkers as Danaeus, Ames, Wollebius, Walaeus, Rivetus, Owen, Wittich, the Synopsis purioris theologiae, Gomarus, Arrowsmith, Alting, Maccovius, Pocock, Ames, Mede, Hoorbeeck, Essenius, Baxter, Allixius, Marckius, Hottinger, Cocceius, Wendelin, Forbes, Goodwin, Twisse, Pemble, Rutherford, Turretin, Witsius, Mornaeus, Waterland, and Vitringa" (53)

Mimicking the Ramist method of Althusius, Ames, and Wollebius, Gill divides his systematic theology into two sections of doctrinal/theoretical discussions and moral/practical instruction.
“The division "between 'doctrinal' and 'practical' divinity, namely between instruction in the system of beliefs and instruction in the practices or duties of Christians. Gill's model here, if not his language, partakes of the division of theology found in many of the Ramist systems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (58)
In thought, organization, and method, John Gill is well within the reformed tradition and a significant figure of the Late Reformed Scholasticism of the 18th century.

John Gill and Eternal Justification
Curt Daniel explains John Gill's view of Eternal Justification, that the elect have been justified by God from eternity past. Even prior the reception of faith, they have been justified.
As Curt Daniel describes it:
"Gill explained this in terms of the three stages of justification: from eternity, in the resurrection of Christ, and in the believer's "court of conscience." The first two were virtual, not actual...Most Calvinists would sketch the ordo salutis thus: regeneration-faith-justification. Gill, however, would make it justification-regeneration-faith." (185)

Much of the controversies over Eternal Justification and accusations of antinomianism are due to Gill's defense and republication of Tobias Crisp's writings. Although Gill is quick to reject antinomianism, Crisp and Gill's followers would be the ones who pushed their positions too far and would lead to the accusations of antinomianism.


John Gill and the call to repentance
Another controversy surrounding Gill is his reluctance to extend the invitation of faith to unbelievers. Later Baptists would criticize Gill for being reluctant to call sinners to repentance: Linking this to his belief in Eternal Justification, it is thought Gill believed it to be inappropriate to extend the call to repentance to the unelect, since the elect who have been justified since eternity would receive it.
As Gregory Willis notes, this is a more complicated issue.
“Gill's reluctance to invite sinners to faith was abetted by his vision of Christian spirituality...But his qualifications of indiscriminate invitations encouraged others to prohibit all invitations and to appeal to Gill as their precedent.
Gill's own method was rather finely textured. Gill did not favor a universal invitation to faith in Christ. In this he agreed with the Hyper-Calvinist Baptists. But he held that all who heard the gospel were obligated to repent and believe in Christ. In this he agreed with Fuller and the "evangelical Calvinists."” (205)

For Gill, external proclamations of the Gospel would convict the elect of their sins and lead to repentance, but that repentance would only come about by the work of God in the heart of individual believers in their affections.
“Gill's vision of Christianity beheld a life of godly emotions. Believers' feelings, the affections of their hearts, were the subjective characteristics which ultimately distinguished them from unbelievers. Many wicked hypocrites might assent to the truths of reason and revelation concerning the law of God, the person and work of Christ, and the way of salvation. But only the saints loved God. Only true believers yearned affectionately for the presence of the Lord Jesus. Only they were spiritual. Their spirituality was proof of their regeneration and manifested itself in the exercise of their godly feelings.” (193)

Part of this stance, as Gregory Willis argues, is linked to the enlightenment rationalism that had infected Baptist churches in England. “Large numbers of Dissenters in Gill's day embraced the forms of rationalist religion that became popular in Enlightenment England. The Hyper-Calvinists reduced conversion in large measure to a rational discovery that they were elected and saved. Many others agreed with philosopher John Locke's notion that conversion consisted in a rational assent to the proposition that Jesus was the Messiah coupled with outward repentance. In keeping with the tradition of evangelical Dissent, Gill opposed such rationalist views.” (209)

Gill locates the Christian life, not in the intellect, but in the affections. It is not by rational arguments someone is converted, but by a change of emotions and affections of the heart from the hearing of the Gospel.
“Gill's vision of Christianity beheld a life of godly emotions. Believers' feelings, the affections of their hearts, were the subjective characteristics which ultimately distinguished them from unbelievers. Many wicked hypocrites might assent to the truths of reason and revelation concerning the law of God, the person and work of Christ, and the way of salvation. But only the saints loved God. Only true believers yearned affectionately for the presence of the Lord Jesus. Only they were spiritual.” (193)

Conclusion

John Gill is a significant figure in Baptist theology and among the Late Reformed Scholastics. He is seen as the figure that helped preserve orthodoxy among Baptists when enlightenment rationalism had begun to influence the London Baptist churches. He vigorously defended the Doctrine of the Trinity against rising Socinianism and defended reformed doctrines in volumes such as "The Cause of God and Truth" when some baptists turned to Arminianism. Although Gill stumbled on some issues (Hyper-Calvinism, etc), he is one of the most sophisticated Baptist theologians in church history and his writing should be frequently consulted. Although some of the essays indulge in hagiographic language, overall all these were excellent essays that helped describe Gill’s thought and theology.

4/5 very informative volume on John Gill's life and ministry

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The chapters by Robert Oliver, Richard Muller, Tom Nettles, and Curt Daniel, were especially good. They covered biography, reformed theology, the evangelical awakening and antinomianism.
In summary, Gill did call sinners to repentance and faith as a duty, but shrank from a universal offer. The conclusion is that Gill was not an doctrinal antinomian .

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book for understanding the life and theology of John Gill in his historical context. Most of the chapters were very thorough and detailed providing very useful information. The last two chapters on John Gill's view of women and marriage and the chapter on Gill's Ecclesiology were only about 10 pages compared to most of the other chapters being 30-40 pages each, so they didn't provide as much depth. Curt Daniel's chapter on John Gill and Calvinistic Antinomianism argued that John Gill wasn't antinomian, but that he was a hyper-calvinist even though Curt Daniels didn't consistently define what makes someone a hyper-calvinist. He primarily assumed that if you affirm eternal justification, then you are a hyper-calvinist, but many other confessional reformed theologians affirmed eternal justification and are not considered hyper-calvinists such as Twisse and Thomas Goodwin.

The first chapter was very useful and important since it was a biography of Gill's life placing most of his writings in their historical context which is helpful to have in mind when reading Gill's works. Richard Muller makes a useful contribution demonstrating that Gill with the majority of his doctrine maintained a confessional reformed view despite the growing rationalism in the 18th century with false teachings such as Deism, sabellianism, and other heresies. This shows that a confessional baptist/particular baptist can exist despite some claims by paedobaptist scholars that reformed and baptist are contradictory terms since even Muller essentially admits this in his chapter on Gill.

The only two areas where Gill departed from a confessional reformed baptist view that are discussed in the book are his view on eternal justification and his view of baptism as an ordinance not as a means of grace, which is the theological outworking of his view of eternal justification. The chapter on baptism discusses how Gill's argument for credobaptism served as a transition point between the 17th century particular baptists' view of credobaptism as a means of grace and the contemporary credobaptist view of baptism as an ordinance. The chapter argues that Gill leaned more towards the position of baptism as an ordinance than as a means of grace.

The two chapters on Gills interpretation of the Old and New Testament evaluate some of Gill's hermeneutics found in his commentaries. They demonstrate his vast knowledge of Semitic languages, various ancient bible translations, Jewish sources, and most important his Christocentric hermeneutic, which make his commentaries still useful today and by no means outdated. It was interesting to learn while reading this book that John Gill was the first theologian to publish a commentary on the entire Bible in the English language, making his commentaries extremely significant for future generations of ministers.