Ryle’s Evangelical theology was unashamedly Augustinian or Reformed. He believed in the total spiritual inability of the unregenerate human will to contribute anything to its own regeneration. He held the doctrine of unconditional election, that God chooses those who are to be regenerated, chooses them sovereignly and unconditionally, without any cause or qualification in them as the basis of His choice.

This doctrine Ryle discovered not only in the Bible but in his own experience. We remember his words about his own conversion: “Before that time I was dead in sins and on the high road to hell, and from that time I have become alive and had a hope of heaven. And nothing to my mind can account for it but the free, sovereign grace of God.” He believed in the efficacious monergistic grace of the Holy Spirit in calling elect sinners out of darkness into the light of Christ, transforming their faithless impenitent wills into trustful and penitent wills by the same creative energy that brought the universe into being out of nothing. And he believed in the perseverance of the saints, that those so chosen and regenerate will by grace endure to the end and be saved.

All these beliefs of Ryle are found clearly expressed in his various writings. In his essay on John Wesley, he examines the Wesley-Whitefield controversy and says, “If I am asked whether I prefer Whitefield’s gospel or Wesley’s, I answer at once that I prefer Whitefield’s: I am a Calvinist and not an Arminian.” He also says of Wesley, “I feel unable to account for any well-instructed Christian holding such doctrines as perfection and the defectibility of grace, or denying such as election and the imputed righteousness of Christ.” Here is an example of Ryle’s Calvinism, commenting on Jn.10:28 – “I give them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand”. Ryle says:

“We have here the perpetuity of grace in believers, and the certainty that they shall never be cast away. How anyone can deny this doctrine, as the Arminians do, and say that a true believer may fall away and be lost, in the face of this text, it is hard to understand. It is my own deliberate opinion that it would be almost impossible to imagine words in which a saint’s perseverance could be more strongly asserted… The doctrine plainly taught in this text may be called Calvinism by some, and of dangerous tendency by others. The only question we ought to ask is whether it is Scriptural.”

However, those with sharp eyes will have noticed that I did not mention particular redemption as among Ryle’s Reformed convictions. That is because Ryle was an avowed Amyraldian, a “four point Calvinist”. He championed this position rigorously. Here he is expounding Jn.3:16:

“To confine God’s love to the elect is taking a harsh and narrow view of God’s character, and fairly lays Christianity open to the modern charges brought against it as cruel and unjust to the ungodly…. I believe in the electing love of God the Father as strongly as anyone. I regard the special love with which God loves the sheep whom He has given to Christ from all eternity as a most blessed and comfortable truth, and no one most cheering and profitable to believers. I only say that it is not the truth of this text. The true view of the words ‘God so loved the world’ I believe to be this. The world means the whole race of mankind, both saints and sinners without any exception…. Those who confine God’s love exclusively to the elect appear to me to take a narrow and contracted view of God’s character and attributes… I have long come to the conclusion that men may be more systematic in their statements than the Bible, and may be led into grave error by idolatrous veneration of a system.” Ryle, then, although clearly and cogently Reformed in the bulk of his theology, was what has often been termed a “moderate” or “four-point Calvinist”.

Purchase his books you will not be sorry. Every writer has his pitfalls and some are greater than others. You know Ryle's main one..now read him.

Back to work. All of you have a blessed evening--see you later.

Reformed and Always Reforming,