Addition to "Why is Calvinism so dangerous? #10 (Sovereignty)"
I updated the post on sovereignty in the "Why is Calvinism so dangerous?" series.
I added a few links to posts on how Calvinists manipulate people and spread Calvinism ("Saint PJs Deceptions and Manipulations" and "MacArthur's Manipulations" and "A not-so-imaginary conversation with a Calvinist" and "Calvinism 101...").
And then I added this:
If God is in control over everything, it must mean that He controls everything (even people’s decisions and sins), that He always does everything He wants and that everything that happens is because He preplanned/wanted/caused it to happen. So when people sin or end up in hell, it’s because He willed it, wanted it, planned it, and caused it. And nothing different could have happened because they had no choice.
This is where Calvinists go wrong. They start with their assumption that being sovereign and all-powerful must mean that God always uses His sovereign power all the time to control everything ... or else He couldn't be God. In their mind, being "in control" means "controlling everything." And so if there was one moment, one choice, one sin, one piece of dust that God didn't control, He wouldn't be God.
They simply refuse to accept what the Bible shows: that in His sovereignty (His right to decide how things will go), God has decided to self-limit His use of power and control to a degree, to give us the right to make real choices that have real consequences. (Note: I have to say "real choices" because Calvinism teaches fake choices, like a computer "choosing" to do what the programmer programmed it to do or a puppet "choosing" to do what the puppet-master makes it do. But is that really "choosing" anything?)
God can be "in control" over all (watching over all, deciding what to allow and what to not allow, deciding how to work things into His plans, etc.) without controlling/causing everything.
Yes, God has plans. And there are things He does sometimes regardless of us. But there are a great many times and ways that He has decided to work out His plans (His Will) in cooperation with mankind, through our prayers, obedience, decisions, etc. And He gives us the right to decide to join Him in His plans (obey Him) or to refuse His plans (disobey Him). And whatever we decide - obedience or disobedience - He can work it into His plans.
But if we refuse to obey Him then we miss out on the blessings we could have gotten if we had obeyed as He wanted us to, as He called us to. God doesn't choose what we decide. Our decisions and sins were not predestined. He gives us the choice, let's us decide, and (since He already knew what we'd decide) He figures out how to work it into His plans.
[Calvinists make the mistake of equating "foreknowledge" with "fore-planning," saying that if God foreknew something it's because He fore-planned it, and if He fore-planned it then it has to happen that way. But that's changing the definition of "foreknowledge." Foreknowledge is simply knowing beforehand. Whatever we choose, God knows it beforehand and can work it into His plans. And if we had made a different choice, He would've known that too and would've worked that into His plans. His foreknowledge doesn't determine our decisions, but our decisions determine what He foreknows.]
He's like a brilliant master Chef (humor me here) who can take whatever ingredients we bring to the table and still turn it into something amazing, adjusting the steps as needed to incorporate what we bring while still accomplishing His over-all plans - whereas the Calvinist god has to preplan every ingredient, every step, every detail and has to cause it all to happen exactly the way he planned it because if even one tiny ingredient, step, or detail happened that he himself didn't preplan, cause, control then the meal would be a disaster and his plans would get foiled and he'd cease to be a chef. (Which God is bigger and wiser and more powerful?)
In Calvinism, God commands things but then, in His "sovereignty," He causes people to break His commands. How can this be? How can God command us to not sin and to believe in Jesus, but then cause people to sin and reject Jesus?
In order to make Calvinism seem biblical, Calvinists will answer this with "Well, God has two Wills, you see. There are revealed ones, like when He says it's His Will that we don't sin and that all people believe and be saved. But then there's hidden unspoken ones, like when He "ordains" that we sin and that non-elect people reject Jesus and go to hell. God can decree that we disobey His decrees, for His purposes and glory."
They really think that by simply appealing to two Wills (which contradict and oppose each other), that it makes it okay, that it makes their views biblical. But it does not. Their views are wrong, and they destroy God's character, making Him duplicitous, untrustworthy, schizophrenic, and the cause of the sin, evil, and unbelief that He commands us not to do.
(What does Matthew 12:25 say? That a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Calvinism makes God a divided God who contradicts/opposes Himself, who thwarts His own plans. But Calvinists will try to shame you into agreeing with them by saying things like "Who are you to talk back to God or to decide what God can and cannot do? He is sovereign and can do what He wants. His ways are so far above our ways. We cannot use human logic to define God. Etc." They want you to shut off your critical thinking skills so that you don't pay attention to any red flags you sense about what they're teaching. Very cult-like.)
But Pastor Dr. Tony Evans (whom I think is one of the most biblically-accurate pastors out there) presents a view of God's Will that is biblical, that keeps God's character intact. He says that God has an unconditional Will for some things and a conditional Will for other things. (See the first ten minutes of this sermon: How to get your prayers answered.)
There are things God's planned and decided to do regardless of us, unconditionally, such as create the world, send Jesus to die for our sins, offer salvation to sinners, renew creation in the end, etc. He does these things regardless of what we do or don't do. But then there are things He's planned to do on the condition that we do our part, and this is where we get the "if you ... then ..." verses from. "If you obey, then I will bless you. If you disobey, then you'll face bad consequences. If you believe in Jesus, then I will give you eternal life. Etc." (These kinds of verses only make sense if God gave us a real right to decide. And He did. Which is why the Bible makes sense.)
This isn't like Calvinism where God has two opposing, contradictory Wills about the same issue (sin, salvation, etc.), where He says He wants one thing but causes the opposite. But it's God having two different kinds of Wills for different situations: in some situations, He decides to do something on His own, but in others, He decides to let us make decisions and then He responds accordingly.
This is not a divided God. But it's a God who wants something to happen and made it possible for it happen but who lets people decide what they want, if they want to do or not do things His way (and then He lets us have the consequences of our decisions). And so if people go to hell, it's not because He caused it based on some secondary, secret, contradictory Will of His. It's because He has decided to make salvation conditional on our belief, on our choice. He offers salvation to all and makes it available to all, but we only get it on the condition that we accept it, that we believe.
I don't base my views of God's sovereignty on my own assumptions of how God must be/act in order to be God (as Calvinists do). I base them on what the Bible says about Him, on how He reveals Himself to be in His Word. And the Bible says:
1. Time and time again with the Israelites, God lays out the “blessing path” and the “curse path,” and then tells them to choose which path they want to take. (Deuteronomy 30 for example.) He has the plans - the destinations - clearly set for both choices, but He leaves it up to the people to decide which path they take. And these are real choices, not the illusion of having a choice.
[If God's already decided what we choose and if He forces us to do what He preplanned, why would He pretend we have options and can make choices? And what would it do to His character if He pretends we have the ability to make choices when we don't, if He really preplans/causes/controls it all (even our sins and unbelief), if He commands us not to sin but causes us to sin and then punishes us for it? Could we trust a God like that? Calvinism destroys God's good, righteous, faithful character. And this is a main reason we must fight against it with all we've got. If we destroy God's good, righteous, faithful character, what've we got left? Nothing better than the sinful, untrustworthy, human-like gods of the ancient world.]
2. We get a clear picture of how God works when we look at how God called the Israelites out of Egypt and took them to the Promised Land. His predetermined Will and plan was to take the Israelites from Egypt right to Canaan. But because He created us with free-will, He allowed the people to choose if they wanted to follow Him or rebel against Him. And they chose to rebel. But His Will was still accomplished by leading the next generation into Canaan, the ones who were willing to follow Him. He will work His plans out one way or another, but we miss out if we don't obey. (Likewise, His ultimate plan is to have people with Him in heaven for all of eternity. And that plan will still be accomplished, but we have to choose if we will accept or reject the pre-paid ticket to heaven, if we will follow Him to the Promised Land or not.)
3. In Exodus 23:32, God tells Israel to make no covenant with the people in the land of Canaan after they take possession of it. But in Joshua 9, we read about the Gibeonite deception and how they did make a treaty with these people, believing that they were from a distant land. Joshua 9:14 says that in this instance, Israel “did not inquire of the Lord.”
God’s Will and plan was that they didn’t make a treaty with these people. And I believe God would have warned Israel about the deception ... if they had prayed about it. But they chose to not pray about it, so God’s Will didn’t happen in this case.
Prayer matters. Prayer makes a difference in our lives. Prayer invites God to carry out His plans, to get involved in our lives, to guide us, etc. And He won't always do it unless and until we pray. Matthew 6:10 instructs us to pray that God's Will gets done, but why pray for it if it's the only thing that ever happens (as Calvinists say)? In Luke 22:32, Jesus says He prayed that Peter's faith would not fail - so clearly it was God's Will that Peter's faith remained strong, but Jesus still had to pray for it. (And if Jesus had to, how much more do we?) Job 42:8-10 shows that God's Will and plan was to forgive Job's friends, but He waited on Job to pray for it before He did. Prayer invites God to do what He planned, and He won't always do it unless and until we pray. He gave us the responsibility to pray, to decide whether we want His Will done or not. And James 4:2 says that we don't have certain things because we don't pray for them. There are things God is willing to give us and do for us, but we do not get them unless we pray.
You see, God has given a certain level of dominion/responsibility to man, the right to make decisions that affect things. And with this comes the right to decide if we want Him or not, if we want His input and help or not. And so if we choose to do things on our own, to run ahead of His timing, to stray outside His Will, to sin, to not pray for guidance or help or comfort or whatever, etc., He will allow it, in deference to our free-will. Because that's how He set things up. Free-will is what He decided is best for His over-all plans and glory, and with free-will comes the right to make our own decisions, even bad ones, even rejecting Him. But no matter what we choose, He can still accomplish His ultimate goals (by incorporating our disobedience, postponing His plans, moving on to someone else who will obey, etc.), but we miss out if we don't do things His way. So our disobedience doesn't ultimately hurt His plans - He finds ways around it, to incorporate it, to make something good out of it - but it does hurt us and the life we could've had.
God's conditional Will (what He desires for us) doesn’t just happen because He is all-powerful and can make it happen. (Just because He can doesn't mean He does.) We have to pray for it, to seek it. And to obey! God leaves the responsibility with mankind to put His conditional Will into motion with our prayers and obedience.
But if Calvinism is true, then everything that happens is God's Will, even sin. And therefore, there is no need to "ask anything according to His Will." Because His Will is all that ever happens, with or without us asking for it. And therefore, in Calvinism, if we disobey, sin, fail to pray, fail to share the gospel, reject Him, etc. ... it's all "God's Will" anyway, because everything that happens is because He willed it, preplanned it, causes it, controls it, for His glory. Therefore, our disobedience is as much "God's Will" as our obedience is. Unbelief is as God-caused as belief is. Evil is as God-glorifying as good is.
In Calvinism, that is. But not in the Bible. (What a mess Calvinism makes of God's Word!)
4. In 1 Samuel 13:13, Samuel tells Saul that if Saul had kept God's commands, then God would have established Saul's kingdom permanently.
If Calvinism is true that God preplans/causes all that happens, then He preplanned/caused that Saul would disobey and lose the kingdom (because that's what happened) and so it would be a lie to say that something different could have, would have, happened, that there was an alternative path that hinged on Saul's choice.
Was Samuel and God lying? Or is Calvinism not true?
I'm going with "Calvinism's not true!"
In this example, Calvinists might just answer that God decreed that His decree (His plan that Saul would get the kingdom) didn't happen. That He commanded Saul to obey but then caused Saul to disobey.
So God (in Calvinism) not only decrees that we disobey His decrees, but He also decrees that other decrees of His don't happen!?!
Calvinists will say that God decrees (preplans, causes) everything that happens, but then in cases where God's plans didn't happen, they'll say He also decrees what didn't happen. They'll say He had two decrees (two Wills): one Will was that Saul got the kingdom, but the other was that Saul disobeyed and lost the kingdom. God decreed that His decree didn't happen. He decreed that Saul disobeyed His decree.
How very Alice-in-Wonderlandy!
Can they not see how messed-up this is? What this does to God's character and Word? And then which decree is His real decree: the thing He says or the thing He causes? And how can we trust any decree (command) God gives us if He might really want us to do the opposite? And why should we put any effort into obeying His decrees if He's just gonna cause us to do whatever He wants anyway, even causing us to do the opposite of what He said He wanted us to do?
Calvinism destroys God's character and His Word. How can Calvinists not see that!?!
God does not preplan what we do. He does not give us commands that He secretly wants us to break. He does not give us offers and promises that He never intended to fulfill. He does not preplan/cause our decisions, our sins or unbelief.
But He does know the outcome of whatever choice we will make, and He knows how to incorporate it into His plans. He knew that if Saul obeyed, his kingdom would have been established. And He knew that if Saul disobeyed, his kingdom would be taken away and go to David. And He could have worked either of those into His plans to bring Jesus into the world.
["But," you might say, "didn't God have to cause it to work out the way it did so that certain biblical prophecies could get fulfilled?" Well, don't you think that if God foreknew that someone would make a different decision and that He'd work His plans out in a different way, then He would have made sure that the Bible's prophecies reflected it? The Bible wasn't written first, before God knew what was going to happen - which would leave Him scrambling to make sure things happened the way the Bible predicted it. No. God knew first what would happen, and then He made sure that humans recorded it accordingly. And so if He knew things would've been different because someone made a different decision, He would've made sure the Bible was written to reflect it.]
God knows where all our potential paths will lead, and He knows how to work it all into something good, into His plans. But He lets us decide. And then He decides how to work our choices into His plans. He is wise enough, powerful enough, and sovereign enough to work many variable factors into His plans, unlike Calvi-god who can't manage any other factors than what he himself preplans and causes.
5. In Acts, Paul is headed to Rome as a prisoner on a ship when they come against a hurricane-like storm. And after many days at sea, Paul tells the discouraged, scared men, “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete, then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul.... God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ ...” (Acts 27:21-24)
And then a little later, when the sailors were trying to escape from the ship in the lifeboats, Paul tells them, “Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 27:31)
Obviously, God wanted to spare the men from having to go through this storm, so He gave Paul the insight and wisdom to warn them. But they didn’t listen. And then, when they decided to sail from Crete anyway, God graciously decided that none of their lives would be lost in the storm.
It was His Will that they all lived ... but only if they stayed with the ship.
He had a plan (a conditional Will), but they had to follow Him in the plan. If God was going to spare their lives regardless of what they did - if they couldn't change or affect His plan - there'd be no reason to warn them to stay with the ship. But their actions and choices had an effect on whether or not they stayed safely inside God’s Will, whether or not they got the blessings that come with obedience. He invited them to obey and to follow His plan and be saved. But if they didn’t, it was on their own heads. God does not force His Will and plans on us. We have to follow Him in it through our obedience ... or else we pay the price of disobedience.
This is how it is with salvation. God has given us the ship that will save us: Jesus’s sacrificial death on our behalf. And He has promised that we will be saved... but only if we stay with the ship. God sets the plan, the destinations, and gives us the choice, but we have to decide: God's way or not? Follow Him or reject Him?
[Calvinists have ways of manipulating you into agreeing with their view of sovereignty. They say that if you believe God doesn’t control everything then you're saying that He can’t control everything or that He controls nothing. They make you feel that believing in free-will - that we have the ability to choose and that our choices and prayers affect things - is the same as saying that God is weak and powerless, that we are stronger than Him, that He relies on us. They shame you into agreeing with them by making you feel that believing in free-will reduces God to a dependent weakling while elevating mankind to a supremely powerful being.
But we are not reducing God when we say that He allows people to make choices. We are not saying He is not sovereign and all-powerful. We are simply saying that He has chosen - in His sovereign position as Supreme Ruler who can make whatever rules He wants - to voluntarily restrain His use of power in order to give men the right to make real choices that affect things.
Calvinists are the ones who limit God, saying that He's only capable of handling things if He Himself preplans it all and causes it all. They have decided that God can only be God if He is always controlling everything. Telling God how God has to be in order to be God is a dangerous thing!]
6. In 1 Kings 22 (which I looked at in the “Sovereignty and Free-Will Working Together” post), God asks for a volunteer to entice King Ahab to go into battle where he will be killed. And a demon steps forward and says that he will entice Ahab by being a lying spirit in the mouths of the false prophets.
God wanted Ahab dead (He could've killed him instantly, but He chose to do it through other means). And so He looked for a plan that would cause Ahab to go to his own death. Notice that God didn’t cause the demon to lie nor did He cause Ahab to believe the lies, but He did bring them together: a lying spirit and a person who wanted to believe the lies. He gave the demon permission to spread lies through the false prophets, knowing that Ahab would believe the lies and go into battle and be killed. But God did not force Ahab to believe lies. Ahab didn't have to believe lies - but he would believe them because that's what he wanted to do. And so God allowed him to be presented with lies (through the demon), and then He let Ahab believe them and choose to do things that would lead to his death.
What's interesting about this story is that God even gave Ahab a true prophecy through the mouth of a godly prophet: that he would be killed if he went into battle. And yet Ahab still chose to listen to the lying prophets, even though he knew that the godly prophet was speaking for the Lord. God didn’t hide the truth from Ahab in order to make him believe the lies. Ahab was just so set on going into battle that he would only listen to what he wanted to hear. Ahab willfully chose the lies. In fact, Ahab had already made up his mind about what he was going to do before getting Micaiah’s counsel. He wasn’t going to listen to the word of the Lord, no matter what it was.
God didn’t make Ahab believe lies or go into battle. He just put the choice before Ahab: believe the lies or believe the truth. And He made Ahab choose. But since He already knew what Ahab would choose, He knew the demon would be successful.
7. We've looked at these verses before, but they are so important to understanding that God does not always force what He wants, that He gives us real choices and lets us choose to disobey Him or to do things without Him, that His Will can be disobeyed (and notice that these are all things God Himself says):
1 Kings 20:42: "He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die.''" [God determined something would happen, but it didn't happen. How is this possible if God determines everything that happens and nothing different could have happened? Once again, Calvinists would say, "Well, God sometimes decrees that people disobey His decrees." And they say it with a straight face - as if it makes sense and doesn't damage God's character.]
Hosea 8:4: "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval." [If God ordains/controls all that happens, how can anything happen without His approval? Calvinists would simply say, "Oh, well, God can ordain things He doesn't approve of, for His mysterious plans." With a straight face.]
Jeremiah 19:5: "They have built the high places to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind." [It would be kinda difficult for God to predestine/cause something that He never thought of commanding, wouldn't it? And how would Calvinists answer this? I'm actually not sure. I never heard one try. Instead, they always switch topics or bring up a different verse that they think "proves" God "ordains/causes" all that happens, such as a verse about God causing a storm. But ... this is critical ... causing a storm is nowhere near the same thing as causing someone to do something evil that He commanded them not to do. Causing a storm does not destroy His righteousness, faithfulness, and justice. But causing sin - and then punishing us for it - does.]
Ezekiel 13:22 (KJV): "Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad ..." And the CSB version puts it this way: "Because you have disheartened the righteous person with lies (when I intended no distress)..." [In Calvinism, God would be the one who preplanned and ultimately caused people to lie to the righteous people. He would have preplanned/intended to cause the righteous people to be disheartened, contradicting His claim that He never intended to do that. And so either God lies or Calvinism lies. Which one do you think it is?]
Isaiah 30:1: "Woe to the obstinate children," declares the Lord, "to those who carry out plans that are not mine..." [If all plans are God's plans, how can anything happen that He didn't plan? Calvinists might simply say, "Well, God has two different plans. In one plan, He didn't want the people to do what they did. But in the other plan, He caused the people to do what He didn't want them to do, for His glory and mysterious reasons. And He's so far above us that we can't understand it. He is the Potter and we are clay. How can the clay talk back to the Potter or understand the Potter's ways? Blah, blah, blah. Gobble, gobble, gobble."]
Exodus 13:17: "When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country. For God said 'If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." [I don't even need to tell you how this totally contradicts and disproves Calvinism, their idea that God preplans, causes, controls everything we think and do. You can see it clearly for yourselves. Calvinists can't, but you can.]
And why would God give "boundaries" to people, Satan, and nature (such as putting a boundary around the one forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and putting a limit on how far the sea can move in Job 38:11, and putting a hedge around Job and limits to how much Satan can do to him in Job 1) if God alone controls every single movement that everyone and everything makes? Boundaries are only needed when there is freedom to move within those boundaries.
Summing it up
Calvinism teaches that sovereignty means that God preplans and controls everything that happens, exactly the way it happens, even our sins and decisions about Jesus ... and nothing different could have happened. They'll say we "freely" choose to do what He predestined us to do. (But there's nothing "free" about it. They don't mean you actually decide for yourself or that you have real free-will. They just mean that God changes your desires so that you desire to do what He predestined you to do, and so He doesn't actually have to "force" you to do it. You do it because you "want" to. Like how giving someone a magic love potion makes them "want" to love you. It's bogus!)
But in the Bible, God does not preplan and cause (force) us to choose what we do (sin, evil, lie, reject Jesus, etc.). We are not locked into one option. He lets us decide how to act and believe, to choose among various options. And since He already knows what we'll choose, He knows how to work it into His plans. This is how His sovereignty works in conjunction with our free-will choices. (While He doesn't force us to decide what we do, He can force us to make our choice. He can put us in situations that force us to decide whether to obey or disobey, to act out what's in our hearts. But this isn't the same as preplanning and causing what we choose.)
God does not always force whatever He wants, even though He has the power to. But He has decided to voluntarily restrain His use of power over us, giving us the right and responsibility to make real choices, as seen time and time again in the Bible.
God has made the truth, the gospel, salvation, available to all. He offers all of us the gift of eternal life. But He lets us decide to accept it or reject it. And in the end, we get what we chose eternally: life with Jesus or life without Jesus. And since He lets us decide for ourselves, no one can say He is unjust when someone goes to hell. He didn't predestine anyone to hell or cause anyone to reject Jesus. They chose to do it themselves, in spite of His many attempts to reach out to them in love.
"Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'" (Ezekiel 33:11)
