THE SIXTH POINT OF CALVINISM

Calvinistssometimes seem to affirm freedom of choice for a lost man regarding where he will spend eternity. Calvinism as a system, however, will not allow it. The primary reason Calvinism denies man this freedom is found in a seriously flawed definition of sovereignty. Despite the fact that Calvinists see themselves as the vanguards of divine sovereignty, the concept of sovereignty as found in Calvinism undermines and degrades the concept of sovereignty found in Scripture.

One of the ways in which Calvinism undermines the biblical concept of divine sovereignty is by confusing it with the biblical concept of divine freedom. For some Calvinists, such as James White, God’s sovereignty and God’s freedom are practically synonymous. It is truly doubtful that any thoughtful Evangelical would disagree with the fact that God is absolutely free because He is absolutely sovereign—and He is absolutely sovereign if, and only if, He is absolutely free. According to White, however, the problem is:

Sin causes man to constantly seek to insert himself into the work of God in salvation, so every generation has to be reminded of their complete dependence upon Him and of His perfect salvation. That is one reason why I do not believe the common “Five Points” is enough for today. There is a sixth point that lies at the head of the list, which must be firmly proclaimed and defended today: the freedom of God. While it may have been taken for granted a few centuries ago, today it is surely a belief under fire. But since it lies at the very heart of the debate, we need to begin with a discussion of what it means.⁴⁹⁰ On one hand, the Calvinist doctrine of sovereignty teaches us that everything is as it ought to be. In other words, things are as the sovereign God desired, determined, and even decreed them to be. Thus, according to Calvinism, if God is on the throne, in charge, and in control, things could not be other than they are, unless He had determined or decreed them to be some other way. On the other hand, Calvinists constantly bemoan the fact that man (especially those pesky Arminians) does not accept God’s sovereignty but openly denies and even attempts to resist that sovereignty. They do this without even noticing how inconsistent this view is. Assuming Calvinism is true, how can man (even an Arminian man) do anything to offend God, or please Him for that matter, that God did not sovereignly predestine that he would and should do?

Calvinists may speak of sin causing this or that thing to happen in a secondary sense, but in the primary and morally responsible sense, a consistent Calvinism teaches that God causes everything, including sin and the refusal of some men to embrace Calvinism. Some Calvinists may not mean to teach this and may even deny that this is what they are teaching. In such cases, however, these Calvinists are failing to understand the implicit and sometimes even explicit teachings of Reformed Theology. In fact, according to a consistent Calvinism, God “. causes man to constantly seek to insert himself into the work of God in salvation.” God does so by His own irresistible determination and decree, which caused the “sin” that “causes man to constantly seek to insert himself into the work of God in salvation.” A consistent Calvinism also holds that God caused James White, for example, to complain about what God caused by His irresistible decree. And according to this way of thinking, I could not escape being caused by God to point out how silly all this sounds. In mainstream Calvinism in general, and for White in particular, the meaning of God’s freedom can be stated as follows:

• God can and does as He pleases in all matters, including with man and his eternal destiny. God has the only say in what He does with man. Conversely, man has no say in what God does with him.

In more picturesque terms, the divine potter shapes the human clay into any form He pleases to use and (in the case of some) to dispose of as He pleases. Ultimately, the human clay cannot meaningfully assist or resist the way he or his future shapes up. The divine potter does as He pleases with the human clay and the human clay does as the divine potter pleases. Period! Even the things that we are told in Scripture that displease God are decreed by God in accordance to His own pleasure, according to a consistent Calvinism.

Focusing heavily upon the image of a potter and his clay (Romans 9), Calvinists misinterpret Paul’s use of this image by going far beyond Paul’s intended purpose. In fact, Calvinists not only go too far but they take you in the wrong direction. How would a consistent Calvinist answer the question “why have You made me this way?” The Calvinist could, and probably should, logically and theologically, say that even this question, along with the sinful rebellion they say it represents, is really determined and decreed by God. Not only so, but a consistent Calvinist could and should also be able to say that even the non-Calvinist misunderstanding of the biblical doctrines of salvation and damnation and the non-Calvinists’ rejection of Calvinism are also determined and decreed by God. The fact that no Calvinist suggests such an interpretation for the potter and the clay only proves that Calvinists cannot go all the way down the interpretive road they are asking others to travel on. Nevertheless, for White, at least one of the issues he believes is at stake is the affirmation that:

God truly can do as He pleases, without getting permission from anyone, including man .. ,⁴⁹¹

Given the basic and faulty premise of Reformed Theology, how could a man object to God doing what He pleases, unless God determined and decreed that he would object to God doing what He pleases? If Reformed Theology is true, God had to decree even that.

If Calvinism’s view of God’s sovereignty is true, then every thought (correct or in error), every feeling (good or bad), and every statement (either for or against Calvinism) have been sovereignly determined and decreed by God. If Calvinism’s view of God’s sovereignty is true, we could never actually know it, test it, or argue its merits—we could only “go through the motions” that look like real thinking and arguing but which are actually merely the sovereignly determined and decreed acts or thoughts of God working themselves in, through, and out of us.

I have described and defined this Calvinist dilemma repeatedly because once one understands the dilemma, it seems absurd and unbelievable. Why would anyone believe such a thing? The fact is, even to have a meaningful discussion of Calvinism, some central tenets of Calvinism cannot be true and for all practical purposes must be assumed not to be true.

DEFINING DOWN SOVEREIGNTY

What if God, however, simply chose to give man a choice in where he spends eternity? Not possible, says the consistent Calvinist. For as there can be only one will that truly accomplishes anything, according to Calvinism, so there can only be one being who is free. White likes to say that he believes in libertarian free will, but only for God. Earlier I referred to this as mono volitionism. Richard Phillips, vice president of The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals,perfectly identifies the Calvinist concern by asking: Who is free? Man or God? Which is sovereign?⁴⁹² For Phillips, White, and the Calvinism they represent, the answers to these questions are the theological bottom line. God is free. Man is not.For White, this is also to say that God is sovereign. Man is not.It is true that a sovereign being is by definition a free being. It is not true, however, that a free being is necessarily a sovereign being. Therefore, while it is true that an absolutely sovereign God would have to be absolutely free, as the one and only true God is, one does not have to be absolutely free to be meaningfully free. A being that is meaningfully and relatively free is not thereby relatively sovereign,if I may use an oxymoron to illustrate my point.

Calvinism is simply guilty of muddying the theological waters. Many hypo-Calvinists want to dance around this issue because Scripture often affirms that man is both free and responsible. They often state their view in a way that makes it seem likethey really believe that both man and God can be free. Given enough time to explain what they mean or what is implied by their view, however, they end up denying that man is free in any meaningful or responsible way.

Mainstream Calvinists want to be able to say that both God and man are free, but object when the Biblicist does so. For when a Calvinist says that unregenerate man is free to reject the gospel, as they often do, they mean something very different than does the non-Calvinist Evangelical. Freeto reject, according to Calvinism, actually means exactly the same thing as boundto reject. When freedomand bondagemean the same thing, they mean nothing. When a reprobate freelyrejects God’s offer of eternal life on the condition of faith in Christ, it is, according to the Calvinist, because of his bondageto sin. That is, the reprobate is only free to reject, not free to accept orreject. Some freedom! This kind of convoluted thinking has led some very bright and godly men to say some pretty incongruent things. For example, Charles Spurgeon says:

Free agency we may believe in, but free will is simply ridicu lous.⁴⁹³

I suggest that what is really ridiculous is to believe you are a free agent in any meaningful sense, unless you have a will that is meaningfully free. In theological lockstep with Spurgeon, George Bishop says:

Man is a free agent. But man has no free will.⁴⁹⁴

Pardon me if I cannot distinguish between the Calvinist definition of a free agent and my definition of a non-free agent. I fail to see how a man with no free will can still be a free agent. How can there be such a thing as free agency, without a will that is free through which the agent can express freedom or act freely? Spurgeon says:

I believe in [the Calvinist version of] predestination ... its very jots and tittles. I believe ... that every word and thought of man ... is foreknown and foreordained [in the Calvinist sense].⁴⁹⁵ He also says everything:

... is ordained and settled by a decree which cannot be violated.⁴⁹⁶ Spurgeon goes on to say:

... I believe in the free agency of man, that man acts as he wills, especially in moral operations—choosing the evil with a will that is unbiased by anything that comes from God, biased only by his own depravity of heart and the perverseness of his habits .⁴⁹⁷

Perhaps unconsciously, Spurgeon reduces the decree of God to no effect on man by saying that man’s choice to commit evil is “unbiased by anything that comes from God, biased only by his own depravity of heart and the perverseness of his habits.” Spurgeon asks: Can you understand it, for I cannot, how a man is a free agent, a responsible agent, so that his sin is his own sin and lies with him and never with God? . I cannot comprehend it: without hesitation I believe it, and rejoice to do so, I never hope to comprehend it. I worship a God I never expect to comprehend .⁴⁹⁸ The Reformed professor Douglas J. Wilson is right when he says: From cover to cover, the Bible teaches that divine sovereignty and human responsibility are compatible with one another; nowhere does the Bible even suggest that the affirmation of divine sovereignty leads to the denial of human liberty.⁴⁹⁹ R. Laird Harris represents the hypo-Calvinist view as follows:

Calvinism does not deny free will. It declares that God’s sovereignty extends to all things and persons, but that His sovereign control in some inscrutable way does not deny man’s free moral agency and responsibility. ... Calvinism does not claim to solve the problem, but only to put it in the Scripture focus and leave it there, not going beyond what is written.⁵⁰⁰ Feinberg goes as far as to say:

Common sense, let alone Scripture, suggests that we are free and morally responsible for our actions.⁵⁰¹ To be “free and morally responsible” in Reformed Theology is, however, to be neither free nor morally responsible. Man becomes excused from moral culpability by any view that sees man only doing what God makes him do (by His hidden decrees). While not recognizing what they are doing, or recognizing it and not admitting it, some hypo-Calvinists engage in a serious redefinition and defining down of the meaning of freedom to avoid coming into conflict with the contradictions imposed by their views of human depravity and divine sovereignty. Sometimes Calvinists will simply accept conflicting definitions of divine sovereignty and human freedom and leave the resulting logical problems unresolved. In fact, Calvinist Thomas Schreiner admits: The scandal of the Calvinist system is that ultimately the logical problem posed cannot be fully resolved. The final resolution to the problem of human responsibility and divine justice is beyond our rational capacity.⁵⁰² The example I provided earlier for the kind of Calvinist that Feinberg refers to is Edwin Palmer. According to Palmer, a true Calvinist embraces:

... both sides of the antinomy. He realizes that what he advocates is ridiculous.⁵⁰³ Palmer goes on to admit:

It is impossible to harmonize these two sets of data [divine sovereignty and human responsibility].⁵⁰⁴ The Calvinist creates and introduces this apparent paradox, with all its awful ramifications concerning the character of God and the destiny of men. He then berates us for wanting to take a probing look at the arguments and evidence offered upon which it precariously rests. While Palmer apparently does not see the utter impossibility of what he is affirming, at least he concedes that it comes across as “impossible,” “ridiculous,” and “nonsense.” As far as concessions go, this should raise some eyebrows. What it all leads to, according to Palmer and Calvinism, is that: This is the awesome biblical asymmetry. God ordains sin and man is to blame.⁵⁰⁵

“Asymmetry!” This is a nice way of saying that it is “nonsense” or “ridiculous” to say that “God ordains sin and man is to blame.” If God ordains sin in the Calvinist sense, how can man be blamed in any sense? Logically and legitimately, he can’t. If the Calvinist view of sovereignty and predestination did not at least appear to clash with human responsibility and divine justice, which Calvin and others clearly admitted it does, there would be no problem to solve or classify it as a mystery. As we have repeatedly seen, a common defense of the contradictions of Calvinism is that we simply do not have enough information to understand the solution to the problem of reconciling divine sovereignty and human freedom and responsibility. That is not the case. Instead, the contradictions appear not because we do not have enough information. The problem for the Calvinist and for Calvinism is that we have too much information. That is why Calvinists, like many if not most non-Calvinists, simply cannot leave this matter alone. Too much scriptural information about both divine sovereignty and human responsibility are on the theological table.

What we can and should know from Scripture makes Calvinism appear to be unscriptural (as it really is). Feinberg’s affirmation that sovereignty and free will are compatible is clearly defensible from a scriptural point of view. His explanation of what it means to be free undermines and even contradicts his affirmation. For Feinberg: The best way out of this dilemma is for Calvinists to begin by reexamining what free will means.⁵⁰⁶

What Feinberg does is radically redefine and define down what it means to be free. Shortly, we will allow Feinberg to explain exactly what is involved in his reexamination of “what free will means.” Before we do so, consider the following analogy, which admittedly is mine and not Feinberg’s:

Suppose you have a married couple we will call Bob and Sue who cannot get along together. So you decide to reconcile them by replacing one of them with someone who can get along with the one you do not replace. While it may result in harmony, the original two are not reconciled but separated. In the same way, redefining freedom as some Calvinists do does not reconcile sovereignty with freedom but instead removes meaningful freedom from the discussion. Something I will call nominal freedom is introduced in the place of real freedom.

Using our analogy of the married couple who cannot get along, let us suppose that Bob represents sovereignty and Sue represents freedom. Since it is believed that Sue cannot peacefully coexist with Bob, we replace her with Sally, whom we rename Sue, and then claim we have resolved the differences between Bob and Sue and saved the marriage.

If we did this to a married couple, everyone would see right through it. By redefining freedom, however, the Calvinist, who feels a need to reconcile divine sovereignty with human freedom, can tell everyone that this is what he has done and few seem to notice.

Some Calvinists, while defining sovereignty and freedom in a contradictory way, do not try to reconcile them. Instead, they just say that the problem of affirming both divine sovereignty and human freedom represents an irresolvable mystery for the mind of man. Still others, especially of the hyper-Calvinist camp, simply deny that unregenerate man is free in any meaningful way. A Calvinist would go theologically ballistic if an Arminian were to define down divine sovereignty to reconcile it with a misguided notion of human freedom (as Open Theists do). While I agree that it is wrong to redefine and define down sovereignty to conform to a particular and misguided view of free will, it is equally wrong to take the free out of the will. Ironically, in their misguided attempt to rescue God’s sovereignty from the supposed damage done by a view that accepts that man is morally free and a morally responsible agent, Calvinists actually define down sovereignty as well as freedom. Just as important, it is not necessary to do this for either scriptural or logical reasons.

Feinberg’s proposed solution to the problem Calvinism has created is no solution at all. Pay very close attention to how he believes he has resolved this matter:

People are morally responsible for their actions because they do them freely. I agree that no one can be held morally accountable for actions that are not free. ... If the acts are constrained, then they are not free and the agent is not morally responsible for them. But if the act is according to the agent’s desire, then even though the act is causally determined [by God], it is free and the agent is morally responsible.⁵⁰⁷

Feinberg is one of many Calvinists who say they believe that sovereignty and freedom are compatible. He believes in a certain kind of Calvinist determinism (i.e., what he calls “soft determinism”) that says God causally determines things to happen that are at the same time freely done by morally responsible agents. The kind of causal determinism he describes, however, does not really allow for any real freedom on the part of the agent. Why? Because this so-called “non-constraining” cause involves “sufficient conditions, which incline the will decisively in one way or the other.”⁵⁰⁸ Feinberg is right when he reasons:

If . the agent is causally determined by constraining forces on a particular occasion . his act on that particular occasion was [not] free.⁵⁰⁹

Feinberg is wrong when he reasons that if an agent is “causally determined” to act under the influence of “conditions sufficient to incline the will decisively in one way or the other,” “his act” is free. This is like saying a man chose to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff where he was pushed with sufficient force to ensure that he would actually end up on the canyon floor below. If a police investigation were to follow the death of this man, assuming the police could determine the facts of the case, would they call it a suicide or a homicide? Would they determine the man killed himself or that someone else murdered him? The fact is, if the man was pushed hard enough to ensure that he would actually fall to his death, it is murder. In like manner, if God causally determines in the way that Feinberg suggests, the agent is not really free and cannot really be morally accountable for what he was causally determined by God to do. A sufficient condition that “decisively inclines the will” is a condition that forces the agent to do what the agent does. Some Calvinists, such as Feinberg, believe they can get around this problem by saying that the agent is only doing what the agent desires and is therefore morally responsible for what he does. In the Calvinist scheme of things, this only pushes the problem back one level. Why does the agent desire to do what the agent does? Feinberg says that the agent’s desire is causally determined and his will is “decisively” inclined. If such is the case, there is no rational way to deny that the agent’s will and desire are under a divine and irresistible “constraining force.” Feinberg, as well as many hypo-Calvinists, wants what Calvinism cannot give him. The Biblicist faces no such problem. God’s absolute sovereignty does not deny human freedom but is in fact the basis for real and meaningful human freedom. If we should admit an apparent problem, it is certainly solved by the very implications of the meaning of divine sovereignty. Admittedly, there are some things even God cannot do. For example, God cannot lie because He is by nature true. He cannot cease to exist because He is by nature eternal. As Hank Hanegraaff points out:

God is limited in His activities only in this way—He accomplishes what He wants (or wills) to accomplish. In other words, because God always acts in accord with His nature, He does not (and indeed cannot) desire to lie or deny Himself. While it is agreed that God is completely sovereign over His creation, He performs only what sovereign power can actually accomplish. To make a nonsense statement and add the words “God can .” in front of them does not change the fact that the statement is nonsense. . Simply because God is unable to create a hypothetical absurdity, such as a square circle, does not mean that He is not omnipotent. Instead it means that there is no such thing [and cannot be] as a square circle. The same can be said with the “heavy rock” question often asked of Christians [e.g., can God create a rock so heavy He can’t lift it?].

God can lift any rock He actually creates. But there is no such thing as [and cannot be] a rock so big that an all-powerful and sovereign Being could not lift it. So the probability of God creating one is naturally zero.⁵¹⁰

Such an admission says nothing that diminishes the concepts of absolute sovereignty and omnipotence. By definition, nothing could diminish the absoluteness of God’s sovereignty and omnipotence. Either He is or He is not absolutely sovereign. Period! Of course, men can and do deny that God is absolutely sovereign and all-powerful, but the idea of a reduced level of absolute sovereignty or omnipotence is itself absurd. It would be like saying that a man has all the money in the world in his safe, but others have some in their safes as well.

While questions such as “Can God create a rock so heavy He can’t lift it?” may sound clever to the people asking them, they say nothing at all about what God can or cannot really do. In no way should they lead to an admission that God may not be sovereign or omnipotent after all. Questions like these merely reflect the inability of some men to seriously think through the questions they sometimes ask, or to see how intellectually silly questions like these really are.

Unless we say that God sovereignly determines that men will deny His sovereignty (which in some sense Calvinism does), it is evident that divine sovereignty does not cancel out human freedom. There is no definitional, logical, or scriptural reason to suggest that divine sovereignty makes it impossible for an unregenerate man, while in an unregenerate state, to make a real choice between either of two eternal destinies. The fall of Adam and the resultant depravity of man imply nothing that could possibly limit the options open to a sovereign God.

God is just as sovereign over the unregenerate as He is over the regenerate. All this is to say that an acknowledgment of divine sovereignty, consistent with what is affirmed in Scripture, overcomes any problems that might otherwise be posed by the limitations imposed by the many and serious consequences of the fall, such as spiritual death. To say otherwise is not to protect the doctrine of sovereignty, as is often claimed, but to undermine it. Thus, one should not appeal to the facts of either divine sovereignty or human depravity as proof that an unregenerate man can have no say in where he spends eternity. Neither divine sovereignty nor human depravity should be used as a basis for denying that a man can have a say in where he spends eternity. Sovereign power is the solution to the problems faced by the unregenerate and not a problem itself, as Calvinism has made it out to be. The Calvinist agrees that sovereign power is the solution in that God regenerates the unregenerate. Man is spiritually dead. That is the problem. God gives life to the spiritually dead. That is the solution. There is nothing about the concept of sovereignty or the unregenerate nature of man that prevents God from enabling a spiritually dead man, while spiritually dead, to make a choice between heaven and hell. Everything about the scriptural concept of divine sovereignty says that God can make it possible for a spiritually dead man to turn in faith to Jesus Christ if that man so chooses. The question is not what canGod do, but what hasHe done or what willHe do?

It would not be misleading or an overstatement to say that everything Calvinism teaches about salvation and damnation can be traced to the Reformed doctrines of sovereignty and predestination. It is equally clear that it is the way that Calvinists have defined the doctrines of sovereignty and predestinationthat is responsible for so many thorny theological and logical problems. The concepts of sovereignty and predestination do not in themselves pose any real problems, especially as they are defined in light of what Scripture says about the sovereign God and the way He administers sovereign control. It is either the height of arrogance or the depth of ignorance (or both) that moves Calvinists like Leonard Coppes to say:

Only the Calvinist ... recognizes the absolute sovereignty of God.⁵¹¹ On many different occasions, I have been asked, mostly by Calvinist acquaintances and friends, the twin questions: Do you believe God is sovereign?And: Do you believe everyone and everything (acts, words, thoughts, intentions, motives, events, etc.) is according to God’s sovereign will?It might surprise some and anger others that I, as a non-Calvinist, would say yesto both questions. In fact, I would say that if you say yes to the first question, you must also logically say yes to the second question, as I know my Calvinist friends would agree. Where the Calvinist goes wrong is in the way he believes God sovereignly governs the universe.

Despite the fact that many Calvinists may and do deny this, the Calvinist view of divine sovereignty and predestination makes God, through the nature of His sovereign control of all things that come to pass, the morally responsible agent, not only of everything moralthat comes to pass, but also of everything immoral that comes to pass. As most Calvinists will agree, this simply cannot be if what Scripture says about the holy nature of the sovereign God is true. Gunn is right when he says: The sovereignty of God also teaches that God is not the responsible author of [moral] evil, that man is a free moral agent who is not forced to sin and who is responsible for what he does.⁵¹² Pay very close attention, however, to how Jay Adams addresses this same issue. He says:

God is neither the author of sin, nor sanctions it (approves of it).

He is not responsible for sin, though He decreed it. Those guilty of sin are responsible.⁵¹³ Can God decree sin in the Calvinist sense and not be responsible for what follows inevitably from and because of that decree? If you understand the Calvinist concept of decree, such a statement logically must be recognized for the contradiction that it is. I agree with The Canons of Dort when it says: The cause or guilt of unbelief and all other sins, is in no wise in God.⁵¹⁴

Once, however, you take into account the meaning and implications of a divine decree as defined by Calvinists, this statement should also be recognized for the impossible contradiction that it is. I would say that if God is truly sovereign, then everyone and everything must be under God’s sovereign control, and therefore everything happens according to the sovereign will of God. That does mean that everything that happens, happens because of God’s sovereign control.

Whatever happens must, by definition, always be under the sovereign control of God, if God is absolutely sovereign. This is like saying a circle must be round to be a circle. If something is not round it would not be a circle. Even so, if a sovereign God administers sovereign control over everything, then nothing is or could be outside His sovereign control.

Even Calvinists, however, recognize that a sovereign God can and does command that some things should happen that do not actually happen. Needless to say, God does this without surrendering His sovereignty. Otherwise, the Calvinist would have to admit that when God commands things to happen that do not happen, He must not be commanding sovereignly.

Conversely, God can and does command that some things should not happen, that in fact, do happen. Those sinful or immoral things that have happened or will happen can and do happen as a result of what I will call other morally responsible agents. By this I mean that morally responsible agents other than God can be morally responsible for moral things that happen, under the sovereign control of God. They can and do happen without implicating God in immorality or suggesting that God is morally responsible for that immoral behavior.

Whereas Calvinists unwittingly define down human freedom to accommodate an unbiblical view of divine sovereignty, they should define up their lower view of sovereignty to accommodate for what Scripture really says about the nature of God and His sovereign control of everything. In fact, a scripturally informed doctrine of sovereignty says that everything that is under God’s sovereign control (which is everything) takes place in such a way that only morally good things can be legitimately traced to God. The decretive will of God is predictably in accord with His nature. Thus, whatever God is morally responsible for is by definition morally defensible. Conversely, if something occurs that is morally reprehensible, God cannot, by definition, be morally responsible for that something. A scripturally informed doctrine of divine sovereignty does not say that God is morally responsible for everything that is under His sovereign control. Again, if something is morally reprehensible, it cannot rightly be traced to God in a way that suggests God is the morally responsible agent of that activity or decision. Why? It is because God is absolutely holy and only decides or acts in ways that are consistent with His holiness.

While we can and should distinguish between the will and nature of God, we should not pit the one against the other. God’s decretive will is predictably and inevitably holy because God is absolutely holy. Anything that happens that is not holy must be attributed to someone other than God. Anyone who commits an immoral act must already be immoral or become immoral at the time they commit such an act. Since God is absolutely moral, He cannot do immoral things and cannot legitimately be viewed as morally responsible for immorality.

It may be helpful at this point to consider an entirely different aspect of the nature of God. Consider the omniscience of God as it is brought to bear on the future. God knows everything that will happen. What He knows will happen must happen in accordance with what He knows. Otherwise, He would not and could not have known they were going to happen. His foreknowledge, however, of what will happen is not the cause of what happens. Even Calvin admitted that foreknowledge of the future is not the cause of future events. Calvin, however, got off track by saying that God knows the future because He determined the future (in a Calvinistic sense) and all that takes place in the future.

If God determines or decides something will happen, that something has to happen. Otherwise, God would not be omnipotent. God, however, knows the future not simply because He determines future events by a decree. He knows future events because He knows all events—past, present, and future. God knows the future because He is omniscient. Some things happen because God determines they will and must happen. Some things happen because God determines to allow them to happen. The relationship to God of those things that happen differs, depending upon whether He causes or allows them to happen. The kind of responsibility God has for those things also differs depending upon whether or not He causes or allows them to happen. You can allow a thing to happen and thereby become complicit with the one that is the cause. For example, suppose you witness a bank robbery from the safety of a secure room and choose not to report the robbery until the bank robber has left the scene of the crime. You were not the cause of the robbery, but you could have and should have prevented the robbery. You would be morally, even if not legally, culpable. Suppose, however, that you knew that by calling the police, innocent people would unnecessarily die during their intervention. In such a case, even if you were legally culpable, you certainly would not be morally culpable. Even so, God can allow things (given what He knows—which is everything) without being morally responsible for what He knows. To judge God, we would have to know what He knows and know that what He did was wrong in light of all relevant factors. If God is absolutely holy, as Scripture declares Him to be, we could only find out (if we also knew everything) that what He did was the right thing to do.

Knowing an event is going to occur (or even allowing for an event to occur) is no more the cause of that event occurring than is knowing an event has occurredis the cause of an event which has already occurred. In effect, Calvin made the divine attribute of omnisciencea mere by-product of omnipotence.That is, Calvin taught that God only knows what will happen because He makes it happen by His irresistible decree. This is a fallacy of the first magnitude.

If God only knows what will happen in the future because He causes the future to occur by His irresistible decree, it would make God the primary and morally responsible cause of everything bad, wrong, and wicked, just as He is the morally responsible cause ultimately of everything that is good, right, and righteous. Such a view of God does not square with what we know of the God of Scripture and of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Psalmist tells us: The LORD is righteous in all His ways. ... (Psalms 145:17) Job’s comforters were not always right. But surely young Elihu is right when he says:

Far be it from God to do wickedness, and from the Almighty to commit iniquity. (Job 34:10) So then, how can it be said that God is in sovereign control of all things without being morally responsible for the immoral things that happen during His sovereign reign? My contention is that God is responsible for everything only in the sense that He is the uncreated Creator or the uncaused cause of everything and everyone in the original and sinless created state. He causes beings to exist who are meaningfully free and morally responsible. He does not determine all the decisions made or actions taken by those free beings He has created. As philosopher-theologian Norman Geisler says, God is the author of the factof freedom without being the author of the actsof freedom.⁵¹⁵

God is not morally responsible for the immorality of those He created. God is responsible for creating beings that became immoralbut He is not responsible for creating immoral beings.In fact, no such beings were ever created. God, therefore, cannot be morally responsible for creating that which was never created. God created moral beings who, by their own choices, became immoral. God is responsible for creating the capacity for immorality but not immorality itself. Creating the capacity for immorality does not make the Creator guilty of creating immorality. By way of analogy, suppose I were to give my daughter the keys to my car and then send her to the store. Suppose then that she deliberately runs a red light on her way there. If I had not given her keys to the car and then sent her to the store, she would not have run the red light. A link then can be made to me, but not a link which makes me legally or morally responsible for her illegal and immoral act. So it is between the sin of a sinner and the God who made the one who becomes a sinner. As long as God does not make the sinner a sinner or make the sinner sin, He cannot legitimately be viewed as morally responsible for the sin or sinfulness of the sinner. At this juncture, it may be helpful to revisit the creation of the first man. God sovereignly created man and therefore is fully responsible for creating man and for creating man the way man was created. God is even responsible for creating man with the capacity to sin, for that is the way He created man. God is therefore responsible for the sinful capacity of the first man. However, unless you can demonstrate that there is something immoral about creating a being capable of sin, you have nothing to blame God for in His creation of man. If you could successfully argue that God created man with a necessity (not mere capacity) to sin, you could legitimately charge God with wrongdoing. For if God created man with the necessity to sin, He would be the responsible cause of sin.

Despite some non-reality based denials, Calvin makes God out to be guilty of creating a man who had to sin, and had to sin because God determined, decreed, and willed that he would sin. God, according to Calvin, effectively forced the pre-fallen Adam to sin. According to Calvin, we can only discern purpose in the fall if we see it as a push from God. At this point, it will be helpful to hear what Calvin said to his detractors regarding this matter. Calvin complained:

They deny that it is ever said in distinct terms, God decreed that Adam should perish by his revolt. As if the same God, who is declared in Scripture to do whatsoever he pleases, could have made the noblest of his creatures without any special purpose. They say that, in accordance with free-will, he was to be the architect of his own fortune, that God had decreed nothing but to treat him according to his desert. If this frigid fiction is received, where will be the omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which every thing depends, he rules over all? But whether they will allow it or not, predestination is manifest in Adam’s posterity.

It was not owing to nature that they all lost salvation by the fault of one parent. Why should they refuse to admit with regard to one man that which against their will they admit with regard to the whole human race? Why should they in cavilling lose their labor? Scripture proclaims that all were, in the person of one, made liable to eternal death. As this cannot be ascribed to nature, it is plain that it is owing to the wonderful counsel of God.⁵¹⁶ In truth and according to Scripture, you cannot blame God for wrongdoing because He did nothing, does nothing, and can do nothing wrong. It is not wrong to create someone capable of sinning. It would be wrong to create someone incapable of not sinning. But only in the mind of Calvin and in the theology of Calvinism was such a man ever created by God. God is responsible for creating Adam, but not morally responsible for the immorality of Adam as Calvin and Calvinism make Him out to be. The sinful Adam was no less under God’s sovereign control than was the sin-free Adam. By definition he could not be. And assuming a sinful Adam could do good things (e.g. tell the truth) after becoming a sinner, his sinful acts (e.g. lying) could be no less in God’s sovereign will than his sin-free acts. I doubt a sinful man could ever do something that subjectively speaking was totally free from the influence of sin. Objectively, however, bad men can do good things. The bad things, however, that a man does cannot be traced back to God, and do not have a relationship to God the way we can trace good things to God.

Adam’s immoral or sinful acts, insofar as moral culpability is concerned, can only be traced back to Adam and perhaps to the influence of his wife and Satan. Despite what Calvin taught, God, in no sense, can be viewed legitimately as a morally responsible party (directly or indirectly, primarily or secondarily) of Adam’s fall. He is not the cause of Adam’s sin. God created Adam with the capacity to sin but also with a capacity to resist sin. God also gave Adam incentive not to sin in the form of a command not to sin and a warning which spelled out consequences if he did sin. The real influence of God was in opposition to sin. God is innocent. therefore, of any charge that He is somehow the morally responsible cause or even a morally co-responsible cause of the sin that Adam committed or that anyone commits. God’s sovereignty works in perfect concert with His absolutely holy nature and character. Just as God cannot surrender His sovereignty, He cannot sovereignly do anything contrary to His holiness. God simply does not and cannot work in conflict with His nature, which is absolutely holy.

Consider the relationship you have with the rest of humanity. (This is admittedly a narrow, limited analogy, but in the following sense, it is applicable.) You are related to everyone through Adam. You are closer (relationally) to some people than you are to others. You are closer to your sister than to your third cousin, though you are related to both. The kind of relationship you have with one person is also very different from the kind of relationship you have with another person. I have a close relationship with my daughter and a close relationship with my wife. The nature of the relationship I have with each is, however, very different. The relationship I have with a casual acquaintance, an enemy, or even someone I have never met is even more different. Even so, all things are related to God in some sense,but not all things are related to God in the same sense.This is why the apostle James says:

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. (James 1:13-17)

God does not lose any control when a man rebels. God is just as sovereign over the wicked as He is over the righteous. If something could come to pass that was not under the sovereign control of God, then that something would happen, by definition, independently of God. Even the free action of a free moral agent happens because God sovereignly has determined that such freedom exists. As noted earlier, the Calvinist needs to define sovereignty and predestination up, in accordance with Scripture, and not define human freedom down.

God can and does determine everything in one sense,and yet is not morally responsible for some things in any sense.Nevertheless, the immoral acts, which immoral men do, are on His perfectly sovereign and moral watch. God’s sovereign will permitsthings to happen that God does not desire to happen, or that He even commands not to happen. For example, God desires that every Christian man love his wife as Christ loves the church. He even commands every Christian man to love his wife as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5:25). Yet, not every Christian man loves his wife as God desires and commands. The very fact that God feels a necessity to command us to do something, such as repent, suggests the very real possibility that we may not do it, especially without such a command as a motivator to comply with what He desires.

Even with such motivation as a divine command, men, including very devout men, do not always do what God desires and commands. God allows them to disobey Him without causing them to disobey Him. There is, however, no conflict between what God sovereignly allows (which is the only way a sovereign God can allow anything), and the painfully apparent fact that people defy God’s moral and expressed will. A consistent Calvinism would have us believe that God ultimately causes man’s sinful rebellion. In fact, to a Calvinist, sinful rebellion is a manifestation of a man involuntarily yielding to the sovereign decree of God for that man’s life. It should be obvious that not everything under God’s sovereign control happens in relation to God in the same way. In fact, the God who sovereignly controls everything, as we have already seen, may and does allow things to happen that He disapproves of. This list of the divinely disapproved of and forbidden things in this wicked world is very long. Sproul is right when he says: That God in some sense foreordains whatever comes to pass is a necessary result of his sovereignty. In itself it does not plead for Calvinism. It only declares that God is absolutely sovereign over his creation. God can foreordain things in different ways. But everything that happens must at least happen by his permission. If he permits something, then he must decide to allow it. If he decides to allow something, then in a sense he is foreordaining it. . To say that God foreordains all that comes to pass is simply to say that God is sovereign over his entire creation. If something could come to pass apart from God’s sovereign permission, then that which came to pass would frustrate his sovereignty. If God refused to permit something to happen and it happened anyway, then whatever caused it to happen would have more authority and power than God.⁵¹⁷

Ironically, it is the Calvinist who places logically unnecessary as well as unscriptural restrictions (in his thinking and theology) on the freedom and sovereignty of God. It is the Calvinist who says or suggests that not even a sovereign God could ordain that an unregenerate man would be able to choose between two separate eternal destinies while still unregenerate. For God to bring to life a spiritually dead man on the condition he believes in Jesus Christ is not, however, the equivalent of trying to create a square circle, as Calvinists insist. There is nothing about spiritual deadness that prevents God from sovereignly requiring and enabling the unregenerate to put his faith in Jesus Christ without actually placing faith in the man for the man.

Hypothetically, God certainly could regenerate a spiritually dead man unconditionally if He chose to do so. Scripturally speaking, however, God chooses to regenerate spiritually dead men on the condition they believe in Jesus Christ. Calvinism unscripturally and illogically requires God to create faith in a man in order for a man to place that faith in Christ. According to Scripture, God gives man reasons for believing in Christ, enables a man to believe in Christ, and then leaves it up to the man to believe or not believe.

Much of what Calvinism says about the sovereignty of God is, of course, true. Insofar as it goes, I agree with the definition of sovereignty found in a Calvinist dictionary of theological terms which defines sovereignty as: The right of God to do as He wishes (Psalms 50:1; Isaiah 40:15;

1 Timothy 6:15) with His creation. This implies that there is no external influence upon Him and that He also has the ability to exercise His power and control according to His will.⁵¹⁸

There is no external force that can influence God to act contrary to His will or nature. There is no force that can cause God to do anything. He does, however, have an absolutely holy character, which ensures that all of His decisions or decrees will be holy. God’s holiness ensures that all of His acts and interactions will be holy. Hypothetically, if we could get out in front of God’s decrees, knowing what we know about God from Scripture, we could predict with absolute accuracy that all of God’s decrees or sovereign determinations would be in accord with His absolute holiness. Therefore, whatever is determined by God to come to pass is determined by God in such a way so as to ensure that He is not morally responsible for immoral things. Boettner is right when he says:

It has been recognized by Christians in all ages that God is the Creator and Ruler of the universe, and that as the Creator and Ruler of the universe He is the ultimate source of all power that is found in the creatures. Hence nothing can come to pass apart from His sovereign will ...⁵¹⁹ Boettner is also correct when he says: By virtue of the fact that God has created everything which exists, He is the absolute Owner and final Disposer of all that He has made. He exerts not merely a general influence, but actually rules in the world that He has created. The nations of the earth, in their insignificance, are as the small dust of the balance when compared with His greatness; and far sooner might the sun be stopped in its course than God be hindered in His work or in His will. Amid all the apparent defeats and inconsistencies of life, God actually moves on in undisturbed majesty. Even the sinful actions of men can occur only by His permission. And since He permits not unwillingly but willingly, all that comes to pass—including the actions and ultimate destiny of men—must be, in some sense, in accordance with what He has desired and purposed.⁵²⁰ The question is in what sense? In the Calvinist sense, God is effectively blamed for the sin of man, just as He is credited with the saving of some of the sinful men He caused to be sinners in the first place. In What is the Reformed Faith? John R. de Witt, while noting agreement with Prof. G. C. Berkouwer, says: The Calvinist insists that God is Lord, and that He reigns in history, over all the universe; that He knows the end from the beginning; that He created, sustains, governs, directs; that in the day of the Lord the marvelous design which He has had from the beginning will be fully manifest—complete, perfect at last.⁵²¹

Without a doubt, all thoughtful Christians could and would affirm the same. In his now classic Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, J. I. Packer goes so far as to say:

I do not intend to spend any time at all proving to you the general truth that God is sovereign in His world. There is no need; for I know that, if you are a Christian, you believe this already. ... Nor, again, am I going to spend time proving to you the particular truth that God is sovereign in salvation. For that, too, you believe already.⁵²² Sproul could not be more right than when he says:

If God is not sovereign, God is not God.⁵²³

And, Without sovereignty God cannot be God.⁵²⁴ For as Sproul also says:

We know God is sovereign because we know that God is God.⁵²⁵ Sproul even says:

Every Christian gladly affirms that God is sovereign. God’s sovereignty is a comfort to us. It assures us that He is able to do what He promises to do.⁵²⁶ According to Sproul:

Rarely, if ever, does a professing Christian deny the thesis of the sovereignty of God. It is axiomatic to Christianity that God is sovereign. Manifestly, a God Who is not sovereign is no God at all.⁵²⁷ Despite what Sproul says elsewhere, he is right when he says that:

We must hold tight to God’s sovereignty. Yet we must do it in such a way so as not to violate human freedom.⁵²⁸

It is not just human freedom that must be guarded in this discussion. Calvinism also calls into question God’s holiness. Technically speaking, in the Calvinist scheme of things, not even Adam before the fall could have a real say in where he would spend eternity. For, as we have already established, Calvin believed that the first man sinned because God decreed with an irresistible decree that Adam would and should sin. If you follow Calvin’s reasoning, you will note that freedom, even for pre-fallen Adam, was only an appearance of reality and not reality itself. If the decree of God is the ultimate cause of man’s first sin, then man was never really free not to commit that first sin. Some Calvinists quote Calvin only when what he says substantiates or represents their version of Calvinism. For example, I recently read an article posted on the Internet that quoted Calvin as follows: In this upright state, man possessed freedom of will, by which, if he chose, he was able to obtain eternal life. ... Adam, therefore, might have stood if he chose, since it was only by his own will that he fell; but it was because his will was pliable in either direction and he had not received constancy to persevere, that he so easily fell.

Still he had a free choice of good and evil. .⁵²⁹ The Calvinist who posted this quote was attempting to prove the often repeated contention that Calvinism allows for both the sovereignty of God and freedom for at least the first man. Knowingly or otherwise, a sentence was left out of the paragraph which denies the very thing it is being used to affirm. Let us now consider this paragraph with this important sentence included: In this upright state, man possessed freedom of will, by which, if he chose, he was able to obtain eternal life. It were here unseasonable to introduce the question concerning the secret predestination of God, because we are not considering what might or might not happen, but what the nature of man truly was.⁵³⁰ In other words, if we do not factor in “the secret predestination of God,” it would appear that Adam had a choice to sin or not sin, because he was not sinful the first time he did sin. Once you take the secret counsel into account, however, you can see that Adam’s freedom not to sin that first time was only an illusion created by our inability to see “the secret predestination of God.” In other words, Adam had to sin because of the decree of God that determined he would. According to Calvinism then, the real reason everything happens, the guiding and controlling force in time and eternity, is that God, mostly working behind the scenes, ensures that everything will happen in accordance with this secret and irresistible decree.

Some Calvinists want you to feel theologically shallow if you cannot see how this can be so or theologically arrogant for even pointing out how contradictory all of this is. Consider the very convoluted reasoning of Calvin in his commentary on Genesis with regard to why Adam fell into sin:

I understand that [God] had appointed whatever he wished to be done. Here, indeed, a difference arises on the part of many, who suppose Adam to have been so left to his own free will, that God would not have him fall. They take for granted, what I allow them, that nothing is less probable than that God should be regarded as the cause of sin, which he has avenged with so many and such severe penalties. When I say, however, that Adam did not fall without the ordination and will of God, I do not so take it as if sin had ever been pleasing to him, or as if he simply wished that the precept which he had given should be violated. So far as the fall of Adam was the subversion of equity, and of well-constituted order, so far as it was contumacy [stubborn rebelliousness] against the Divine Law-giver, and the transgression of righteousness, certainly it was against the will of God; yet none of these things render it impossible that, for a certain cause, although to us unknown, he might will the fall of man. It offends the ears of some, when it is said God willed this fall; but what else, I pray, is the permission of him, who has the power of preventing, and in whose hand the whole matter is placed, but his will?⁵³¹ Thus, according to Calvin:

• God is not the cause of sin.

• The fall of Adam was the subversion of equity.

• The transgression of righteousness was ... against the will of God.

• Sin is not pleasing to God.

Yet:

• Adam was not left to his own free will.

• Adam fell according to the ordination and will of God.

• God willed this fall.

• Sin is among the things God wished to happen.

Sproul says:

If it is true that in some sense God foreordains everything that comes to pass, then it follows with no doubt that God must have foreordained the entrance of sin into the world. That is not to say that God forced it to happen or that he imposed evil upon his creation. All that means is that God must have decided to allow it to happen.⁵³²

It is hard for me to imagine that Sproul could say (with a straight face) that all foreordination “means” to a Calvinist “is that God must have decided to allow [all things] to happen.” If that was all Calvinists meant by foreordination there would be no difference between Calvinists and Biblicists (such as myself). Even Arminians agree that “God must have decided to allow [all things] to happen.” Sproul knows that to the Calvinist foreordination means God is the cause of everything that is foreordained, which to the Calvinist is everything that comes to pass. Still, Sproul is right when he says:

God gave us [in Adam] free will. Free will is a good thing. That God gave us free will does not cast blame on him. In creation man was given an ability to sin and an ability not to sin. He chose to _sin.⁵³³

Because all men since pre-fallen Adam (with the exception of our Savior) are born in an unregenerate or spiritually dead state, I will restrict myself here to a consideration of sovereignty and predestination as it relates to the unregenerate. What must be understood is that Calvinists separate themselves from most of the rest of the Evangelical community in the way they answer what Sproul calls the big question. That is:

How is God’s sovereignty related to human freedom?⁵³⁴ In Calvinism, human freedom with regard to eternal destinies is not so much related to divine sovereignty as it is negated by divine sovereignty. In order for God to have a “free will,” or to be sovereign, Calvinists say or imply that a lost man can have no say in whether or not he will be saved. According to Best: The ideas of free grace and free will are diametrically opposed. All who are strict advocates for free will are strangers to the grace of the sovereign God.⁵³⁵ In Calvinism, if man were free to accept or reject salvation, God could neither graciously give salvation nor could He be sovereign in the salvation He gives. The Calvinist cannot even entertain the possibility that a sovereign, omniscient, and omnipotent God could, of His own absolutely free will:

• decree that fallen man must or could exercise a relatively free will to freely choose the salvation God freely offers fallen men. In fact, Calvinists say or imply that there is nothing, short of regeneration, that even God could do to make an unregenerate man able to choose heaven over hell. As we read earlier, according to Reformed Theology:

It takes much more than the Spirit’s assistance to bring a sinner to Christ—it takes regeneration by which the Spirit makes the sinner alive and gives him a new nature.⁵³⁶ SOVEREIGNTY VERSUS AUTONOMY

It is true that the lie and illusion of human autonomy is incompatible with the truth and reality of divine sovereignty. Sproul is right when he says:

If God is sovereign, man cannot possibly be autonomous. If man is autonomous, God cannot possibly be sovereign. These would be contradictions.⁵³⁷ Sproul correctly says:

It is not freedom that is cancelled out by sovereignty; it is autonomy that cannot coexist with sovereignty.⁵³⁸ He is also right when he reasons:

One does not have to be autonomous to be free. Autonomy implies absolute freedom. There are limits to our freedom.⁵³⁹

While this is true, the Calvinist definition of sovereignty does not allow for any meaningful freedom for man. That is why so few Calvinists try to harmonize or reconcile these concepts. For example, I found the following and typically hypo-Calvinist sentiments on the Internet:

Human free moral agency and the sovereignty of God are both clearly taught in the Bible. They cannot be understood or harmonized by the human mind, yet they are true. One side of the truth does not cancel the other side. They both are true, yet God is the only One who can explain this and will, when we see Him in Heaven, not before. If we attempt to harmonize these clearly revealed truths in this life we run the risk of distorting the Word of

God. Let’s get it right; our logic must bow to the ultimate authority of God’s revealed truth, not the other way around.⁵⁴⁰ On the surface, such a view may sound very spiritual. It is, however, also very superficial. The one who wrote these words apparently takes comfort or is satisfied with the words of another theologically and logically “conflicted” hypo-Calvinist who says:

It is true that verses like John 6:44-45, Acts 13:48, and Ephesians 1:4-5 teach that we cannot come to God unless He first draws us to Himself. Such passages make it clear that those who choose Christ are people destined beforehand to be the eternal children of God.

Other passages teach that the human will is so fallen and captured by sin that only the Spirit of God can give a person a desire to know God and be freed by Him. This is a difficult claim, and not only for people of faith. The principle of determinism is one side of a greater paradox that has defied explanation not only by Christian theologians but by atheistic philosophers as well. Both sides have struggled with two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of human experience: freedom and determinism. The Bible holds both sides in tension without trying to resolve the problem for us. While teaching that God is in control of His universe, the Scriptures make it equally clear that He offers salvation to all and holds all accountable for the real choice of accepting or rejecting His genuine offer. ⁵⁴¹ The problem with this well-intended but misguided reasoning is that the doctrine of determinism, as defined in Calvinism, contradicts what Scripture says about human freedom and responsibility. It is not that we cannot understand and therefore cannot reconcile Calvinistic determinism (hard or soft) and human freedom. We can understand them both. We cannot reconcile them with each other because they cannot by definition be reconciled.

Some Calvinists and even some non-Calvinists argue that we can actually have two parallel lines that eventually meet. One line represents Calvinistic determinism. The other line represents human freedom in the biblical sense. In time, these two parallel lines never merge because in fact they are parallel. In eternity, they are supposedly able to merge despitethe fact that they are parallel. Calvinistic determinism, however, cancels out human freedom of the biblical kind. The most famous and most respected hypo-Calvinist of all time, Charles Spurgeon, insists: The [Calvinist] system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once .⁵⁴²

Spurgeon, like most hypo-Calvinists, does not believe it is possible for two truths to be in contradiction. They could appear to be in contradiction but they could not in fact be in contradiction. They could be irreconcilable in timeand for us.That does not mean that they are irreconcilable to God or for us in eternity. Spurgeon even scolded those that believed it was beyond God’s ability to reconcile what appeared to be impossible contradictions to us. He argued that it was our duty to believe whatever Scripture teaches, no matter how impossible it is for us to understand how Calvinist determinism and biblical freedom could both be true. He even looked at this kind of problem as a test to see if we are going to believe God and His Word no matter what our logic tells us. Iain Murray, a disciple of Spurgeon (if I may use that term in the most positive way possible), probably expresses this view as well as anyone when he says: however unable we may be to reconcile the calls and invitations addressed to all sinners with God’s purpose of electing grace, we may be assured that to the eye of God they are reconcilablelike many other things in His unsearchable works and ways which seem to our limited minds to be equally mysterious. For our part, we find ourselves necessitated to believe both the one and the other(although we cannot discern on what principle they are to be harmonized) on the clear Scriptural grounds that may be severally assigned for them. We do well to be exceedingly diffident in our judgments respecting matters so unsearchable as the secret purposes of God.⁵⁴³

There is simply no logical way, however, for eternity to reconcile that which by definition is irreconcilable. It would be like saying that we cannot reconcile the idea of a square circle in time, but in eternity, we will have no such problem. Sproul prefers to say, “I don’t know,” when responding to the questions related to a Calvinist view of sovereignty and predestination and a biblical view of human freedom and moral responsibility. Sproul correctly reasons:

If the lines meet, then they are not ultimately parallel. If they are ultimately parallel, they will never meet. . To say that parallel lines meet in eternity is a nonsense statement; it is a blatant con tradiction.⁵⁴⁴

Keep in mind that Sproul is himself a hypo-Calvinist and probably very much aligned with Spurgeon on many other matters of importance to the greater Calvinist community. The question that must finally be answered is: can we be freely living our lives according to the Calvinist understanding of a divine script? Suppose that the writer of a play writes a scene in his play in which an evil man commits a terrible crime. Suppose the writer of the script exercises the kind of control over the play that ensures the actor playing the evil man does exactly as the script says he will do. From the vantage point of the audience, within the context of the play, the evil character, played by the actor, is responsible for the crime. From the perspective of the writer of the script, the writer is in reality responsible for the crime committed in the play by the actor playing the evil man.

If we were to call God the writer of the play, and a sinful human becomes the actor/evil man, then it would be appropriate to say that God committed the terrible crime (since He is the writer), and yet to also say that the evil man/actor committed the terrible crime (since that was written into his role). When all the theological fog is cleared away, Calvinism asserts that God is really the one responsible for whatever happens, good or bad, while man only appears to be the one responsible for his actions (that were in actuality “scripted” for him). Since, however, we are in this divinely written play, and it appears to be reality to us, and is in fact our reality, the Calvinist says we are free. The Calvinist also believes that we will ultimately be held accountable for what Calvinism says or suggests that God is really responsible for. Many will object to my analogy of the play. They argue that this is not really what Calvinism says or suggests. To the contrary, Calvinist Wayne Grudem says: The analogy of an author writing a play may help. ... In the Shakespearean play Macbeth, the character Macbeth murders King Duncan. Now (if we assume for a moment that this is a fictional account), the question may be asked, “Who killed King Duncan?” On one level, the correct answer is “Macbeth.” Within the context of the play he carried out the murder and is rightly to blame for it. But on another level, a correct answer to the question, “Who killed King Duncan?” “William Shakespeare:” he wrote the play, he created all the characters in it, and he wrote the part where Macbeth killed King Duncan.⁵⁴⁵

Although Grudem’s theology makes mankind less than actors in a divine play (an actor can always quit or ad lib his lines)—mere puppets controlled by divine strings—he still attempts to rescue Calvinism from the charge of fatalism as follows:

Sometimes those who object to the [Calvinist] doctrine of election say that it is “fatalism.” ... By fatalism is meant a system in which human choices and human decisions really do not make any difference. In fatalism, no matter what we do, things are going to turn out as they have been previously ordained. Therefore, it is futile to try to influence the outcome of events or the outcome of our lives by putting forth any effort or making any significant choices, because these will not make any difference anyway. In a truly fatalistic system, of course, our humanity is destroyed for our choices really mean nothing, and the motivation for moral accountability is removed.⁵⁴⁶

Grudem rightly argues that Scripture paints no such picture and in many ways contradicts such a view of reality and humanity. Yet, this is exactly the picture painted by Calvinism in general and Grudem in particular. Everything said in the above quote could be and is said by Calvinists about the Calvinist version of sovereignty and predestination. In the Jim Henson animated Disney movie The Dark Crystal, the forces of light and darkness, good and evil, finally meet to see who or what will ultimately triumph. To the delight of New Agers everywhere, as it turned out, the ultimate victory, according to the creator of the Muppets, was not good over evil but the realization that these were mere illusions. That is, ultimately there was no good or evil, right or wrong. Unwittingly, the Calvinist view of the sovereign decrees of God accomplishes essentially the same thing.

If evil can be traced to God the way good can, if God is responsible for everything the way Calvinism says He is, if man is just an actor in a divine play (a tragedy at that), then the Hindu concept of Maya, which says (among other things) that human morality is just an illusion, is not that far off after all. A well thought-out understanding of Calvinist logic actually leads to views which are more in keeping with Hinduism than with biblical Christianity. I do not say these things to inflame the Calvinist. I do not believe Calvinists are Hindus. I do believe, however, that the Calvinist view of sovereignty and predestination logically lead to ideas which are as foreign to Scripture as is Hinduism. Some ideas in Calvinism lead logically to other ideas that should be anathema even to the most staunch and extreme Calvinist.

PREDESTINATION REVISITED No doctrine of Calvinism is more closely associated with the Calvinist doctrine of sovereignty than is the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. In fact, they are so closely related in Reformed Theology that what is said about one is often said about the other. Since, however, predestination is such a key concept in Calvinism, even at the risk of some repetition, it is needful that we look even closer at this concept in light of Scripture. As with so many other matters, it is not the Calvinists’ affirmation of predestination that distinguishes Calvinists from non-Calvinist Evangelicals. Rather, it is the Calvinist doctrine of predestination (which in turn is based upon the Calvinist definition of predestination) that sets Calvinists apart from the rest of us. As Sproul says:

Virtually all Christian churches have some formal doctrine of predestination. . If the Bible is the Word of God, not mere human speculation, and if God himself declares that there is such a thing as predestination, then it follows irresistibly that we must embrace some doctrine of predestination.⁵⁴⁷ In like manner, Sproul correctly reasons that:

Almost every church has developed some form of the doctrine of predestination simply because the Bible teaches predestination. Predestination is a biblical word and a biblical concept. If one seeks to develop a theology that is biblical, one cannot avoid the doctrine of predestination.⁵⁴⁸ And as Sproul also says: The idea of predestination is rooted in the Bible. This is why all churches historically have found it necessary to formulate some doctrine of predestination in an effort to be Biblical in their theology. The issue is not does the Bible teach the doctrine of predestination or election but whator whichdoctrine of predestination does it teach.⁵⁴⁹ And Sproul is right when he says:

It is not enough to have any view of predestination. It is our duty to seek the correct view of predestination, lest we be guilty of distorting or ignoring the Word of God.⁵⁵⁰ I have no argument with Sproul when he says: Our destination is the place we are going. In theology it refers to one of two places: either we are going to heaven or we are going to hell. In either case, we cannot cancel the trip. God gives us but two final options. One or the other is our final destination.⁵⁵¹ According to Sproul, however, the problem is that the Calvinist definition of predestination:

... seems to cast a shadow on the very heart of human freedom. If God has decided our destinies [in the Calvinist sense] from all eternity, that strongly suggests that our free choices are but charades, empty exercises in predetermined playacting. It is as though God wrote the script for us in concrete and we are merely carrying out His scenario.⁵⁵²

One reason the Calvinist definition and doctrine of predestination “seems to cast a shadow on the very heart of human freedom” is that in Calvinism, God does not reallygive man “two final options,” as Calvinists repeatedly remind us. To say that men will either go to heaven or to hell is not to say that heaven and hell are options. An option suggests a choice for the person with options. No such choice exists for man in Calvinism.In Calvinism, it is not you are going to hell, but you can go to heaven if you believe in Jesus Christ. Rather, it is you can only believe in Jesus if God predestines you to believe. Conversely, the dark side of Calvinism says that some are unconditionally and from all eternity predestined for hell and cannot cancel the trip. To believe otherwise is to deny the very heart of the Calvinist doctrine(s) of sovereignty, predestination, redemption, and reprobation. Calvinists should step up to the plate and admit as much. In mainstream Calvinism, embracing predestination, and all that follows in the Calvinist scheme of things, and embracing real human freedom of choice, especially with regard to spiritual and eternal matters, is, according to Sproul and effectively all Calvinists, embracing a:

“You can have your cake and eat it too” system.⁵⁵³ That is, if you are divinely predestined in the Calvinist sense, you cannot be meaningfully free. This is the essence of the so-called sixth point of Calvinism. In fact, the five separate points of Calvinism are merely particularizations of the sixth point as it is brought to bear on the various matters addressed in each of the respective points. As the Calvinist view of sovereignty leads to the Calvinist view of predestination, so the Calvinist view of predestination leads to theistic fatalism. In Reformed Theology, divine freedom leaves no room for human freedom.

Before going further, it is important that we make a distinction between what is the biblical doctrine of predestination and the way the term is used in a broader theological and philosophical context. Sproul is right when he says that predestination is taught in Scripture. He is wrong in saying or suggesting that the biblical doctrine of predestination is equivalent to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination is deduced not from what is clearly taught in the scriptural usage of the word predestination or its cognates, but from a distinctive and erroneous understanding of the nature and administration of God’s sovereign control of everything. By this, I mean that if you actually examine those passages that use the word predestination or similar terms, they do not teach, explicitly or implicitly, the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. When the Bible uses the word predestination, it is always with regard to the future of a believer. Never is the future of an unbeliever referred to as predestined in the Calvinist sense, one way or the other. We will come back to this matter at the end of this chapter. THE CAUSE OF SIN

Those of us who do not fault God with anything immoral or wrong must recognize that when something immoral or wrong occurs, someone other than God is responsible. We must also recognize that there is something about those who are responsible that makes them responsible. That something God sovereignly included or predestined for man, we call volition. A moral (and morally culpable) man must by definition be more than a volitional being.

He cannot, however, be less than a volitional being. The volition of a man must by definitionand actuallyallow a man to really choose between good and evil. No matter how depraved a sinful man is, he is still morally responsible for what he does because the immoral things he does, he does not have to do, but choosesto do.

One could argue that a time may come when an immoral being, due to his enslavement to sin or to the effect of sin on the will, may not even “know” that he is doing something bad when he does it. He is still morally responsible because he is responsible for the immoral behavior that leads to this serious consequence of immorality. Somewhere behind and before this, this man had a choice to sin or not to sin. He was not forced to sin. Not even his sinful nature forces the sinner to sin. The sinful nature of the sinner does not make the sinner sin. The sinner makes himself sin. It is not the other way around. God’s sovereign decrees do not force or even influence man to sin. God’s power (if we disregard His holiness) could force a person to actagainst God’s holy standard, but that coerced action would not meet the biblical definition of sinany more than a man being pushed to his death off a bridge could be defined as a suicide. God’s holy nature guarantees that no such thing would or could ever happen.

Consider a vicious attackby a pit bull on an innocent letter carrier. The result of that attack can be horrible and even lead to a painful death for the letter carrier. All the letter carrier was trying to do was his job. Now we might call that a baddog and even put him to death. I know I would. But we would not consider that dog immoral or sinful. A dog is amoral and therefore incapable of sin. Why? It is because a dog does not have the capacity for sin, because a dog cannot make moral choices. He has no moral volition. He can do awful things but he cannot do wicked things as a moral/immoral man can do.

If we say a man has no capacity for real moral choices, or that he can only do immoral things, we do not thereby deny his ability to do terrible harm. We would not, however, be able to morally judge him for the terrible acts he might commit as ifthose acts were sinful or immoral acts. The fall of man into sin and its consequent state of spiritual death does not change the fact that man can and must make moral choices. Both the Calvinist view of an all-encompassing decree and the Calvinist view of fallen nature make man amoral—not immoral.

Again, most Evangelicals believe that one of the reasons things happen that are relationally distant from God, such as all sinful deeds, is that sinful man, even in his spiritually dead state, is still a moral creature capable of morally defensible behavior as well as morally reprehensible behavior. This capability of man legitimately provides a moral shield, so to speak, for God so that whatever happens by the hand of man does not reach back to God in a way that makes God morally responsible for the immorality of man. If God is absolutely moral and only God was responsible (or even primarily responsible) for all things that happen, then only moral things could happen. But since immoral things happen in a world under the absolute sovereign control of an absolutely moral God, it is evident that God does not relate to everything in the same way. It cannot be overemphasized that some things can legitimately be traced to immoral beings in a way they cannot be traced to God. God is not thereby less than in control of all things. Control of all things is not the issue. Cause is the issue. To say God is in sovereign control of all things is not to say that He is the responsible cause of all things.

Even though all immoral activity is repugnant to God and cannot be traced to God in a way that allows us to legitimately blame Him for that immorality, we still believe it happens on His watch, under His sovereign control, and in accordance with what He has sovereignly allowed to occur from all eternity. Is God not to blame for immoral acts just because He is God and can do as He pleases? Or do we say that He makes the rules so that whatever God does is, by definition, not immoral? Unless we recognize that man, even fallen and spiritually dead man, possesses and retains something that allows him to make decisions which are really his decisions and not God’s (or causally determined by God in the Calvinist sense), then God by definition is morally responsible for all of the ungodly conduct of ungodly men.

If Calvinists became as zealous for the holiness of God as they are for the sovereignty of God, Calvinism might soon cease to exist as a theological system. Calvinists like to say or suggest that you must either accept a God centered theology and their view on divine sovereignty or a man-centered theology and the Arminian view of human autonomy. What Calvinists have really done, however unintentionally, is asked us to embrace a view of divine sovereignty that is dissociated with the moral attributes of God, such as holiness and righteousness.

Fortunately, the solution to the so-called problem of relating divine sovereignty to human freedom is far simpler than what many theologians and philosophers would have us believe. That is, the God who sovereignly controls everything determined us to be meaningfully free, even after the fall of Adam. It is God who factored in volition. God is absolutely sovereign and His sovereignty is not, and cannot, be limited by our relative but meaningful freedom. Our freedom in no way restricts His sovereignty, but is dependent upon His sovereignty. The Calvinist is not doing God any favors by placing unnecessary restrictions on what God can and cannot do. The question is not (or at least should not be): could God make it possible for a sinful and un regenerate man to choose heaven over hell while that man is in a spiritually dead state, but: did He? To believe that a sovereign God (the only kind of God there can be) can make it possible for a man (regenerate or unregener ate) to make a real choice between heaven and hell is not the equivalent of suggesting God can make an honest liar, as Calvinists have charged.

If, therefore, we are to establish the notion that man is not really free to choose heaven over hell, as Calvinism says, we must seek to do so outside a discussion of divine sovereignty and human depravity as such. We would have to demonstrate that God sovereignly decided that man would not be able to make such a choice. Keep in mind that the concept of sovereignty tells us what God can do, which is everything not contrary to His nature or of a contradictory nature. It does not tell us what God cannot do.

Most philosophers and some theologians insist that a meaningful discussion of God’s sovereign rule over man cannot occur without a long and complicated definition of what is meant by the free will of man. I think this is misleading at best. Just as we must assume some things to have a meaningful discussion, such as words have meaning and can be understood, we must also assume that a person is free to have a meaningful discussion about freedom. Otherwise, our very discussion is not actually meaningful, but merely determined. Most people, even people who formally do not believe man has a really free will or that he can make really free decisions, know what is meant by free will or free decisions, and even act as if they have a free will. To even engage in a discussion about free will presumes that a person is free to actually have such a discussion. For many mainstream Calvinists, such as Feinberg, Sproul, and Wilson, who formally agree that divine sovereignty and human freedom are not incompatible, the question is not, is man free? Rather the questions are, how can a man be free and in what sense is he free? While I disagree with their particular attempts to answer this question, I agree with them that the question can be answered and that the right answer must and does affirm both the absolute sovereignty of God and a meaningful freedom for man. The view I hold and that I believe is the biblical view is called “moral self-determinism.” The Christian philosopher and Evangelical theologian Norman Geisler has stated this view as well as I think anyone could. Because Geisler has done such a great job in this regard, I will not reinvent this same theological and philosophical wheel. First, it must be understood, as explained by Geisler, that “moral self-determinism” holds:

Moral acts are not uncaused or caused by someone else. Rather, they are caused by oneself.⁵⁵⁴ In agreement with Geisler I believe: This view best fits both the biblical and rational criteria.⁵⁵⁵ As Geisler says:

There are several philosophical objections [to moral self-determinism]. The first has to do with the principle of causality—that every event has an adequate cause. If this is so, then it would seem that even one’s free will has a prior cause. If one’s free will has a prior cause, then it cannot be caused by oneself. Thus self-determinism would be contrary to the principle of causality which it embraces.⁵⁵⁶ In defense of moral self-determinism, Geisler explains:

There is a basic confusion in this objection. This confusion results in part from an infelicitous expression of the self-determinism view. Representatives of moral self-determinism sometimes speak of free will as though it were the efficient cause of moral actions. This would lead one naturally to ask: what is the cause of one’s free will? But a more precise description of the process of a free act would avoid this problem.⁵⁵⁷ Geisler goes on to explain:

Technically, free will is not the efficient cause of a free act; free will is simply the power through which the agent performs the free act. The efficient cause of the free act is really the free agent, not the free will. Free will is simply the power by which the free agent acts. We do not say that humans are free will but only that they have free will. Likewise, we do not say that humans are thought but only that they have the power of thought. So it is not the power of free choice which causes a free act, but the person who has this power.⁵⁵⁸ Geisler then reasons:

If the real cause of a free act is not an act but an actor, then it makes no sense to ask for the cause of the actor as though the actor were another act. The cause of the performance is the performer. It is meaningless to ask what performance caused the performance. Likewise, the cause of a free act is not another free act. Rather, it is a free agent. And once we have arrived at the free agent, it is meaningless to ask what caused its free acts. For if something else caused its actions, then the agent is not the cause of them and thus is not responsible for them. The free moral agent is responsible for the free moral actions. And it is as senseless to ask what caused the free agent to act as it is to ask who made God? The answer is the same in both instances: nothing can cause the first cause because it is the first. There is nothing before the first. Likewise, humans are the first cause of their own moral actions. If humans were not the cause of their own free actions, then the actions would not be their actions.⁵⁵⁹ Geisler anticipates and answers critics of this view as follows:

If it is argued that it is impossible to claim that humans can be the first cause of their moral actions, then it is also impossible for God to be the first cause of his moral actions. Tracing the first cause back to God does not solve the problem of finding a cause for every action. It simply pushes the problem back farther. Sooner or later theists will have to admit that a free act is a self-determined act, which is not caused by another. Eventually it must be acknowledged that all acts come from actors, but that actors (free agents) are the first cause of their actions, which therefore have no prior cause. The real question, then, is not whether there are agents who cause their own actions but whether God is the only true agent (that is, person) in the universe.⁵⁶⁰

James White in his challenge to (some would say attack on) Geisler and Chosen but Free,a book in which Geisler sets forth and defends this view, takes the very position that Geisler refers to. That is, according to White, “God is the only true agent (that is, person) in the universe.” This is the error (some might say heresy) of monovolitionism.

Geisler also identifies and effectively answers three important philosophical objections to moral self-determinism. I highly recommend reading the book Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom(David Basinger and Randall Basinger, eds., InterVarsity Press, 1986), in which Geisler does this, and carefully considering what he has to say. As much as I appreciate that Geisler and others from different theological persuasions have grappled with this topic for us, I do not really think it is all that difficult to accept either the concept that God is absolutely sovereignor that man is responsibly free(and therefore morally responsible for a whole host of important and even eternal matters). The fact that you may not be able to articulate your convictions in precise theological or philosophical terms makes little or no difference in your day-to-day living. Most Christians simply do not have trouble reconciling sovereignty and free will because they see no natural conflict between them.

What matters most, for most of us, is that we take God’s sovereignty seriously and use our God-given freedom to submit to His sovereignty so that we do the right thing.You may not understand how it is that God can be absolutely sovereign while you are truly free and morally responsible. That, however, does not necessarily constitute a paradox or even rate as a mystery. It may just be that you have been misled into believing the two concepts cannot be reconciled this side of glory. The very fact that a sovereign God says He is going to hold us accountable for how we use our freedom should settle the matter for all practical purposes for the believer. Both concepts are true and are of the greatest practical importance to our life, both temporally and eternally. For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written: “As I live, says the LORD, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:10-12)

God ... has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. (Php 2:9-13)

If you believe that ultimately you will bow your knee to the King of kings and Lord of lords, you need no further proof that God really is absolutely sovereign, not just over all, but over you.The fact that we will have to give account to Him for how we have lived the life He has given us, with all the gifts and resources needed to bring honor and glory to Him, is all the proof that we should need that we are free and really are morally responsible to Him. Divine sovereignty and human freedom are not antithetical to one another, as Calvinism at least implies. It is the very freedom that our sovereign God gives us and for which He will hold us accountable that allows us to appreciate and appropriately respond to God’s sovereignty. If we were not free to submit to or reject God’s sovereign rule over our lives in a practical manner, knowledge of His sovereignty would have no real or practical value to us. In other words, a denial of freedom, such as is found in Calvinism, makes the very emphasis placed on sovereignty unnecessary at best. As noted earlier, when Scripture uses the word predestination, it limits the discussion to the destiny of the believer. Perhaps this is because God realizes how easy it is for some to falsely conjure up extreme and unwarranted notions about man having no real say as to where he will spend eternity and thus no real responsibility for where he ends up. For whatever reason or reasons, it is a very conspicuous fact that nothing is said about the destiny of the unbeliever relative to the use of this word in any of its several forms. Sproul seems to admit as much (at least in one of the primary texts dealing with predestination) when he says, in the context of a discussion of Ephesians 1:3-12 :

Paul speaks of believers being predestined according to the counsel of God’s will.⁵⁶¹

While Sproul clearly believes that God unconditionally predestines unbelievers to be saved from all eternity, what he says here is indisputable. It is believers who are predestined to heavenly glory and all that this implies.

Nothing is taught about the unbeliever being predestined, unconditional or otherwise, to salvation or damnation. As Herbert Lockyer says:

What must be born in mind is the fact that predestinationis not God’s predetermining from past ages who should and who should not be saved. Scripture does not teach this view. What it does teach is that this [biblical] doctrine of predestination concerns the future of believers. Predestination is the Divine determining the glorious consummation of all who through faith and surrender become the Lord’s. He has determined beforehand that each child of His will reach adoption,or the “son-placing” at his resurrection when Christ returns. It has been determined beforehand that all who are truly Christ’s shall be conformed to His image. (Romans 8:29; Ephesians 1:5).⁵⁶² H. A. Ironside concurs as follows:

Nowhere in the Bible are people ever predestined to go to hell, and nowhere are [pre-saved] people predestined to heaven. ... Predestination is always to some special place of blessing.⁵⁶³ Elsewhere, Ironside exhorts:

Turn to your Bible and read for yourself in the only two chapters in which the word “predestinate” or “predestinated” is found. The first is Romans 8:29-30. The other chapter is Ephesians 1:5; Ephesians 1:11.

You will note that there is no reference in these four verses to either Heaven or Hell, but to Christlikeness eventually. Nowhere are we told in Scripture that God predestined one man to be saved and another lost.⁵⁶⁴

I will conclude this discussion with a consideration of one of the two passages referenced by Lockyer and Ironside and among the most frequently used by Calvinists to suggest their distinctive doctrines of salvation and damnation or redemption and reprobation. The other (Romans 8:29) has already been considered in some detail. In Paul’s opening salutation to the church at Ephesus he says:

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, andfaithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christshould be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians 1:1-14, emphasis added)

• First, it should be noted that those chosen were chosen in Christ and not outside of Christ.

• Second, it should be noted that those chosen in Christ were not chosen for salvation but for holiness, blamelessness, and love.

• Third, it should be noted that those chosen in Christ for holiness, blamelessness, and love were predestined to adoption as sons. They were not predestined to salvation as non-sons to be sons. They were predestined to adoption as sons. Adoption in this context does not bring a non-family member into the family but a family member into his inheritance.

• Fourth, predestination here relates to those who first trusted Christ.

• Fifth, the Ephesian believers trusted Christ after they heard the gospel.

• Sixth, those who trusted Christ were then sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.

• Seventh, the promise of the Holy Spirit is that those who trust Christ are guaranteed that they will receive their inheritance.

• Eighth, the guarantee is given until the redemption (the resurrection of the just or glorification) of the believer.

Once again, only in Ephesians 1:5; Ephesians 1:11 does Scripture use the term predestinated, and only in Romans 8:29-30 does Scripture use the term predestinate (KJV). This does not suggest that this is not an important concept and that it does not refer to important truths. It does mean that we should not go beyond what Scripture says in our definition of a biblically based predestination. As Vance points out:

There are several problems with the Calvinists’ understanding of these verses that immediately come to mind. First, in none of these verses is predestination ever called a decree of God. Second, there is no mention in any of these verses of predestination taking place before the foundation of the world. Third, none of these verses mention any angels. Fourth, there is no mention in any of these verses of anyone being predestinated to salvation. Fifth, none of these verses contain any reference to judgment, condemnation, reprobation, or everlasting death. It is apparent that what the Bible says about predestination is irreconcilable with what the Calvinists say about predestination.⁵⁶⁵

I have no problem with calling a decision by God to do something a decree of God. I have no problem thinking of God’s decisions as eternal decisions. The issues are not that God makes decisions or when He makes them. The issue is about the kind of decisions attributed to God by Calvinists. The theological landscape would be a very different place today if Calvin would have heeded his own words when he said:

Let it ... be our first principle ... [not] to desire any other knowledge of predestination than that which is expounded by the word of God ...⁵⁶⁶