John Owen’s argument is rhetorically powerful, but it assumes a false dilemma. He presents only two options: either Christ’s death actually secured the salvation of every individual for whom He died, or it merely made salvation possible for everyone while accomplishing nothing in itself. Scripture, however, presents a third category. Christ objectively accomplished redemption through His death, fully satisfying the demands of God’s justice and establishing the basis upon which God can genuinely offer salvation to the world. The question is not whether the atonement accomplished anything—it accomplished everything necessary—but how and when its benefits are applied.
Even Calvinists acknowledge a distinction between accomplishment and application. If Christ literally paid for every sin of the elect in the fullest commercial sense at the cross, why are the elect still described as “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) prior to conversion? Why are they justified only when they believe (Rom. 5:1)? Owen’s “double payment” argument seems to require that the elect could never be under condemnation after Calvary, y
et Scripture plainly says they are until they are united with Christ through faith. That demonstrates the New Testament itself distinguishes between what Christ accomplished historically and when individuals come to participate in those benefits.
Nor does this make faith a work that completes an unfinished atonement. Scripture consistently contrasts faith with works (Rom. 4:5). Receiving a gift does not contribute to purchasing the gift. Likewise, believing in Christ does not add to the value or efficacy of His sacrifice; it is simply the God-ordained means by which sinners receive what Christ has already accomplished. The cross is not weakened because its benefits are received through faith any more than the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 was weakened because those who looked upon it were healed.
Finally, the repeated appeal to passages such as Matthew 1:21, John 10, and John 17 demonstrates for whom Christ’s saving work is effective, not necessarily for whom it was intended as a provision. No Provisionist denies that Christ saves His people, lays down His life for His sheep, or intercedes for believers. The disagreement is whether those texts exclude other passages that explicitly speak of Christ dying for “the world” (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2), tasting death “for everyone” (Heb. 2:9), or reconciling “the world” to God (2 Cor. 5:19). Rather than forcing these texts into an either/or framework, it is better to let all of Scripture speak: Christ’s atonement is sufficient for all, genuinely offered to all, and fully effective for all who believe.
In this panel discussion, Frank Turek, Allen Parr, Michael Jones (Inspiring Philosophy), and Braxton Hunter engage in a thoughtful conversation surrounding Calvinism, divine sovereignty, and Romans 9.
At the center of the discussion is the tension many Christians feel when reading Romans 9 – how to understand election, God’s sovereignty, and human responsibility without flattening the text into a system. Is Paul teaching determinism? Is he speaking about corporate election and historical purposes? Or is there a deeper synthesis that holds both divine sovereignty and genuine human response together?
Whether you are Reformed, non-Reformed, or simply trying to understand Romans 9 more clearly, this discussion highlights the key issues that continue to shape evangelical theology today.
During conversation the other day with a customer at Whole Foods, it was revealed that this person was, is, enamored with a “hippie movement” from the late 60’s (some say 68′, others 69′) that was situated for many years in the Seattle Washington area. The group is commonly called Love Israel, named after its founder… who’s real name is Paul Erdman. But this “organization” has gone by a few names: Jordan Village Farms, Love Is Real Family Inc., Love Family, Church of Jesus Christ at Armageddon, Church of Armageddon.
Israel Love’s (Paul Erdman) followers renamed themselves in like fashion, for example: Patience Israel, Serious Israel, Charity Israel, Abishai Israel, Honesty Israel, on-and-on. With “love” being the central tenant, this New Age cult – like most others – quickly fell into drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, family’s torn apart, bankruptcy, mind-control tactics, and yes… even death. In fact, Erdman’s sexual activities were the subject of much scandal, not to mention the fact that he fathered a dozen or more children with many different women. One dispute after another involved the group in various legal battles, which included zoning and housing violations. All this combined with the many lawsuits from families of cult members led to a mass egression in the mid-eighties of most of its followers. (The lawsuits were mainly to get back savings accounts, property and possessions back after they ere “donated” to Paul Erdmann.)
Revelations
This movement got its start with revelation Paul Erdman received that indicated that he represented the authentic message of the New Testament. Thus, he and his followers felt they were the “true” Christians as well as the “true” Israelites. Old Testament dietary laws were incorporated into this group’s lifestyle while at the same time Old Testament restrictions on “altered states of consciousness” were ignored. Speaking of which, altered states of consciousness were reached by ritualized inhaling of the vapors from an industrial solvent called toluene. Paul Erdman taught that inhaling these vapors was a religious ritual that his members must follow. Follow, that is, until two members died from it in 1972; at which time this practice was “stopped.” I say “stopped” because the group continued to use hyperventilation, hallucinogens and marijuana as aids to altering consciousness.
Reportedly all members of the group had visions, dreams, and revelations that explained their purpose on earth. Duh! You could include most of the “Orange Sunshine” consuming hippies in this “revelational” category. Cocaine, of course, later became the drug of choice for Paul Erdman. Shortly after the egression of about 350-or-so people in 1983, the Church of Armageddon was officially disbanded in 1985.
While officially disbanded, a small core of people still follow the religious leader Love Israel. Recently Brotherhood Israel sold ecstasy to two undercover agents reconfirming the addiction to drugs this cult has.
Hollywood Connections
As with other cults of the day (Manson Family for instance), the Church of Armageddon had its own connection to Hollywood. The son of the father of talk television, Steve Allen, was part of this group for some time which prompted Steve Allen to write a book on the subject. The book is entitled Beloved Son: A Story of the Jesus Cults, and is currently out of print (I have a copy of course) and should be considered a dated read, however, it is still “chalked full of nuts,” literally!
The Communal 60’s and 70’s
The hippie movement of the sixties produced a mix of Marxian communal living arrangements with a dash of Christianity and New Age (Eastern) thinking thrown in for authority in edicts and lifestyles. Groups such as At Twin Oaks (Virginia), East Wind (Missouri), Ganas (New York), The Farm, and the like popped up all over the place.
The picture is from Alaska 1975
Marriage
Similar to these groups the followers do not marry each other with the classical understanding of the monogamous relationship, but considered themselves married to each other in the universal marriage of Jesus Christ and are not bound by “worldly traditions” of matrimony. Love Israel and other leaders had the prerogative (still does, just with fewer people) of permitting couples temporary bonding for the purpose of having children. The humorous question is has thinking spread to the modern left of today? The Church of Armageddon got its name from Revelation 16:16 where Armageddon is mentioned as the gathering place of the end-time.
1977 “Love” Passover
Positive Aspects?
Of course. Nothing is purely negative. The group farmed and fished and they developed a free restaurant and a 24-hour inn where guests were housed and fed at no charge. Members distributed food from their farms and fishing boats to needy neighbors. But the good is outweighed by the bad theology, brainwashing, and fear tactics.
No longer in the “Queen Ann” area of Seattle, likewise no longer in Arlington, the cult has had to move after declaring chapter 11 bankruptcy. Something ironic since the “Church” rejected worldly laws and governing bodies. The few members (about 30) have moved due to this bankruptcy, selling its spiritual center to a Jewish organization in late 2003. They then moved to the Canadian border and at last report had fewer than 50 members. The Love Israel Family has set up tents along 52 acres near China Bend, a scenic river bench about 10 miles south of the U.S.-Canadian border in Stevens County.
Interesting Factoid
Because of the growth of the many cults during this time, there were many kidnappings and deprogramming done. Family members would pay for the cult member to be kidnapped and then have cult-deprogrammers talk these people through what constitutes the movement as a cult and try to deprogram the influence of the movement on this individual. The first taken from the Love Family was Cathy Crampton. Cathy’s parents allowed CBS to film the kidnapping and deprogramming, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Exit counseling got its start in these times, and many great books and insights have come from the study of brainwashing since.
Modern Day Thinking
Of course, in our Politically Correct environment, all opinions and actions are considered equal in weight and judgment. What is true for you may not be for me! Who are you to say I am wrong in my choice? There are no absolute moral laws. Moral choices are decided by the individual or by society and are not subject to intervention by you… if you do you are considered intolerant. This type of thinking will create more cults and more people who will unite and I am sure in the future we will hear of it. We will hear of the punch being drunk to catch a ride on a comet or to leave this horrible life for a better one. The more the West steps away from the Judeo-Christian-Grecian culture, the less rational and logical thinking will be applied to peoples personal lives. Thus, relativism will “seize the day.”
Founded by Paul Erdman, aka “Love Israel” in 1968 in Seattle, Washington. Purports to be fulfilling the vision of Jesus Christ on Earth by working toward a vision of a community that is committed to “love” one another and forgive one another.
Reached zenith of membership in the mid-80’s with nearly 400 members. Dissolution of the majority of the group came about when families of members sued for return of property turned over to the family and allegations of monetary and property mis-management occurred.
The remaining members moved to a 290 acre ranch near Arlington, Washington. During the 90’s the leader and his lead “elder” Serious have formed multiple “corporations”, one of which is The Love Is Real Family, Inc., reportedly a non-profit corporation. Additionally, Serious is the registered agent for: The Jordan Village Corp., The Golden Triangle Development, Inc., The Bistro, Inc., and The Love Is Real Family, Inc. The Bistro is a restaurant concern in Arlington, Washington, reportedly owned and operated by the family. Also reported in the Seattle Times is a evening coffee club called the Compassion Cafe. Members confirm that this is a Family concern but at this point I’ve been unable to obtain documentation to confirm this connection.
I. Behaviors
Great cultural pressure to adhere to group’s norms of dress, styles, manner of talking.
Communal living idealism, so food is regulated by the core group. Key members of the group do not go without food or sufficient provisions. Out of favor members tend not to be taken care of as well or poorly.
Early morning meetings are de riguer and the lifestyle encourages late evenings as well, therefore, not much sleep occurs.
Members are encouraged to contribute all to the family upon joining. Households are reportedly self-sufficient, but must contribute (as of 10/00) 1/3 of their income to Love so that the payments on the property may be made.
Leisure activities of the members revolve around the family actitivies. Love Israel frequently takes trips around the world, particularly Europe. Lesser members never, if ever, travel.
Must always ask permission to make major decisions. Marriages must be “sanctioned” Otherwise, less formal couplings are neither discouraged nor encouraged, although couples are encouraged to experiment outside their union.
Morning “prayer” meetings are often used for getting to what people think/feel.
If you are in favor, you get more food, greater benefits, more freedom. Out of favor and you get job assignments that aren’t as welcome… punishments, group pressure, etc.
There are many rigid rules and regulations. Dependency is wrought first by financial dependency developing into emotional dependency and “learned helplessness.
Perhaps the only real autonomous people there are Love Israel and Serious Israel.
II. Information
Leaders decide who needs to know what. Likely only Love Israel, Serious and their most trusted companions know key areas of the business dealings of the two men.
III. Thought
Must internalize the group’s truth as truth
Loaded language techniques are rampant.
No critical questions about Love, his doctrine or his policies are legitimate. You are a traitor if you question him.
IV. Emotional
Excessive use of fear. Many of the people who have been there for 20 or so years have developed such an indoctrination to the culture that living outside the “family” has become extremely difficult.
It is almost demonic. How do you say that Calvary, Christ’s finished work, the Word of God, and the Gospel shared with people is useless, non effective…. without saying it? This is how:
Calvinism assumes that without the intervention of God no one will ever want Christ. Left to themselves, no one will ever choose Christ.
Mind you, I am not the biggest fan of Faith On Fire, but once in a while there is really good stuff. It is 10-minutes long, here is his description:
Christianity is under attack more today than ever, and a big part of that attack comes from Calvinists. Did God create billons of people that God never wanted? Calvinism teaches that God did exactly. Calvinists want people to believe that the God of the Bible has predestined billions of people to hell before they were ever born. They think God has kept any hope of salvation from most people on purpose for His own glory and so God can demonstrate His wrath on them because God ordained and decreed their eternal punishment before the foundation of the world. They believe God reserves salvation for only some preselected elect people who are saved unconditionally by God’s grace.
According to Calvinism, Satan wants all people to join him in hell and the lake of fire, and they think God wants only most people to join Satan in hell and the lake of fire, and Satan doesn’t even have much of anything to do with any of it because it was all meticulously and divinely determined by God before Creation anyway.
TULIP or the 5 points of Calvinism are doctrines of salvation unique and distinctive to Calvinism, not Biblical Christianity. Those Calvinistic doctrines are from Satan and I expose the implications of them and the dangerous errors of that theology.
Sin and repentance, according to Johnny Mac, are fully subsidized by an eternal decree. So his TULIP belief undermines this graphic. There is no “person” outside the eternal decree to “sin”. There is no “rebellious creature” in Calvinism.
_________________
“…it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory…. [t]his includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child…”
— Mark Talbot, in John Piper and Justin Taylor
“I wish very Frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do so.
— Gordon H. Clark
“God works all things after the Council of His will. Even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so! And when He wants to, he orders those to commit adultery when he wants to!”
— Theodore Zachariades
“Even the fall of Adam, and through him the fall of the race, was not by chance or accident, but was so ordained in the secret counsels of God.”
— Loraine Boettner
… how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission. . . . It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them. . . . Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.
[BTW, I love this post because it show just how “off” Calvinism is, and how it undermines any Biblical commands and categories.]
Here is the original (to the left) with an edit by whom I assume are Calvinistic in their leaning (to the right). I say this because they are saying that Satan is driving out solid Biblical teaching via that Calvinist teachers:
Which got me thinking. The person did not realize it, but they undercut their own argument.
How?
This is how [I created a larger cartoon – click to enlarge]:
Satan’s ultimate ambition is to usurp God’s position (Isaiah 14:13-15, 2 Thes. 2:3,4).
Right?
However, John Calvin notes:
“[W]e infer that God was the author of that trial of which Satan and wicked robbers were merely the instruments.”
“Therefore, whatever men or Satan himself devise, God holds the helm, and makes all their efforts contribute to the execution of His judgments”
“That men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on anything but what He has previously decreed with Himself, and brings to pass by His secret direction, is proved by numberless clear passages of Scripture”
“That men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on anything but what He has previously decreed with Himself, and brings to pass by His secret direction, is proved by numberless clear passages of Scripture”
“not that He intends to teach wicked and obstinate man to obey spontaneously, but because He bends them to execute His judgments, just as if they carried their orders engraven on their minds. And hence it appears that they are impelled by the sure appointment of God.”
Etc, etc. (Institutes 1.18.1. and 1.18.2.).
… how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission. . . . It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them. . . . Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.
— John Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” 10:11
…it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child…
— John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God
“Therefore, whatever men or Satan himself devise,” argues Calvin, “God holds the helm, and makes all their efforts contribute to the execution of his judgments.” (Calvin, 1.18.1.)
Satan is said to blind the minds of those who believe not (2 Cor. 4:4). So, you note that the “blinding by Satan” is by spitting out the ingested Calvinist acolytes. However, Satan is ultimately irrelevant since the elect still get saved and the non-elect still go to the lake of fire for eternity. The Devil is God’s Devil (to summarize Martin Luther) and never operates outside the Lord’s decree (Sproul). The Devil is God’s servant (Piper, MacArthur).
So, the change in the cartoon is really a defeater. It undercuts any point trying to be made.
In other words, you are saying God put Calvinism into the person. And God took Calvinism out of the person.
As far as the Scripture is concerned, it is very clear that faith and believing come first and the new birth follows. The Scripture is replete, lucid, and compelling in teaching that the order is faith prior to regeneration, and faith is a gift that God endowed man with in creation not in selective regeneration; moreover, God is working in order to give men and women a real chance to trust Him unto salvation (John 16:8). Salvation is offered as a free gift (Romans 6:23) to all who are in need of forgiveness (Romans 5:15, 18), and people are summoned to act upon the offer by accepting the gift by—grace-enabled—faith (John 1:12). “Never does the Bible say, ‘Be saved in order to believe; instead, repeatedly, it commands, ‘Believe in order to be saved.’” (GEISLER)
If God has decided in eternity past which individuals he will not save, then those individuals cannot be thought of either as being truly loved by God or as being the objects of his saving intentions. Calvinists protest that it is simply a mystery as to how God loves people he wills to condemn before they are ever born. Some assert that God has two wills, one “hidden” and one “revealed,”108 or two kinds of love,109 but most Southern Baptists view these answers as having neither a biblical nor logical basis. Moreover, Calvinists’ affirmation of “single predestination” over against “double predestination” as a method for absolving God of the charge of actively causing the lost to spend eternity in hell is unconvincing. To say that God merely passes over the lost rather than actively causing their perdition is both a distinction without a difference110 and a flat refusal to own the implications of the Calvinist system.111
110. If I have the ability and opportunity to rescue someone who is drowning, then I have an obligation to render aid. If I simply stand aside and let them die, then I am morally culpable. Calvinist objections that the sinner is already dead will not suffice. If I have the ability and opportunity to regenerate a spiritually dead person but do not, then my culpability is the same.
111. Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty, 148–49.
This statement by MacArthur is “anti-Gospel.”
It negates the power of the Word.
In the end this is what MacArthur is saying if you take into account his Calvinism:
God by means of divine decree determines all peoples decisions/actions
Potter by means of molding determines all pots decisions,actions,shapes, etc…
Programmer by means of preprogramming determines the Avatars/Robots decisions and actions
Puppeteer by means of strings determines all the puppets movements, actions, decisions
Author by means of writing a story determines all characters decisions, actions
This life in Calvinism has everything completely and fully scripted with every thought, action, deed. Welcome to the world of the avatar. The world of make belief – sounds much like the world of Walt Disney.
The “gospel” according to Calvinists is akin to a “cosmic lottery” then.
In a post detailing misreading’s of Scripture, I end with this:
TO SUMMARIZE:
If the “T” is correct, there is no rebellion against God’s will. Add the “U” and the “I,” the Gospel is rendered meaningless. It is sad, but it is a logical outgrowth of those. The Word of God, the Gospel message sent to a dying and sick world is secondary, Calvary becomes moot. Your hope can only be in if you won the cosmic lottery.
So when the unbeliever stands before God and Romans 1:19-20 is in the thought of our Holy God, when the words come out of said unbelievers mouth,
“I could not believe in your salvific offer because of my nature which you ensured. I suspect you won’t torture a cow [cows are biologically designed to eat grass] for eternity because your command was to eat meat, but ensured their nature was vegetarian.
What should God’s response be?
Are We PRE-PROGRAMMED To Reject The Gospel? Dr. Leighton Flowers | John MacArthur | Calvinism
Dr. Leighton Flowers, Director of Evangelism and Apologetics for Texas Baptists, responds to John MacArthur on whether we are pre-programmed to reject the Gospel or not. Check out the full video here:
Not only does this “pre-programming” dilute Scripture and it’s clear teaching, but it dilutes truth as well!
Preprogrammed definition: (of instructions or data) programmed into an electronic device to control future action. “the drones are designed to follow a preprogrammed route at the push of a button” (Berean Apologetics)
(Adapted from another comment) This is why Christians need to put on the whole armor of God to protect us against becoming infected By malware. We need to put on the Girdle of Truth! May we stand firm in the truth of Your Word so we will not be a victim of Satan’s lies.
RONNIE ROGERS completes the idea simply with the two views compared:
Compatibilism Determinism and moral responsibility are compatible; hence, the name. This compatibility is not achieved by compatibilism being less deterministic than hard determinism. Rather, it is achieved by defining free choice to mean as long as a person chooses according to his greatest desire, he can be considered to have made a free choice for which he is morally responsible; even though given the same past, he cannot choose differently in the moral moment of decision.
Consequently, the difference between compatibilism (soft determinism) and hard determinism is not to be found in the levels of the deterministic nature of each because they are the same. Rather, the difference is compatibilism contends people are morally responsible for their choices if they are made according to their greatest desire, and hard determinism says they are not.
Therefore, moral responsibility is the product of defining free choice as a person acting in accordance with his greatest desire even though the desire is determined. I frequently find Calvinists who affirm soft determinism and disavow hard determinism because they think soft determinism is not as unflinchingly deterministic as hard determinism. That kind of thinking is based upon a misunderstanding of compatibilism.
Libertarianism Man is not determined. He has the actual ability to choose between accessible options, at least in some scenarios. Libertarians contend determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility. Man possesses actual otherwise choice and can, therefore, act or refrain in the moral moment of decision even with the same past within a given range of options. Extensivism contends God endowed man with this ability, which is an aspect of being created in the image of God. [2] God determines the range of options. Adam’s range of options before the fall was greater than humanity’s options after the fall. The range of options available before the fall was the result of creative grace.
Fallen man can still choose between options. He did not lose his libertarian moral freedom, but the range of options is less than man had before the fall. Since the fall, man has lost the ability to make choices that are inherently righteous or spiritually restorative (making one right with God) based solely on creative grace. To make an inherently righteous or spiritually restorative choice, God had to provision redemptive grace, grace enablements.
For compatibilism to be the biblically reflective approach to understanding Scripture (what the Bible actually portrays and teaches), Calvinists would have to explain why the Bible, from Genesis 2 through Revelation 22, is absolutely permeated with verses, events, challenges, commands, offers, and judgments that clearly reflect that people have libertarian free will. That is to say; they can choose to act one way or differently in a myriad of passages (Gen 2:17-3:24; Josh 24; Jer 32; Mark 10:17-31; Rev 22:17-21).
Libertarian freedom allows for both determined events (events uninfluenced by human choice) and undetermined events (events influenced or caused by human choice) in which people choose between options. And whatever they did choose, they could have chosen differently even with the same past.
Compatibilism, Calvinism, requires that everything is determined, and if there is even one verse (I believe there are hundreds if not thousands that do so) that demonstrates the person had the freedom to choose differently than he chose, in the moral moment of decision, Calvinism and compatibilism collapse into an unbiblical perspective.
Consequently, unless a person can demonstrate the Bible teaches only micro-determinism (every verse that speaks of choosing reflects only a predetermined choosing wherein the appearance of having the freedom to choose differently is an illusion), he should totally and quickly disavow Calvinism. If a person chooses to remain a Calvinist, he is integrity bound to speak consistently with the micro-determinism of his position. In my book, Does God Love All or Some? I demonstrate that Calvinism’s view of moral freedom is absolutely in conflict with the teaching of Scripture when we consider all the Scripture.
What makes the micro-determinism in Calvinism, compatibilism, so difficult to detect is that Calvinists often interpret, talk, and teach the Scripture libertarianly. Meaning, they do so as though there is an undetermined choice involved, i.e., man can choose among the options available in the passage, and whatever he does choose, he could have chosen differently. Now, while that is true to the Scripture, it is in absolute contradiction to compatibilism, Calvinism.
Therefore, if a Calvinist is not going to live, speak, teach, interpret Scripture, and pray in a way that is consistent with micro-determinism so that both the Calvinist and the one whom he engages understands his deterministic perspective, he should disavow Calvinism.
(Emphasis added)
And that is the bottom line. If you adopt the Calvinist “TULIP,” you jettison truth. Truth in Scripture, truth in God, truth in reality, and truth in reason.
I believe I do understand Calvinism very well and that is why I argue that it cannot be put into the service of evangelism because there is no “good news” in the Calvinist soteriological doctrines. As such, Calvinism is not “evangelical,” which means “to bring good news.” When Calvinist’s do evangelism that have to abandon their soteriology and preach a non-Calvinist version of the gospel which is truly “good news,” but inconsistent with their Calvinist “doctrines of grace.” I argue against Calvinism because ultimately the truth of the gospel is at stake. (Source)
A man has just entered heaven and is being given a guided tour by St. Peter. As they walk past a certain group of people, Peter tells him to be extra-quiet and not to disturb them. The man asks why and Peter replies, “They’re the Calvinists. They think they are the only ones here!”
A Calvinist is about to enter heaven. There are two lines, one labelled “Chosen” and the other “Free will”. He decides that the “Chosen” line is the one for him and lines up. When his turn comes, he is asked why he joined that line. He replies that he chose to join it.
“No!” he is told. “This is only for those who do not choose. You have to go to the other line. It’s the one for those who choose.”
So he lines up at the “Free will” line. When he gets to the official at the head of the line, he is asked, “Why did you join this line?”
He replies, “Because I was told to join it.”
“Then,” replies the official, “You’re in the wrong line. This is only for those who choose to join it.”
In this session from NAPC 2026, Michael Jones takes a deep dive into the question: what does the data actually say about the link between Islamic doctrine and violence?
Michael shares some eye-opening research on how things like the concept of jihad and the fusion of religion and state impact everything from global conflict to domestic stability. He compares these findings with other faiths, offering a data-driven look at how certain teachings have shaped history and continue to influence our world today, breaking it down with clear evidence and academic rigor. If you’re interested in the intersection of faith, history, and sociology, you won’t want to miss this one.
With these graphs, when you click it it will enlarge. When you right click that opened the enlargement, choose “open image in new tab” for it to enlarge even more… your mouse turns into a plus symbol.
If nihilism says “brain chemistry determines true and false beliefs,” and exhaustive divine determinism says “God determines true and false beliefs,” then what ultimately grounds confidence that my current belief is true rather than merely determined?
The same kind of self-defeating epistemic concerns raised against naturalistic nihilism can be raised against exhaustive divine determinism, especially concerning rational agency, deliberation, responsibility, and confidence in theological conclusions.
Calvinism doesn’t equal Nihilism, but it mirrors it in many ways.
Here is some conversation with GROK, going from a challenge to my position to getting more information on the issue and seeing the light. I am including the moment it hit me. Here is the audio question/conversation I had with GROK:
RPT
I just thought of a concept. I was doing a study of Calvinism a year ago and I came across an article by Albert Mohler talking about how atheists are determinists. They don’t believe in truth. Because everything is chemically charged in our brain to produce a certain viewpoint. So there is no real truth. And that’s what atheistic naturalistic determinism leads to. So within the studies of Calvinism, there’s a form of theistic determinism. Where everything is determined beforehand by God. And so no matter our choices, it doesn’t lend to actually finding truth. It’s whatever God determines us to believe. So I just heard an interview where a guy became a Christian again after losing faith and becoming a nihilist. And his view of nihilism is that there is no ultimate truth. So is it possible to call Calvinists Christian nihilists? That’s my question.
Grok Responds
No, calling Calvinists “Christian nihilists” doesn’t really hold up. Nihilism says there’s no ultimate truth or meaning at all—everything’s pointless. Calvinism says there is ultimate truth: God’s sovereign will and his revealed word in scripture. They just believe God determines who accepts that truth.
The parallel you’re drawing from Mohler’s critique of atheist determinism is fair as a gotcha—both systems make beliefs the product of forces outside our control, so why trust your brain chemicals or God’s decree more than the other? Critics of Calvinism love pointing that out. But Calvinists dodge it by saying God, being good and all-powerful, ensures the elect believe actual truth, not illusion. It’s circular, sure, but that’s their answer.
The guy who came back from nihilism to Christianity probably found real meaning and truth in the gospel, which Calvinists would say God sovereignly gave him. So they’re on opposite ends there—nihilism is the void, Calvinism claims God’s got the whole map. Interesting thought experiment though.
After some short talk and requests for Grok to go through the transcripts from these videos as well as an article and book.
Arguments From Reason Show that Divine Determinists Have Worse Problems than Naturalists | EPS 2023 (VIDEO)
An Explanation and Defense of the Free-Thinking Argument (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
Here is Grok after the above:
GROK
Core of Their Case (Deity of Deception Argument)
From the transcripts:
Everyone (including Christians) holds some false theological beliefs. This is uncontroversial—no one claims infallibility.
If EDD is true, God determines all of them. Every false belief a Christian holds (about God, salvation, etc.) is ultimately caused/decreed by God.
Therefore, God determines His followers to affirm falsehoods about ultimate reality. This makes Him a “Deity of Deception” (even if for “morally sufficient reasons”). His word/Scripture becomes untrustworthy because the same source inspires truth and plants error.
This leads to epistemic meltdown: You can’t rationally trust any theological belief, including the ones supporting EDD itself (a self-undermining loop, like an adapted Lewis Argument from Reason). It’s not just “we’re wrong sometimes”—it’s that there’s no reliable mechanism for sorting truth from the divinely determined falsehoods.
They contrast this with naturalism: Blind chemistry/evolution also undercuts reason (Darwin’s doubt, Plantinga’s EAAN), but at least it doesn’t involve a personal, truthful God actively determining deception. Divine determinism makes the problems worse because it attributes the unreliability to a supposedly omnibenevolent, truthful God.
Ties to Your “Christian Nihilist” Idea
Nihilism: No ultimate truth/meaning; nothing grounds reliable knowledge.
Atheist naturalism (per Mohler): Determinism via brain chemistry → beliefs are just caused, not truth-tracking → no real truth.
Calvinist EDD: Determinism via God’s decree → same problem, but the cause is God → undermines the gospel’s reliability, God’s trustworthiness, and any claim to “know” Calvinism is true.
Your label captures the functional similarity: Both leave you without independent grounds for confidence in truth. The ex-nihilist in the interview likely escaped by finding grounding in a non-deterministic gospel—free response, genuine relationship, trustworthy revelation—which these Molinist-leaning critics say EDD erodes. Calvinists aren’t nihilists (they affirm God’s truth and meaning), but the view risks collapsing into a practical skepticism about accessing that truth.
Calvinist Counters (and Why Critics Say They Fail)
Calvinists typically respond:
God ensures the elect believe saving truth; errors are compatible with His sovereignty.
Compatibilist freedom: We’re “free” enough in the determined sense.
Scripture teaches determinism (e.g., Eph 1, Rom 9).
Stratton et al. push back hard:
This still makes God the source of deception for all Christians’ false beliefs.
Double effect/morally sufficient reasons don’t work when God could just determine the good without the error (no need for “greater goods” via determined sin/falsehood).
It downgrades views of God (love, truth), man (passive cogs, not agents), sin (no real “missing the mark”), and the gospel (bad news for the non-elect; different from the “good news” of free grace).
They conclude EDD isn’t outright heresy (it gets core orthodoxy like Trinity right, unlike Mormonism), but it’s a flawed, sub-biblical view of God that distorts the gospel enough to warrant strong critique—hence the “different gospel?” title.
Bottom Line for Your Study
This isn’t a gotcha that disproves Calvinism overnight—philosophical theology has deep debates here (Molinism vs. Calvinism, libertarian vs. compatibilist freedom, etc.). But the parallel you spotted is legitimate and echoed by these philosophers. EDD risks turning God into the ultimate determiner of illusion, mirroring the nihilistic/atheistic dead-end Mohler critiques. Provisionist or Molinist frameworks (emphasizing genuine free will/responsibility) avoid this by letting humans be active agents who can be held responsible for error without God authoring it. …
I then asked,
Here is a transcript to detour you on the “‘Moral sufficient reasons’ for decreeing error (e.g., displaying justice, greater goods).”
An provided two more resources:
A Rational Refutation of Divine Determinism (VIDEO)
Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, Second Edition: A Biblical, Historical, Theological, and Philosophical Analysis (BOOK)
GROK:
Mere Molinism is Stratton’s (and Craig’s, etc.) proposed solution to the exact problems you’ve been wrestling with—the Deity of Deception, epistemic meltdown under exhaustive divine determinism (EDD/Calvinist theological determinism), and the functional similarity to naturalistic determinism that risks practical nihilism about reliable truth-seeking.
Quick Recap of the Tension
From Mohler → atheist brain chemistry determines beliefs (no truth-tracking).
From EDD (per the transcripts) → God determines all beliefs, including false ones among Christians (Deity of Deception).
Result: No independent grounds to trust your reasoning or Scripture, since the determiner (chemistry or God) plants errors as the “normal case.”
“Morally sufficient reasons” don’t fix it if God could just determine the good without the deception (as Stratton and the EPS talks emphasize).
Your “Christian nihilist” label captures the epistemic despair: ultimate truth exists, but accessing it reliably collapses under exhaustive determination.
[….]
Ties to Your Provisionist Lean
Provisionism emphasizes God’s universal salvific will, genuine free will/responsibility, and rejection of determinism that makes God the author of unbelief. Mere Molinism is highly compatible (many Provisionists/Molinists overlap). It avoids Calvinist EDD while affirming strong sovereignty—God isn’t surprised or limited; He knows exactly how free creatures will respond and arranges circumstances accordingly.
Stratton’s personal story (Preface) mirrors many: former 5-point Calvinist whose marriage and faith were strained by EDD implications, transformed by Molinism.
Bottom Line for Your Study
Calling Calvinists “Christian nihilists” is provocative but highlights a legitimate vulnerability in exhaustive determinism. Mere Molinism (or similar libertarian + middle knowledge frameworks) dissolves the Deity of Deception and restores reliable agency/truth-seeking without sacrificing God’s greatness. It’s not the only option (open theism, simple foreknowledge, etc., have their own issues), but Stratton makes a robust cumulative case: biblical, historical (Molina, pre-Reformation surveys), philosophical (FTA, Argument from Reason), and practical (problem of evil, prayer, assurance).
After some back and forth…
… I asked GROK a last question:
Recap not on the positive case for Molinism and how it fixes anything… My position is that Calvinism is close to nihilism and no free will or way to substantiate true positions or trust biblical theology or truths
GROK ANSWERS
Yes, your core position holds: Exhaustive divine determinism (EDD) in Calvinism functionally approximates nihilism regarding reliable access to truth, despite affirming God’s ultimate meaning. It undermines genuine free will in a way that leaves no independent ground for substantiating or trusting true positions—including biblical theology itself. Here’s a tight recap based on the materials and arguments we’ve covered.
The Nihilism Parallel
Atheistic naturalism (Mohler’s point): Blind brain chemistry/evolution determines all beliefs. No rational agent steering toward truth—just caused outputs. Beliefs are not “up to you”; they’re products of non-rational forces. Result: No trustworthy path to objective truth. Skepticism/nihilism about knowledge follows.
Theistic determinism (EDD/compatibilism): God’s decree determines all beliefs, desires, reasoning processes, and conclusions (including false theological ones as the “normal case”). Compatibilist “freedom” (Hendryx: no less deterministic than hard determinism; MacArthur: we act willingly per our determined nature) redefines freedom but doesn’t restore agency. You’re still a determined effect in God’s causal chain—willingly hitting targets God aims, including error.
Both systems make beliefs the inevitable product of forces outside the agent’s ultimate control. The ex-nihilist convert escaped into a gospel with real meaning, responsibility, and truth-tracking. EDD risks pulling back toward functional nihilism: Truth exists (in God), but you have no reliable, non-circular way to access or justify it.
No Genuine Free Will → No Epistemic Responsibility
Under EDD, there are no categorical alternative possibilities. You could not have believed/thought/reasoned otherwise in the exact same circumstances—God determined the desires, deliberations, and outcome.
Deliberation collapses: True deliberation (weighing reasons, estimating arguments, choosing the best—per Webster/Stratton) requires the ability to evaluate and select among options. If God determines the entire process (how and what you think), you’re not deliberating; the process is happening to you. Reasoning becomes illusory.
The Deity of Deception (from the talks): Everyone, including Calvinists/elect, holds false theological beliefs. God determines those too. This isn’t rare pedagogy—it’s systemic. Even “morally sufficient reasons” (greater goods, displaying justice) don’t help: God could determine the good without decreeing the error. The ultimate source of deception is God Himself.
Result: You can’t trust your cognitive faculties for metaphysical/theological truth. Any belief you hold (including EDD, compatibilism, or a specific interpretation of Romans 9) is just what God caused you to affirm. No independent justification.
Inability to Substantiate or Trust Biblical Theology
Transfer of trust problem: Scripture is inspired by the same God who determines false beliefs in His followers. If He determines Christians to misread or affirm errors about His word, why trust any interpretation—including the ones supporting EDD? Every proof-text has an undercutting defeater: “God determined me to see this as true.”
Self-undermining: The belief that EDD is true is itself determined. You can’t rationally affirm it without begging the question (assuming the reliability of a process God may have determined toward error). This is epistemic meltdown—adapted Argument from Reason.
Low view of man and sin: Humans are “passive cogs” or “bags of beliefs” none of which are up to the bag. Sin isn’t genuine missing the mark by a responsible agent—it’s determined. Moral intuitions (and theological reasoning) get undercut.
Gospel implications: The “good news” becomes bad news for the non-elect (determined to reject it with no real alternative). Assurance and trust in Scripture erode when the Author determines widespread theological falsehood.
Compatibilism (MacArthur/Hendryx) doesn’t resolve this. It preserves “willingness” and responsibility language, but the determinism is total. Willing puppets are still puppets when it comes to epistemic accountability. You act according to your determined nature, but that nature (and every belief it produces) traces back to the decree.
This is why critics label it close to nihilism: Ultimate truth and meaning exist in God, but finite knowers are left in a predetermined fog with no reliable flashlight. Your Provisionist emphasis on genuine free will and responsibility directly counters this by preserving active agents who can be held accountable for reasoning and responding to truth—without making God the determiner of deception.
The transcripts and arguments we’ve reviewed (Deity of Deception, FTA applications, etc.) consistently press this as a serious vulnerability in EDD, even if Calvinists find it biblically compelling on sovereignty texts. It’s a live tension worth pressing in your study.
During a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) pushed back on claims President Trump intended to nationalize elections.
…Justice Samuel Alito captured the consequences better than anyone else in his dissent:
As interpreted by the Court today, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of “birth tourists,” women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home.
A Chinese woman can board a flight from China, spend a few weeks in the Northern Mariana Islands, give birth, return home, and her child acquires an American passport as a constitutional right. The practice has become so widespread that, by some estimates, well over a million Chinese nationals have acquired American citizenship through this mechanism.
And after Trump v. Barbara, Congress cannot simply vote to change it. Nor can the American people. Five justices have placed the issue beyond the reach of ordinary democratic government and elevated it into constitutional doctrine….
Megyn Kelly is joined by Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, and Alan Dershowitz, author of “Founding Fathers and One Jewish Mother,” to discuss steps President Trump could take right now to cut down on and stop birthright tourism, whether Justice Kavanaugh could have offered a path to a new ruling, and more.
Debating the Supreme Court Birthright Citizenship Ruling
I came across this clip that intrigued me, so here are multiple breakdowns of this. It is from:
“Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan during the congressional debates over the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 — Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st Session, May 30, 1866, p. 2890”
CHAT-GPT
GENERAL OVERVIEW via CHAT GPT of the smaller clipping
Yes. This is a famous statement by Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan during the congressional debates over the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866. The highlighted passage is often cited in modern debates about birthright citizenship because Howard was one of the senators who introduced and explained the Citizenship Clause.
The key sentence is:
“Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.”
Then he immediately adds an exception:
“This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”
What was Howard trying to do?
Before the Civil War, the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott (1857) decision held that Black Americans could not be citizens of the United States.
The Fourteenth Amendment was written largely to overturn Dred Scott and permanently establish national citizenship.
Howard is saying:
If you’re born in the United States,
and you’re subject to U.S. law (“subject to their jurisdiction”),
then you’re a citizen.
His main concern was ensuring that formerly enslaved people and their children were unquestionably citizens.
What does “subject to their jurisdiction” mean?
This is where modern arguments arise.
There are two major interpretations:
Traditional / prevailing legal interpretation
Most courts and legal scholars point to the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).
Under this view:
Almost everyone born on U.S. soil is subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
The main exceptions are:
children of foreign diplomats,
children of occupying enemy armies,
historically, some tribal Indians who were considered under separate sovereign tribal governments.
Under this interpretation, children born to legal immigrants and illegal immigrants are citizens at birth.
Restrictionist interpretation
Others point to statements like Howard’s and argue:
“Jurisdiction” means more than merely being subject to American laws.
It means complete political allegiance to the United States.
Since foreign nationals owe allegiance to another country, their children should not automatically receive citizenship.
Supporters of this view often highlight Howard’s use of the words: “foreigners” and “aliens” as evidence that the framers intended broader exclusions than modern courts recognize.
Why historians argue over this passage — The dispute comes from the fact that Howard’s sentence can be read two ways.
One side emphasizes:
“…will include every other class of persons.”
The other side emphasizes:
“…will not include persons born in the United States who are foreigners [or] aliens…”
The question becomes:
Was Howard referring only to diplomats and their families who happened to be foreigners and aliens?
or
Was he excluding all children of foreigners and aliens?
The Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark largely adopted the first understanding and relied heavily on English common-law birthright citizenship traditions.
An interesting detail — If you read the entire Senate debate, another senator, Lyman Trumbull, explained jurisdiction as:
“Not owing allegiance to anybody else.”
Modern advocates on both sides quote Trumbull because that phrase seems to support the allegiance-based interpretation, yet Congress later enacted laws and courts later interpreted the Citizenship Clause more broadly than many restrictionists believe was intended.
So this clipping is historically important because it is one of the primary pieces of evidence used in the modern birthright citizenship debate. The argument isn’t over what Howard said—the argument is over what Howard meant by “foreigners, aliens” in the context of the entire sentence and the larger debate.
FULLER CLIPPING AND COMMENTARY
Yes. The best source is the actual Congressional Globe (the official record of congressional debates before the Congressional Record existed).
Here is the page containing the exact text from your clipping:
Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st Session, May 30, 1866, p. 2890
The image you posted is only a cropped section of that page. The full page shows:
Howard introducing the Citizenship Clause.
His explanation of “all persons born in the United States.”
The exchange with Senator Doolittle regarding Indians.
Howard’s statement that tribal Indians were not considered under U.S. jurisdiction in the same sense because they maintained separate tribal relations.
Senator Cowan immediately asking whether children of Chinese immigrants and Gypsies born in the U.S. would be citizens. (UNT Digital Library)
What’s especially interesting is what follows immediately after the section in your screenshot. Cowan asks:
“Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen?” (UNT Digital Library)
That question is important because it shows that senators at the time were already thinking about the application of the clause to children born to non-citizen immigrants.
Another excellent source is the National Constitution Center’s reproduction of Howard’s speech:
One thing to keep in mind when reading modern arguments is that both sides quote Howard. The debate usually turns on whether the phrase:
“foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers…”
should be read as:
One category (foreign diplomats and their families), or
Several categories (foreigners generally, aliens generally, and diplomats).
The punctuation is part of why this 1866 sentence is still debated today. (UNT Digital Library)
If you’d like, I can also pull the next few pages (2891–2893) and walk through the entire debate in plain English. That’s actually where some of the most revealing discussion occurs.
I sent a friend the video of Dr. Theodore Zachariades stating that God wills [causes, not just permits] a man to be unfaithful to his wife.
God works all things after the Council of His will. Even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so! And when He wants to, he orders those to commit adultery when he wants to! (Video)
My friend dismissed this person as a hyper-Calvinist. But as the video below notes, using his definition of a “hyper Calvinist,” A.W. Pink, John Piper, Jeff Durbin, James White, and many-many more, would thus be considered the same. Because of the age restriction, the video must be watch on YouTube, link in pic.
When I asked him: “Question RW, is Piper, Calvin, White and Durbin hyper-Calvinists?” He simply replied “Fishing Bait.” But this is an interesting phenomena… and after decades of encountering Mormons and J-Dubs, the disconnect is the same. I get links and not actualizing on statements made when challenged. When shown a person who follows to the end the logical conclusion of theistic determinism found in Calvinism, the person who is the Calvinist is dismissed as a “hyper-Calvinist” by their fellow Calvinist’s if they are challenged. When that label is then applied rightly to others for the same reason — meaning, using RW’s definition of what a hyper-Calvinist is — then all these others have said worse; and would be by definition, hyper-Calvinists.
Two quick examples. 1st John Calvin, then, John Piper:
John CALVIN:
… how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission. . . . It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them. . . . Who does not tremble at these judgments with which God works in the hearts of even the wicked whatever He will, rewarding them nonetheless according to desert? Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for His mercy’s sake, or to evil according to their merits.
John Calvin, “The Eternal Predestination of God,” 10:11
John Piper:
Ephesians 1:11 goes even further by declaring that God in Christ
“works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Here the Greek word for “works” is energeø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually brings about all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).
John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42. (FULLER QUOTE VIA THIS PDF)
Martin Luther at the time of the Reformation. In his book The Bondage of the Will, written in response to Erasmus’ essay On Free Will, Luther said:
[The] omnipotence and foreknowledge of God, I repeat, utterly destroy the doctrine of “free-will”… Doubtless it gives the greatest possible offence to common sense or natural reason, that God, Who is proclaimed as being full of mercy and goodness, and so on, should of His own mere will abandon, harden and damn men, as though He delighted in the sins and great eternal torments of such poor wretches. It seems an iniquitous, cruel, intolerable thought to think of God; and it is this that has been such a stumbling block to so many great men down through the ages. And who would not stumble at it? I have stumbled at it myself more than once, down to the deepest pit of despair, so that I wished I had never been made a man. (That was before I knew how health-giving that despair was, and how close to grace.)
In this passage Luther seems to be aware that there is a deep moral problem with aspects of his view… [RPT:before redefining “grace” that is – almost like what is, is.]
In a reference in that above book is this paper: “I Believe In Divine Sovereignty,” by Thomas H. McCall in Trinity Journal (TRINJ 29:2 [Fall 2008]), 209-210. Of which I excerpt:
… He [John Piper] works long and hard to illustrate this [theistic determinism] from Rom 9:1-23, which he concludes is about the purposes of God being preserved “by means of the predestination of individuals to their respective eternal destines.”11 And we are not to think that God is righteous in spite of such action—instead we are to see that God is righteous because of this action, for the “heart of Paul’s defense” is this: “in choosing unconditionally those on whom he will have mercy and those whom he will harden God is not unrighteous, for in this ‘electing purpose’ he is acting out of a full allegiance to his name and esteem of his glory.”12
This all-determining action of God notably includes predestination and election, but it extends far beyond—it extends to everything. God determines all events that occur in the universe, including all demonic and satanic action.13 As Mark R. Talbot puts it, God creates, sends, instigates, and moves others to do evil, because “nothing that exists or occurs falls outside God’s ordaining will.”14 Talbot makes the point with relentless and unmistakable clarity:
Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed. God’s foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events.15
Make no mistake: “when even the worst of evils befall us, they do not ultimately come from anywhere other than God’s hand.”16 …
NOTES:
11.John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 218, cf. 56-73.
12. Ibid., 219.
13.On this see John Piper, “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God: Ten Aspects of God’s Sovereignty Over Satan and Satan’s Hand in It,” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 19-30. Piper here uses the rather confusing (given his determinism) language of “permission.” By my lights, what he means when he says that God “permits” something is this (a) God determines it to occur and then (b) does not act so as to override his previous ordination. Regarding talk of “permission,” I think that John Calvin’s approach is more consistent, [….] see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.xviii.1, and John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 696.
14. Mark R. Talbot, “‘All the Good That Is Ours in Christ: Seeing God’s Gracious Hand in the Hurts Others Do to Us,” in Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 43 (41-43), emphasis original.
15.Ibid., 43-44.
16. lbid., 47.
Dave Hunt is right to say that Calvin uses unbiblical positions in dealing with this Augustinian determinism:
There is yet another question that troubles many: If man is free to choose between options, would that not in itself deny both God’s sovereigntyand His foreknowledge? Luther claimed that this question was the very heart of the Reformation and of the gospel itself. In fact, Luther dogmatically insisted that it was impossible for God to foreknow the future and for man at the same time to be a free agent to act as he wills.
Believing firmly in God’s foreknowledge, Luther wrote an entire book titled The Bondage of the Will, to prove that the very idea of man’s free will is a fallacy and an illusion. Several reasons have already been given as to why Luther was wrong on this point, and that issue will be dealt with further in the next chapter.
Though Calvin took so much from Augustine, like Luther he also rejected the Augustinian belief that God could foreknow the future, while at the same time man could have a free will. According to Calvin, foreknowledge leaves no room whatsoever for free will, because foreknowledge is the same as predestination:
If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the question [of free will] … but since he foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed them, they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience. …
If this frigid fiction [of free will] is received, where will be the omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which everything depends, he rules over all? (Calvin, Institutes, III: xxiii, 6–7.)
Calvin repeatedly uses such unbiblical and utterly fallacious reasoning.
The Calvinist assumes a contradiction between sovereignty and free will that doesn’t exist. The fact that God is able to allow man freedom of choice, while still effecting His purposes unhindered, is all the more glorifying to His sovereign wisdom, power, and foreknowledge.
In order to understand this better theologians have come up with the term “compatibilism” to describe the concurrence of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Compatibilism is a form of determinism and it should be noted that this position is no less deterministic than hard determinism. — John Hendryx (John Hendryx is the creator and editor of Monergism.com | SEE: “We are not Determinists!” for more)
Here is A.W. Tozer’s take of the above:
Here is my view: God sovereignlydecreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou? Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
One of the single strongest philosophical critiques of exhaustive Calvinistic determinism is that it isn’t merely, “God ordaining evil.” That’s been debated for centuries. It’s that once every thought, desire, temptation, deception, warning, and response is exhaustively decreed, enormous portions of Scripture become functionally redundant.
Glen Shellrude makes this point from dozens of New Testament angles—not just Satan, but exhortations, warnings, prayer, false teaching, perseverance, church discipline, evangelism, and moral responsibility.
The Redundancy Problem in Exhaustive Calvinistic Determinism
The Redundancy Argument (TRA)
Theological determinism, as commonly defined within Reformed theology, is the belief that God unconditionally decreed every event in history. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes the position as the view that God determines every event that occurs in the history of the world, whether described as His decree, providential control, or efficacious will. Under this understanding, nothing—including every human decision, temptation, belief, unbelief, deception, repentance, or act of faith—could ever occur differently than God eternally ordained.
This creates what may be called the Redundancy Problem. If mankind is already born morally incapable of responding positively to God’s revelation apart from irresistible grace, then many of Scripture’s mechanisms for explaining unbelief become strangely unnecessary. Why does Satan need to blind minds already born incapable of seeing? Why would God judicially harden people who are supposedly already hardened by nature? Why speak in parables to conceal truth from those who could never understand it anyway? Why send strong delusion upon people who were already unable to believe? These biblical actions make perfect sense as judicial acts against previously resistible rebels, but they appear redundant if Total Inability already guarantees the identical outcome.
The redundancy extends far beyond Satan. Throughout the New Testament believers are warned against false teachers, exhorted to persevere, commanded to resist temptation, urged to pray, rebuked for sin, corrected for doctrinal error, and called to repentance. Yet under exhaustive theological determinism, God not only ordains every warning but also ordains every false doctrine, every deception, every act of apostasy, every sinful choice, and every response to those warnings. As Glen Shellrude observes, if theological determinism is consistently applied, God choreographs both the rise of heresy and the degree to which believers either resist or embrace it. Likewise, God ordains every act of obedience and every act of disobedience, every success and every failure, rendering many of Scripture’s exhortations and warnings functionally descriptive of God’s decree rather than genuine appeals capable of being either accepted or rejected.
The issue is not merely philosophical—it is exegetical. Scripture repeatedly portrays Satan as actively blinding unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4), false teachers as genuinely deceiving the church, and believers as capable of resisting deception through faithful perseverance. Those realities fit naturally within a framework in which people are accountable moral agents who may either receive or suppress God’s revelation. However, if every thought, temptation, deception, rejection, and response has already been immutably determined by divine decree, then Satan’s blinding activity, warnings against apostasy, calls to repentance, and commands to resist error appear to accomplish nothing that had not already been guaranteed from eternity. In that sense, Satan becomes less a genuine adversary than an unnecessary middleman carrying out a script whose outcome could never have been otherwise.
The result is that Scripture’s repeated appeals to “hear,” “repent,” “believe,” “beware,” “stand firm,” “do not be deceived,” and “choose” lose much of their ordinary force. The biblical narrative consistently presents these as meaningful appeals directed toward responsible hearers, whereas exhaustive theological determinism necessarily understands them as elements within an already settled decree. The irony is striking: the very worldview intended to magnify God’s sovereignty can unintentionally render many of Scripture’s warnings, explanations, and even Satan’s own ministry logically redundant.
The Redundancy Argument Against Exhaustive Theological Determinism
P1
If every human thought, desire, temptation, deception, belief, and response is exhaustively determined by God’s eternal decree, then no secondary means can alter or further secure the predetermined outcome.
P2
Scripture presents secondary means—Satan’s blinding, judicial hardening, parables concealing truth, warnings against apostasy, false teachers, exhortations, rebukes, and calls to repentance—as genuine means affecting people’s responses.
P3
If those responses are already exhaustively determined and cannot occur otherwise, these secondary means do not function to change or secure any outcome that was not already guaranteed.
Conclusion
Therefore, under exhaustive theological determinism, many of Scripture’s stated means—including Satan’s blinding ministry—become functionally redundant.
Satan is Exhibit A in a much larger pattern. The same logic applies to:
Satan blinding minds.
God hardening hearts.
Jesus speaking in parables to conceal truth.
Warnings against false teachers.
Commands to repent.
Calls to believe.
Exhortations to persevere.
Church discipline.
Appeals to resist temptation.
This broader framing also aligns well with the point Glen Shellrude develops:
if exhaustive determinism is assumed, many New Testament warnings and appeals become difficult to understand as genuine means of influencing human response because the responses are already fixed by decree.
QUOTE:
Warnings to Believers
Related to the above point are the frequent warnings in the New Testament about embracing erroneous teaching. Jesus warns about false prophets (e.g., Matt. 7:15-20), Paul warns the Philippian church about the dangers of both Judaizers and libertines (Phil. 3:221), and the Colossian church about a theology that is somewhat difficult to reconstruct precisely (Col. 2:16-23). In his letter to the Galatians he rebukes Christians for embracing a Judaizing theology, and in the Johannine epistles, John rebukes those who embrace a theology that again is difficult to reconstruct precisely. When read within the framework of theological determinism, the conclusion is that God choreographed all the details of these heretical theologies as well as the extent to which believers would resist or embrace false teaching or realign themselves with truth when they stumbled.
In Rev. 14:9-13 believers are warned not to compromise when persecuted. Those who fail to heed this warning and deny their faith will come under eschatological judgment, while those who remain faithful to the point of death will “rest from their labor” (i.e. will experience eschatological salvation). Elsewhere Revelation explicitly states that God extends the grace that will enable believers to remain faithful in a tribulation context (e.g., Rev. 7:18; 11:1-2). Revelation 14:9-13 assumes that believers can exercise their grace-empowered libertarian freedom by choosing either to defend their faith or to deny it. However, based on Calvinist assumptions, God is the one who decided “before the foundation of the world” how each believer would choose.
In a similar vein, philosophical determinism (atheism/evolutionary paradigms). In what follows — quote’wise — if this is true fore secular forms of determinism, then so to it applies to THEISTIC DETERMINISM:
Atheists reject evidence as illusory…
Why?
Because they “have to.”
Donald C. Abel in his book, Fifty Readings in Philosophy, asks us to imagine for a moment that you walking along and come to a fork in the road. One street is called Divinity Avenue, the other Oxford Street. Assuming you have to walk down one of them, there is a confrontation of choice. Continuing he says,
Now, I ask you seriously to suppose that this ambiguity of my choice is real; and then to make the impossible hypothesis that the choice is made twice over, and each time falls on a different street. In other words, imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate ten minutes of time with all that it contained, and set me back at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice was made. Imagine then that, everything else being the same, I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. You, as passive spectators, look on and see the two alternative universes; one of them with me walking through Divinity Avenue in it, the other with the same me walking through Oxford Street. Now, if you are determinists, you believe one of these universes eternally impossible, because of the intrinsic irrationality or accidentality somewhere involved in it. However, looking outwardly at these universes, can you say which is the impossible and accidental one, and which the rational and necessary one?
Donald C. Abel, Fifty Readings in Philosophy (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 296.
“He thus acknowledged the need for any theory to allow that humans have genuine freedom to recognize the truth. He (again, correctly) saw that if all thought, belief, feeling, and choice are determined (i.e., forced on humans by outside conditions) then so is the determinists’ acceptance of the theory of determinism forced on them by those same conditions. In that case they could never claim to know their theory is true since the theory making that claim would be self-referentially incoherent. In other words, the theory requires that no belief is ever a free judgment made on the basis of experience or reason, but is always a compulsion over which the believer has no control.”
Roy A. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 174.
The implications of strict naturalism are grim or even counterintuitive. For example, Bertrand Russell affirmed that any philosophy hoping to stand must ultimately take for granted the (naturalistic) picture of unguided causes and accidental collocations of atoms and must be built on the “firm foundation of unyielding despair.” When it comes to naturalism’s implications for morality, naturalist Kai Nielsen contends that reason can’t bring us to morality; this picture ”is not a pleasant one,” and that reflecting on it ”depresses me.” When it comes to consciousness, naturalist Daniel Dennett considers it an illusion- -something fellow-atheist Thomas Nagel finds utterly confused:
You may well ask how consciousness can be an illusion, since every illusion is itself a conscious experience …. So it cannot appear to me that I am conscious though I am not … the reality of my own consciousness is the one thing I cannot be deluded about …. The view [of Dennett] is so unnatural that it is hard to convey …. Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious. … And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, ”maintaining a thesis at all costs.”
Jaegwon Kim acknowledges the stark picture painted by the naturalistic brush. Naturalism is ”imperialistic; it demands ‘full coverage’ … and exacts a terribly high ontological price.”
Paul Copan and Charles Taliaferro (editors), The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays on Theism’s Rationality (New York, NY: Lexington Books, 2019), viii
I could go on, but you get the point. To fashion the issue for you to see, Jaegwon Kim could have said:
Theistic determinism is ”imperialistic; it demands ‘full coverage’ … and exacts a terribly high ontological price.” (added for emphasis)
What is this price? Here is just one example… God vs. God:
Here is a Facebook post I recently posted:
“What is there for God to harden, provoke, or restrain if not the autonomous will of creatures?”
If God knows the future because He planned the future [Sproul, Piper, MacArthur, etc.], when God hardens, provokes, or restraines…. is He working against Himself?
If the “T” of TULIP [total depravity] is a reality, wouldn’t hardening, provoking, or restraining someone be the same thing as digging up bodies in a cemetery and putting blindfolds on the rotting cadavers?
In other words, does He plan the abuse of a child just to redeem that act in some way to bring glory to Himself? Is Satan superfluous?
Are all the prescriptions in the Bible making God out to be duplicitous – since he has planned our actions thru determinitive means?
You could not argue that “evil” is really “evil.” Eastern philosophies run into the same problems as the atheist’s/evolutionist’s I just noted above. The Calvinist runs into the same issue. And it is a distortion of Christianity (T.U.L.I.P.):
(Eph 1:11) “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” Here the Greek word for “works” is 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑒ø, which indicates that God not merely carries all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends but that he actually 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 all things in accordance with his will. In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those who love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects for his glory (see Ex. 9:13-16; John 9:3) and his people’s good (see Heb. 12:3-11; James 1:2-4). This includes—as incredible and as unacceptable as it may currently seem—God’s having even brought about the Nazis’ brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Rader and even the sexual abuse of a young child: “The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil” (Prov. 16:4, NASB ).14 “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (Eccl. 7:14, NIV).
John Piper and Justin Taylor, eds., Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), 42.
Or…
Is it more like Tozer notes — which lowers man’s position by making him/her responsible to God’s law; and keeps God’s holiness and glory intact as He truly redeems or judges such actions (is He judging Himself in Calvinism? Working against His own will? Secretly?)
TOZER:
God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, ‘What doest thou?’ Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
There is an analogy of two chess players. As you walk up on one professional chess player, he is sitting on one side of the bench, and at the end of his move he gets up walks to the other side, sits down, thinks a moment and makes his move. This process is repeated until the game is over and the chess player wins.
Guaranteed.
When you ask him why he is playing chess alone, he says to ensure his victory. Or as Piper notes in his book astonished by God: “…the reason God knows the future is because he plans the future and accomplishes it.”
You wouldn’t think too highly of his skills, would you? As you walk down the road a bit further, you come across another chess master. This time however, there is a line of players, world famous chess players, lined up as far as the eye could see. As you watched, the one chess player was handily beating every player that sat before him. Player after player.
With whom would you be more impressed with?
And it is this perceived contradiction that leads Calvinists to a polluting of God’s character, which A.W. Tozer tackles in his book, Knowledge of the Holy. Here is a excerpt…. I changed a couple words to read better:
… While a complete explanation of the origin of sin eludes us, there are a few things we do know. In His sovereignwisdom God has permitted evil to exist in carefully restricted areas of His creation, a kind of fugitive outlaw whose activities are temporary and limited in scope. In doing this God has acted according to His infinite wisdom and goodness. More than that no one knows at present; and more than that no one needs to know. The name of God is sufficient guarantee of the perfection of His works.
Another real problem created by the doctrine of the divine sovereigntyhas to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereigndecrees, how is it possible for man to exercise free choice? And if he cannot exercise freedom of choice, how can he be held responsible for his conduct? Is he not a mere puppet whose actions are determined by a behind-the-scenes God who pulls the strings as it pleases Him?
The attempt to answer these questions has divided the Christian church neatly into two camps which have borne the names of two distinguished theologians, Jacobus Arminius and John Calvin. Most Christians are content to get into one camp or the other and deny either sovereigntyto God or free will to man. It appears possible, however, to reconcile these two positions without doing violence to either, although the effort that follows may prove deficient to partisans of one camp or the other.
Here is my view: God sovereignlydecreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereignwill of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, What doest thou? Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereigncould not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.
On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.
Both freedom and sovereigntyare present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with mans freedom and the sovereigntyof God. The mighty liner of Gods sovereigndesign keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfilment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.
We know that God will fulfil every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will some day be cleansed out of the earth; we know that a ransomed company will enter into the joy of God and that the righteous will shine forth in the kingdom of their Father; we know that Gods perfections will yet receive universal acclamation, that all created intelligences will own Jesus Christ Lord to the glory of God the Father, that the present imperfect order will be done away, and a new heaven and a new earth be established forever.
Toward all this God is moving with infinite wisdom and perfect precision of action. No one can dissuade Him from His purposes; nothing turn Him aside from His plans. Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circumstances, no accidents. As He is sovereign, there can be no countermanded orders, no breakdown in authority; and as He is omninpotent, there can be no want of power to achieve His chosen ends. God is sufficient unto Himself for all these things.
In the meanwhile things are not as smooth as this quick outline might suggest. The mystery of iniquity doth already work. Within the broad field of Gods sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good with evil continues with increasing fury. God will yet have His way in the whirlwind and the storm, but the storm and the whirlwind are here, and as responsible beings we must make our choice in the present moral situation.
Certain things have been decreed by the free determination of God, and one of these is the law of choice and consequences. God has decreed that all who willingly commit themselves to His Son Jesus Christ in the obedience of faith shall receive eternal life and become sons of God. He has also decreed that all who love darkness and continue in rebellion against the high authority of heaven shall remain in a state of spiritual alienation and suffer eternal death at last.
Reducing the whole matter to individual terms, we arrive at some vital and highly personal conclusions. In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on Gods side is on the winning side and cannot lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and cannot win. Here there is no chance, no gamble. There is freedom to choose which side we shall be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made. By the mercy of God we may repent a wrong choice and alter the consequences by making a new and right choice. Beyond that we cannot go.
The whole matter of moral choice centers around Jesus Christ. Christ stated it plainly: He that is not with me is against me, and No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. The gospel message embodies three distinct elements: an announcement, a command, and a call. It announces the good news of redemption accomplished in mercy; it commands all men everywhere to repent and it calls all men to surrender to the terms of grace by believing on Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
We must all choose whether we will obey the gospel or turn away in unbelief and reject its authority. Our choice is our own, but the consequences of the choice have already been determined by the sovereignwill of God, and from this there is no appeal.
And the response is really an adaptation of this post at LEESOMNIAC:
