A. W. Tozer

Sovereignty of God

Published by Papa Giorgio

At EXAMINING CALVINISM you can read responses in this post to: James White, R.C. Sproul, Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams,

… Some Calvinists have wrongly concluded that the non-Calvinist seeks to downplay the sovereignty of God and highlight the autonomy of man, when in reality we seek to maintain the right biblical understanding of man’s autonomy so as to better highlight the sovereignty, love and holiness of God.

Does God’s sovereignty terminate at the point of being able to create
autonomous beings who seek their own purposes?

Does God’s sovereignty terminate at the point of being able to offer
such beings an independent choice He does not determine?

If God must meticulously decree every thought, word and deed ever conceived in order to remain “sovereign,” then that wouldn’t say much for divine sovereignty. In contrast to Calvinism, God exhibits being all-wise, all-knowing and all-powerful when He governs without any strings attached. The contrasting Calvinist conception of divine sovereignty would make God out to be pretty mediocre.

All of scripture supports God’s “sovereignty.” The controversy is over how Calvinists try to redefine sovereignty to mean exhaustive, philosophical determinism, and the way that is accomplished is by citing the biblical word, “predestination.” However, the fact that God predestines some things does not necessarily mean that God predestines everything. Moreover, it is critical to correctly understand the manner in which God predestines things. For instance, God predestined to redeem good from evil, but that doesn’t necessarily mean He caused the evil He redeems.

God is the ultimate cause of everything that exists, meaning that without Him, nothing can come to pass, and this is something that all theists can affirm, so long as one incorporates a truly meaningful definition of divine permission, in which in addition to God’s own determinations, He also permits independent agents who possess autonomy of reason to conduct their own libertarianly free choices. The problem in Calvinism, however, is that divine permission is reduced to a matter of God allowing people to do what He exhaustively and meticulously rendered certain and necessary, thus spoiling the aforementioned definition of permission.

God is in control of all things, though He is not all-controlling. Calvinists, however, believe in a type of divine sovereignty which requires that God exhaustively predetermine everything that ever comes to pass, including every person’s thoughts, intentions and actions, for all eternity, including sinful thoughts, intentions and actions, thus drawing a sharp rebuke from non-Calvinists. This is what Calvinists term “predestination,” though the Bible does not teach predestination in such a way. Moreover, such a notion has historically drawn the criticism of being a form of Christian fatalism. Nonetheless, from the Calvinist perspective, an exhaustive eternal decree is necessary for God to truly be in control and to truly be omnipotent. It should be pointed out, however, that the Bible never talks about any such eternal decree. What Calvinists are referring to is just a systemic, doctrinal perspective, rather than something that is firmly taught in Scripture. A decree is simply something that God declares to be, and so if God declares for mankind to have free-will, which is what non-Calvinists hold to, then that’s what God decreed. For instance, non-Calvinists believe that God has decreed, not which choices that we will make, but rather that we would be free in making them. That’s a doctrinal perspective. So when we make free choices, it is understood that we are not countervailing the will of God, but rather we are acting in accordance with the ability God has granted.

Speaking frankly, Calvinistic determinism would mean that God cannot handle free-will, and it would gut all creation of true life. It would render God as a marionette, pulling the strings of dead things. It would be a worthless and humiliating endeavor for a truly glorious, all-powerful, all-knowing and all-wise God. …

Voddie Baucham on Sovereignty

Dr. Leighton Flowers responds to a short snippet from Dr. Voddie Baucham on the sovereignty of God

Ronnie W. Rogers, Reflections of a Disenchanted Calvinist,

CPHT 1, Sovereignty of God (PDF)

Sovereignty of God

  1. I affirm that God is sovereign over everything without exception; therefore, He is in total control; further, I believe that creating a world where men are given a real choice demonstrates God’s sovereignty rather than undermines it. By real free choice, I mean that by grace, God gave man the ability to believe the gospel or not to believe the gospel; as a result, the ones who believe could have not believed, and the ones who disbelieve could have believed unto salvation. Consequently, man’s consignment to hell is due to being born a sinner, sinning, and rejecting a real offer of the redemptive love and mercy of God, which he could have accepted; therefore he is in hell because he chose to be despite God’s provision and desire for him to be saved (2 Peter 3:9). This position does not in any sense minimize or waste the redemptive work of Christ and the power of the cross, or undermine or thwart the sovereignty of God. The work and power of the sacrifice of Christ was to provide salvation for all and secure it for all who would receive it by faith and by God’s gracious provision. I affirm that God’s sovereignty is not minimized because He sovereignly chose to provide a real choice for everyone to accept or reject the gospel. This includes deliverance from eternal hell, men’s just desert, for anyone and everyone who acts in concert with His grace enablement and follows Christ.

The means of this grace enablement include but are not limited to: Gods’ salvific love for all (John 3:16), God’s manifestation of His power so that all may know He is the Sovereign (Isaiah 45:21-22) and Creator (Romans 1:18-20), which assures that everyone has opportunity to know about Him. Christ paying for all sins (John 1:29), conviction of the Holy Spirit (John 16:7-11), working ofthe Holy Spirit (Hebrews 6:1-6), enlightening of the Son ( John 1:9), God’s teaching ( John 6:45), God opening hearts (Acts 16:14), and the power of the gospel (Romans 1:16), without such redemptive grace, no one seeks or comes to God (Romans 3:11). Further, I believe that man, because of these gracious provisions and workings of God, can choose to seek and find God (Jeremiah 29:13; Acts 17:11-12). Moreover, no one can come to God without God drawing (John 6:44), and that God is drawing all men, individuals (John 12:32). The same Greek word for draw, helkuo, is used in both verses. “About 115 passages condition salvation on believing alone, and about 35 simply on faith.”5 Other grace enablements may include providential workings in and through other people, situations, and timing or circumstances that are a part of grace to provide an opportunity for every individual to choose to follow Christ.

I also affirm that the permissive will of God is a part of His decretive will that permitted sin to enter the world and, for a time, continue.6 Holiness is always God’s standard and therefore sin is never God’s perfect, immediate or ultimate desire for His creation or man, but within His sovereign decretive will, He has purposefully permitted it. He commands man to obey, but permits him the freedom to disobey. The choice to disobey God’s commands results in man suffering the consequences of such choice. Thus, with regard to salvation, God desires that all come to salvation (2 Peter 3:9). Accordingly, He enables man to be able to be saved, and thereby permits man to freely choose to believe the gospel or to reject His grace and love and die in his sins. Without question, God’s permissive will does not preclude Him from ever intervening in the decision-making process of man if His purposes so require; however, neither does it necessitate that it be done in order to maintain sovereignty as long as He sovereignly chose to act in that particular way.

I further affirm that God’s full character and attributes, not just His sovereignty or justice, are to be considered when speaking of Him and His plans. This includes His infinity, justice, mercy, compassion, love, grace and power, which He possesses perfectly and infinitely. God is the sum of perfection. Lewis Sperry Chafer notes concerning this balance, “He is free to dispose of His creation as He will; but His will… is wholly guided by the true and benevolent features of His Person ….The attributes of God form an interwoven and interdependent communion of facts and forces which harmonize in the Person of God. An omission or slighting of any of these, or any disproportionate emphasis upon any one of them cannot but lead to fundamental error of immeasurable magnitude.”7

Moreover, I affirm that all of God’s attributes are more accurately reflected by accepting the truths of Scripture, which declare that salvation is provided and genuinely offered to everyone by God, and everyone can by “grace through faith” receive salvation, rather than by accepting the teaching of Calvinism that God only actually offers salvation to some because only that particular some can actually believe; those are the ones He monergistically causes to believe by changing their nature against their will. Calvinism teaches that regeneration is monergistic—God alone—and man has no part in it. After regeneration there becomes a synergistic relationship between God and man, and man exercises faith because he cannot choose to do otherwise. This is a disquieting reality.

Lastly, while some things about God are indeed a mystery because either they are not fully disclosed by God or understood by man or both (Deuteronomy 29:29), this is quite different than mysteries generated by Calvinism’s overemphasis upon certain attributes or concepts like justice or predestination and defining sovereignty to necessarily preclude real free choice. Actually, the Calvinist’s persistent mention of the sovereignty of God tells us nothing about the biblical loyalty of Calvinism since all believers with any biblical fidelity and understanding of God believe in His sovereignty. Further, disavowal of the Calvinist’s definition of sovereignty is not a denial or undermining of the sovereignty of God, but it is what it is, a denial of Calvinism’s definition.

  1. I disaffirm that salvation is monergistic, which means that God actively causes some to be saved by forced regeneration, and that act of regeneration is contrary to and against their sinful, rebellious nature, will, and choice, and that until regeneration, man is totally passive and becomes active only after regeneration. I disaffirm that there is nothing that can be done prior to regeneration with regard to salvation.8 I disaffirm that man is passive in regeneration.9 I further disaffirm that God selects to regenerate some and thereby either actively or passively chooses to leave some in their lost condition,10 and therefore irresistibly pre-determines some to be forever lost and damned to a place created for Satan (Matthew 25:41).

Calvinism asks us to believe that God chose eternal torment for the vast majority of His creation (Matthew 7: 1 3 —14). They want us to rejoice in a God who desires and chose for the vast majority of his creation to go to hell when He could have redeemed them. That is indeed God according to Calvinism, but not the God Scripture. This is a disquieting reality. Where is the plethora of Scripture where God expresses His desire for the vast majority of His creation to perish in eternal torment and this with equal clarity and abundance as those Scriptures that declare His indefatigable, sacrificial love and desire that all repent and be saved? I suggest that they do not exist and for good reason.

Monergism means that salvation is “[God’s] work alone”11, which is based upon the Calvinistic view that salvation depends upon God’s unconditional election to regenerate some prior to and quite apart from anything, even faith. However, if there is nothing that is a part of salvation and no one can do anything, even by the grace of God, to facilitate faith and thereby salvation, then why did Paul reason from the Scriptures in order to prove that Jesus was the Messiah? (e.g., Acts 17:2-4). Why did he attempt to “persuade men”? (2 Corinthians 5:11). Why did he beg people to be “reconciled to God”? (2 Corinthians 5:20). Why did God reconcile the “world”? (2 Corinthians 5:19). Why was Paul able to reason with the Jews concerning Christ, persuading some while others “would not believe”? (Acts 28:24). Notice it was not that they could not believe, but they would not believe. Why would Paul believe and say, “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some”? (1 Corinthians 9:22).

To respond, as Calvinists do, that God has established the means to salvation, and therefore this may be the means of salvation, which in reality according to monergism has no real effect upon conversion, is just simply not what is presented in the Scripture. The picture in Scripture is that these things do have an actual part in salvation. They play a part, as does faith, by the grace and plan of God. To say that Paul was doing and saying this all out of mere obedience, all the while knowing that the people to whom he reasoned and pleaded may be the ones who could not hear or respond any more than a blind person could see you wink, is not the picture that is presented ever so clearly Scripture. Nor is it the implication of most Calvinists’ messages on Paul’s behavior. This is a disquieting reality.

Moreover, according to monergism, if they ever did respond, it would have nothing to do with anything Paul or the respondent had done, which is obviously contrary to Paul’s words (1 Corinthians 10:33; 1 Thessalonians 2:16). Although Calvinists talk, at times, as though what we do matters in a person’s salvation, it is actually absolutely disallowed by their monergistic view of salvation. I do grant that the Calvinist can be disobedient to God’s process, but this disobedience neither hinders nor facilitates salvation—according to monergism.

Man’s passiveness is stated explicitly in The Westminster Confession. “This effectual call [to salvation] is of God’s free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, who is altogether passive therein, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed by it.”12 (italics added) I add to this the clarification that he is not only enabled, but according to Calvinism, he is enabled against his will, and not only enabled to believe but made to only be able to believe rather than choose between believing and not believing. I maintain that God indeed has foreknowledge, even of the future, contingent, freewill choices of men and women, which is an indispensible part of His decrees and predestination. That is to say, contrary to Calvinism, He gave free will, paid everything necessary for the salvation of all, sent the call out to receive by faith, provided grace enablements and predestined to salvation those who would receive and respond to His grace.

Further, I disaffirm that the key to God’s sovereignty is causation, as the Calvinists seem to believe. Their definition of sovereignty is actually a product of defining sovereignty, as well as viewing Scriptures relating to sovereignty, through the Calvinist grid. Moreover, I disaffirm that it is possible for a Calvinist to demonstrate how an unfettered decision by God to give man the ability to have a real free choice undermines sovereignty. Finally, I disaffirm the legitimacy of using mystery to serve as a satisfactory alternative to the biblical balance of sovereignty and human responsibility and/or that the response “it is a mystery” is a satisfactory answer to the dilemma caused by the Calvinist teaching of selective regeneration preceding and necessarily resulting in faith. This is a disquieting reality.

Here is the dilemma caused by selective regeneration. If God monergistically selects to regenerate some and not to regenerate others, and all whom He regenerates will necessarily believe, and none whom He does not choose to regenerate can believe, then God is necessarily the one deciding to send the vast majority of sinners to hell. In other words, according to Calvinism’s monergism, everything necessary to save one sinner—God choosing to regenerate prior to faith—is sufficient to save all sinners. The only thing lacking is God choosing to regenerate certain sinners. Therefore, it is an inescapable reality, based on Calvinism, that people are in hell because God sovereignly chose not to regenerate them. God is the sole determiner that certain lost people cannot be saved and therefore must perish in hell. This is a disquieting reality. I maintain that the portrait of God painted by Calvinism is not the picture painted by Scripture.

When I have presented this reality to Calvinists, I am told not to take logic too far—i.e., it is a mystery. Of course they use logic all of the time. While I do agree with the Calvinists’ assertion that God would be just if He sent everyone to hell because everyone is a sinner, and it is grace if He chooses to redeem one; I disagree that this truth in any way answers this dilemma of Calvinism or satisfies the boundless, matchless, and majestic grace, love, and mercy of God presented throughout the Scripture.

It is rather perplexing to see how a Calvinist can sign the Baptist Faith and Message because it says of God, “He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.”13 Since Calvinism teaches that God actively elected to withhold salvation from most of the lost people of the world, it seems fair to ask in what way is that fatherly. In other words, He chose to pass them by, thereby predestining them irrevocably to eternal torment, which action, according to Calvinism, pleased Him. To say they deserve it, or that God is just, misses the point. For the dilemma is not regarding their just due, but rather what kind of father is God, knowing that He could have exercised selective regeneration through irresistible grace and delivered them from such fate. This indisputably transmogrifies the affectionate and endearing word “fatherly” into something that is horrifyingly dreadful.

《《 《《  FOOTNOTES  》》》》

5. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, vol. VII, Doctrinal Summarization, (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1948), 273-274.

6. I am using permissive for that which God decreed to command but not compel. Theologians often distinguish this from God’s decretive will with the term perceptive. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, vol. I, Prolegomena, Bibliology, Theology Proper, (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1947), 209.

7. Chafer, Systematic Theology. vol. I, 223. This citation is not intended to indicate Chafer’s endorsement of my overall position, but rather to note the need for balance in handling the attributes of God, which I do not think Calvinists do.

8. Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, Sin, Salvation (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House, 2004), 192.

9. The Westminster Confession of Faith, A.D. 1646, chapter X, sections 1 and 2, found online at The Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics.

10. Either actively as Hyper-Calvinism and some other Calvinists maintain or passively as other Calvinists maintain.

11. Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, 192.

12. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), Chapter X, Section II.

13. The Baptist Faith and Message, 2000, II, A, (accessed 6/6/11).

Interview with Pastor Ronnie Rogers (1hr and 20-minutes)

This first audio is from A.W. Tozer regarding God’s sovereignty. I also include a partial excerpt from his book, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God. Their Meaning in the Christian Life, chapter 22 ~ “The Sovereignty of God” ~ of which the entire chapter is here.

Here is that partial chapter excerpt.

I changed a couple words as can not reads better as cannot:

… While a complete explanation of the origin of sin eludes us, there are a few things we do know. In His sovereign wisdom 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 sovereignty has to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereign decrees, 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 sovereignty to 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 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? 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.

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 sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with mans freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of Gods sovereign design 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 sovereign will of God, and from this there is no appeal.

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God
(San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1961), 110-111.

Calvinism’s “Reading Rainbow” | John 11

Published by Papa Giorgio

One of the many issues I saw in a study on sovereignty at church was this side-by-side statement in our handout:

  • God chooses some people for salvation, this is one of His decrees
  • Man is responsible for rejecting God

This is the furthest thing from the truth if one understands the “T” in TULIP. We will also visit the “U” and the “I.” Let us start in order of the acronym however.

Man cannot react to, freely, an offer of salvation through enablement’s or grace offered evidence the work at Calvary. Other grace enablement’s that are soaked with the Holy Spirit are the Gospel, preachers teaching from the Word, other Christians witnessing, etc. I do not accept selective regeneration of the elect which precedes faith and necessarily results in faith in Christ “IS” how one is saved (Acts 16:31-32; Romans 1:16).

Calvinists believe that a totally depraved person is spiritually dead. By ‘spiritual death’ they mean the elimination of all human ability to understand or respond to God, not just a separation from God. Further, the effects of sin are intensive (destroying the ability to receive salvation) ~ Geisler, Chosen but Free (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 56.

Pastor Rogers helps us define it as well:

Total Depravity: The whole of man’s being is corrupted by sin and he is, therefore, incapable of doing any eternal spiritual good.

Calvinism’s understanding of total depravity includes a compatibilist view of human nature, unconditional election, and limited and selective regeneration. This means the only interpretive option Calvinism permits for God to be able to redeem such a compatibly defined totally depraved person is that God must give him a new nature (variously called quickening, regeneration, or restoration), which he is pleased to do only for the limited unconditionally elect; thereby, guarantying their subsequent free exercise of faith.

Viewing man from a compatibilist perspective means that while fallen man freely chooses to sin, he cannot freely choose to believe in the gospel unless God gives him a new nature and past that assures he will freely choose to exercise faith in Christ; however, in either state, man cannot choose to do other than he did choose because while freely choosing, he has no salvific choice.

Although it seems most Calvinists in the SBC do believe in regeneration prior to faith, it is true not all Calvinists depend upon regeneration preceding faith. Nevertheless, they all do depend upon on a preceding determinative work of God that changes the elect’s past. This work of God changes their nature from what it was before to something different after the work. This is due to their commitment to compatibilism. Technically, compatibilism requires that given the same past, man cannot choose, in the moral moment of decision, other than he did in fact choose.

Consequently, while some may seek to avoid reliance upon a new nature preceding faith, if they are going to be consistent compatibilists, they must believe God works determinatively in the unconditionally elect so as to change man’s past in order that he can transition from only being able to reject Christ to only being able to accept Christ. Therefore, regardless of what term they choose to employ, it never changes the deterministic nature of salvation nor its limited accessibility. This pre-faith work necessary to exercising faith is intentionally withheld by God from the non-elect.

Ronnie W. Rogers, Does God Love All or Some? Comparing Biblical Extensivism and Calvinism’s Exclusivism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019), 30-31.

Calvinistic Election says to the unregenerate elect, “Don’t Worry, your Depravity is no obstacle to salvation,” and to the unelect, “Too bad, you have not been predestined for salvation but damnation” (George L Bryson, The Five Points of Calvinism: Weighed and Found Wanting). Here is a definition of Total Depravity’s “inability” (more… longer PDF):

… The doctrine of total depravity is explained as total inability in the writings of some theologians. James Boice and Philip Ryken explained, “In this sad and pervasively sinful state we have no inclination to seek God, and therefore cannot seek him or even respond to the gospel when it is presented to us. In our unregenerate state, we do not have free will so far as ‘believing on’ or ‘receiving’ Jesus Christ as Savior is concerned.”130 They clarified that unbelievers “cannot” respond to the gospel by repenting and believing in Jesus when it is presented. Consistent with article 3 in the Canons of Dort, they taught that a person believes in Jesus after they are born again. Mark DeVine wrote, “Humanity’s fall into sin results in a condition that must be described in terms of spiritual blindness and deadness and in which the will is enslaved, not free.” DeVine continued, “We need to ask whether the Arminian insistence that the work of the Holy Spirit frees the will to either repent and believe or refuse to do so does not evidence a deeper misunderstanding of the nature of depravity itself.”131 John Piper wrote, “Faith is the evidence of new birth, not the cause of it.”132 “Regeneration precedes faith,” R. C. Sproul explained. He added, “We do not believe in order to be born again; we are born again in order to believe.”133 R. Albert Mohler Jr. also affirmed that regeneration precedes faith:

In the mystery of the sovereign purposes of God and by his sheer grace and mercy alone, the Word was brought near to us. As a result, we were called, made alive, and regenerated. We then believed what we otherwise would never have been able to believe, and we grasped hold of it, knowing that it is the sole provision of our need. We came to know of our need and of God’s response and provision for us in Christ, and then we came to know of our necessary response of faith, repentance, confession, and belief.134

According to these views of total depravity, spiritual blindness and deadness results in the enslavement of the human will so that people do not have the ability to repent and believe the message of the gospel unless they are first regenerated, or born again.

[130] James Montgomery Boice and Philip Graham Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace: Rediscovering the Evangelical Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 30; italics in the original.

[131] Mark DeVine, “Total Depravity,” in Barrett and Nettles, Whomever He Wills, 35 (see intro., n. 22).

[132] John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1986), 50.

[133] Robert C. Sproul, Chosen by God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1986), 72.

[134] R. Albert Mohler Jr., “The Power of the Articulated Gospel,” in The Underestimated Gospel, ed. Jonathan Leeman (Nashville: B&H, 2014), 19.

To further the point, here is John MacArthur explaining it:

Now, any discussion of the doctrine of predestination or the doctrine of divine sovereign election, or, if you will, sovereign salvation as a work of God is based on another doctrine, on another doctrine.  God must save us.  He must choose us, call us, regenerate us, justify us by his divine power, because we are neither willing nor able to do it for ourselves.  And this takes us to what I’m going to call the “doctrine of absolute inability.” 

[….]

Especially would I never say to a dead man, “Bill, come forth.”  I mean, you wouldn’t waste words.  You’d look foolish.  Dead men can’t hear.  Dead men can’t think.  Dead men can’t respond cause they’re dead and dead means the absolute inability to do anything in response to any stimulus.  There’s no will.  There’s no power to think or act. 

[….]

Those who deny the doctrine of divine election, those who deny the doctrine of divine salvation as an act of God have to believe that there’s something in man left to himself that enables him to become willing and to come to life.  Is that what the Bible teaches?  The Bible doesn’t describe our condition as a disability.  It describes it as death.  And everybody knows that death means an inability to respond.

[….]

That is not what is meant when theologians refer to total depravity because not everybody is as bad as they could be, and not everybody is as bad as everybody else.  What we’re talking about here is what I’ve chosen to call “absolute inability.”  What is true of everybody is we have no ability to respond to the gospel.  We are completely unable to raise ourselves out of a state of death.  We are completely unable to give our blind hearts sight.  We are completely unable to free ourselves from slavery to sin.  We are completely unable to turn from ignorance to truth.  We are completely unable to stop rebelling against God, stop being hostile to His Word.

So far the point about “Man is responsible for rejecting God” is not in the cards. Romans 1:19-20:

  • since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.al As a result, people are without excuse. (CSB).
  • God punishes them, because what can be known about God is plain to them, for God himself made it plain. Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made. So those people have no excuse at all! (GNB)
  • because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (NASB95)
  • For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God himself has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been understood and observed by what he made, so that people are without excuse. (ISV)
  • since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (NIV)
  • For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (ESV)

Romans continues to say (CSB): “For though they knew God, …. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” So, they knew God, and had the truth, but with the hardening of their hearts and chasing after worldly pleasure and letting their emotions trample on the Imago Dei, they handed over that plain truth to lies and sensuality.

MacArthur and the others contradict the plain reading of Scripture, and they have to throw in Lazarus to try and prove their point by Eisogesis rather that exegesis. Because Christ Himself told us what that story meant.

  • Jesus, however, was speaking about his death, but they thought he was speaking about natural sleep. So Jesus then told them plainly, “Lazarus has died. I’m glad for you that I wasn’t there so that you may believe…” (John 11:13-15, CSB)

Notice what Jesus didn’t say, via the HCBV (Honest Calvinist Bible Version):

Jesus, however, was speaking about his death, but they thought he was speaking about natural sleep. So Jesus then told them “plainly,”

Lazarus serves as an example that everyone on earth is born spiritually dead. Not everybody is as bad as they could be with their hands, but spiritually they are bad as they could be. Completely blind, unable to respond to any grace enablements, so the words I speak and the truth I present are 100% impossible to be responded to, the 115 passages which condition salvation on believing alone, and about 35 simply on faith… all that is poppycock I tell you, truly!

There is a narrow way in which I effectually call you from before time was created, and nothing you have or will do made God choose you. You were arbitrarily and unconditionally chosen, and the vast majority of people made in my image I [God] chose for perdition, hell. They cannot respond because they are totally unable, not effectually called and drawn irresistibly to truth.

So my death to come soon on Calvary is secondary to that unconditional, arbitrary choice. Sorry, many here I have chosen, irresistibly, to end up in eternal torment — not based on them rejecting anything; because, if you are unconditionally chosen, likewise, you are unconditionally ‘unchosen.’ Too bad, soo ‘sad’ that you have not been predestined for salvation but damnation.

Truly, truly I tell you, that when you’re in heaven, the very few listening to my words I have chosen since before time will be so sanctified that you will be able to see your own mother, brother, sister, best friend standing next to you now — in hell — and rejoice in that, knowing that God’s perfect justice is being carried out. Again I tell you, You will be so sanctified in heaven that you can look into the pit of hell, see your mother there, and be glad.

Remember when I said to Matthew:

  • Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 

Or what Peter clearly heard, that

  • the Lord is not slow about his promise, as some people understand slowness, but is being patient with you. He does not want anyone to perish, but wants everyone to come to repentance.

Those are merely my public statements. Secretly I care for birds more than you and wish most to be damned. I will only allow a very select few to understand this gnosis [secret] of the material flesh being bad and the ‘secret will of my counsel,’ so that much the Gnostics got right — So toughen up buttercup, eternal torture is in store for most hearing and reading my words… not because of anything you didn’t do, but because of what I didn’t do.

I wish to be clear, I realize I told an audience in front of my beloved disciple, John, 

  • You study the Scriptures, because you think that in them you will find eternal life. And these very Scriptures speak about me! Yet you are not willing to come to me in order to have life.

What I was REALLY SAYING was this:

  • You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, but there is no salvation in the book called the Bible unless I irresistible and effectually called you to believe… the Gospel is powerless to effectually save you, and yet they testify about me. But I have not elected you for effectual salvation before the foundation of the world so that you can not irresistibly come to me so that you may have life. 

So that you may believe. HOW?

By God forcing you to believe — against your will.

Got it? Good. Selah.

[See: Born Dead? and The Walking Dead]

In other words, Jesus didn’t teach Calvinism. The Calvinist repeatedly uses such unbiblical and utterly fallacious reasoning. The Calvinist also assumes a contradiction between sovereignty and free will that doesn’t exist.

  • 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.)

VERSUS TOZER:

  • Here is my view: 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? 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.

Tozer is saying that the Calvinist God is too small. Can I return quickly to Johnny Mac?

He said this of the Lazarus story:

Especially would I never say to a dead man, “Bill, come forth.”  I mean, you wouldn’t waste words.  You’d look foolish.  Dead men can’t hear.  Dead men can’t think.  Dead men can’t respond cause they’re dead and dead means the absolute inability to do anything in response to any stimulus.  There’s no will.  There’s no power to think or act. 

What I personally view as foolish is that God is made to look like a fool with that non-Biblical retelling through the lens of a systematic invented in the 16th century. If [BIG IF] the “T” from TULIP is correct, why restrain? Why harden? Why provoke? Why mention to resist the Devil or veil things? That would be like going around a graveyard and digging up bodies and putting blindfolds on them and ear plugs in their ear — or what is left of the cadavers.

It also changes the nature of God in a dangerous way. Making the God of the Bible more like Allah of the Qur’an.

  • God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. (Genesis 1:31, CSB)

I just added the below quote from Calvin to Genesis 1:31 in my Bible…. if Calvinism is correct, and the theistic determinism that is its baggage, then God called “good” His creation [man] by nature destined by decree to sin.

  • “God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his posterity; but also at His own pleasure arranged it … Though their perdition depends on the predestination of God, the cause and matter of it is in themselves … Man therefore falls, divine providence so ordaining, but he falls by his own fault.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.23.7; 3.23.8)

Gordon H. Clark: “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 …In Ephesians 1:11, Paul tells us that God works all things, not some things only, after the counsel of his own will.”

  • They have built high places to Baal on which to burn their children in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, something I have never commanded or mentioned; I never entertained the thought (Jeremiah 19:5, CSB)

James 1 says every good gift that we get is from God. He doesn’t cause our sin thru 1st or secondary causes.

  • No one undergoing a trial should say, “I am being tempted by God,” since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself doesn’t tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:13-17, CSB)

Otherwise, He would be redeeming His own decree, a dualistic God of Eastern metaphysics. Even our prayers are rendered useless, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” ~ His will is being done, to the “T”. Which is why when challenged in a lecture about prayer and Reformed ideas, Wayne Grudem said our prayers were even decreed [scripted] before the creation of the time-space-continuum.

To be clear, I do not worship a God restricted by a Calvinistic theological systematic.

  • “…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)
  • “Hence we maintain that, by his providence, not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined.” — John Calvin, Inst. I.xvi.8. 1539 edition. Quoted in A.N.S. Lane, “Did Calvin Believe in Freewill?” Vox Evangelica 12 (1981): 73
  • “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.” — John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God 177 (OC 8.360) (‘summam et praecipuam rerum omnium causam’). Cf. Inst. I.xviii.2 (1559). See A.N.S. Lane, “Did Calvin Believe in Freewill?” Vox Evangelica 12 (1981): 73
  • “Plainly it was God’s will that sin should enter this world, otherwise it would not have entered, for nothing happens except what God has eternally decreed. Moreover, there was more than a simple permission, for God only permits things that fulfill his purpose.” — A.W Pink, The Sovereignty of God, 2009, 162.
  • (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.

This is unbiblical. And as C.S. Lewis cogently noted:

“On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judge­ment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

On the other hand, if God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear—and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity— when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing— may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.”

CS LEWIS, from chapter 3 of The Problem of Pain.

Yep, I refuse to worship “a god” that is the “devil behind Satan.”

God has never desired sin, nor will He ever. God always desires holiness.

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?

Is God the “devil” Behind Satan? | Sovereign Puppeteer (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

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)

John Lennox notes in his wonderful book,  “Determined to Believe? The Sovereignty of God, Freedom, Faith, and Human Responsibility,” that Martin Luther struggled with the consequences of this form of thought:

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.]

Calvinism’s [T.U.L.I.P.] Logical Conclusion Displayed

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 sovereignty and 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.

And one last point on this via MONERGISM.COM:

  • 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 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? 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.

Tozer is saying that the Calvinist God is too small. Something I run through with Mormon Elders if they decide to come into my home to discuss further their “mission.” 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 sovereign wisdom 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 sovereignty has to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereign decrees, 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 sovereignty to 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 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? 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.

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 sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with mans freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of Gods sovereign design 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 sovereign will of God, and from this there is no appeal.

Challenges To Strict 5-Point Calvinism | Tozer/Winger/Geisler/Lewis

Published by Papa Giorgio

This post will include lengthy excerpts combined with media… so buckle up buttercup!

  • Let him, therefore, who would beware of such unbelief, always bear in mind, that there is no random power, or agency, or motion in the creatures, who are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed. – John Calvin

I reject this strict interpretation by Calvin… Tozer reopens this “knowingly and willingly decreed” to a slightly different understanding that I see is a better fit to this mystery God has unveiled.

This first audio is from A.W. Tozer regarding God’s sovereignty. I also include a partial excerpt from his book, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God. Their Meaning in the Christian Life, chapter 22 ~ “The Sovereignty of God” ~ of which the entire chapter is here.

Here is that partial chapter excerpt.

I changed a couple words as can not reads better as cannot:

… While a complete explanation of the origin of sin eludes us, there are a few things we do know. In His sovereign wisdom 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 sovereignty has to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereign decrees, 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 sovereignty to 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 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? 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.

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 sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with mans freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of Gods sovereign design 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 sovereign will of God, and from this there is no appeal.

Here is the excellent first question [of twenty] Mike was attempting to get to get through, which then prompted me to go thru a bunch of his videos. I will include links to those below the video I grabbed the response to that first question from:

Why God Hardens Hearts: Romans 9:17-24 (YouTube) – This topic is what, many years ago led me to come up with the idea that as God [in His perfect justice] and Man [in his freedom to rebel] working in a mystery together led to the eventual hardening of Pharoah’s heart. God’s perfect sovereignty and man’s limited freedom will culminate in God’s will/plan/glory being executed perfectly.

AND THIS IS A MYSTERY

Our freedoms — as such, and God’s sovereignty. Working in tandem. One of many mysteries involving an infinite Being: the Judeo/Christian God, YHWH.

  • “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart and multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.”  – Exodus 7:3
  • “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had told Moses.” – Exodus 9:12
  • “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them.’” – Exodus 10:1
  • “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will pursue them. Then I will receive glory by means of Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD.” So the Israelites did this.” – Exodus 14:4
  • “The LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the Israelites, who were going out defiantly.” – Exodus 14:8

— combined with Romans 1:18-25:

For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.

Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.

A good dealing with the order of the verbs in these and other passages of the hardening of Pharoah’s heart is HERE (it is a must read in my opinion, even though it is long). The author is more on the hard-Armenian side of the aisle, but nonetheless his treatment of the issue is one I made years ago. I believe both the strict 5-pointer and the Arminian over-step their bound like we try to relegate the Trinity to water/ice/steam. We all misuse language in trying to describe the God who saved us, and we will continue in this failure/endeavor in our discussions. Thankfully the Holy Spirit is the giver of real Truth by pointing us to Jesus for the Glory of the Father:

… fundamentally, the way we know Christianity to be true is by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit. Now what do I mean by that? I mean that the experience of the Holy Spirit is veridical and unmistakable (though not necessarily irresistible or indubitable) for him who has it; that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God; that such experience does not function in this case as a premise in any argument from religious experience to God, but rather is the immediate experiencing of God himself; that in certain contexts the experience of the Holy Spirit will imply the apprehension of certain truths of the Christian religion, such as “God exists,” “I am condemned by God,” “I am reconciled to God,” “Christ lives in me,” and so forth; that such an experience Provides one not only with a subjective assurance of Christianity’s truth, but with objective knowledge of that truth; and that arguments and evidence incompatible with that truth are overwhelmed by the experience of the Holy Spirit for him who attends fully to it.

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 43

Other Mike Winger YouTube discussions are…

BTW, there are many debates I have watched on this topic by James White. I highly recommend Dr. White and his ministry, they have had a huge apologetic influence on me over the years.

I also use thinking over the years to note this idea of God’s sovereignty and foreknowledge in my life in a two page testimony I use this graphic in:

Another influential apologetics “coach” in my life was Dr. Norman Geisler. Here is a presentation I uploaded for this post:

CS LEWIS was another huge influence on my apologetic life. I noted in his book, The Problem of Pain, this part from chapter 3 and 4,

“Divine Goodness”

Any consideration of the goodness of God at once threat­ens us with the following dilemma.

On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judge­ment must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.

On the other hand, if God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear—and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity— when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is worth simply nothing— may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship.

The escape from this dilemma depends on observing what happens, in human relations, when the man of infe­rior moral standards enters the society of those who are better and wiser than he and gradually learns to accept their standards—a process which, as it happens, I can describe fairly accurately, since I have undergone it. When I came first to the University I was as nearly with­out a moral conscience as a boy could be. Some faint dis­taste for cruelty and for meanness about money was my utmost reach—of chastity, truthfulness, and self-sacrifice I thought as a baboon thinks of classical music. By the mercy of God I fell among a set of young men (none of them, by the way, Christians) who were sufficiently close to me in intellect and imagination to secure immediate intimacy, but who knew, and tried to obey, the moral law. Thus their judgement of good and evil was very different from mine. Now what happens in such a case is not in the least like being asked to treat as ‘white’ what was hitherto called black. The new moral judgements never enter the mind as mere reversals (though they do reverse them) of previous judgements but ‘as lords that are certainly expected’. You can have no doubt in which direction you are moving: they are more like good than the little shreds of good you already had, but are, in a sense, continuous with them. But the great test is that the recognition of the new standards is accompanied with the sense of shame and guilt: one is conscious of having blundered into soci­ety that one is unfit for. It is in the light of such experi­ences that we must consider the goodness of God. Beyond all doubt, His idea of ‘goodness’ differs from ours; but you need have no fear that, as you approach it, you will be asked simply to reverse your moral standards. When the relevant difference between the Divine ethics and your own appears to you, you will not, in fact, be in any doubt that the change demanded of you is in the direction you already call ‘better’. The Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning.

This doctrine is presupposed in Scripture. Christ calls men to repent—a call which would be meaningless if God’s standards were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practise. He appeals to our existing moral judgement—‘Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?’ (Luke 12:57) God in the Old Testament expostulates with men on the basis of their own concep­tions of gratitude, fidelity, and fair play: and puts Himself, as it were, at the bar before His own creatures—‘What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me?’ (Jeremiah 2:5.) …

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain (Chapter 3)

“Human Wickedness”

…A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed. We lack the first condition for understanding what He is talking about. And when men attempt to be Christians without this preliminary consciousness of sin, the result is almost bound to be a certain resentment against God as to one always inexplicably angry. Most of us have at times felt a secret sympathy with the dying farmer who replied to the Vicar’s dissertation on repentance by asking ‘What harm have I ever done Him?’ There is the real rub. The worst we have done to God is to leave Him alone—why can’t He return the compliment? Why not live and let live? What call has He, of all beings, to be ‘angry’? It’s easy for Him to be good!

Now at the moment when a man feels real guilt— moments too rare in our lives—all these blasphemies vanish away. Much, we may feel, can be excused to human infirmities: but not this—this incredibly mean and ugly action which none of our friends would have done, which even such a thorough-going little rotter as X would have been ashamed of, which we would not for the world allow to be published. At such a moment we really do know that our character, as revealed in this action, is, and ought to be, hateful to all good men, and, if there are powers above man, to them. A God who did not regard this with unappeasable distaste would not be a good being. We cannot even wish for such a God—it is like wishing that every nose in the universe were abol­ished, that smell of hay or roses or the sea should never again delight any creature, because our own breath hap­pens to stink.

When we merely say that we are bad, the ‘wrath’ of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God’s goodness. To keep ever before us the insight derived from such a moment as I have been describing, to learn to detect the same real inexcusable corruption under more and more of its complex disguises, is therefore indis­pensable to a real understanding of the Christian faith. This is not, of course, a new doctrine. I am attempting nothing very splendid in this chapter. I am merely trying to get my reader (and, still more, myself) over a pons asi-norum—to take the first step out of fools’ paradise and utter illusion. But the illusion has grown, in modern times, so strong, that I must add a few considerations tending to make the reality less incredible.

  1. We are deceived by looking on the outside of things. We suppose ourselves to be roughly not much worse than Y, whom all acknowledge for a decent sort of person, and certainly (though we should not claim it out loud) better than the abominable X. Even on the superficial level we are probably deceived about this. Don’t be too sure that your friends think you as good as Y. The very fact that you selected him for the comparison is suspicious: he is prob­ably head and shoulders above you and your circle. But let us suppose that Y and yourself both appear ‘not bad’. How far Y’s appearance is deceptive, is between Y and God. His may not be deceptive: you know that yours is.

Does this seem to you a mere trick, because I could say the same to Y and so to every man in turn? But that is just the point. Every man, not very holy or very arrogant, has to ‘live up to’ the outward appearance of other men: he knows there is that within him which falls far below even his most careless public behaviour, even his loosest talk. In an instant of time—while your friend hesitates for a word—what things pass through your mind? We have never told the whole truth. We may confess ugly facts— the meanest cowardice or the shabbiest and most prosaic impurity—but the tone is false. The very act of confess-ing—an infinitesimally hypocritical glance—a dash of humour—all this contrives to dissociate the facts from your very self. No one could guess how familiar and, in a sense, congenial to your soul these things were, how much of a piece with all the rest: down there, in the dreaming inner warmth, they struck no such discordant note, were not nearly so odd and detachable from the rest of you, as they seem when they are turned into words. We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are excep­tional single acts, and make the opposite mistake about our virtues—like the bad tennis player who calls his nor­mal form his ‘bad days’ and mistakes his rare successes for his normal. I do not think it is our fault that we cannot tell the real truth about ourselves; the persistent, life-long, inner murmur of spite, jealousy, prurience, greed and self-complacence, simply will not go into words. But the  important thing is that we should not mistake our inevitably limited utterances for a full account of the worst that is inside.

  1. A reaction—in itself wholesome—is now going on against purely private or domestic conceptions of moral­ity, a reawakening of the social We feel our­selves to be involved in an iniquitous social system and to share a corporate guilt. This is very true: but the enemy can exploit even truths to our deception. Beware lest you are making use of the idea of corporate guilt to distract your attention from those humdrum, old-fashioned guilts of your own which have nothing to do with ‘the system’ and which can be dealt with without waiting for the mil­lennium. For corporate guilt perhaps cannot be, and cer­tainly is not, felt with the same force as personal guilt. For most of us, as we now are, this conception is a mere excuse for evading the real issue. When we have really learned to know our individual corruption, then indeed we can go on to think of the corporate guilt and can hardly think of it too much. But we must learn to walk before we run.
  2. We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. As for the fact of a sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God. Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multi-dimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern? It may be that salvation consists not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humanity that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it fur­nished to God’s compassion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe. Perhaps in that eter­nal moment St Peter—he will forgive me if I am wrong— forever denies his Master. If so, it would indeed be true that the joys of Heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, ‘an acquired taste’—and certain ways of life may render the taste impossible of acquisition. Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.
  3. We must guard against the feeling that there is ‘safety in numbers’. It is natural to feel that if all men are as bad as the Christians say, then badness must be very excus­able. If all the boys plough in the examination, surely the papers must have been too hard? And so the masters at that school feel till they learn that there are other schools where ninety per cent of the boys passed on the same papers. Then they begin to suspect that the fault did not lie with the examiners. Again, many of us have had the experience of living in some local pocket of human soci-ety—some particular school, college, regiment or profes­sion where the tone was bad. And inside that pocket certain actions were regarded as merely normal (‘Every­one does it’) and certain others as impracticably virtuous and Quixotic. But when we emerged from that bad soci­ety we made the horrible discovery that in the outer world our ‘normal’ was the kind of thing that no decent person ever dreamed of doing, and our ‘Quixotic’ was taken for granted as the minimum standard of decency. What had seemed to us morbid and fantastic scruples so long as we were in the ‘pocket’ now turned out to be the only moments of sanity we there enjoyed. It is wise to face the possibility that the whole human race (being a small thing in the universe) is, in fact, just such a local pocket of evil—an isolated bad school or regiment inside which minimum decency passes for heroic virtue and utter corruption for pardonable imperfection. But is there any evidence—except Christian doctrine itself—that this is so? I am afraid there is. In the first place, there are those odd people among us who do not accept the local stan­dard, who demonstrate the alarming truth that a quite dif­ferent behaviour is, in fact, possible. Worse still, there is the fact that these people, even when separated widely in space and time, have a suspicious knack of agreeing with one another in the main—almost as if they were in touch with some larger public opinion outside the pocket. What is common to Zarathustra, Jeremiah, Socrates, Gautama, Christ1 and Marcus Aurelius, is something pretty sub­stantial. Thirdly, we find in ourselves even now a theoret­ical approval of this behaviour which no one practises. Even inside the pocket we do not say that justice, mercy, fortitude, and temperance are of no value, but only that the local custom is as just, brave, temperate and merciful as can reasonably be expected. It begins to look as if the neglected school rules even inside this bad school were connected with some larger world—and that when the term ends we might find ourselves facing the public opin­ion of that larger world. But the worst of all is this: we cannot help seeing that only the degree of virtue which we now regard as impracticable can possibly save our race from disaster even on this planet. The standard which seems to have come into the ‘pocket’ from outside, turns out to be terribly relevant to conditions inside the pocket—so relevant that a consistent practice of virtue by the human race even for ten years would fill the earth from pole to pole with peace, plenty, health, merriment, and heartsease, and that nothing else will. It may be the custom, down here, to treat the regimental rules as a dead letter or a counsel of perfection: but even now, everyone who stops to think can see that when we meet the enemy this neglect is going to cost every man of us his life. It is then that we shall envy the ‘morbid’ person, the ‘pedant’ or ‘enthusiast’ who really has taught his company to shoot and dig in and spare their water bottles.

[….]

This chapter will have been misunderstood if anyone describes it as a reinstatement of the doctrine of Total Depravity. I disbelieve that doctrine, partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved, and partly because experience shows us much goodness in human nature. Nor am I recommending universal gloom. The emotion of shame has been valued not as an emotion but because of the insight to which it leads. I think that insight should be permanent in each man’s mind: but whether the painful emotions that attend it should also be encouraged, is a technical problem of spiritual direction on which, as a layman, I have little call to speak. My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to ‘rejoice’ as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue: it is the high-minded unbeliever, desperately trying in the teeth of repeated disillusions to retain his ‘faith in human nature’, who is really sad. I have been aiming at an intellectual, not an emotional, effect: I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact. Perhaps you have imagined that this humility in the saints is a pious illusion at which God smiles. That is a most dangerous error. It is theoretically dangerous, because it makes you identify a virtue (i.e., a perfection) with an illusion (i.e., an imperfection), which must be nonsense. It is practically dangerous because it encourages a man to mistake his first insights into his own corruption for the first beginnings of a halo round his own silly head. No, depend upon it; when the saints say that they—even they—are vile, they are recording truth with scientific accuracy.

CS Lewis | The Problem of Pain (Chapter 4)

Needless to say I have been privy to this debate since the 80’s.

I like to say I am a Baptist except for dress and drink… but a Baptist nonetheless. I am not a 1689 Confession type Baptist. I have always joked that I am a 3.5 Calvinist when I read Norman Geisler, and a 4.5 Calvinist when I read James White.

No more.

This next part comes from a post about preaching the Gospel to ourselves. And in the middle of this post I have the following. And THE REASON I put that there was to note that a majority of Calvinists give lip play to a distinction between “total” and “utter” depravity, but many use language and ideas to the “utter” end of the spectrum.

A TEACHING BREAK

A spiritually dead person, then, is in need of spiritual life from God. But he does exist, and he can know and choose. His faculties that make up the image of God are not absent; they are simply incapable of initiating or attaining their own salvation. Like a drowning person, a fallen person can reach out and accept the lifeline even though he cannot make it to safety on his own.

The below is from Geisler’s book, Chosen but Free:

Sproul has a wonderful ministry, and he [Sproul] has asked ~ rhetorically ~ how: anyone could be involved in believing in the value of human worth and at the same time believing in TOTAL depravity? He responds:

The very fact that Calvinists take sin so seriously is because they take the value of human beings so seriously. It is because man was made in the image of God, called to mirror and reflect God’s holiness, that we have the distinction of being the image-bearers of God.

But what does ‘total depravity’ mean? Total depravity means simply this: that sin affects every aspect of our human existence: our minds, our wills and our bodies are affected by sin. Every dimension of our personality suffers at some point from the weight of sin that has infected the human race.

So the argument is nuanced and deep.

Thus I split the horns and end up tweaking some of the 5-points, and getting rid of others.

Again:

  • Let him, therefore, who would beware of such unbelief, always bear in mind, that there is no random power, or agency, or motion in the creatures, who are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed. – John Calvin

I do not take that as Gospel Truth, in other words. The following graph serves as a good comparison between the two (larger here):

 

The Totality of God’s Work At Calvary (Grace)

Published by Papa Giorgio

As you get older, the idea that the Old and New Testament are just about Jesus, comes into focus more-and-more. This explanation [below/right] of the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, in focus, is another picture of the Salvation given us… let me repeat that… GIVEN/GIFTED TO US by our Great God’s work at Calvary

  • Then the other men [the company of soldiers, the commander, and the Jewish temple police] surged forward, took hold of Jesus, and arrested him. At that moment Simon Peter drew his sword and struck the high priest’s slave, Malchus’, right ear off. But Jesus responded, “No more of this!” Jesus said to Peter, “Sheathe your sword! […]”, the Jesus touched Malchus’ wound and healed him.

[Adapted telling from Luke 22:49-51; John 18:9-15; Matthew 26:49-55 via the International Standard Version (ISV) and the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)]

A neighbor noted this when watching that video of the “flyover country” Christian’s insight:

So good. Romans 8:1. There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. It’s the sweet exchange. As human beings, it’s normal to want to come and bring something, show some effort. Earn our salvation. But we can’t.

THIS IS WORTHY OF A FEW VERSES FROM ROMANS 8:1-5 (ISV):

  • Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in union with the Messiah Jesus. For the Spirit’s law of life in the Messiah Jesus has set me free from the Law of sin and death. For what the Law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did. By sending his own Son in the form of humanity, he condemned sin by being incarnate, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not live according to human nature but according to the Spirit.

I have an insight into a verse many have not seen a connection in. The Apostle Paul visited the Church in Jerusalem ~ keep in mind that Paul was God’s replacement to Judas, not Matthias (who was chosen by lots). In visiting with some of the other Apostles in Jerusalem, he would have surely heard stories about Jesus’ life.

This event in John 13:1-20 would have been one:

JOHN 13:1-2; 4-8

Now before the Passover Festival, Jesus realized that his hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  [….] Because Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his control, that he had come from God, and that he was returning to God, therefore he got up from the table, removed his outer robe, and took a towel and fastened it around his waist. Then he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel that was tied around his waist.

Then he came to Simon Peter, who asked him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus answered him, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later on you will understand.”

Peter told him, “You must never wash my feet!”

Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you cannot be involved with me.”

Leon Morris notes of this section in one of the best commentaries on John that this was a story about the cross:

Many take the story as no more than a lesson in humility, quite overlooking the fact that, in that case, Jesus’ dialogue with Peter completely obscures its significance! But those words, spoken in the shadow of the cross, have to do with cleansing, that cleansing without which no one belongs to Christ, that cleansing which is given by the cross alone. As Hunter says, “The deeper meaning then is that there is no place in his fellowship for those who have not been cleansed by his atoning death. The episode dramatically symbolizes the truth enunciated in I John 1:7, ‘We are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of Jesus’.”4

4 Hunter A. M. Hunter, The Gospel according to John, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge, 1965) Hunter adds, “Many people today would like to be Christians but see no need of the cross. They are ready to admire Jesus’ life and to praise the sublimity of his moral teaching, but they cannot bring themselves to believe that Christ died for their sins, and that without that death they would be lost in sin. This, as Brunner has said, is one of the prime ‘scandals’ of Christianity for modern man—and the very heart of the apostolic Gospel.”

Leon Morris, The Gospel according to John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 544–545.

Now, this is me, but I think that that story was the Holy Spirit inspired precursor to this well known verse in Christendom.

In other words, Paul refashioned this Last Supper story of Jesus washing feet to Philippians 2:6–11:

He loved them to the end […] Jesus rising from his seat [throne], removed his outer robe [Godhood], took a towel and fastened it around his waist [took on humanity], he poured some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples [ work on the cross for our punishment]

… hence Paul’s rewording of the core of this story:

PHILIPPIANS 2:6–11

6 who, existing in the form of God,

 did not consider equality with God

as something to be exploited.

 7 Instead he emptied himself

 by assuming the form of a servant,

 taking on the likeness of humanity.

And when he had come as a man,

8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient

to the point of death—

even to death on a cross.

 9 For this reason God highly exalted him

and gave him the name

 that is above every name,

10 so that at the name of Jesus

every knee will bow—

in heaven and on earth

and under the earth—

11 and every tongue will confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus’s “servant work” was to cleanse us completely! Even when we live our Christian life at times trampling on His Imago Dei in each of us causing his wrathful jealousy to protect this Image by judgement…

  • The remarkable plotline of God’s story is that the depth of the brokenness of the world’s inhabitants is answered by the uniqueness of Jesus. God is jealous of His own image in man, an image created to reflect the rays of His moral majesty. In fact, our creational identity as the image of God says a great deal about who we are, and our purpose, and meaning. (GOSPEL for LIFE)

…all He sees is Christ. It is the old man who is judged righteously in the trampling of this Holy Image in his or her rebellion. And they will know one day that God’s Grace was involved in every breath they took! Every tongue will confess…

And everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
  and bring glory to God the Father

Amen?

Man, God is Good.

[To compliment the above graphic]

A. W. Tozer said of Leonard Ravenhill: “To such men as this, the church owes a debt too heavy to pay. The curious thing is that she seldom tries to pay him while he lives. Rather, the next generation builds his sepulchre and writes his biography — as if instinctively and awkwardly to discharge an obligation the previous generation to a large extent ignored.”

Soak in this understanding of Law vs. Gospel via THE WHITE HORSE INN’s discussion of God’s grace in Genesis chapters 15 thru 18 and the promises of redemptive history. Here is the description of this episode from White Horse Inn:

In his Genesis commentary, Walter Brueggemann notes that in chapters 16 to 18, Abraham and Sarah “are not offered as models of faith but as models of disbelief.” In this part of the narrative, he says, “the call is not embraced, but is rejected as non-sensical.” This helps to explain why the couple sought to fulfill God’s promise with Hagar’s assistance. But as Paul explains in Galatians chapter 4, this entire narrative is a tale of two covenants: one of grace, and another of works. Shane Rosenthal talks with Mike Brown about these issues and more as we continue our series on the Gospel in Genesis.

Show Quote:

There are only two kinds of religions in the world – one that seeks righteousness by keeping the law and one that seeks righteousness through faith in Christ. With the exception of Christianity, all of the religions in the world with their pursuits of enlightenment, salvation or self-realization fall into the first category, the category of trusting in self, in one’s own obedience. It’s a religion of human ascent that tries to earn God’s blessing through personal effort rather that receiving God’s blessing by grace through faith alone.

Mike Brown